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Sparks

Flood-Proofing NYC’s Subways Means Closing Them

Even in the best case scenario, storms will keep closing New York City’s public transportation system.

A subway map.
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New York City’s subway service was hit hard by the rains and flooding that hit the city today: The B, G, W trains were all suspended, while every other line either saw delays or partial suspensions. This is, as the Wall Street Journal's Ted Mann tweeted (or whatever we’re calling it these days), a sign of how vulnerable the subway system still is to flooding. But it’s also worth pointing out that the MTA’s best-case scenario for a subway system that’s been hardened against extreme rain and flooding would force many of the city’s underground stations to close anyway. At some level, if the MTA’s plans ever come to fruition, service disruptions would be a sign that things are working as intended.

A bit of context: After Superstorm Sandy inundated the city in 2012, the MTA asked the engineering and design consultancy Arup to develop a barrier that could close off the entrances to subway stations during extreme rain, preventing water from coming down the stairs and flooding tunnels. Arup and manufacturing firm ILC Dover came up with a system they called Flexgate, which is essentially a fabric cover that can be rolled out to cover ground-level entrances and stairwells. It’s been rated to withstand flooding from Category 2 hurricanes; in 2019, The Verge’s Justine Calma wrote about how the MTA intentionally flooded a subway entrance in Brooklyn for a few hours to test the system out.

Of course, the problem with gates that roll out across station entrances is that ... you can’t really use those stations. This is the problem with hardening subway systems against flooding generally: The Flexgate is one of many solutions the MTA has been testing post-Sandy, but protecting stations and tunnels from water does, inevitably, mean some level of service disruption.

But hey, at least our feet will be dry when the trains start running again.

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Sparks

Why SoCal Electricity Customers Are Paying for Utility Reforms

The August Electricity Price Hub data is in.

The Hollywood sign and power lines.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

It’s another hot and expensive summer.

Across the country, average household electricity bills are up 2.7% in the first eight months of the year, according to the latest update to Heatmap and MIT’s Electricity Price Hub, tacking on $4 per month to the typical bill. This level of rise is consistent with the pace set in 2024 and 2025, but faster than 2021 and 2023.

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Voltpost announced two new models today designed to mount on walls and ceilings.

Voltpost chargers.
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Voltpost, the company putting electric vehicle chargers on lampposts, is now expanding to parking garages.

On Wednesday, the company unveiled two new configurations that can attach to the walls and ceilings of parking garages, lots, and other locations without easy access to streetlights or utility poles. Like Voltpost’s signature pole-mounted design, the ceiling- and wall-mounted options avoid the expensive construction work required by freestanding charging infrastructure. In theory at least, that should allow the company to deploy more chargers faster.

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Trump’s USDA Using Farmland Rule to Go After Energy Companies, Democrats Say

A proposed change in how the agency implements an obscure Cold War-era law would impose onerous reporting requirements on renewables and pipelines.

Wind turbines and a farm.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Democrats in Congress claim that a new Trump administration proposal will have a chilling effect on the energy sector by subjecting renewables and fossil fuel pipelines alike to an obscure, rarely cited Cold War-era law requiring detailed information on foreign farmland ownership be submitted to the Agriculture Department.

In late June, the Agriculture Department released a proposal to change implementation of the Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act of 1978, which requires companies to provide information to the federal government on foreign investors in farmland holdings, acquisitions, and sales. If finalized, the new rule would expand the definition of “agricultural land” in regulation to include all renewable energy facilities and pipeline corridors by explicitly tying the term to those industries’ formal codes under the North American Industry Classification System.

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