Portland News

Under broken clouds and morning blue sky, a train of weathered hopper cars rumbled toward the Portland Generating Station, a hulking complex on the Delaware River with a voracious appetite for coal.The train's spoils will help generate 500 megawatts of power annually, lighting living rooms and keeping refrigerators cold.

I'm writing this letter to thank the person in Columbia, just across the river from the little town of Portland, who lights up the Christmas tree right after Thanksgiving.

Today: is the 350th day of 2009. There are 15 days left in the year. On this date In 1773, the Boston Tea Party took place as American colonists boarded a British ship and dumped more than 300 chests of tea overboard to protest tea taxes.

The owner of a home damaged in a fire last night in Portland initially believed her neighbor's house was on fire when she noticed a bright, orange glow outside her kitchen window around 11.

Firefighters rescued five people trapped by a fire that gutted the third floor of a Stroudsburg apartment building last night.

The renovations on Larry Holmes Drive are part of the $2.1 million in waterfront improvements that are being funded by a grant from the Delaware River Joint Toll Bridge Commission.

Font size: [A] [A] [A] ERIC CONOVER/Staff Photographer Members of the Hazleton High School class of 1954 held their class reunion in September at the Valley Country Club.

The population of the United States now stands at more than 307 million; in 1980 it was 226 million.

Nine years after the Portland Industrial Park was built, the only tenant in the 96-acre parcel is plastics maker Ultra-Poly , whose owners own the park.

Destroyed in the ashes at the Foxmoor Village mall: $200,000 of brand-new rattan furniture.

The future of the Portland Industrial Park, considered key to the economic future of the Slate Belt, hangs in limbo again amid disagreement between surrounding municipalities and the Portland Borough Authority over water tapping fees.

A vacant Upper Mount Bethel Township house on Route 191 was destroyed in a fire this morning, and a state police fire marshal was called to investigate.

Northampton County councilman and Slate Belt resident Ron Angle has raised concerns over grant money that was earmarked for low-income residents to receive assistance with sewer costs that went to a handful of Portland Borough elected officials and others with government ties.

Ed Kowalczyk, York native and member of the rock band Live, performs an acoustic set Thursday night at the Strand Theatre in York.

Three candidates seek two seats on the board of supervisors in the largest and most populous municipality in the Slate Belt.

Residents of Bangor and East Bangor who live near an abandoned slate quarry used to dispose of coal ash learned this week that RRI Energy -- the utility that operates the quarry and the Portland generating station -- has received state and federal clearances in terms of keeping heavy metals out of local water supplies.

Stroudsburg Volunteer Fire Co. Chief Clement "Butch" Kochanski died suddenly Wednesday afternoon after a heart attack, according to a report in the Pocono Record.

Coal ash from the Portland Generating Station is dumped in Bangor. Two environmental groups, Environmental Integrity Project and Earthjustice , say an ash disposal site at the Bangor quarry has an inadequate lining.

Two Slate Belt families awoke Saturday to some unpleasant news when they found tires slashed on their vehicles, according to police records.

Everyone else on the planet has been on a reality dating show, so why not someone from the Poconos? It finally happens tonight when a Canadensis native is the subject of a dating show .