Miami, FL
An underground battery: Miami’s latest geothermal plant conversion
Following senior commencement, Miami University plans to break ground for construction, but not for a new academic building or residence hall.
Miami will begin drilling more than 500 wells almost 850 feet into the earth as the university’s next step toward carbon neutrality. The wells will be used for geothermal energy extraction to support the conversion of the North Chiller Plant from fossil-fuel-powered steam systems to a geothermal energy plant. According to the Energy Information Administration, geothermal plants use wells to extract and use the heat from the Earth’s interior to power turbines that generate electricity.
Overseeing this project is Miami’s Director of Sustainability, Olivia Herron.
“Through the President’s Climate Leadership Commitment, President Crawford has committed Miami to carbon neutrality by 2040. The biggest source of our emissions, broadly, is energy,” Herron said. “But specifically, we can attribute the biggest single source to heating and cooling our buildings.”
The North Chiller Plant, located between Withrow and McFarland Halls, currently provides heating and cooling through steam systems powered by natural gas, a fossil fuel. Although cleaner than conventional fossil fuels such as coal and oil, natural gas is non-renewable, and unintended leaks or flaring can harm the environment.
The geothermal wells will be dug under the front lawn of Millett Hall instead of the Millett parking lot.
The Miami Student
“We have transitioned to natural gas, which is obviously a lot cleaner. But still, we know that it’s not efficient to send something really hot through 14 miles of underground line. You’re just always going to have heat loss,” Herron said. “… This transition to geothermal is essential to achieving our carbon neutrality targets and will just improve the energy efficiency of all of the buildings it starts.”
The soon-to-be North Geothermal Plant will provide clean heating and cooling to many North campus buildings, including Millett Hall and the Student Athlete Development Center. In addition to North Campus buildings being supported by the North Geothermal Plant, Shideler and Bachelor Hall will be transitioned onto Western’s existing geothermal energy plant.
The Oxford campus projects to heat 43 buildings from geothermal by 2026, accounting for 39% of campus buildings and making geothermal the largest energy source by square footage and number of buildings.
Geothermal plants produce and store energy all year round, making them a reliable source for fluctuating weather patterns and changing climates. Don Van Winkle, the associate director of engineering within Miami’s physical facilities department, explains its capacity to balance energy shortages in times of need.
“What the geothermal wellfield will allow us to do is take that energy we’re pulling out in an unbalanced situation and store it in the ground,” Van Winkle said. “So if we are in the cooling season, we’ve got to take a bunch of heat out of spaces. And we always have someplace to put heat, there’s always domestic hot water going on, no matter what time of year.”
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Van Winkle explained that the current steam system is a balancing act of energy use, and with geothermal the ground can be used as an underground battery to store unused energy.
“There is always use for some of the heat, but it could be out of balance. We can use the new geothermal wells to send that heat into the ground, and then it’s available for us to use in the winter when we are unbalanced the other way.”
The original project outline for digging these geothermal wells planned on tearing up the Millett parking lot, but discussions in the fall 2023 semester led to a decision not to drill the wells underneath the parking lot. Herron said the wells will be dug under the grass in front of Millett instead.
The energy efficiency, low cost and storage abilities of geothermal energy make it an enticing source of energy for college campuses. With its growing popularity, Miami has run into issues finding contractors to begin construction.
“Cost is going crazy with everything right now, but there’s also a pretty high demand for transitioning to geothermal, especially amongst college campuses,” Van Winkle said. “Contractors, they’re becoming more available but a lot of them are busy. There’s a lot of people doing this work. It’s hard to get good competitive pricing and construction in general right now.”
Once the plant is in operation, the university expects costs to go down from removing cooling towers that currently serve the chiller plant, which require excessive chemicals and water for steam production.
The transition to geothermal is one step closer to Miami’s goal of carbon neutrality, and places Miami as an exemplary institution in the race to decarbonization. From 2008-2022 the university reduced their energy-based carbon emissions by 57% and saved $95 million from utility usage. Another geothermal plant will push Miami to wider dependency on geothermal energy and a subsequent reduction in emissions.
“It’s also exciting because the goal is essentially for eventually all buildings to be tied on to this geothermal system,” said Herron.
Miami’s North Chiller Plant conversion is expected to begin in the summer of 2024 and be in full operation starting the spring of 2026, with time to charge the Earth’s “battery” over the summer months.
kalinaae@miamioh.edu
Miami, FL
3 hurt in fire on Lincoln Road that started underground
Three people were hurt after a building caught fire on Lincoln Road on Sunday, according to authorities.
The Miami Beach Fire Department said it was working a fire near 230 Lincoln Road.
The flames had spread from a fire in a manhole that “ignited an FPL vault of an adjacent building,” officials said.
Three people were taken to Mount Sinai Medical Center with minor injuries.
The building was evacuated, and FPL has shut off power to the surrounding area, the fire department said.
Drivers were asked to avoid the area of Collins Avenue between 16th and 17th streets while crews worked the scene.
Miami, FL
“Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta” star Tommie Lee among 6 arrested during World Cup match in Miami, sheriff says
Reality television personality Tommie Lee — whose real name is Atasha Jefferson — best known for her appearances on “Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta,” was among six people arrested during the England vs. Norway FIFA World Cup match in Miami on Saturday, according to the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office.
The sheriff’s office said 60,024 fans attended the match. Deputies also reported 19 ejections from the stadium, adding that all incidents were isolated and handled quickly.
Authorities have not yet released the circumstances surrounding Jefferson’s arrest or any charges she may face.
A social media account that regularly reports celebrity news claimed Sunday that Jefferson was arrested July 11 and released July 12 after posting a $1,000 bond. The post also alleged she is facing a felony charge of interference with a sporting or entertainment event and said she later shared a video on Snapchat appearing to be in good spirits after her release.
What we don’t know
CBS News has not independently verified those claims, including the reported charge, bond amount or release information, and Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office has not publicly confirmed those details.
CBS News has also not independently verified what led to the encounter, and the sheriff’s office has not said what prompted deputies to take Jefferson into custody.
CBS News has requested Jefferson’s arrest report, booking information and any charging documents from the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office. A request for comment has also been sent to Jefferson’s representatives.
Reality TV star’s legal troubles in South Florida amid World Cup festivities
Jefferson rose to national prominence as one of the breakout personalities on “Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta” before later appearing on several Zeus Network reality series, where she has remained a frequent cast member.
This is not Jefferson’s first legal issue in South Florida. In 2024, she was arrested in Miami Beach on a battery charge following an incident outside LIV Nightclub. Court records from that case alleged she physically confronted another person before officers took her into custody.
Saturday’s arrest comes as Miami continues hosting FIFA World Cup matches that have drawn tens of thousands of fans from around the world. Despite the arrests and ejections, the sheriff’s office said the event proceeded safely and described the incidents as isolated.
This is a developing story. CBS News will update this article as additional information, including the exact circumstances surrounding Jefferson’s arrest and any charges, becomes available.
Miami, FL
Why I’m Not Worried About Giannis in Miami
The reaction to the trade was predictable. The moment Pat Riley landed his whale and the Heat sent most of their young talent and a war chest of draft picks to Milwaukee for Giannis Antetokounmpo, the conversation turned away from how Miami finally landed the star they had been seeking, to calf strains and Giannis not being the superstar player that he once was.
“He only played 36 games last year.” ”The calf injuries keep coming back.” “He’s 31, turning 32.” “They bet the franchise on a body that’s breaking down.”
Various voices on Giannis Antetokounmpo
I’ve spent Over 15 years working with youth, collegiate and pro athletes on exactly this question, not “is he hurt,” but “what does this injury actually mean for what comes next.” And I’ll say it plainly: I’M NOT WORRIED ABOUT GIANNIS. Not in the way the panic merchants want you to be.
Let me be clear about what I’m NOT claiming. I’m not his trainer. I don’t have his imaging, his force-plate data, or his medical file. And I’m not going to insult you by telling you calf strains are nothing, because in a 31-year-old NBA forward with 13 years in the NBA, they are decidedly something. The fear has a real basis.
The soleus and the gastrocnemius, which are the two muscles of your calf, both funnel down into the Achilles tendon. When a calf is compromised and an athlete returns before it has its full capacity back, the load it can’t absorb has to go somewhere, and the Achilles is next in line. We’ve watched it happen on the biggest stages. Those are the facts and I take it seriously. I just don’t think it’s the story here.
Here’s why…
He’s one of the most durable superstars of his era
Before we talk about what’s fragile, look at what’s been bulletproof. Strip away the two COVID-compressed seasons that the entire league played short, and strip away last year (where he wa shut down by the team), and across his other ten campaigns Giannis averaged roughly 73 games a season and never once dipped below 63. He cleared 72 games in 7 different seasons. For more than a decade, the single most physically violent player in basketball, a 6’11”, 250+ pound freight train who initiates more contact per possession than almost anyone alive — was, by availability, an iron man.
Tissue tolerance, connective-tissue quality, recovery capacity, and movement efficiency are stable characteristics of an athlete, and Giannis has eleven years of evidence that his are elite. One brutal season doesn’t erase that baseline. When a historically available athlete has one wrecked year, the honest question should be “what was different about that year.” And a lot was.
The injuries are soft tissue, not structural
Here’s the piece that many are missing, and it’s the heart of my optimism. Call me a fan if you want, but I hate seeing ANYONE get injured. I’m rooting for Giannis to bounce back.
There are two broad categories of injury, and they age completely differently. The first is structural: torn ligaments, ruptured tendons, cartilage and joint degeneration, stress fractures. These leave a permanent mark. A reconstructed ACL is never the original. Cartilage doesn’t grow back. These are the injuries that genuinely shorten careers, because the tissue itself is changed forever and the clock only runs one direction.
The second category is soft-tissue strains or muscle. A calf strain, a groin strain, a hamstring pull. And muscle is the one tissue in the lower body that, when managed properly, heals back to full structural integrity. It is not a cumulative wound. A calf you strained in December and rehabbed correctly is not a weaker calf in March; it’s a healed calf. There’s no scar that compounds the way an arthritic joint compounds. Strains are frustrating, they’re disruptive to a season, and they recur when you rush them, but they are not a countdown timer ticking toward catastrophe.
Now go down Giannis’s list from last season: a low-grade groin strain. A calf strain. A re-aggravated calf. An ankle sprain. A knee hyperextension with a bone bruise. Look at that honestly. The ankle sprain is acute meaning it’s a one-off mechanical event as opposed to a sign of decay. The knee hyperextension and bone bruise are traumatic. That could be somebody’s leg, a bad landing, a freak gather (no pun intended). A bone bruise heals. None of those four are degenerative. None of them are the kind of injury that feeds the next one.
Which leaves the calf. The one real recurrence. So let’s talk about the calf specifically, because that’s where the argument is actually won or lost.
What a soleus strain is
Your calf is two muscles doing two different jobs. The gastrocnemius is the showy one that crosses both the knee and the ankle, it’s fast-twitch, it’s what fires when you sprint and explode off the floor. The soleus sits underneath it, crosses only the ankle, and it’s the endurance muscle. It’s considered the postural workhorse that absorbs force every time you decelerate, land, and push off, thousands of times a night in the case of many athletes. Giannis’s recurring problem has been the soleus.
Soleus strains are classic high-mileage, fatigue-and-load injuries. They show up in athletes who run an enormous volume on a heavy frame which is the literal job description of a player who logged the third-highest workload on a bad team.
And here’s the critical part: soleus strains are notoriously slow to heal and notoriously easy to re-tweak. The calf is one of hardest lower-leg structures to truly load-test before return. It can pass every clinical check, feel 100 percent walking and even jogging, and still not have the deep capacity to handle a full-speed game’s worth of repeated max-effort decelerations. Return a week early and you’re injuring healed tissue that hadn’t been rebuilt to game-level capacity yet.
Last season was the worst possible environment for getting that management right. Consider the context Giannis was actually operating in. Milwaukee went 32-50 and missed the playoffs. The franchise eventually fired its coach.
Giannis spent the entire year as the center of a trade saga that, by every report, had him wanting out for over a year. A declining team with a disgruntled superstar and a front office weighing his trade value against his health is the textbook setup for muddled, hurried, incentive-conflicted return decisions which are exactly the conditions under which a soleus strain becomes two soleus strains.
Now change the environment as he lands in Miami. Known for being an organization with a near-mythological reputation for conditioning and body management, a culture that has rehabilitated and extended careers other teams gave up on.
He pairs with Bam Adebayo, which means for the first time in years Giannis doesn’t have to be the entire offensive and defensive engine every single night. As of now the roster isn’t fully complete but they will add to that so that there’s lower usage and a shared load. Real return-to-play standards instead of playoff-desperation math. You take the most fixable injury pattern on his chart and drop it into the best possible setting to fix it.
His game is built to age
There’s a movement argument too. Giannis isn’t a stop-start, pull-up, hard-cut guard whose game is one violent deceleration after another. He’s a downhill, long-stride force athlete. His value comes from length, gather, straight-line pressure, rim protection, and playmaking. Those are skills that lean on size and feel, and they degrade gracefully with age in a way that twitchy, change-of-direction games don’t. The same frame that makes him an injury talking point is the frame that lets him dominate without living on the edge of his physical limits every possession.
What would actually change my mind? If the recurring issue were structural, like a partial Achilles tear, chronic patellar tendon breakdown that imaging showed was degenerating, cartilage loss in the knee, I’d be writing a very different column.
If he came back this season and strained the same calf a third and fourth time despite a clean environment and proper protocols, that would tell me something about the tissue I can’t see. And the Achilles risk that follows calf injuries in some athletes is real enough that it should govern how Miami brings him back: slowly, on capacity-based criteria.
EVERY great athlete in his thirties requires careful management. That’s just the truth.
I’m not telling you he’s invincible. But I’m not willing to bet against eleven years of durability and the most fixable problem on the chart if you want. I’ll take the Greek Freak, the new setting, and the science that we’ll all be watching a productive age-32 season with a lot less fear than the headlines are selling you.
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