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The sewer system in Fridley, Minnesota is about to undergo a massive restoration project beginning next month.

Local newspaper the Sun Focus reports that the Metropolitan Council Environmental Services (MCES) recently announced the project. The restoration work will begin next month and is expected to wrap up by September 2016.

The sewer repair work will affect Fridley Community Park and Plaza Park, among other areas.

The project’s citizen liaison, Tim O’Donnell, says the repair work is way overdue.

“Many of them are in the 50, 60, and 70-year-old range and were made of reinforced concrete and pipe back in that time frame,” O’Donnell said. “We are finding now that they are just falling apart. They are suffering high levels of corrosion on the inside of the pipe. We are really trying to target these areas in critical condition and restore them to a condition that will help them last for another 50 years.”

In addition to improving the sewer’s sanitation capabilities, the project will also help prevent groundwater and stormwater from entering the sewer.

MCES is hiring sewer repair contractor Lametti and Sons, Inc. for the job. Lametti and Sons will first install above ground waste water pumps in order to maintain sewer service during the repair work. The bulk of the repair work will involve a process known as cured-in-place-pipe (CIPP) lining, which involves inserting flexible, seamless new pipes into the existing pipes via manholes and sewers.

“We are using the existing sewer, even though it is damaged, as a mold to create a new pipe,” O’Donnell explained. Because the existing pipe will not be physically removed, the majority of the repair work will be contained in the local manhole sites.

“Once we have that set up, there is no flow going through the pipe and we can clean it, inspect it again, put the liner in and make sure the liner is working well,” he said. “Once the actual sewer repair is done then we can come back and do any restoration work that we need to do if we have to dig across streets or driveways or if we do any minor excavation in the park areas or any other landscape area. We will restore those back to the existing condition or better.”

The “trenchless” method as CIPP lining is sometimes referred to as is a cost effective and relatively quick way of repairing sewer pipes. It has been available for residential use since around 2000.

While carpet covers nearly 70% of American floors, Chicago-based carpet company FLOR brought carpet out of homes and into the streets. According to a recent report from the Chicago Tribune, FLOR distributed 5,000 free carpet squares to the audience of the Pitchfork Music Festival, which were used by the concertgoers as soft spots to sit and protection from muddy walkways.

The free carpet was an attempt by FLOR to show millennials that it’s hip to be square. With all the grime of a music festival present (cigarettes, mud, booze, food) the carpet was proven to be durable and long-lasting. FLOR digital marketing director Kim Brannigan says that “it’s a new market for [FLOR]. We’re just pushing to show we’re affordable to Millennials, and we have a lot of options.”

Their push wasn’t free, either. FLOR paid the $15,000 vendor fee, as well as the cost of the squares themselves. Altogether, the assorted colored carpet pieces would have retailed for around $60,000. But it was worth it to get people talking. Some concertgoers liked the idea of keeping their square as a reminder of the festival, while others decided to recycle their squares. The squares that were left in the park were shipped back to FLOR’s manufacturing plant, where the eco-friendly company will make them into new carpets.

While some of the concertgoers sneered at the tiles, saying they wouldn’t want to sit at the festival at all, many people appreciated having their own space. Peter Michalik, 29, said he and his friends ditched their blankets in support of the squares, which he claimed felt very durable. He did say that he wouldn’t want to carry the carpet square around for several days, making the concert-wide recycling an efficient choice of disposal.

Known as the golf capital of the world, the city of Myrtle Beach is looking to add some more sun and surf into the equation. According to a recent report from MyrtleBeachOnline.com, residents of the Northwoods neighborhood were not pleased to find out that the places they’d been surfing for years were actually designated no-surf zones. The recent addition of lifeguards in some of these zones (to police surf activity) has left the community in a huff.

City Manager John Pedersen commented, “Before there was no lifeguard located at 78th or 79th avenues. Surfing isn’t allowed in that area but people were surfing there because there was not a constant [lifeguard] presence to enforce that. Residents in that area complained about not being able to surf, so we decided to take a look at it.”

Surfers will definitely appreciate the extra space, since some of the beaches where surfing is allowed are being overpopulated with swimmers. Revision to the surf zones, as well as the addition of more lifeguards, would increase the number of surf and swim zones while decreasing the distance each lifeguard is responsible for.

The city is also considering taking down the “swim at your own risk” signs and replacing them with information on how to contact the “mobile guards” that will be patrolling the beaches. These guards won’t be set up in the stationary chairs, but instead will do constant patrol of the beach, to cover the maximum area for safety.

The report states that “if passed as expected surfing would be allowed all day in the area from 29th Avenue South to the south city limits; from 34th Avenue North to 47th Avenue North; from 62nd to 68th avenues North; the new zone between 78th and 81st avenues North; and from 87th Avenue North to the north city limits.”

Discover Bank and two of its affiliate financial institutions have been ordered by the federal court to pay $18.5 million in consumer refunds for violating student loan practices, according to a federal regulator on Wednesday, July 22.

Reports from USA Today and the Wall Street Journal say that the Illinois-based bank exaggerated the minimum amount due on billing statements for student loans, failed to provide borrowers with enough information to get federal tax benefits from the loan payments, and also used illegal debt-collection practices, including calling debtors early in the morning and late at night.

Simply put, in the words of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Director Richard Cordray, “Discover created student debt stress for borrowers by inflating their bills and misleading them about important benefits.”

Discover is the third-largest student loan lender by origination volume, the WSJ reported, and its actions affected hundreds of thousands of consumers.

There are currently more than one million student loan borrowers in the U.S., and experts predicted that between 2014 and 2015, the total outstanding student loan debt in the country will climb up from $1.21 trillion to $1.3 trillion by the end of the year.

By making payments more difficult for recent college graduates, Discover wasn’t just breaking the law — it was also causing numerous young adults to miss payments, be denied tax benefits, and possibly even be denied housing or loan opportunities if their credit scores dropped too low.

As any economist will attest, setting consumers up for failure in this way is bound to create an even worse financial situation for the entire country — and according to the New York Post, Discover had been using illegal lending practices for years after it acquired more than 800,000 student loan accounts from Citigroup in 2010.

Discover is now being order to pay $18.5 million total — $16 million will be given to more than 100,000 borrowers who were affected by Discover’s practices, and $2.5 million will be paid to the CFPB’s civil penalty fund.

Individual payments could be as high as $500 for each of the 5,200 consumers who were misled by Discover’s “minimum” payment amounts; up to $300 will be given to each of the 130,000 consumers who can amend their 2011 or 2012 tax deductions and prove that they should have been refunded; $92 will be given to each consumer who received between five and 25 calls at inappropriate times, and $142 will be given to anyone who received more 25 calls.

The WSJ has reported that Discover “neither admitted or denied the allegations [and] a Discover spokesman declined to comment.”

Two teens are now dead after a driver’s education car pulled in front of a tractor-trailer at a rural Upstate New York intersection.

On Tuesday, July 14, the Freightliner truck hit the car’s rear driver’s-side door broadside at the intersection of County Route 1A and Union Corners Road in Warwick, NY — a notorious location for car crashes.

According to WPIX 11, the truck appears to have had the right of way at the intersection. Police said the car had a stop sign and a flashing red light at the intersection, while the truck, which wasn’t pulling a trailer, had a flashing caution light.

The crash killed Antonio Baglivo and Paul Vandoran, both 16, who had been sitting in the back seat of the 2007 Chevrolet Malibu. One of the teens died at the scene of the crash, while the other was pronounced dead at the hospital, the Goshen Central School District announced.

On Wednesday, Goshen School District Superintendent Daniel Connor announced that a third passenger, Lucas O’Connor, 16, had died of his injuries. Connor said he had received word of O’Connor’s death shortly before a planned vigil that evening.

However, the next day, Connor said his report about O’Connor was unconfirmed, and that he may have been given incorrect information about the boy’s status.

All four student drivers attended Goshen High School. Classmates and teachers have had access to grief counselors since Wednesday.

Across the U.S., road crashes result in the deaths of more than 37,000 people each year, and are the leading cause of death for teens and young adults between 15 and 20 years of age. However, it’s relatively rare for car crashes involving driver’s education cars to prove fatal, given the presence of an adult driving instructor in the car.

The driver, 16-year-old Claudia Krebs, and the group’s 61-year-old driving instructor were injured in the crash, but survived. The driver of the tractor-trailer was also taken to the hospital in stable condition.

Currently, the cause of the crash remains under investigation.

A recent study has shown that regular coffee drinkers are about half as likely to develop type 2 diabetes than those who do not consume coffee.

Reuters Health reports that a long-term study conducted by researchers at the Department of Nutrition and Dietetics at Harokopio University in Athens, Greece has shown promising results for people who drink coffee regularly, adding on to a wealth of evidence that suggests coffee is good for one’s health.

“Extensive research has revealed that coffee drinking exhibits both beneficial and aggravating health effects,” said Prof. Demosthenes B. Panagiotakos, a co-author of the study. “An inverse relation between coffee intake and diabetes has been reported in many prospective studies whereas some have yielded insignificant results.”

Panagiotakos was careful to point out that the study used a random sample rather than a control group, so the results of the study aren’t conclusive in the strict scientific sense. Still, the researchers’ findings bring scientists closer to establishing a definite cause-and-effect hypothesis for coffee consumption.

The study was conducted over 10 years and involved more than 1,300 adult men and women in Athens. Beginning in 2001, the participants filled out a questionnaire regarding their diet habits, including coffee consumption. According to the questionnaire, drinking less than 1.5 cups of coffee a day was considered “casual” coffee drinking while drinking more than 1.5 cups was considered “habitual.” Of the participants, 816 were casual drinkers, 385 were habitual drinkers, and 239 didn’t consume coffee at all.

In addition to the questionnaire, the participants also had their blood evaluated for protein markers of inflammation and antioxidant levels.

Ten years later, 191 of the participants had diabetes. Most of those with the disease were casual or non-drinkers. Habitual drinkers were 54% less likely to develop diabetes compared to non-drinkers. Factors such as smoking, high blood pressure, family history, and dietary habits were taken into consideration.

“Previous studies pointed in the same direction…now we have an additional hint,” said Dr. Marc Y. Donath, Chief of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at the University Hospital Basel in Switzerland. Donath was not part of the study.

Coffee is one of the world’s most consumed liquids. Business Insider, for example, reports that approximately 500 billion cups of coffee are consumed every year around the world.