■The Look Park Streamliner, which has carried 1.8 million passengers since its purchase in 1948, is getting a major overhaul by Lenny Bergeron of Leeds in preparation for another season. The train is a favorite of young and old alike.
■Three city women Monday will begin work as meter maids, according to Mayor Sean M. Dunphy. “They will work a 40-hour week,” he said, “as parking meter superintendents in the central business district.” They will be paid $2 an hour.
■Peter A. Zebrowski, 66, a longtime teacher at the John F. Kennedy Middle School in Northampton, died Friday at the Cooley Dickinson Hospital. Mr. Zebrowski, known to many as Mr. Z., taught industrial arts at the school since it opened in 1964.
■Northampton’s water customers as a whole could save millions, if tests continue to show the city’s water is pure enough to do without a new filtration plant. Water tests taken from July 1996 through December show that water in city reservoirs falls well below federal thresholds for turpidity and bacteria, a state Department of Environmental Protection official says.
■Elevated levels of problem substances in wastewater from the Coca-Cola bottling plant on Industrial Drive are prompting the company to install additional treatment equipment to comply with a city permit. Meantime, the Board of Public Works in April plans to increase one surcharge rate and create a new kind of rate for customers with wastewater pollutants that exceed certain thresholds.
■The long-planned redevelopment of the former state mental hospital in Northampton is expected to surpass 100 homes this spring, as three more housing projects are preparing to break ground at Village Hill Northampton. MassDevelopment is also exploring building a co-housing community on the north campus. If it comes to fruition, it would be the third co-housing project in the city.