From the AP

Yucca Mountain North Tunnel Entrance. Note the circus bigtop right-center. What the hell? Does this mean that Bush's DoE is a bunch of clowns?

I kinda figured it had to happen. In a grand, F.U.  moment, Bush’s Dept of Energy has stated they want to lift the 77,000-ton restriction on the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository. They say that the mountain will hold three times as much waste, and that the 77,000 ton limit is arbitrary.

The Energy Department in its report said that if Congress gives authorization and adequate funds, it could have an interim storage facility running by 2015, but the Bush administration has argued against interim storage, saying it would take pressure off building a permanent repository and require waste to be moved twice.

Never mind that Yucca Mountain is a hot-button political topic in Nevada. The Bush administration is pissing on our backs and not even bothering to convince us that it’s raining.

Tags: environment, nuclear, Politics, yucca

One of the many ways paramedics survive a 72 hour shift is listening to podcasts.  Bob Edwards’ Weekend on XM radio includes archived interviews with leaders in business, politics, arts and education.  Mr. Edwards recently interviewed former President Jimmy Carter.   Topics included the Carter Center and it’s involvement around the world in peace negotiations, democratic election observation teams and human rights issues.  One section included a conversation on the  Carter administrative efforts to decrease the country’s dependence on foreign oil and efforts to turn the country to more renewable and efficient energy sources.  He briefly outlined some of his work on energy independence and efficiency. Then, former President Carter included an anecdote;  “one of the first orders from incoming President Regan was to remove the solar panels from the roof of the White House. ”

The following is a brief summary of one aspect of the Carter administration efforts by Fuel-Efficient-Cars.org:

In 1981 Joan Claybrook, the Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) for President Jimmy Carter, advanced a NHTSA notice that called for fuel efficiency standards to reach 48 mpg by 1995 in the last few days of his administration. Interestingly the notice pointed out that the auto industry itself said it could reach in excess of 30 mpg fuel economy by 1985 with GM saying it could do 33 mpg. The Reagan Administration didn`t waste any time and withdrew the NHTSA notice just three months after it was issued. After the original Congressional mandate of 27.5 mpg took effect in 1985, the Reagan Administration rolled the standard back to 26 mpg in 1986. Finally in 1989 the first Bush Administration moved the standard back to the 1985 level of 27.5 mpg. There was no improvement in the CAFE standards under the Clinton Administration.

This is not a republican or democratic failure, but, one of greed and stupidity.  Clinton made no efforts to address the issues.   Bailout for the big three automakers…… I’ll pass.

Silly President Carter, what was he thinking?

Tags: energy, environment, Politics

From an EPA news release (12/05/08):

“PTP, Inc., a Nevada-based developer, was fined $43,000 for violating its underground injection control permit at the Pineview Estates subdivision in Gardnerville, a violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act. Companies must comply with underground injection control regulations of the Safe Drinking Water Act for wastewater treatment and disposal systems that have the potential to impact subsurface waters. PTP has been working closely with EPA to comply with the UIC permit requirements.”

PTP, based in Minden, Nevada, was previously fined $76,800 in 2005 for allowing polluted storm water at Pineview Estates to run off into the Carson River. The details that the EPA blurb doesn’t mention: this time around, the EPA discovered raw sewage pooling at the surface at the same subdivision. Not only was this an obvious health threat by itself, but it also directly threatened drinking water aquifers.

David Albright, manager of the EPA’s regional groundwater office, stated, “As a public health matter, it is an indication the [sewage treatment] system is not working adequately.”

“They are working closely with us and have made the changes to the system we asked them to. We are pretty much at the end of the process,” he said.  I wonder, did the EPA say that the first time PTP got fined?

Since the development is on land leased from the Washoe Tribe, the EPA is in charge of wastewater enforcement instead of the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection.

Tags: Developers, environment, water

From MLive.com:  Now that wastewater have gotten cleaner, Muskegon County, Michigan, has a problem: the wastewater system has gone green–and not in the fuzzy, feel-good way.

You see, they used to have a paper mill that dumped huge volumes of dark brown wastewater into the county’s wastewater treatment lagoons. Now that the mill has closed, the water in the lagoons has gotten much clearer. This allows more sunlight to penetrate the water, which has cause a massive algae bloom.  The treated water is used on croplands, but the increased algae in the water has clogged up the soils, causing mini-swamps to form in once-productive farmlands.  The built-up algae in the ponds also dies and rots, creating a significant odor problem.

Local restaurants cart their grease to the wastewater lagoons, which adds to the problem. Enter Western Michigan University. WMU has teamed up with Muskegon County to determine the feasibility of harvesting the algae for energy use and converting the restaurant grease to fuel. The county already harvests methane from their landfill and sells it to local industry, so the concept of dipping into the waste stream to harvest energy is an easy topic to broach to the county.

We need more forward-thinking public officials like the administrators in Muskegon County. It would be simple enough to skim up the algae and send it to the landfill. By partnering with academics and entrepreneurs, they are solving a common problem with an intriguing solution and maybe even generating some future revenue as well.

So, what about Douglas County, Nevada? What exciting things are we doing here in the hamlet of Gardnerville?  Considering the Gardnerville city council has forbidden recycling companies from operating here, considering that there are no bike lanes or bike trails, considering that dogs are forbidden in every single park, considering that the sewage treatment plant smells like last year’s egg salad, considering that Bentley Biofuels is just up the road outside of Minden, Gardnerville is not doing much.  Well, we did have a renewable energy fair last month, but a presence from the town of Gardnerville was conspicuously absent. I would have thought that Gardnerville/Minden/Douglas County would be eager to take a lead in alternative energy.

Tags: algae, biofuels, Douglas County, environment, Gardnerville

From the University of Washington and the Nature Conservancy, here is a chart detailing all the dirty little details about biofuels that accompanied an insightful biofuels article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Corn? Fuggedaboudit. Algae? Wave of the future, baby!

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com

The more I read about the algae, the more I like the concept. Save the Ethanol for drinkin’.

Click the image to read the associated story at SeattlePI.

Tags: algae, biofuels, energy, environment

The Boulder-based Solix Biofuels company is planning a 10 acre farm in Durango, CO, to produce biodiesel via algae. Although their website is all hat and no cattle, the $15 million project has an impressive list of backers: Valero, Infield Capital, and the Southern Ute Indian Tribe. It promises 3,000 gallons per year from the plant, which will be constructed on the Southern Ute reservation.

From what I can find, Solix Biofuels started as an academic scientific venture that is now branching out in a reach for commercial viability. According to the Denver Business Journal, the pondscum field is starting to get pretty crowded, along with the addition of Chevron and NREL as big players. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: algae, biofuels, energy, environment, Science

Shawn-Yu Lin of Rensselaer Technical Institute has discovered a way to improve solar cell efficiency by using multiple layers of an anti-reflective coating combined with silicon dioxide and titanium dioxide.

The American Response
In an attempt to recreate the results in Sweetwater, TX,  R. B. “Junior” Metzler was arrested after shining the beam from a 5-cell flashlight down the artificially-enhanced cleavage of a local Hooters waitress. “I was attemptin’ to prove that conversion of light to energy would be improved by havin’ silicone covered in a coupla layers o’ cotton and Victoria’s Secret rayon.”

Tags: environment, Science, solar

As the smoke was still clearing from the Arvida vs. Save Our Bay grudge match discussed in the previous post, we moved to much-more-laid-back Siesta Key. Our house was on a point of land on the inland side of the key. Typical of many normal houses in west Florida back then, it was small, low, breezy, without air conditioning, and very comfortable. Lots of jalousie windows looked out onto a small bayou, with a mass of mangroves and Australian pines beyond. A passing teacher would give my brother and me a ride home from school, and she dropped us off at the end of the road. As we walked home, we passed undeveloped land crowded with birds, hermit crabs, and sheltered by a belt of mangrove trees. It wasn’t a large area, and as such was well off the Save Our Bay’s radar. We felt pleasantly isolated from the tourist bustle closer to the beaches on the other side of the key.

One day, as we walked past our beloved, wild buffer, we saw a new dirt road leading into the sandy stretch of land. As the week wore on, we walked farther along the new road and noticed more and more clear-cut patches of denuded sand. One Saturday, we walked down to the road, and saw that almost all the trees were gone; they were chopped up and bulldozed into messy slash piles. In their place were thickets of wooden stakes with colored ribbons like enemy pennants. I didn’t care what they were, I didn’t care whose they were. I went through and pulled every single one up and tossed them like spears into the slash pile.

Next Monday, I was pulled out of school early by my mother, and we went back home. I was surprised that we were greeted by a phalanx of three sheriff’s deputies in two squad cars. I was separated from my mother, and the deputies grilled me concerning the (as I had just learned) surveyor’s stakes. Apparently, one very smug-looking weasel in a truck had guessed that kids were responsible because of the small size of the Keds shoe prints in the sand. I was driven to the scene of the crime to be confronted with my misdeeds. I was completely unrepentant, and I was pestering them to turn on their lights with such increasing frequency, that they were forced to oblige just to continue asking me questions. Once they had satisfied my juvenile desire to see the lights, they resumed asking me about the surveyor’s stakes. They just couldn’t believe that I pulled them up because the trees had been cut down. After about a quarter of an hour, the weaselly fellow’s smug grin had hardened considerably, and I suspect he was considering asking that I be arrested. Eventually, the deputies gave up, commanded me to stay off the developer’s property, and left. Under threat of massive spanking from my mother, I reluctantly obeyed.

Sadly, a small kid pulling up surveyor’s stakes doesn’t stop developers once they catch the scent of money. That section of Siesta Key was completely plowed under and reshaped into something unrecognizable. Any map I look at may as well be printed with a amorphous circle with the words, “You Were Here.”  The lazy, breezy house that we lived in was scraped to make way for a rich person’s mansion, complete with private beach. The mangrove-lined bayou with it’s fascinating tidal flats was dredged and filled to make a concrete-walled canal lined with exclusive, faux-Spanish mansions, swimming pools, and docks sporting luxury yachts.

The east side of Siesta Key as it is today: overdeveloped and crowded. And judging from the satellite picture, apparently it now comes complete with their own, artificial, private lagoon. And, yes, I know what the spit of land looks like; there's no need to point it out. It seems to me that our house should have been midway down the spit...right where the bare patch of sandspur-infested ground is.

What I learned from the Save Our Bay battle with Arvida and my insignificant, solo skirmish is that yes…most development corporations in general do not care about the land outside of its ability to generate money.  They do not care about the general decay of the quality of life of the citizens already living in the area. They demand infrastructure, tax breaks, and utility access that already-strapped municipalities may be hard-pressed to provide yet are unable to ignore.  If crossed or confronted, developers will ruthlessly fight back by using lobbyists, politicians, and lawyers.

Most importantly, I learned that a strong, unified opposition presented by a large group of steadfast citizens can defeat the biggest of destructive plans.  The voices of a cohesive, concerned voters do get heard.

Tags: Developers, development, environment, florida, Politics

Why I Don’t Like Developers
By Some Guy

Many years ago, somewhere around the end of 1959,  the Arvida Corporation, a rapacious mega-developer with Arthur Vining Davis at the helm, showboated into Sarasota, Florida, and announced the plans to develop the old John Ringling properties into a mega-monstrosity of mammoth proportions. The developments involved dredging tens of thousands of cubic feet of extraordinary tidal and estuary land and piling it up to build an empire of fancy homes build on loose sand. A.B. Edwards, a real-estate developer living in Sarasota, was aghast. He stated, “When you interfere with the channels, bars, currents, and waterways, you’re liable to have trouble.”  The man was prescient, long before researchers established the crucial role these areas played in fish breeding habitat and water quality.

First, they pillaged Bird Key by digging up the tidal flats around the little spit of land, piling up the sand, and crowding 511 houses onto the resulting sandpile.  The Arvida corporation, whetting the avaricious instincts of otherwise-decent, local real estate agents, offered luxury yachts and automobiles as incentives to whom could sell the most lots on the key.

Bird Key, before Arvida

Bird Key, after Arvida. The Arvida corporation dredged up and filled in the entire tidal flat visible in the other photo.

Neighboring Otter Key is a small island surrounded by tidal flats and tangled in mangrove and Australian Pine. Although seemingly inconsequential at the time, it provided habitat for manatees and dolphins, and is an important nesting and breeding ground for many different species. It was also right out our back door. It was a constant backdrop to our daily lives. As my brother and I played in the yard, the key was there. Fishing was incredible, and perching in the mangroves for an entire afternoon with a fishing pole was an ideal way to spend a Saturday afternoon. As the seasons progressed, different colonies of birds would flock into the mangrove, from herons to pelicans to ibis and spoonbills. The tidal flat right in front of our house harbored millions of hatchling fish and crabs. We could hear the wind whispering through the Australian Pines across the bayou. As a kid, I knew every mangrove tunnel that lead to the shell-strewn spit of land inside the mangroves. I knew every square foot of the island, and I’d spend weekends searching the island for evidence that the apocryphal pirate Gasparilla had once hidden away on the island.

Otter Key Today

After the demise of Bird Key and its zombie-like rise from the tidal flats of Sarasota Bay, Arvida turned it piggy, greedy eyes onto Otter Key in 1967. They planned to develop the island, along with the entire south end of Lido Key, into a mega-resort, complete with huge golf course, parks, waterfront resort hotels, and high-rise apartment buildings. By this point, a sense of alarm and outrage was spreading around the residents of the keys. It became evident that the Arvida Corporation was planning to dredge and fill in most of Sarasota Bay from the causeway to Big Pass, effectively destroying the entire bay. Before environmentalism was socially fashionable, John Bergen, my grandparents, and twenty-nine other concerned citizens formed the first “Save Our Bay” association (my grandfather’s humorous idea of a group name), affectionately or derisively referred to as the S.O.B.s, with the stated goal of preserving the bay from the ravages of unchecked and reckless development. The Arvida corporation was ruthless in assaulting the nascent environmental group at every turn, prowling the city halls and commisions in the county lobbying for injunctions and lavishing favors upon the politicians. Due to the long history and social standing of many of the citizens in the S.O.B.s, the mayor of Sarasota, Jack Betz, overrode the strenuous legal objections of the Arvida corporation and allowed the S.0.B.s to file petitions with hundreds of signatures from local residents.

Otter Key/South Lido project envisioned by Arvida

During the legal battles, I recall when the Arvida corporation sent unctious spokesmen around to my grandparents’ house where they dripped charm across the living room floor. “But we’re so eager to be your neighbors,” he oozed. “Just imagine how wonderful it will be to wave across the canal to your neighbors while you’re eating breakfast!” While growling vile curses and promises of legal vengeance, my grandfather ushered them unceremoniously from the house.

The S.O.B.s bought full-page spreads in the local and regional newspapers. They packed city council meetings. They petitioned city and county commissioners. They attracted the attention of the local television media. They even had bright orange bumper stickers before anyone knew what they were. In the end, the S.O.B.s prevailed. The Arvida Corporation’s grandiose plans were vanquished, and from that point on, Arvida had to deal with the S.O.B.s at every turn, who had then become watchdogs to hold uncontrolled development in check. Members of S.O.B. became politically active, and were elected into office. They successfully passed a bond issue that purchased Otter Key, Casperson Beach, South Lido Key, and land in North Lido Key for 7.5 million dollars. Otter Key and the surrounding tidal flats became a protected wildlife habitat, which by now we know helped protect the increasingly-troubled, local fishing industry by providing fish breeding habitat.

Save Our Bays groups began springing up across western Florida to battle the ravages of unchecked development, much to the irritation of the money-blinded developers that wanted to destroy the landscape of coastal Florida.

Arvida Corporation was gobbled up by the Disney conglomerate.  Don’t ask me how I feel about that.

Addendum: (11/14): Sarasota Magazine has a good piece by Craig Pittman on the depressing environmental history of Sarasota Bay. My fave quote from the article:

“I see a lot of houses where I never see any people outside,” the fishing guide says. “People pay an exorbitant price for that view and never enjoy it. They never look outside. They don’t care if it has any fish in it. Maybe if it stunk real bad, then they’d care about it.”

Thanks to hermetically-sealed houses and A/C, I don’t think they’d care even if we dumped dead fish from a red tide kill into their back yard.

Tags: development, environment, florida, Politics