Enviroman No. 93

Monday, April 28, 2008

Will The Great Sacandaga Lake Flood Albany? While the dry weather of the weekend allowed them to drain a lot of the Great Sacandaga Lake, there still is real question if there will be enough free space in the reservoir if we get heavy rain today.

Last week the lake was above flood level, but thanks to aggressive draining of the lake, they've been able to drop the level before today's rain. They can't let water out too quickly or it will flood the river, and could leave downstream cities like Troy and Albany flood with too much water in the river.

Albany currently has a while before it gets to flood stage (note the effect of tides on flooding).

From NOAA on the Hudson River:

Flood Categories (in feet)
Major Flood Stage: 15
Moderate Flood Stage: 13
Flood Stage: 11
Action Stage: 9

Historical Crests
(1) 21.71 ft on 02/09/1857
(2) 21.45 ft on 03/28/1913
(3) 20.42 ft on 02/14/1900
(4) 18.98 ft on 10/05/1869
(5) 17.86 ft on 03/19/1936

Flood Impacts
17.0 WATER REACHES BROADWAY AT MAIDEN LANE
14.0 WATER RECEEDS OFF THE APPROACHES OF THE DUNN MEMORIAL BRIDGE
14.0 WATER FLOODS ONE LANE OF THE APPROACH TO THE DUNN MEMORIAL BRIDGE ...GETS INTO BASEMENTS ALONG BROADWAY...AND BLOCKS ACCESS TO THE GAGE HOUSE
13.0 WATER RECEEDS OFF THE CONRAIL TRACKS
13.0 WATER FLOODS THE RAILROAD TRACKS UNDER INTERSTATE 787
12.0 WATER RECEEDS OFF THE RAMPS TO INTERSTATE 787
12.0 WATER OVERFLOWS ONTO RAMPS OF INTERSTATE 787 AND UNDERPASS OF BROADWAY NEAR MADISON AVE AND COLONIE STREET AND INTO THE PARKING LOT OF THE VILLAGE ONE APARTMENTS IN MENANDS
11.0 WATER RECEEDS OFF UNDERPASSES IN DOWNTOWN ALBANY
11.0 WATER APPROACHES UNDERPASSES AND RAMPS OF BROADWAY AND COLONIE STREET TO INTERSTATE 787 IN DOWNTOWN ALBANY
8.0 WATER OVERFLOWS INTO THE CORNING PRESERVE
7.0 WATER HAS RECEDED OUT OF THE CORNING PRESERVE
5.0 THE RIVER IS ABOUT A FOOT ABOVE NORMAL HIGH TIDE

It should be interesting to watch, although I don't think we will get that much rain today. P'Link

The Nation: What Nuclear Renaissance? The Nation magazine has pointed out while the President and some other greens say that nuclear power will save us all, the reality is that nobody really wants to build new nuclear plants.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) expects up to thirty applications to be filed to build atomic plants; five or six of those proposals are moving through the complicated multi-stage process. But no new atomic power stations have been fully licensed or have broken ground. And two newly proposed projects have just been shelved.

The fact is, nuclear power has not recovered from the crisis that hit it three decades ago with the reactor fire at Browns Ferry, Alabama, in 1975 and the meltdown at Three Mile Island in 1979. Then came what seemed to be the coup de gr�ce: Chernobyl in 1986. The last nuclear power plant ordered by a US utility, the TVA's Watts Bar 1, began construction in 1973 and took twenty-three years to complete. Nuclear power has been in steady decline worldwide since 1984, with almost as many plants canceled as completed since then.

...

"Wall street doesn't like nuclear power," says Arjun Makhijani of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. The fundamental fact is that nuclear power is too expensive and risky to attract the necessary commercial investors. Even with vast government subsidies, it is difficult or almost impossible to get proper financing and insurance. The massive federal subsidies on offer will cover up to 80 percent of construction costs of several nuclear power plants in addition to generous production tax credits, as well as risk insurance. But consider this: the average two-reactor nuclear power plant is estimated to cost $10 billion to $18 billion to build. That's before cost overruns, and no US nuclear power plant has ever been delivered on time or on budget.

Several of the coal plants that went online in the 1970s, where originally designed to be nuclear reactors, after the costs of building these plants exceeded any sense of cost reasonableness. Not surprisingly, the same is true today.

Nuclear plants are so complicated, and they need to have extensive and redundant safety systems that can not ever fail. There can't be a mishap with nuclear power, unless you want to kill thousands of people and destroy hundreds if not thousands of miles of land for ever.

In contrast, fossil fuel plants are simple, safe, and whose mishaps will have a limited effect on the environment. A toxic cloud may go out the stack of a seriously malfunctioning coal or oil plant, but those toxins will quickly dissipate and have a minimal long term effect on the land.

Read What Nuclear Renaissance? in The Nation. P'Link

Even Amid High Oil Prices, Troubling Signs in Production - New York Times. From the article:

As oil prices soared to record levels in recent years, basic economics suggested that consumption would fall and supply would rise as producers opened the taps to pump more.

But as prices flirt with $120 a barrel, many energy specialists are becoming worried that neither seems to be happening. Higher prices have done little to attract new production or to suppress global demand, and the resulting mismatch has sent oil prices spiraling upward.

“According to normal economic theory, and the history of oil, rising prices have two major effects,” said Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the International Energy Agency, which advises industrialized countries. “They reduce demand and they induce oil supplies. Not this time.”

Read Even Amid High Oil Prices, Troubling Signs in Production - New York Times. P'Link

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

McDonald's Refuses to Comply With Saratoga City Zoning. Saratoga wants buildings that look kind of like an urban downtown, and with the McDonald franchise replacing their building, they need to create a building that is mixed used with residential properties up top.

The only problem is McDonald's is refusing to cooperate.

McDonald's wants to replace its more than 30-year-old restaurant on South Broadway, but city officials say it needs to rise to two floors.

The Planning Board recently asked McDonald's representatives to revise the preliminary single-floor designs for a new 197 S. Broadway store because zoning rules for the so-called "downtown gateway" area require all new buildings to be a minimum of two stories. The existing one-story McDonald's was built before the zoning change was enacted about five years ago.

Owner Clark Brink Jr. proposes building something more efficient and architecturally significant for the small lot near the intersection of Route 50, Planning Board Chairman L. Cliff Van Wagner said.

Of course, they'll probably do something ugly and stupid as the Saratoga CVS store to get two stories without leasing out residential space, regardless of the additional profit it could bring in.

Read McDonald's proposal doesn't measure up in the Times Union. P'Link

Water Pollution Staff at DEC Criticized. Environmental Advocates says they are not carefully analyzing permits before reissuing them and that many permits are either overdue, due to a lack of staff and extensive use of the "short-form".

The report from Environmental Advocates of New York said the state should hire more staff at the Department of Environmental Conservation to better scrutinize 1,100 permits overdue for renewal by at least a decade.

Federal Clean Water Act rules require that the state completely review permits and pollution levels at least every five years. Environmental Advocates examined 32 of 343 water pollution permit renewals granted by DEC without such a review since July 2007.

"The most frightening problem our research uncovered is what we don't know," said Katherine Nadeau, a program associate at Environmental Advocates. "Because of the lack of oversight, we can't say what is in our waters. And neither can the DEC."

Their report, Permission to Pollute is online and points out several examples of plants that are regularly exceeding permitted levels of pollutants, with little sanction or change in their permits.

Read Pollution permit program faulted in Times Union. P'Link

County asks 3 areas be protected. From the article:

County officials will ask that at least three new projects be added to the state’s regional open space acquisition plan.

They are the Fish Creek corridor from Saratoga Lake to the Hudson River, the habitat of the Blanding’s turtle in Wilton and Northumberland and a 1,000-acre property in southern Clifton Park where the town of Colonie has a reservoir.

Getting listed would add those projects to an existing state priority list that is consulted when the state is deciding how to spend open space money.

Read County asks 3 areas be protected. P'Link

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Senate proposes suspending NY gasoline tax. From the article:

The Republican-led Senate will call for the suspension of the state's gasoline tax as a way to cut the price at the pumps by more than 30 cents a gallon.

But the suspension could create a $500 million hole in state finances, already shaken by a likely recession, and would face opposition in the Democrat-controlled Assembly.

The state's gasoline tax is 32.4 cents a gallon. Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno and his Republican members plan to call for suspension of the state tax on Wednesday.

Read Senate proposes suspending NY gasoline tax in Newsday. P'Link

19 Square Feet of Store Space. That's what every man women and child can claim in our country today in their local retail shopping stores. It's pretty much an insane number when you realize that you don't really live in a store, that you can buy the same soap box from the store shelf that your neighbor can, and products are constantly entering and exiting the same retail products stream.

Now many of those stores are going bankrupt this year, in part due to the credit crunch, inflation, and the simple fact that there are simply too many stores. Last year, 4,500 stores went bankrupt. This year as many as 7,000 stores will disappear from our communities. There buildings won't disappear, it's just they will become vacant and abandoned.

Hopefully, municipalities will find new uses for these structures and not waste just waste the land. There is nothing worst then having empty big box stores with abandoned parking lots that take up lots of space yet do not get used, while new stores are built farther out in the hinterlands.

Too often our society is investing in new things, without the money to really afford them, and at the same time these are things that we don't really need. This is a real problem that hopefully this economic crisis will help us change in our ways as a collective society. P'Link

Grist: Expect Cooler Weather. It seems that the weather patterns that the super-long forecasters are predicting may mean that next few years a colder decade, with lots of snow.

Natural shifts in ocean circulation may trump human-caused warming over the next decade, causing global temperatures to cool slightly, says new research published in the journal Nature. But hang on to your pessimism: "Just to make things clear, we are not stating that anthropogenic climate change won't be as bad as previously thought" over the long run, says researcher Mojib Latif. Of course, if the cooler-decade theory holds true, there's the concern that "policymakers may either think mitigation is working or that there is no global warming at all," says coauthor Noel Keenlyside. Oh, Noel, policymakers are smarter than that. Sob.

I'm not sure if that's a bad thing necessarily. Rushing too fast on global warming is going to promote bad technologies like nuclear power and carbon sequestration, when what we really need is greater conservation of energy, modest technological improvements and investments, more renewable energy, and smarter ways of doing things.

Read Cool as a Still-Warming Cucumber on Grist. P'Link

Thursday, May 1, 2008

President Bush Today on Biofuels and Local Agriculture. He has some interesting things to say on this topic. He points out the real problems that agriculture is facing beyond ethanol and high grain prices, and how communities can benefit by local agriculture.

Q Thank you, Mr. President. I'd like to ask you about an area --

THE PRESIDENT: You're welcome.

Q—where food prices and energy come together; that's biofuels.

THE PRESIDENT: Yes.

Q The World Bank says about 85 percent of the increase in corn price since 2002 is due to biofuel—increased demand for biofuels. And your Secretary of State said that—indicated yesterday that she thought that might be part of the problem. Do you agree with that? And what can the United States do—what more can the United States do to help make food more affordable around the world?

THE PRESIDENT: Actually, I have a little different take: I thought it was 85 percent of the world's food prices are caused by weather, increased demand and energy prices—just the cost of growing product—and that 15 percent has been caused by ethanol, the arrival of ethanol.

By the way, the high price of gasoline is going to spur more investment in ethanol as an alternative to gasoline. And the truth of the matter is it's in our national interests that our farmers grow energy, as opposed to us purchasing energy from parts of the world that are unstable or may not like us.

In terms of the international situation, we are deeply concerned about food prices here at home and we're deeply concerned about people who don't have food abroad. In other words, scarcity is of concern to us. Last year we were very generous in our food donations, and this year we'll be generous as well. As a matter of fact, we just released about $200 million out of the Emerson Trust as part of a ongoing effort to address scarcity.

One thing I think that would be—I know would be very creative policy is if we—is if we would buy food from local farmers as a way to help deal with scarcity, but also as a way to put in place an infrastructure so that nations can be self-sustaining and self-supporting. It's a proposal I put forth that Congress hasn't responded to yet, and I sincerely hope they do.

Read Press Conference by the President from May 1, 2008. P'Link

Breathing in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh Can Be Hazardous. It appears that Pittburgh, PA is now one of the most polluted cities in our country, and in one particularly dangerous form of pollution—short-term particulate, is now the most polluted city in our state.

One out of every 10 people in the United States lives in an area with unhealthful levels of all three types of air pollution tracked by the new American Lung Association State of the Air report - ozone, short-term particle pollution and year-round particle pollution.

Published today, the annual report shows that Los Angeles again is the city most affected by ozone and year-round particle pollution. But for the first time, a city outside California ranks as the city most polluted by one of the measures - short-term particle pollution.

Pittsburgh moved to the top of the list of cities most polluted by short-term levels of particle pollution, which the Lung Association describes as "a deadly cocktail of ash, soot, diesel exhaust, chemicals, metals and aerosols that can spike dangerously for hours to weeks on end."

This brought to you by the same people that bring you steel and electricity. In other words, lots of coal is burned to power the city and to make steel. And that has a real impact not just on the environment, but anybody that tries to breathe in Pittsburgh.

See Breathing in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh Can Be Hazardous on the ENS Newswire. P'Link

NPR: Clinton Support Gas Tax Holiday Because of "Leadership". One could not make such a silly story up about Hillary's dumb idear of a gas tax holiday. It's been a particularly unpopular idea - the gas tax holiday. Economists across the political spectrum think it's a bad idea. Yet Sen. Hillary Clinton continues to push the idea. (Although it has changed a bit in the past few days; it's not longer a "gas tax holiday" it's 'let the oil companies pay the gas tax over the summer"—an idea the experts also say won 't work.)

So why is Clinton so intent on pursuing this idea? Leadership.

We would all like cheaper gasoline. But all the studies that I've seen suggest the tax break would just be a license for gas companies to make higher profits, without bringing the cost of gas down much at all—no matter the absurd system you create to make this happen.

Read NPR: Clinton Support Gas Tax Holiday Because of "Leadership" on NPR. P'Link

Cutting Gas Tax: A Good Idear? That's what some Republicans are proposing in the state legislature.

Republican lawmakers Wednesday proposed suspending the state’s gasoline tax for the summer, when prices at the pump are expected to hit $4 a gallon.

“We have to provide relief so people can live and support their families,” said State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno.

While Gov. David A. Paterson called it a “good idea,” he remained cautious because there were no assurances the nearly 33 cents the state collects on each gallon of gas would be passed on to motorists.

“They can’t guarantee me, you or anyone else that it’s going to get to the consumer,” Paterson said, pointing to concerns the tax savings will disappear as the gasoline industry raises prices, further inflating its profits.

The governor also warned of new and far more worrisome forecasts coming out today by his budget office for the shape of the state’s finances in 2009 and the following several years. He estimated next year’s budget is looking at a $5 billion deficit — $1 billion higher than previousely believed — and close to $7.5 billion the following year.

Those concerns where echoed by the State Assembly which had this to say about the proposal by Speaker Silver:

Oil companies in the United States are already making outrageous profits, and these companies dominate the Republican Bush Administration in Washington. The Bush administration has refused to take any action to rein in huge oil company profits and the Administration has failed to put in place an effective energy policy that puts consumers first and moves our country toward energy independence.

There is absolutely no guarantee that tax savings would be passed on to consumers. In fact, I believe that oil companies will simply raise their prices to eliminate any cost savings for the public.

Gasoline taxes in New York State are already capped, and are based on the number of gallons purchased, not the cost of the gasoline. So, the rising cost of gasoline does NOT result in greater tax revenues for the state.

Eliminating the gas tax in New York State for the summer months will result in a $500 million shortfall in revenues that are dedicated to road and bridge construction across the state - and we already have a deficit in funding for these vital projects. In a year when New York State is already facing significant economic challenges, it is the height of fiscal irresponsibility to create this enormous hole in the state budget.

You can learn much from watching this video by Shelly Silver on the problem of high gas prices:

This part of the Shelly video I did not realize until I watched it:

First of all, we suspended half of the tax permanently last year. So we only taxed on a unit of energy at the rate of what use to be $2.00 a gallon. So half of it is suspended and nobody knows about it. The reason nobody knows about it is they created and we created, in the half, opportunity for the energy companies to make more money. Nobody regulates the price. Nobody regulates the price gauging, and they don’t propose to do it. Now, they’re going to give them another fund. The consumers will not see it, and the energy companies will make more money as a result.

So sales state tax isn't charged on gasoline anymore above $2 a gallon. This I did not know. Counties can choose if they want to cap their sales tax at the first $2 of a gallon or not—certainly many do not due to the fiscal troubles they face now. Albany County does not cap sales tax right now on gasoline.

And the elephant in the room is the fact that the state can't actually cut most of the taxes on gasoline. They might be able to eliminate even more of the sales, but the reality is many of the other taxes provide revenues to pay for bonds that have to pay for one way or another.

Read The Buffalo News: Home: Bruno urges suspension of state's gas tax for the summer. P'Link

Friday, May 2, 2008

DEC to Spend 1/2 Million on a Pointless Environmental Clean Up. In the latest chapter of fear and loathing over PCBs, they will be spending millions to clean up dirt that is minimally contaminated by PCBs that was sprayed with oil to keep the dust down.

Nearly 6.4 million pounds of tainted soil are due to be dug out and trucked to a landfill, he said. That's enough to fill more than 1,000 dump trucks, based on an average load of 6,000 pounds.

...The state initially investigated the drive-in site in 1997 and concluded in 2003 that the PCBs must removed. Winchell said no evidence of PCBs exists beyond the theater property into the surrounding neighborhoods.

Preliminary budget for the cleanup is $612,000. Kingsbury received a $551,000 DEC grant and will pay for the balance. The project could be finished by the end of the year, although it could take longer if tests show more PCBs than expected, Winchell said.

This does not sound like serious PCBs contamination. I'm sure most of our houses probably have more PCB spread into the air, when an old ballast in a florescent light fixture overheats and fails. Probably by DEC standards, that would mean the whole house would have to be demolished.

PCBs aren't even dioxins when it comes to toxicity. Indeed, prior to 1973, they were widely considered to be safe. Nearly every transformer or ballast build prior to 1977 uses them as an insulator. People prior to 1977 weren't morons, and people didn't die from cancer in extreme numbers back then either.

The Hudson River is a totally different issue. In parts of the river, there are high levels of PCBs, which bio-accumulate in some species of fish, and make them unsafe to eat. Large amounts of PCBs where dumped or leaked into the river—back before people realized to what a great extent that the chemicals would pile up on the bottom of the river, and cause future problems. P'Link

Malta to AMD: Do What You Please. They signed off on zoning rules that won't restrict what AMD will do with their factory.

Town officials won’t insist on setting their own environmental protection rules for the proposed Advanced Micro Devices computer chip plant, the Town Board decided Thursday.

The board has agreed to be satisfied with revised zoning language sought by AMD lessening the town’s role, but stating that the factory will “comply with all state and federal regulations.”

Computer chip factories use millions of gallons of water and numerous chemicals, so AMD’s plant will need to comply with a number of rules set by state and federal environmental regulators.

Read Town backs off AMD environment role in the Daily Gazette. P'Link

E.P.A. Proposes New Limits on Lead in the Air. From the New York Times:

Air, however, is no longer the most common source of major exposure to lead, which can cause I.Q. loss, kidney damage and other serious health problems. In most places, water and lead paint are more troublesome sources.

Lead emissions in the air have dropped by more than 97 percent in the last three decades, because the United States banned lead as an additive in gasoline. That step was taken to allow cars to have catalytic converters, which cut the ingredients of smog, and reduced lead in the air as a side benefit.

Still, high lead concentrations exist in scattered places with iron and steel foundries, copper smelters, mining operations, waste incinerators and concrete plants, according to Lydia Wegman, an expert at the Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards. In addition, she said, gasoline with lead is still used in small airplanes.

Depending on the level at which the new standard is set, officials can identify two dozen counties that would be out of compliance. But they cannot be certain how many other counties may fail because the network of monitoring stations has been cut back.

Read E.P.A. Proposes New Limits on Lead in the Air, the First Revision in 30 Years in the New York Times. P'Link