Boone Pickens is about to invest $1.5 billion in Panhandle wind turbines that will produce electricity for North Texas. His Mesa Water and Power companies plan on starting right-of-way acquisition this summer to place a water pipeline and electric lines.
Save Our Springs, which has battled developers over the Edwards Aquifer and our Barton Springs is bankrupt and having trouble getting a judge to accept their replayment plan. The group has lost some sway in Austin recently and could end up like their beat up old nemesis Gary Bradley. I linked to a new documentary on the SOS-Bradley duel here.
The Seminole water utility is piloting a wind-powered desalination plant to treat water from the Santa Rosa aquifer. It will produce 30,000 gallons a day from a 50 kilowatt turbine.
Apr 20, 2008
Apr 19, 2008
Lake Columbia
Is set for construction in 2011 or 2012
LUFKIN - Officials with the Angelina and Neches River Authority are sticking to their plan, 30 years in the making, to provide a rural water supply in Cherokee and Smith counties.Kenneth Reneau, ANRA general manager, confirmed Wednesday that Lake Columbia is nearing construction, despite several necessary hurdles."We're looking somewhere in the 2011, 2012 time frame," he said. "We will be in the construction phase once we get (necessary documentation)."
..."Lake Columbia is a necessary project for this five-county planning area," Reneau said. "The long-term future for water supply in this area is a question, and a number of participants are currently depending on wells for their water."As that area grows, demand for water will continue to grow also. We believe this project will take care of needs in quantity as well as quality."..."Conservation is certainly an element in solving the problem, but additional water sources will have to be generated."
More smart Mekong sentences
Cooperation in and of itself is not the desired end for third-world riparian governments who create transboundary governance institutions; rather cooperation is perceived as the basis for proceeding with the development of water resources encompassed by basins.
from Rethinking transboundary waters: A critical hydropolitics of the Mekong basin, by Sneddon and Fox, Political Geography 25(2006) pp 181-202
Smart Sentences
The international financial institution claim that "large revenues are essential for development risks conflating "economic growth" with "development" Philip Hirsch observes that the impacts of dam development have to be seen in terms of unequal distribution of costs and benefits.
...
Some opponents of big dams argue that international financial institution involvement in large hydropower projects is explained best not by alruism, but rather by the interst of the Banks in preserving their raison d'etre.
from Greacen and Palettu, Electricity Sector Planning and Hydropower, in Democratizing Water Governance in the Mekong Region, Lebel et al ed. at Amazon
Lake Meredith
Is going dry: it has received almost no inflows because of a drought over the past seven years, and is about to fall below the level of the Canadian River Municipal Water Authority's intake points. CRMWA has decided not to ration the water taken out of the lake, and not it faces decisions on how much to pay for mobile pumps to extend its reach as the lake level flows. The Authority has invested heavily in rights to aquifer water to supplement, and eventually replace the lake, but the well fields there aren't yet at full production.
Cities will continue draining the Panhandle's drought-wracked reservoir rather than cut drinking supplies for Lubbock and other customers, regional water directors voted Wednesday.
Directors of the Canadian River Municipal Water Authority voted to draw down the dwindling Lake Meredith using trailer-mounted pumps that could fetch water long after the shoreline falls out of the reach of the authority's water system.
...
The pumps are the latest investment in a costly fight against drought conditions. Directors in 2002 began tapping groundwater fields originally drilled to improve the taste of the briny lake water. They dramatically expanded the authority's rights to the aquifer under Roberts County as water levels fell, spending a projected $76 million to secure access. Lubbock has drawn two-thirds of the water spilled from customer taps so far this year from under that Panhandle ranchland.
...
Levelland director Carl Shamburger asked whether cities should simply limit the pumping from Meredith rather than spending money on new equipment.
Amarillo and Lubbock representatives said to stop pumping would simply cede the water to evaporation.
"If we could stop the evaporation and then conserve it out, that would be ideal, but we all know, as staff has reported, we cannot stop the evaporation," Lubbock Deputy City Manager Tom Adams said. "Politically, I don't think it would be acceptable to be cutting off our citizens from water knowing it's just up here evaporating."
Rio Grande: border, bridge, blight
On our attempts to concretize, that is.
The Dept of Homeland Security has approved an override of, among other
things, the applicable federal environmental laws to allow quicker
construction of a border fence through El Paso. El Paso and UT-El
Paso are concerned because the fence is planned to go right through a
city park containing wetlands that are just being restored.
Since cross-border migration has been happening for more than a few
years longer than the current Brown Menace scare, I don't really see
how building a fence more quickly solves the problem of people on both
sides of the river being culturally connected.
It's hard for me to get past my malice toward the Bush administration,
but when I do I still see a government response, of obstacles to
humans and disregard for nature, that will be overcome in ways we
can't foresee.
http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_8906405
"
AUSTIN -- The manager of El Paso's largest city park is concerned that
federal plans for a border fence will undo years of work to restore
natural wetlands on the Rio Grande.
And U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's decision last
week to circumvent environmental protection laws that could hold up
progress on the barrier have John Sproul, manager of Rio Bosque
Wetlands Park, wondering whether sensitive wildlife and habitat will
even be considered before construction begins.
"It's a landscape you just don't see in our river valley today,"
Sproul said.
The Department of Homeland Security plans to build about 57 miles of
fence on the border starting at Socorro and continuing east of the
Fabens port of entry.
The fence will be 15 to 18 feet high, though its final positioning and
design have not been decided.
About a mile of that fencing would abut the 372-acre city park, which
is managed by the University of Texas at El Paso Center for
Environmental Resource Management.
Sproul said staff and volunteers at the park have been working for 10
years to restore the wetlands, the only one of its kind in the El Paso region,
to its original condition.
Recently, he said, coyotes and beavers have returned to the area. And
UTEP is planning an exhibit to celebrate progress to restore native
plants and animals in the park.
"The opportunity for the full range of plants and animals found
historically in the river valley to eventually get established at the
park would be compromised" by the fence, Sproul said.
...
The Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club echoed those concerns in
comments it sent last month to the Department of Homeland Security.
The department relied on brief visits to the area to conduct its
environmental analysis, wrote Cyrus Reed, the chapter's conservation
director.
"A much more robust survey should be taken to assess the types of
species present in the construction area," Reed wrote.
...
The group, which includes U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, argues
that the waivers violate the constitutional separation of powers
between Congress and the executive branch.
...
Brandi Grissom may be reached at bgrissom@...; 512-479-6606.
"
The Dept of Homeland Security has approved an override of, among other
things, the applicable federal environmental laws to allow quicker
construction of a border fence through El Paso. El Paso and UT-El
Paso are concerned because the fence is planned to go right through a
city park containing wetlands that are just being restored.
Since cross-border migration has been happening for more than a few
years longer than the current Brown Menace scare, I don't really see
how building a fence more quickly solves the problem of people on both
sides of the river being culturally connected.
It's hard for me to get past my malice toward the Bush administration,
but when I do I still see a government response, of obstacles to
humans and disregard for nature, that will be overcome in ways we
can't foresee.
http://www.elpasotimes.com/news/ci_8906405
"
AUSTIN -- The manager of El Paso's largest city park is concerned that
federal plans for a border fence will undo years of work to restore
natural wetlands on the Rio Grande.
And U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's decision last
week to circumvent environmental protection laws that could hold up
progress on the barrier have John Sproul, manager of Rio Bosque
Wetlands Park, wondering whether sensitive wildlife and habitat will
even be considered before construction begins.
"It's a landscape you just don't see in our river valley today,"
Sproul said.
The Department of Homeland Security plans to build about 57 miles of
fence on the border starting at Socorro and continuing east of the
Fabens port of entry.
The fence will be 15 to 18 feet high, though its final positioning and
design have not been decided.
About a mile of that fencing would abut the 372-acre city park, which
is managed by the University of Texas at El Paso Center for
Environmental Resource Management.
Sproul said staff and volunteers at the park have been working for 10
years to restore the wetlands, the only one of its kind in the El Paso region,
to its original condition.
Recently, he said, coyotes and beavers have returned to the area. And
UTEP is planning an exhibit to celebrate progress to restore native
plants and animals in the park.
"The opportunity for the full range of plants and animals found
historically in the river valley to eventually get established at the
park would be compromised" by the fence, Sproul said.
...
The Lone Star Chapter of the Sierra Club echoed those concerns in
comments it sent last month to the Department of Homeland Security.
The department relied on brief visits to the area to conduct its
environmental analysis, wrote Cyrus Reed, the chapter's conservation
director.
"A much more robust survey should be taken to assess the types of
species present in the construction area," Reed wrote.
...
The group, which includes U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, argues
that the waivers violate the constitutional separation of powers
between Congress and the executive branch.
...
Brandi Grissom may be reached at bgrissom@...; 512-479-6606.
"
The Trinity River Gets Makeup Love
My classmate Chuck found this
Nature center, other projects blooming in Great Trinity Forest
Nature center, other projects blooming in Great Trinity Forest
Trails, nature center planned for sprawling forest
11:04 PM CDT on Sunday, April 6, 2008
Note to hikers and bikers, birders and boaters: The pace is picking up in the Great Trinity Forest.
Ten years after Dallas voters approved a far-reaching redo of the Trinity River Corridor, the waterway's woodlands are ripe with projects designed to tap and protect the sprawling resource at the city's southern door. For example:
•A nature center, to be operated by the National Audubon Society, will officially open in October.
•Construction of the first segment of a proposed 24-mile system of concrete trails is expected to begin in June, with completion by year's end.
•The concrete paving of a portion of the Buckeye Trail in Rochester Park is scheduled to begin next month, as is construction of the Moore Park Gateway in Oak Cliff, the first of at least four new trailheads into the forest.
•The first draft of a 100-year forest management plan will be released this summer.
•Design of a city-owned equestrian center will resume this summer if a nonprofit group raises enough money toward its share of the cost.
The forest projects are among the first to break ground in a $1.7 billion program for a riverfront toll road, parks, recreation, flood control and bridges.
Also OnlineAs designated by planners, the forest stretches along the Trinity from the former Santa Fe railroad near Corinth Street southeast to Interstate 20.
It covers about 6,000 acres of land lying mostly in the river's 100-year floodplain, making it among the largest urban hardwood forests in North America, said Bryan Kilburn, the city's Trinity forestry manager.
"There's so much more than just the toll road and the levees," he said of the future highway, which survived an election last year to kill it.
Hardwoods – including black willow, American and cedar elm, red oak, burr oak, green ash and pecan – cover about 87 percent of the forest, much of which is less than 50 years old, having emerged from land long cultivated for farming. The city owns about two-thirds of the forest property and plans to acquire the rest.
"We don't want you cutting on big branches overhead," trail planner Wade Peterson told a group of contractors as they walked the future route of one path.
When built this year, the 12-foot-wide concrete hike-and-bike way will extend from a trailhead near the river and Loop 12 through the Joppa Preserve park to Simpson Stuart Road. Passing small lakes, running atop levees and crossing creeks, the trail will cut through an area now scarred in stretches by litter and junk.
"There are wild hogs down in here," said Mr. Peterson, walking along. "They usually just go away."
That two-mile trail will be the first piece of a system designed to connect with others in the city and forest itself.
One of those is the Buckeye Trail, which winds through the woods of Rochester Park about four miles south of downtown.
One segment leads to a grove of Texas buckeye trees (this year's white flowery bloom is over), while another ends at a river overlook.
That latter, half-mile stretch will be paved with concrete in the months ahead, to the objection of at least one local naturalist.
"It will destroy any sense of being in a wild area," said Jim Flood, who routed the dirt path six years ago and leads public hikes there.
"Once it gets opened up like that, it's going to be a less-safe trail. You put concrete in and the next thing you know, people are going to want streetlights."
Mary Ayala, the city's Trinity recreation manager, said the goal is to provide a trail that is wheelchair accessible and durable. Crushed stone would make the trail accessible, but floods might wash it out, and replacements cost more over time than concrete, she said.
"It is a sensitive area, but you want to have opportunities for everyone," she said.
The Buckeye Trail construction and other trails planned for the Rochester Park area will increase recreation opportunities for neighboring residents.
"It's wonderful, man. It's going to be an adventure," said Marvin Richardson, who lives near the trailhead at the end of Bexar Street.
He said he lived for 27 years in the Turner Courts public housing up the street and has never walked the Buckeye Trail. He might check it and the other forest projects out because "curious minds want to know."
Local youngsters stand to benefit most of all, Mr. Richardson said. "I couldn't even start to tell you what it's going to mean to those kids," he said. "They've never had anything like this."
Dallas has never had anything like the Trinity River Audubon Center, either. Built on the site of a former landfill near the river, the almost $14 million city-owned center and grounds will offer nature education, exhibits and hiking.
"That pool was 11 feet high in debris. Now it's 8 feet deep in water," said Don Burns, the city's project manager, looking at one of 10 ponds on the property.
About two miles northwest of the nature center, the city and a nonprofit have agreed to share in building the Texas Horse Park. The 225-acre center and grounds, near Loop 12 and Pemberton Hill Road, would host equestrian competitions and provide trails for horseback riding.
The group – Texas Horse Park Inc. – would operate the center and is trying to raise its estimated $15 million share of the project. If it shows enough success and design resumes this summer, construction could begin in September 2009 with possible completion by late 2010, said Mr. Burns, manager of that project as well.
The Moore Park Gateway, near the Dallas Area Rapid Transit rail station at Eighth and Corinth streets in Oak Cliff, will be the entry point for a new trail across the river bottom.
Other trailheads are planned for Rochester Park, the Joppa community and near Interstate 20. Canoe access points will be added near I-20 and Moore Park. Planners would like to see a campsite near White Rock Creek.
The forest is no Central Park. But at roughly seven times the size of New York City's jewel, it stands to be a regional draw. Not only will it expand recreational options, but someday, Mr. Kilburn said, it could fuel economic growth and change perceptions of an area of the city that has lacked opportunities.
How and how much the public takes to the forest will be answered in time. Responsibilities and funding for its upkeep haven't been resolved.
"It's going to take a long-term commitment by the city of Dallas," Mr. Kilburn said. "Hopefully, there will be some ownership by the neighborhoods."
And volunteers will continue to play an important role.
"It's my hope people will want to be involved in this, put their money where their mouth is," Mr. Kilburn said.
"People talk about a green Dallas. Well, here's an opportunity."
Apr 17, 2008
New federal wetlands rules
Now emphasize wetlands banking as the preferred form of mitigation. In Ohio, which is where I'm reading the news nowadays, this is causing heartache in environmental peeps because that state has focused on increasing the quality of replacement wetlands and on making them close to the lost wetlands. As a marker of the low quality of wetland replacement work, Ohio requires 3 acres of new wetlands to mitigate the loss of 1 acre of authentic wetlands. More here from the Beacon Journal
Since 1995, the Ohio EPA has been analyzing man-made, or replacement, wetlands.
[Ohio EPA ecologist John] Mack's team is surveying 25 of an estimated 415 man-made wetlands across Ohio. Most of the randomly chosen sites are in Northeast Ohio.
Perhaps 25 percent of the sites are good, Mack said, but the majority will earn a poor-to-fair grade.
''We can build quality wetlands, but that's something we don't always do,'' Mack said. '' . . . Quite frankly, we're just not getting the quality back that we're losing.''
...
What Mack is finding in his assessment of man-made wetlands mirrors the findings in a 2006 Ohio EPA evaluation of 1,000 acres of replacement wetlands: 25 percent were simply shallow ponds without vegetation. In the 2006 report, only 18 percent of the wetland acreage was of good quality.
Mack said too many of the man-made wetlands have ''too much water . . . for far too long.''
In a natural wetland, he said, water typically rises and falls, and that results in the growth of different plants.
Apr 10, 2008
Great Lakes Compact
The inimitable Cuyahoga County Planning Commission blogs on the Compact
In the second part of its series on water issues, the Plain Dealer looks at the legislative debate surrounding the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact, and adds an infographic and a FAQ on the Compact.
Toledo's Blade includes a look at John Austin's suggestions for improving the Great Lakes economy, and a column by Tom Henry that says that Lee Fisher "should have known better" than to suggest that Ohio might "sell Great Lakes water to thirsty parts of the country".
Apr 3, 2008
Office for OS X Sucks
The new Microsoft Office for OS X is terrible: it's faster than the old version, but still slow, and it drags like OpenOffice when you have a big document open in Word. The Ribbon is a flaming turd: it's not the awesome all-in-one changing menu like in Windows. It's just a cheesy set of extras like templates that nobody uses. You can turn it off in Word, but not in Excel. It's terrible, and a waste of $200.
The formatting palette in Word and Excel is minimally customizable: you can turn off crap, but you can't even resize it to show more than 4 styles at a time, so if you don't you the top 4 default headers, you constantly scroll up and down. And, of course, the palette scroll bars don't obey your mouse wheel.
In Windows, Excel kind of learns whether to move to the right or move down after you press enter, depending on the dimensions of your data range. OS X Excel makes you choose in the preferences whether to always move right or down. I thought this was just a holdover from the dark OS 9 days, but it's still here, in 2008.
And just like most OS X stuff, there aren't keyboard shortcuts for most things. Ctrl-H doesn't replace? F2 doesn't edit? No VBA, so none of my macros work?
Even the preferences dialog is different: it has the lame Windows 'okay' and 'cancel' buttons, contrary to every other OS X app ever made.
In Word, if you turn on the style area on the left of your document to see which style is applied to which section, and then scroll right on your page, the style area makes copies of itself next to each other when you scroll back left, so you end up seeing six style areas and none of your typing. You can get those copies to disappear by scrolling down your doc and scrolling back up. That's crap you see in Windows 3.1 shareware programs, not $300 worth of office suite
The frickin installer doesn't even ask what you want installed--it installs everything. That's right, zero install options. And it dumps random files in the Office folder, while every other OS x app puts its files into bundle covered by the program icon.
WTF? You suck Microsoft, like an overpaid consultant, for grossly under-delivering on substance, but garnishing with shiny vacuity.
Why did I buy a Mac just to use Zoho Sheet and TextEdit?
The formatting palette in Word and Excel is minimally customizable: you can turn off crap, but you can't even resize it to show more than 4 styles at a time, so if you don't you the top 4 default headers, you constantly scroll up and down. And, of course, the palette scroll bars don't obey your mouse wheel.
In Windows, Excel kind of learns whether to move to the right or move down after you press enter, depending on the dimensions of your data range. OS X Excel makes you choose in the preferences whether to always move right or down. I thought this was just a holdover from the dark OS 9 days, but it's still here, in 2008.
And just like most OS X stuff, there aren't keyboard shortcuts for most things. Ctrl-H doesn't replace? F2 doesn't edit? No VBA, so none of my macros work?
Even the preferences dialog is different: it has the lame Windows 'okay' and 'cancel' buttons, contrary to every other OS X app ever made.
In Word, if you turn on the style area on the left of your document to see which style is applied to which section, and then scroll right on your page, the style area makes copies of itself next to each other when you scroll back left, so you end up seeing six style areas and none of your typing. You can get those copies to disappear by scrolling down your doc and scrolling back up. That's crap you see in Windows 3.1 shareware programs, not $300 worth of office suite
The frickin installer doesn't even ask what you want installed--it installs everything. That's right, zero install options. And it dumps random files in the Office folder, while every other OS x app puts its files into bundle covered by the program icon.
WTF? You suck Microsoft, like an overpaid consultant, for grossly under-delivering on substance, but garnishing with shiny vacuity.
Why did I buy a Mac just to use Zoho Sheet and TextEdit?
Christmas Mountains
Maybe they'll be going to the National Park Service after all.
Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson has told the superintendent of Big Bend National Park he wants to help transfer the Christmas Mountains to the National Park Service while also reasserting his concern about hunting and firearms.The National Park Service should designate the state's 9,270 acres in far West Texas as a "national preserve" so hunting can be allowed, Patterson said in a Friday letter to Park Superintendent Bill Wellman.
...
Patterson does not support the park service's suggestion that it acquire the property by using private donations to buy it from the state. Congress should come up with the money for the purchase and ongoing management, Patterson said in the letter.
Without such a commitment, "the Christmas Mountains will run the risk of being neglected due to a lack of funds needed for its care," Patterson wrote.
His plans to sell the land to the private sector fizzled after the park service expressed an interest in acquiring it.
Lake Columbia close
The Angelina and Neches River Authority is preparing to start construction of Lake Columbia, for Cherokee and Smith Counties, in the next few years. It's applying for more grant money from the TWDB and waiting on 404 approval from the Corps of Engineers
New EPA rules on wetlands banking - bad idea
The EPA has issued new rules that emphasize wetland banking as a preferred technique for developers. That's not a good idea for several reasons, one of which being that creating wetlands from scratch doesn't work well.
The Ohio EPA has been studying wetlands creation for banking for years, and finds that only about 25 percent of banked wetlands are actually passable.
The Ohio EPA has been studying wetlands creation for banking for years, and finds that only about 25 percent of banked wetlands are actually passable.
SAWS makes lots of money
SAWS made $13million in net income last year, even though San Antonio got 47 inches of rain. Revenue decreased a little, and profit was down from about $50million in 2006. At least the SAWS president David Chardavoyne has asked that discussion of his annual performance eval be public.
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