Musings – I was sent this on the internet. No clue the source.
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Environment
Sea Level Rise Planning Part 2
In the last blog we discussed 10 planning steps for sea level rises. When planning 50-100 years other factors can come into play as well. As a result, to allow flexibility in the analysis due to the range of increases within the different time periods, an approach that uses incremental increases of 1, 2, and 3 feet of SLR is suggested. Hence infrastructure is built to meet milestones, not arbitrary dates lessening the potential for stranded assets.. The increments can work as threshold values in planning considerations in terms of allowing planners the ability to know ahead of time where the next set of vulnerable areas will be to allow a for proactive response approach that can be matched to the observed future sea levels.
But prior to developing infrastructure plans, the local community needs to define an acceptable level of service (LOS) for the community. A level service would indicate how often it is acceptable for flooding to occur in a community on an annual basis. 1% is 4 days per years and for a place like Miami Beach, this is nearly 2 ft NAVD88, well above the mean high tide. The failure to establish an acceptable LOS is often the cause of failure or loss of confidence in a plan at a later point in time. The effects of SLR of the level of service should be used to update the mapping to demonstrate how the level of service changes, so that a long-term LOS can be defined and used for near-term planning.
With the LOS known, the vulnerability assessment is developed using a GIS based map of topography and the groundwater levels associated with wet and dry season water levels. LiDAR is a useful tool that may be available at very high resolution in coastal areas. Topographic maps must be “ground-truthed” by tying it to local benchmarks and transportation plans. USGS groundwater and NOAA tidal data from local monitoring stations to correlate with the groundwater information. Based on the results of these efforts, the GIS-based mapping will provide areas of likely flooding.
GIS map should be updated with layers of information for water mains, sewer mains, canals, catch basins, weirs and stormwater facilities. Updating with critical infrastructure will provide a view of vulnerability of critical infrastructure that will be funded by the public sector. Ultimately policy makers will need more information to prioritize the needed improvements. For example, a major goal may be to reduce Economic Vulnerability. This means identifying where economic activity occurs and potential jobs. At-risk populations, valuable property (tax base) and emergency response may be drivers, which means data from other sources should be added.
The next step is to analyze vulnerability spatially, by overlaying development priorities with expected climate change on GIS maps to identify hotspots where adaptation activities should be focused. This effort includes identification of the critical data gaps which, when filled, will enable more precise identification of at risk infrastructure and predictions of impacts on physical infrastructure and on communities. The final deliverable will include descriptions of the recommended concepts including schematics, cost estimates, and implementation plan.
So why go through all this. Let’s go back to the beginning. It has to do with community confidence in its leaders. Resident look at whether their property will be protected. Businesses look at long-term viability when making decisions about relocating enterprises. The insurance industry, which has traditionally been focused on a one year vision of risk, is beginning to discuss long-term risks and not insuring property rebuild is risk-prone areas. That will affect how bankers look at lending practices, which likely will decrease property values. Hence it is in the community’s interests to develop a planning framework to adapt to sea level rise and protect vulnerable infrastructure through a long-term plan. Plan or….
Hog Wild – TMDLs Affecting You?
So I am reading an article in OneEarth, which is a publication of one of the environmental groups. The pretext is the issues with the movement of hog farm operations into Iowa and the problems it is causing. They note that the state has cut the regulatory enforcement budget and the number of inspectors while more incidents of contaminated water are found. The contamination threatens the raw water supply of downstream water utilities which must do more treatment and monitoring. Sorry, I had to giggle because I have heard this story before.
Going back about decade many will recall the “pfiesteria hysteria” as it was called in North Carolina. The issue was that the Department of Environmental Management had found fish kills where the fish had these weird sores on their bodies, and then a number of people were diagnosed as being infected with the same condition, some of whom died. The cause was this pfiesteria, which is a flesh-eating organism that enters the nervous system. Crazy is one of the side effects but it mostly leads to death. DEM determined that the organism thrived in waters with significant loading from nutrients that they could trace to….. wait for it…. hog farms!!
That was not the first time hog farms were implicated in water quality issues, but due to the significant, political influence of the industry, the transgressions were largely ignored due to a lack of enforcement personnel. Actually when I was in North Carolina we had a hog farm upstream of our wastewater plant. Periodically the DEM would test the waters downstream of our plant and find bacteria counts to high and they would want to tag us for the violation. But we never had any indication of violations at our plant (which we tested daily and reported). You can’t “make” nutrients appear out of thin air – they come from somewhere. We told DEM that it was a hog farm that periodically dumped the manure pit n the river when it got full. No treatment was going on. Then hog farms exploded in North Carolina which led the pfiesteria event. Finally the State decided enough was enough and imposed a lot of regulations on hog farms which magically …. moved to Iowa where there are no regulations in place. I guess there is nothing like a good crisis that kills a few people to get past the political influence of the lobbyists (unless you are the NRA).
But here’s the problem for Iowa, which is what North Carolina found. The regulations actually are in place. The Clean Water Act prohibits the contribution of pollutants that will impair the quality of water bodies. Clearly hog farm effluent clearly falls into this category, but the historical focus of the Clean water Act has been on wastewater treatment plants, and lately stormwater, but not agriculture, which is largely exempted in many, rural states. Yet agriculture is and has always been a major contributor to water quality degradation in watershed for two reasons. First they disturb the earth by plowing and planting, so rainfall leads to runoff of material (silt) into streams. With that runoff is herbicides, pesticides, fertilizer (nutrients), and of course in animal husbandry or CAFO operations, bacteria and other pathogens. Do not forget that the two most significant examples of water quality impacts on water utilities, Milwaukee and Walkerton, were both agricultural runoff problems.
Agricultural runoff impacts the downstream users which are typically developed areas which use the streams for water supply. So agricultural practices move land based contaminants to the utility intake, which means more treatment cost to customers. Sometimes these contaminants are a significant health risk. It took a significant incident for North Carolina to act. The question is what will it take for Iowa to act, and once they do where do the hog farms go next?
What needs to happen is that the hog farms develop the treatment systems needed to clean up their act. It would be great for them to pay the cost but history says they won’t. So maybe the political leadership needs to participate in that solution to maintain the employment base, and maybe utilities and other source water protection agencies, and there are many of them like the US Water Endowment, can help as well. Politicians want jobs, while ratepayers do not want to pay all the costs. A collaborative solution seems reasonable, so we will see what Iowa comes up with.
FOLLOW THE MONEY
A week ago the new National Climate Assessment came out. It basically says things we already expected – temperatures are warmer, there will be more droughts, less rainfall, less available water, more intense storms and sea level rise. What the study did in its 800+ pages was outline examples of climate change phenomena that are already occurring including flooded streets in coastal areas, severe weather (Colorado, New Jersey), and changes in the arctic air currents that may be affecting northeastern and Midwestern winter storm frequency. All things that those who have been around for a while and have been even minimally observant have already noticed for themselves. What was also not surprising was the vitriol on the internet about how this assessment was a “fascist plot” perpetrated by a variety of people to impose some yet undetermined regulations on “patriotic Americans.” And then Senator Marco Rubio comes out this week and says he does not believe it is possible for people to cause climate change. No facts, just belief. In Florida. In Miami. Wow…
Those who live in coastal areas, earn their living in agriculture, manage water utilities relying on water supplies, and drought planners know the truth. Denying that the climate is changing simply ignores reality and delays the ability to respond to its impacts. I realize that those impacts might be 20 or 40 or more years out, but planning is needed because we expect our infrastructure, factories, hoses and economies to last longer than that. Science says change is occurring. We can argue why and how fast, but the reality is that there is change and there are many people that will confront he need to adapt to the situation sooner than later (like us the Fort Lauderdale/Miami area!). So why deny climate change?
As we noted in a prior blog, there are several reasons, but many involved business issues. So follow the money. Let’s start with the Koch brothers. The Koch brothers manage Koch Industries, the second largest privately owned company in the United States revenues exceeding $100 billion/year. Many Americans have no idea who they are but they are billionaires who have made their living in the oil business – their father Fred C. Koch developed a new the method for the refining of heavy oil into gasoline. They rely on oil to maintain their wealth and are politically active with conservative organizations including the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity, all organizations the dismiss any impact of man on climate change. Why? Well one of the tenets of dealing with climate change is to reduce carbon dioxide emissions which means less reliance on fossil fuels – oil. Whoops – that would be a problem for the Koch brothers because if they say “sure climate change is a problem,” well then that would mean that their entire business model and their wealth is a contributor to climate change, which means they are the “bad guys.” Can’t have that. So following the money tells you that we can’t make our money with oil and support climate change.
Let’s look at the other side. Those acknowledging climate change are fully supportive of renewables, which in theory will help climate change by reducing carbon dioxide. But the concept of renewables though is fraught with the problem that few of these technologies are ripe for wide-scale implementation. For example natural gas vehicles or natural gas/hybrids are doable, but where do you buy the natural gas for the vehicle? The technology and distribution networks is 10 or more years out at best and of course if you are in the oil business, why would you be interested in installing the natural gas fuel pumps? So technology and need do not match when you follow the money.
How about the Keystone pipeline that would bring oil and gas from these remote areas to refineries in Texas and the Gulf of Mexico states. You can guess the Koch brothers are in favor of the pipeline as they will benefit. So are most oil and gas entities. There are many environmentalists and other opposed to the pipeline because of impacts on water supplies (and other issues). But the railroads are making money by hailing oil and gas from Canada and the Dakotas. Guess which side the railroads are on? The pipeline would take business away from the railroads. Follow the money.
Let’s look at our industry. In the utility business, there is a lot of money with the telephone, power, cable and other utilities. These private entities, although regulated, make huge sums of money for their investors. You can follow that money.
So who supports water and sewer utilities? We do! We supply over 85% of Americans. But why do we have so much trouble getting funding when 85% of people would benefit. One would think that given how many people we support, we have the money, but we are primarily not-for-profit entities, so we don’t make money for anyone. You can’t follow that money because there is no money. That tells us more about the difficulties we have in securing funding that anything.
Fixing it is a little bigger challenge because our representatives and constituents do not understand the financial investment they have in our industry. Their public health and economies are linked to water and sewer. Our services make these other enterprises doable but there is no direct monetary connection to facilitate lobbying on our behalf. I am not sure how to fix this, but we need a better marketing strategy for our services. That’s one thing we know.
Happy Graduation to my seniors.
Happy Graduation to my seniors. Over 20 of them are graduating and you can see them and their gold hardhats of Facebook. The good news is most have jobs or grad school offers. Most of those going to grad school are staying with us, as you would expect with a student body where many have family responsibilities and jobs. They will do well and they are well prepared for the work world. Don’t believe me? Ask their employers.
Top Ten Reasons to Deny Climate Change is Occurring in no Particular Order
borrowing for infrastructure, Climate, Development loans, economy, engineering, Environment, finance, funding, infrastructure, innovation, Leadership, local government, management, planning, Revenues, sea level rise, stormwater, Transportation, utilities, Water Funding, water sewer management, water supplies, Water treatment
I had to share this, from a nonscientific survey of people adamantly opposed to any consideration of changes to our climate:
1. I can’t do anything about it so I don’t care about it
2. People can’t alter what is happening with the earth because it is too big
3. It’s natural, so we can’t do anything about it
4. It’s not an issue now, so it’s somebody else’s future problem
5. The science is inconclusive so why do anything yet. Let’s see what happens
6. Trying to address it will cut jobs
7. We won’t be competitive (i.e our profits will drop)
8. It requires changing our business model (energy)
9. If we talk about it no one will develop in our community
10. Costs too much
I had to post this as many of you will have comments. But before you do, these about this a minute……
The first five are based on no facts, but a desire to ignore the issue entirely. The second five are more poignant because aren’t these pretty much the same arguments to deny the need to correct water pollution concerns in the 1930s? Or 1950s? Or even 1970s? Or even today with hog farms, frack water, acid mine waste, coal dust slurries, etc.? Or actually pretty much every regulation? I seem to recall Tom Delay making this argument when he was in Congress before he was indicted.
Now think about the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, and others. These regulations are designed to correct ills of the past that were simply ignored due to the first five arguments above, ignoring the fact that prevention is always less costly than cleanup afterward. To we pass regulations to clean up problems and protect the public health going forward. Otherwise why have a regulation?
So let’s talk about that jobs impact. The reason is that after the passage of these regulations, didn’t the number of professional jobs (like civil and environmental engineers, environmental and other scientists – STEM jobs) increase? Isn’t increasing STEM jobs a priority? So won’t dealing with climate issue perhaps create a similar increase in STEM jobs? Yes, costs for water increased and the cost for the effects of climate changes will cost money, but don’t these challenges create opportunities? Isn’t this akin to dealing with problems with development from the past? Just asking…..
Inheriting Infrastructure?
At a recent conference I was listening to a presentation by the Army Corps of Engineers explaining the investments made over the last 80 years. Subsequent presentations discussed that the need to reinvest in infrastructure appears to be about 3.6% of infrastructure value per year, but that the US is spending about 2.4%. The best condition of our infrastructure was in the 1980s, but decreases in reinvestment due to funding limitations has caused an ongoing decline in infrastructure value, which is why the ASCE report cards show most of our infrastructure at the D or D- level. It is getting old and it needs repair and replacement. You would rarely buy a house, never maintain it, and expect it to live in it without problems for 50 years. Roofs leak, pipes need replacing, mechanical equipment, lights and appliances fail. It is the cost of owning a home. You have to update. Most times the new equipment is more efficient that the old stuff, saving money. So why do we do this with infrastructure?
More interesting was the response to how some of these agencies may deal with this backlog of deferred maintenance. So far I have heard the Corps, state transportation agencies, state land agencies and another federal government say that they are figuring out means to prioritize the assets and dispose of those not needed. So let’s see how that would work and I kid you not, these are suggestions:
- Abandon state roadways and let local governments deal with them. Of course these are roads that are challenged – like they flood constantly and the cost to raise them is cost prohibitive, but the city has development along the corridor
- The state has low value wetlands they will donate to the underlying county – not that you can do anything with this land- it is not developable, but needs to be monitored and maintained
- There is a waterway that has leaking dikes but serves very few people. Let’s give it to the local community as they are the only ones who use it.
- We have monitoring equipment, but it really provides more information locally that regionally, so let’s give it to them
Hey I like the idea of giving, but seriously, how does the “recipient” deal with this problem. The low value assets are low value because they serve limited people and are deemed to have little economic or useful value or are too expensive to maintain. So what does the recipient do with it? They do not have nearly the resources that larger governmental entities have, and if the big guys cannot find the money, will locals? Are we just kicking the problem to the next guy? Sounds like used car sales to me.
It sounds suspiciously like the argument I have heard several times from a city manager who talked about cutting the size of local government, only what he did was contract with other entities to do the services, which means cuts in employees for his city, but the cost is just transferred to another entity. The rate/taxpayers will foot the bill unless the service is completely discontinued. In his case, they all paid more.
The State of Florida and the federal government have both cut employees and both contract heavily for services that never used to be contracted. There is a whole industry of contracting for government work that used to be done in-house. In other words, they privatized portions of the operations. But did the cost of government decrease in either case? No.
So going back to the initial question – will governments abandon infrastructure? The answer appears to be yes, but the problem is that that infrastructure IS being used by people so the reality of full abandonment is impossible. The result will be that underlying local entities will be stuck with the bill. Planning is needed. “Fail to plan = Plan to fail” as my friend Albert says. We need to identify where these “gifts” may occur and identify a means to deal with the inherent obligation that goes with them. For water and sewer utilities, waterways and roadways are of particular concern, but so could watersheds and well sites.
Will the Default in Detroit Affect Me?
So Detroit defaulted on it’s debt obligations. Do does that impact you? Well, that depends on whether you are a utility looking revenue bonds, a city looking for general fund bonds or some combination. The issue in Detroit with debt is that they pledged the full faith and credit of their taxing authority to repay the debt. Their taxing ability was insufficient to accomplish this goal, which means that there could now be distrust in that promise for other cities. So if you are a city and you are making this pledge, Detroit could impact you, or at least create more review on your balance sheets. If you are a utility that is pledging revenues that have no limitations on amount, the concern is likely less. Of course in either cases, the question is what the rest of your balance sheet looks like. If you have no reserves, do not charge the full cost for service, have a heavy debt load, have high rates already, or send a lot of funds to the general fund, that could be a problem. If you have avoided these pitfalls, the bond market will see much less of an issue.
Keep in mind that Detroit is not the only default – another big one is the Birmingham and several other create questions about general fund uses of funds, which makes it of greater importance to keep our financial house in order. IN part this can be done by creating the appropriate enterprise funds and remove those services from the general property tax fund. That permits local focus on the true cost of general taxing users and creates a delineation between general fund and enterprise costs. That can help elected officials focus on the true general fund issues: police, fire, EMS, administration without hiding those costs with subsidies from other funds.
Colorado Connected
I read a recent article in Roads and Bridges on the reconstruction of the roadways to Estes Park. An excellent effort by state officials and private contractors to rebuild over 20 miles of roads that were wiped away in mid-September when unprecedented rainstorms cut Estes Park off from the front range. I actually had reservations in Estes Park as part of a plan to go hiking at Lawn Lake, among others. Lawn Lake was one the harder hit areas in the park. Went to Leadville. If you have never been, go. The early money in Colorado came out of Leadville – silver was the money-maker. I did a 12 mile hike thought the mining district as it snowed – note it is the 2 mile high City. Great hike in the am – the photos were fantastic as well.
But the point is that people expect government to solve problems like the roadways in Colorado. They expect we will solve water, sewer and storm water problems. We have done a great job of it because people take these services for granted. What we don’t want is to have a catastrophic failure, natural or otherwise.. ..
Oil Energy and Utilities
Back during the dark days of the late-1970s, when America was being held hostage by Middle East oil interests, the Department of Energy was created, ostensibly to free our economy from the dependence on foreign oil and all that trappings that go with it. It was a noble goal – the American economy could grow without the risks posed by foreign governments. Thirty five years later, could we finally be reaching that goal?
Interesting the often criticized billions of energy company subsidies of the Bush era do not appear to be responsible for solving the issue. Nor are the prior efforts to subsidize or otherwise encourage investments before. The energy subsides since 2000 do not appear to be the reason, but the arctic wilderness did not need to be disturbed either. The success had nothing to do with any of it, but instead a series of private risk takers to a gamble on an unproven technology, to make great strides – fracking.
Based on the success of the development of fracking for natural gas, we have made major improvements. But it is not just fracking, as many power plants are or have been rehabilitated to convert away from oil and coal to cleaner burning natural gas, thereby developing the market for natural gas. Local governments have been migrating their fleets to natural gas for years – natural gas can use the same engine with an $8000 conversion kit that allows automobiles to run on both. The conversions have made the demand for natural gas greater, making the investments needed to frack, more profitable. The US has significant reserves of natural gas, and fracking has made it easier to capture this resource. The benefit of natural gas is that the demand for oil is down, creating a glut of oil on the market and a decrease in price (at least for now).
But the question that has been left unanswered is what the domino effect of natural gas is. Certain advertisements will argue there is 200 years of natural gas available for the US so we don’t need to worry about energy. Others will argue that only 10-15% of that supply is actually recoverable (it should be noted that this assumes current methods), which is a far shorter horizon. But in either case, natural gas in the ground is not a renewable resource so the question must be asked – does the fracking boom interfere with investment in truly renewable resources?
Since 2000, Washington has invested heavily in renewable resources – wind, solar and to an extent waves. Some energy companies like NextEra have been investing heavily in wind and solar power (they are the biggest investors in renewable power in the US), so what of these truly renewable investments? Will the rush to frack turn resources away from truly renewables? Or will renewable continue to be a small fraction of energy demands for the near future? The question remains unanswered for now.
The bigger question for utilities is whether fracking will divert money away from plans for renewable efforts like digester gas capture, solar cells and wind power at reservoirs and the like that utilities are using to help reduce power purchases. Will it impact utility efforts to become self-sufficient energy consumers like East Bay MUD? You see the economy has few favorites. Government can create favorites, by subsidizing products that would otherwise be too expensive like PV panels. The benefit of subsides can be to reduce costs of emerging technologies that may never otherwise see widespread use. Subsidizing renewables fit this mode.
Utilities should be concerned that the rush to frack pulls money away from their plans for renewable power. As the feds look to reduce their contributions to water and wastewater infrastructure, public money to energy does not appear to be decreasing. And unlike publically owned water and sewer systems, private investment in energy is increasingly available as a result of the potential profits that can be made. The diversion of funds may decrease prospects for funding water and sewer utility options, especially if interest rates begin to rise. The Federal Reserve Bank’s concern about rising interest rates was manifested earlier this year when interest rate increased, housing sales decreased immediately.
Of course the issue of fracking goes beyond the potential to disrupt monies for renewable energy. There are questions about the practice of fracking include water quality impacts, causing earthquakes, land subsidence, etc., issue that have yet to be resolved. Keep an eye out for a risk assessment that AWWA and others will be involved with to look at these risks.
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