News That Matters Good Monday Morning, Farewell, Isaac Hayes. Hulk Hogan turns 53 today. We're experimenting with new layout formats this week. Please Be patient. If the skies should clear enough later tonight, don't forget to step outside for the Perseid meteor shower. After 2AM tomorrow morning (after the the moon has set) you can expect to see upwards of 60 meteors per hour under dark skies. But don't let that stop you from going outside earlier tonight! If the sky clears, even a little bit, it could be quite a show. Last Friday I asked you to participate in a short poll on whether I'm being too tough on congressional candidate Michael Lalor (the guy with all those illegal signs). The response, though light, was definitive. 100% of those who responded said, no. For those of you with noisy neighbors take heart! A court in Wales has decided that it would destroy a stereo owned by a man for whom complaints had been lodged over playing his music too loud. Said Karl Wiosna, "I didn't play the music that loudly -- and it wasn't just Cher -- I used to play heavy metal as well." A neighbor said, "The noise was just unbearable. It went from sounding like a drag queen's party to a rock concert. The music was just non-stop."
Senator John Edwards had a mistress. Yawn. Americans are a fickle lot. According to a recent ABC News Poll, nearly 80% of Americans believed global warming was a genuine threat yet only 44% thought they should take responsibility for cleaning up the mess. In the fall of, 2007 a BBC poll asked people in 21 countries whether it would be necessary for individuals “to make changes in their life style and behavior in order to reduce the amount of climate changing gases they produce.” In countries polled, large majorities agreed with this statement: 83 percent on average said this would be necessary and 46 percent said it would “definitely” be necessary. The countries with the largest percentages saying definitely necessary were Spain (68%), Mexico (64%), Canada (63%), Italy (62%), and China (59%) In the US, just 19% thought so.  Several years ago the Putnam Smart Growth Alliance held a series of meetings with developer Paul Camarda about some of his planned developments. One item we encouraged was either including solar panels or green roofing his proposed Patterson Crossing project. At the time he told us it was impossible, that the companies involved would not do such a thing. Though we showed him otherwise by pointing to examples across the nation were either or both were done on large-scale commercial buildings he still refused. There's an article below which should change his mind. Land use law permits us to require such additions - and we should.For those of you living in areas of the county that have contentious elections, here's a breath of fresh air for you. Candidate for the 102nd Assembly district (Dutchess County) Jonathan Smith, sends out regular notices to the media and supporters. I wanted to include one of his releases here, not in support of his candidacy, but in support of his style. Misters Ball and Lalor have a lot to learn when it comes to these things and Mr. Smith's post can be instructive. In fact, if all election rhetoric was as poised, positive and polite as his, we'd have a much stronger democracy. Dear Friends,Nice, eh? If you get a political mailer that is negative and attacks an opponent, write to the candidate and tell them s/he's a boor and then vote for the other guy. Though we tend to like the mud-slinging, I know we're better than that. Lastly this morning, I'm looking for a new (for me) car. A Ford escort wagon, a sturdy Subaru wagon or something similar. If you've got one lying around please let me know. As always, visit PlanPutnam.org for more. And now, the News:
A dozen fife-and-drum corps march through CarmelSean Gorman DEC poised to fine Putnam for old landfill, other environmental woesSusan ElanThe Journal News The state Department of Environmental Conservation plans to fine Putnam County for violations related to a long-unused county landfill in Carmel and other breaches of environmental law, according to state and county officials. A state order, not yet issued by the DEC, will require Putnam to clean up the 4-acre site off Old Route 6 where the county operated a landfill from April 1975 to July 1976. In addition, the state agency wants Putnam to devise a plan for recycling, to replace a faulty wastewater treatment plant at the county-owned Putnam National Golf Club in Mahopac and to correct violations involving bulk storage of petroleum at county sites. "The consent order is not finalized yet, so there is no information re: fines or specific compliance information available at this time," DEC spokeswoman Wendy Rosenbach wrote in an e-mail Friday. "The main possible environmental impacts associated with the Putnam County landfill are contaminated groundwater and contaminated sediments," Rosenbach said. Read More Peach Lake residents looking toward sewer construction next yearElizabeth GangaThe Journal News PEACH LAKE - Residents of the former summer colonies around this community could see construction of a new sewage system next year, now that many of the major pieces are in place for the project to move forward. In July, after securing approval from the state Comptroller's Office, the towns of North Salem and Southeast formed sewer districts. That set the stage for approval of low-interest financing through the state Environmental Facilities Corporation, which is expected to be completed in September. The recent flurry of activity followed a vote earlier in the year by the Westchester County Board of Legislators to spend $10 million in New York City watershed funding on the sewers and a 2005 vote committing $2.5 million by the Putnam County Legislature. Before the towns can ask contractors to submit bids to actually build the treatment plant and lay the pipes, they still need several approvals from regulatory agencies, including the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, the state, and the Army Corps of Engineers. "We are rapidly moving toward a bid package," said North Salem Supervisor Paul Greenwood. Read More Don't trust Big Oil on drilling safetyIn spite of all the evidence to suggest an outright ban, or at least extreme caution, it would seem that the mad rush is on to drill for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. The government's own survey suggests any oil we get out of the Gulf would not help ease the pain at the pump and would arrive "too little, too late."Weather models from the National Weather Service show even more severe hurricanes and tropical storms in that region and longer storm seasons. And this is a good place to drill? Advertisement The petroleum industry has assured us that it can be done "safely." What else were we assured was "completely safe"? The Exxon Valdez? Remember that one? When lots of corporate money and hubris are at stake, lots of things have been sold as "completely safe." Remember the Titanic? How about the Hindenburg? Read More Flush With EnergyBy THOMAS L. FRIEDMANCopenhagen The Arctic Hotel in Ilulissat, Greenland, is a charming little place on the West Coast, but no one would ever confuse it for a Four Seasons — maybe a One Seasons. But when my wife and I walked back to our room after dinner the other night and turned down our dim hallway, the hall light went on. It was triggered by an energy-saving motion detector. Our toilet even had two different flushing powers depending on — how do I say this delicately — what exactly you’re flushing. A two-gear toilet! I’ve never found any of this at an American hotel. Oh, if only we could be as energy efficient as Greenland! A day later, I flew back to Denmark. After appointments here in Copenhagen, I was riding in a car back to my hotel at the 6 p.m. rush hour. And boy, you knew it was rush hour because 50 percent of the traffic in every intersection was bicycles. That is roughly the percentage of Danes who use two-wheelers to go to and from work or school every day here. If I lived in a city that had dedicated bike lanes everywhere, including one to the airport, I’d go to work that way, too. It means less traffic, less pollution and less obesity. What was most impressive about this day, though, was that it was raining. No matter. The Danes simply donned rain jackets and pants for biking. If only we could be as energy smart as Denmark! Unlike America, Denmark, which was so badly hammered by the 1973 Arab oil embargo that it banned all Sunday driving for a while, responded to that crisis in such a sustained, focused and systematic way that today it is energy independent. (And it didn’t happen by Danish politicians making their people stupid by telling them the solution was simply more offshore drilling.) Read More Two bits worth: Here comes the sunBy TOM MASTStar-Tribune staff writer Sunday, August 10, 2008 2:08 AM MDT Never underestimate the power of an idea to remake the world. What will be coming next from a some creative scientific team in Tokyo or Berkeley, or in this case, in Cambridge, Mass.? Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology apparently have found a way to store solar energy when the sun isn't shining in a simple and inexpensive way, thus overcoming a big barrier to the widespread use of solar power. According to MIT, the process was inspired by photosynthesis in plants. It uses the sun's energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases, which then can be recombined in a fuel cell as needed to produce electricity, day or night. "This is the nirvana of what we've been talking about for years," said Daniel Nocera, the Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy at MIT and senior author of an article in Science. "Solar power has always been a limited, far-off solution. Now we can think about solar energy as unlimited and soon." Read More Giant Retailers Look to Sun for Energy SavingsBy STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOMRetailers are typically obsessed with what to put under their roofs, not on them. Yet the nation’s biggest store chains are coming to see their immense, flat roofs as an untapped resource. In recent months, chains including Wal-Mart Stores, Kohl’s, Safeway and Whole Foods Market have installed solar panels on roofs of their stores to generate electricity on a large scale. One reason they are racing is to beat a Dec. 31 deadline to gain tax advantages for these projects. So far, most chains have outfitted fewer than 10 percent of their stores. Over the long run, assuming Congress renews a favorable tax provision and more states offer incentives, the chains promise a solar construction program that would ultimately put panels atop almost every big store in the country. The trend, while not entirely new, is accelerating as the chains seize a chance to bolster their environmental credentials by cutting back on their use of electricity from coal. “It’s very clear that green energy is now front and center in the minds of the business sector,” said Daniel M. Kammen, an energy expert at the University of California, Berkeley. “Not only will you see panels on the roofs of your local stores, but I suspect very soon retailers will have stickers in their windows saying, ‘This is a green energy store.’ ” In the coming months, 85 Kohl’s stores will get solar panels; 43 already have them. “We want to keep pushing as many as we possibly can,” said Ken Bonning, executive vice president for logistics at Kohl’s. Read More Putting Water Ahead of Natural GasBy PETER APPLEBOMEPublished: August 9, 2008 It wasn’t quite Barack Obama in Berlin, just a city councilman from Queens standing behind a makeshift lectern on the sidewalk outside his office and trying to talk to four reporters, most of them from small news outlets, over the sound of buses wheezing along Union Turnpike. But if Councilman James F. Gennaro’s press conference Friday with two environmental leaders barely moved the needle on the summer news meter, it almost certainly was a window onto the biggest environmental issue almost no one in New York City is paying attention to. It has slowly dawned on people, among them Mr. Gennaro, chairman of the Council’s Environmental Protection Committee, that there’s one very big local angle to the distant and still exotic notion of major energy companies descending on upstate New York to drill for natural gas in the Marcellus Shale formation. A large chunk of that area is the 2,000-square-mile watershed where New York City gets its water, which comes unfiltered through the city’s reservoirs and aqueducts to nine million people, or roughly half the state’s residents. That raises the obvious questions: Should there be gas drilling in the watershed and, if so, can it be done without imperiling the federal waiver that has allowed New York to avoid building a filtration plant that would cost $10 billion to $12 billion? Read More Invasive Species Bill Stuck in Congressby: The Associated PressCalifornia's Boxer and Hawaii's Inouye face off in Senate. Washington - Tiny foreign mussels assault drinking water sources in California and Nevada. A deadly fish virus spreads swiftly through the Great Lakes and beyond. Japanese shore crabs make a home for themselves in Long Island Sound, more than 6,000 miles away. These are no exotic seafood delicacies. They're a menace to U.S. drinking water supplies, native plants and animals, and they cost billions to contain. Yet Congress is moving to address the problem at the pace of a plain old garden snail. Two powerful Senate committee chairmen are at loggerheads over legislation to set the first federal clean-up standards for the large oceangoing ships on which aquatic invasive species hitch a ride to U.S. shores. The dispute is between Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who chairs the Environment and Public Works Committee, and Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. Read More | |||||||||
Monday, August 11, 2008
News That Matters - August 11, 2008
