Post 53 in a series. When Green Turns Brown is an examination of a small town’s digester-energy project, in which Whitewater, Wisconsin would import other cities’ waste, claiming that the result would be both profitable and green.
When Green Turns Brown has been, and for while more will be, a mostly written account. That’s understandable: I’m a blogger – I write. At this stage, the project is a series of posts, sometimes with questions, sometimes with short, simple video clips.
So far, it’s been a seed, or perhaps no more than a sapling. Some trees grow slowly – there’s more writing to do, and I have the luxuries of time and patience.
Yet, I’ve also the good fortune of advice from others, inside and outside the city, who are talented about film and video. Where I have done little more than a simple clip here or there, they can offer the instruction, guidance, and assistance to do so much more.
Traditional print’s dying, but electronic media are thriving. Even older forms have a new life through digital media.
When this phase of When Green Turns Brown begins, I’ll also give those who’ve offered so many claims on behalf of a digester-energy project for Whitewater (and have already generously supplied me with so many on-camera remarks useful to a wider audience) a chance to speak more about what they claim to know on the project’s behalf.
See, along these lines, When Did Eco Documentaries Get So Slick? @ Bloomberg News, about Louie Psihoyos’s Racing Extinction.
What’s now a written work will become more. A good part of that effort will include comparing how cities have addressed proposals like this local one – the contrast is striking.(There’s an odd way in which Whitewater’s city manager and wastewater superintendent speak about the local project with evident ignorance or indifference to other communities’ experiences.)
But there’s reading and review ahead, of Whitewater officials’ remarks on the project, of questions compiled, of public documents unpublished, of a new website to launch, and continuing visits to other communities.
One works methodically and patiently.
WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN: Mondays @ 10 AM, here on FREE WHITEWATER.
My best guess is that these guys don’t get what you’re doing even after 50 plus installments. If they got it they wouldn’t have said half the dumb things they said on behalf of the plan. After all these months all they do is repeat themselves with teh same b.s. arguments. They’re in a downward spiral.
Well, I don’t know how they think, but I do know that official remarks do – and should – speak for themselves.
So “Attendee” has been writing but now it’s me.
This idea is bad for business, bad for property. Never should have been pushed so much. Reel should not have been on any camera. After expecting a million more for his lab he should stay out on U forever. Who on earth thought he was a good spokesman? He needs to understand that this is not HIS money. How much homework is Cameron doing? He came from Waunakee but doesn’t even know how the Waunakee digester works!
We are with you on this series. Enough is enough from these two guys if they want to be here. Keep the streets clean – leave the rest to others. If they want revenue they need to be in the private sector.
There has been a repeated gap between professing to limit spending (such as the city manager saying large sums make him almost ‘ill’) and actually spending less. After a few times of this, the argument against spending becomes evidently disingenuous.
There was no ordinary person in town who wanted to bring in waste. Just a few bureaucrats. That’s all it was. There were no people crying out to have this, except these bureaucrats and one old man who keeps running for election. Their explanations are like a kid’s explanations. It’s embarrassing. That’s the total pro side in this.
Agreed – this is a top-down idea. It has no popular support – never has, never will.
what’s stupid is they gave it three more months
The same councilman who gave Whitewater’s city manager a helping hand at a 9.17.15 meeting (that only made the case for waste importation worse) was the same one who moved to give the municipal administration an extra three months’ time. That’s not a bad thing – 9.17.15 on camera was revealing, and the 12.15.15 meeting was even more so. If he cares to give the municipal administration more time to talk about the idea (having nothing sensible to show after two years’ time), I’ll not object.
From it, we have more recorded – and strikingly odd – claims in support of this project than anyone else in the state has (to my knowledge) about similar proposals. That’s truly invaluable, as most of these pro-importation or similar discussions in other places have been off-camera.
It’s all to the good to see recorded in the open arguments that men in other places have craftily kept off-camera. I’ve had the chance to show significant portions of our local meetings to others outside the city (there are dozens upon dozens of claims over the last two years) and the reaction has been uniform amazement at much of what’s been said.
People should be forthright – those in government and those commenting on government. This series, for example, has been an open, ongoing, series of posts. Week in, week out, thinking about a project that happens to be in my town.
I didn’t pick the project, of course: others pushed it forward in Whitewater. They were free to push it forward, however imprudent that may have been; they were not free to push it through without others’ commenting on it. They picked the idea, and others have a right to pick a response (e.g., posts, questions, questions at law, a website, video, ebook about it).
I’ll not ask others to talk less, after all. They’re free to keep going, to say more, so much as they’d like, actually.
Maybe you should think about opposing candidates in the spring who keep pushing this project.
Hello and thanks for commenting. In the years during which I have been writing, involving many candidates for local election, I’ve seldom weighed in for one candidate or another. Last year was an exception, for the school board, because two of the candidates seemed to me to be manifestly better choices than the third. I wrote only a single post about each candidate, feeling at the time that my two preferred candidates were likely to win, and so a post for each would be sufficient in that context. (It was: my choices won, and carried both the City of Whitewater and Town of Whitewater over the third candidate.)
If I had thought that the race might have gone the other way, I would have written at length about the third candidate, whose policy prescriptions for Whitewater have been absurdly bad. (If necessary, I would have used media beyond the Web at my own expense to distribute a thorough critique.)
Generally, though, I’m not disposed to make endorsements. It seems so formal and old-fashioned to me. Voters in the city are sharp and discerning; they’ll make up their own minds.
We can be patient – let’s first see who’s running and what they espouse.