FREE WHITEWATER

WGTB, WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN

The December 2014 Presentation
(Part 3)

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WGTB logo PNG 112x89 Post 38 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.

In this post, I’ll consider a portion of the public comments at the 12.16.14 meeting, following earlier posts about the meeting (Parts 1 and 2).

(A full recording of the 12.16.14 discussion is embedded at the bottom of this post for ready reference.)

(Every question in this series has a unique number, assigned chronologically based on when it was asked. All the questions from When Green Turns Brown can be found in the Question Bin. Today’s questions begin with No. 230.)

230. At approximately forty-five minutes into the discussion, Wastewater Superintendent Reel compares the regulatory limit for phosphorus for Whitewater and Beloit. He observes that Whitewater’s regulatory phosphorus limit will be .075 mg/L, while Beloit’s will be .2 mg/L, and that Beloit has a higher limit because Beloit discharges into a larger body of water. Isn’t this an admission that Whitewater’s ecosystem cannot manage the same volume of chemical discharge, generally, that other, geographically larger or geographically more diffusive areas can manage?

231. If it should be true (that Whitewater’s ecosystem cannot manage the same volume of chemical discharge, generally, that other, geographically larger or geographically more diffusive areas can manage), then why would Whitewater be a city seeking to import large quantities of waste from other cities?

232. CDA member (and business lobby president) Larry Kachel asks how many people the plant – now – can accommodate by population. Why can’t Superintendent Reel answer with a ready number of how many people?

233. Reel states that the plant’s capacity was designed to accommodate large businesses no longer in the city (dairy Hawthorne-Melody, for example). Is the upgrade being designed with that same greater-than-now needed capacity?

234. If so (that is, if Whitewater new proposal is using a floor that’s based on industrial needs no longer present in the city), then how will that over-capacity be used?

235. At about fifty-six minutes into the discussion, Donohue representative Mike Gerbitz (in answer to a question) says that communities like Whitewater often fund projects like this via subsidized loans rather than bonds because those communities would not qualify for bonds issued (in this case, projected) at 2.7%, and that they take the subsidized loans because it doesn’t reflect in the same way against their borrowing capacity. Isn’t this a tacit admission that the full project cost is outside Whitewater’s capacity to borrow in an unsubsidized, free market?

236. Do city officials think – regardless of how a loan is treated in the formal accounting of it – that the cost of the project by a loan with interest or in bonds with interest is not an obligation?

237. Donohue representative Nathan Cassity, PE speaks beginning at about 1:07 in the presentation about a digester-energy project. Cassity cites a study from Trane that he contends projected a large digester-energy plan that would not be cost effective ($12.4 million in cost, $800,000 in debt service, but only $450,000-560,000 in revenue). Did Cassity see Trane’s completed study (he implies that he did)? Has the full Trane study been released? If not, then why not?

238. Cassity talks about the possibility of importing “high-strength” waste into the facility to generate revenue in a “baby step approach.” What kinds of high-strength waste does he mean?

239. In what probable amounts, and by kind of waste and proportion to the whole amount imported, would that high-strength waste be?

240. What would be the maximum capacity of the waste importation into the digester by Cassity’s proposal?

241. Cassity talks about moving from the initial approach on waste importation to a “phased” increase in waste importation, about which he contends “he has more [information],” but does not disclose. He doesn’t describe, for example, how much more waste that “phased” importation would entail, or of what type it would be. Why hasn’t the plan for phased, increased importation of outside waste – one that Cassity says that he had as of (at least) 12.16.14 – been released?

242. How is it that – in a scheduled presentation – neither Donohue representatives nor city employees can answer, specifically, questions about item costs or supposed greater efficiencies?

243. Who was, by Gerbitz’s account, the attorney who worked with Reel to develop a plan to pay a charge in lieu of removal, rather than actual removal, of phosphorus? How many times did Reel meet with that attorney? Who else, if anyone, was at those meetings?

244. As compared with point-source phosphorus reductions (that is, at municipal plants), how much phosphorus reduction will municipal payments to county agencies produce? (That is, not whether those payments will be cheaper, but how much payments under something like the CWHE Act will actually reduce phosphorus)?

Next, tomorrow: The Pilot Program.

WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN: Mondays @ 10 AM, here on FREE WHITEWATER.

Donohue Firm’s December 2014 Presentation to Whitewater from John Adams on Vimeo.
 

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 10.4.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Sunday in the Whippet City will be cloudy with a high of fifty-nine. Sunrise is 6:56 and sunset 6:30, for 11h 34m 22s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 53.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

Friday’s FW poll asked when a public school should suspend a student for wearing the wrong shade of green in a dress code. The overwhelming majority (92.31%) of respondents voted against suspension in these circumstances.

On this day in 1957, the Soviets launch an artificial satellite into orbit:

1024px-Sputnik_1 The Sputnik rocket was launched on 4 October 1957 at 19:28:34 UTC (5 October at the launch site[1]) from Site No.1 at NIIP-5.[54] Telemetry indicated the side boosters separated 116 seconds into the flight and the core-stage engine shut down 295.4 seconds into the flight.[52] At shut down, the 7.5 tonne core stage with PS-1 attached had attained an altitude of 223 km (139 mi) above sea level, a velocity of 7,780 m/s (25,500 ft/s) and velocity vector inclination to the local horizon of 0 degrees 24 minutes. This resulted in an initial orbit of 223 kilometres (139 mi) by 950 kilometres (590 mi), with an apogee approximately 500 kilometres (310 mi) lower than intended, and an inclination of 65.1 degrees and a period of 96.2 minutes.[52]

19.9 seconds after engine cut-off, PS-1 separated from the second stage[1] and the satellite’s transmitter was activated. These signals were detected at the IP-1 station by Junior Engineer-Lieutenant V.G. Borisov, where reception of Sputnik’s “beep-beep-beep” tones confirmed the satellite’s successful deployment. Reception lasted for two minutes, until PS-1 fell below the horizon.[29][55] The Tral telemetry system on the R-7 core stage continued to transmit and was detected on its second orbit.[1]

The designers, engineers and technicians who developed the rocket and satellite watched the launch from the range.[56] After the launch they drove to the mobile radio station to listen for signals from the satellite.[56] They waited about 90 minutes to ensure that the satellite had made one orbit and was transmitting, before Korolyov called Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev.[57]

On the first orbit the Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union (TASS) transmitted: “As result of great, intense work of scientific institutes and design bureaus the first artificial Earth satellite has been built”.[58] The R-7 core stage, with a mass of 7.5 tonnes and a length of 26 meters, also reached Earth orbit and was visible from the ground at night as a first magnitude object following the satellite. Deployable reflective panels were placed on the booster in order to increase its visibility for tracking.[57] The satellite itself, a small, highly polished sphere, was barely visible at sixth magnitude, and thus more difficult to follow optically. A third object, the payload fairing, also achieved orbit.

The core stage of the R-7 remained in orbit for two months until 2 December 1957, while Sputnik 1 orbited until 4 January 1958, having completed 1,440 orbits of the Earth.[1]

On this day in 1862, Wisconsinites participate in the Union defense of Corinth, Mississippi (a city having been taken previously by Federal soldiers):

The Second Battle of Corinth began when Confederate forces attempted to retake Corinth, Mississippi. The 8th, 14th, 16th, 17th and 18th Wisconsin Infantry regiments, along with the 6th and 12th Wisconsin Light Artillery batteries, fought to protect the city from Confederate troops. The Union general in charge cited the 14th Wisconsin Infantry for heroic service at Corinth, calling it “the regiment to rely upon in every emergency; always cool, steady, and vigorous.” The 17th Wisconsin Infantry was composed mainly of Irish immigrants. They led a bayonet charge with the Gaelic battle cry “Faugh a ballaghl” (“Clear the way!”), which the same general called, “the most glorious charge in the campaign.”

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 10.3.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of fifty-six. Sunrise is 6:55 and sunset is 6:32, for 11h 37m 15s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 63.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1990, West and East Germany reunite after forty-five years of Communist-supported division:

Berlin, Wednesday, Oct. 3 — Forty-five years after it was carved up in defeat and disgrace, Germany was reunited today in a midnight celebration of pealing bells, national hymns and the jubilant blare of good old German oom-pah-pah.

At the stroke of midnight Tuesday, a copy of the American Liberty Bell, a gift from the United States at the height of the cold war, tolled from the Town Hall, and the black, red and gold banner of the Federal Republic of Germany rose slowly before the Reichstag, the scarred seat of past German Parliaments.

Then the President, Richard von Weizsacker, drawing on the words of the West German Constitution, proclaimed from the steps of the Reichstag: ”In free self-determination, we want to achieve the unity in freedom of Germany. We are aware of our responsibility for these tasks before God and the people. We want to serve peace in the world in a united Europe.”

WGTB, WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN

The December 2014 Presentation
(Part 2)

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WGTB logo PNG 112x89 Post 37 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.

In this post, I’ll consider only a portion of the public comments at the 12.16.14 meeting.

There are two reasons for a deliberate approach.  First, Whitewater’s city officials (at least some of them) contend that they’ve considered this project in detail, and carefully.  Those claims deserve in reply a careful review.  Second, the public comments about which I’ll write today caught my attention at the time, and have been notable to me since.

Today’s questions derive from discussion beginning at the 36-minute mark, and that continued until 46:21.  (The 12.16.14 discussion is embedded at the bottom of this post for ready reference.)

(Every question in this series has a unique number, assigned chronologically based on when it was asked. All the questions from When Green Turns Brown can be found in the Question Bin. Today’s questions begin with No. 223.)

At just over thirty-six minutes in (36:15), one hears the first public comment (from Jeff Knight, chair of Whitewater’s Community Development Authority, and President & CEO of a local business lobby, the Greater Whitewater Committee.)

I’ll transcribe a portion of his remarks (beginning at 37:24):

And question two I’d have is the phosphorus treatment that you’ve included in here.  Other communities have done significant treatment of their phosphorus by putting it out on land so that it trickles and does its cleaning itself.  What’s the process you’ve decided on the phosphorus in this?  And, cause I think that’s a very expensive component of what’s being proposed.  And so, have you looked what are the options on the phosphorus treatment and has the city been able to consider we’ve got a big industrial park with a lot of vacant land…there is land that could be used to treat that phosphorus.  I just would like for the Common Council to understand those decisions.

223.  Is Knight serious in his contention that a possible method of treatment for Whitewater is “putting it out on land so that it trickles and does its cleaning itself?”

224.  Does he really think that a possible solution is spreading phosphorus on vacant land in the business park?

225.  Where does Knight, after all, think that the phosphorus “trickles?”

226.  On 7.15.14 – five months before this December meeting – Donohue explained the options for addressing phosphorus (actually removing it at the source or paying a charge for non-removal above regulatory-defined limits).  Donohue explained those same options in this very December meeting, shortly before Knight speaks.  Why doesn’t CDA Chair Knight – voluntarily speaking on this issue – know the phosphorus option that Donohue presented (and the city administration accepted) five months earlier?

227.  Why doesn’t Knight understand how the method Donohue recommends – and the city administration accepted five months earlier – addresses phosphorus not by removal, but by paying a charge for non-removal?  Isn’t Mr. Knight who’s the one who doesn’t understand this subject?

228.  If spreading phosphorus on the ground so that it “trickles” is an effective solution, will the executive members of the Greater Whitewater Committee (among them Knight, CDA member Larry Kachel, and councilman Dr. Kidd) spread it on their lawns and properties?

229. If Whitewater wants to market the town to residential development, is it an effective marketing presentation to offer Whitewater as a town where the phosphorus plan is “putting it out on land so that it trickles and does its cleaning itself.”)

(Two points worth making: (1) I know that there’s no chance of this bizarre idea as an actual plan – the problem is that CDA Chair Knight actually suggests it, and (2) how can any community have confidence in supposed public-relations – especially directed toward attracting residential home sales – with ideas of this absurd kind?)

Next, on Sunday, 10.4.15: The December 2014 Presentation (Part 3).

WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN: Mondays @ 10 AM, here on FREE WHITEWATER.

Donohue Firm’s December 2014 Presentation to Whitewater from John Adams on Vimeo.
 

Poll

Friday Poll: Suspended for the Wrong Color of Green?

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Should a child in a public school be suspended for wearing the wrong color of blue or green?

At a public school in New Jersey, a child was suspended over a dispute about the color of her shirt:

8-year-old Kylie and her twin sister Karlie don’t look like troublemakers, but Kylie was suspended from school. The reason, according to her mother: a violation of the dress code Monday. Their mother, Crystal, says she got a call from the vice principal at Winslow Township School 4.

“He wanted me to know that she can’t wear that shirt and if she does wear that shirt again, she would be suspended,” she told FOX 29.

The district’s policy states that shirts or blouses be white, dark green or navy blue with collars only. Kelly green is a violation. Crystal admits her conversation with the assistant principal and then the principal did get a bit heated.

“My child messed up, I messed it up for my child, and she be suspended next time for it, but to suspend a child over the shade of a shirt. I found it a little ridiculous,” she explained.

The girls missed the bus Tuesday morning, and when they arrived at school a few minutes late– properly dressed– they were met by the principal.

“She told me don’t bother to sign her in and told Kylie that she’s not in school today,” the mother explained.

“I got suspended for wearing the different color they wanted me to wear,” said Kylie. “The principal told me that I don’t have to stay here and I could leave.”

(The school, by the way, disputes parts of the story as ‘incorrect,’ but offered no explanation to a reporter.)

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 10.2.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Friday in town will be partly sunny with a high of sixty-one. Sunrise is 6:53 and sunset 6:34, for 11h 40m 07s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 74.9% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1959, the Twilight Zone debuts on CBS:

The series was produced by Cayuga Productions, Inc., a production company owned and named by Serling. It reflects his background in Central New York State and is named after Cayuga Lake, on which Ithaca College is located.

Aside from Serling, who wrote or adapted nearly two-thirds of the series’ total episodes, writers for The Twilight Zone included leading authors such as Charles Beaumont, Ray Bradbury, Earl Hamner, Jr., George Clayton Johnson, Richard Matheson, Reginald Rose, and Jerry Sohl. Many episodes also featured new adaptations of classic stories by such writers as Ambrose Bierce, Jerome Bixby, Damon Knight, John Collier, and Lewis Padgett.

Twilight Zone???’??s writers frequently used science fiction as a vehicle for social comment, as networks and sponsors who censored controversial material from live dramas were less concerned with seemingly innocuous fantasy and sci-fi stories. Frequent themes on The Twilight Zone included nuclear war, McCarthyism, and mass hysteria, subjects that were avoided on more serious primetime television. Episodes such as “He’s Alive” or “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” offered specific commentary on current events and social issues. Other stories, such as “The Masks“, “I Dream of Genie“, or “Mr. Denton on Doomsday” were allegories, parables, or fablesthat reflected the moral and philosophical choices of the characters.

Despite his esteem in the writing community, Serling found the series difficult to sell. Few critics felt that science fiction could transcend empty escapism and enter the realm of adult drama. In a September 22, 1959, interview with Serling, Mike Wallace asked a question illustrative of the times: “…[Y]ou’re going to be, obviously, working so hard on The Twilight Zone that, in essence, for the time being and for the foreseeable future, you’ve given up on writing anything important for television, right?” While Serling’s appearances on the show became one of its most distinctive features, with his clipped delivery still widely imitated today, he was reportedly nervous about it and had to be persuaded to appear on camera. Serling often steps into the middle of the action while the characters remain oblivious to him, but on one notable occasion, they are aware of his presence: In the episode “A World of His Own“, a writer (Keenan Wynn) with the power to alter his reality objects to Serling’s narration, and promptly erases Serling from the show.

In season two, due to budgetary constraints, the network decided – against Serling’s wishes – to cut costs by shooting some episodes on videotape rather than film. The requisite multicamera setup of the videotape format precluded location shooting, severely limiting the potential scope of the storylines, and the experiment was abandoned after just six episodes (“Twenty Two“, “Static“, “The Whole Truth“, “The Lateness of the Hour“, “The Night of the Meek“, and “Long Distance Call“).

The original series contains 156 episodes. Unlike seasons one through three, season four (1962–63) consists of one-hour episodes. Season five returned to the half-hour format.

 

On this day in 1861, the first train of the Wisconsin Central Railroad runs:

On this date the first train of the Wisconsin Central Railroad ran between Menasha and Waupaca. The railroad was important in the development of railroads in Wisconsin. [Source: History Just Ahead: A Guide to Wisconsin’s Historical Markers edited by Sarah Davis McBride, p.69]

Here’s the final puzzle in this week’s Puzzability series, Blended Wines:

This Week’s Game — September 28-October 2
Blended Wines
We have some lovely pairings this week. For each day, we’ve taken the name of a wine, added a letter, and scrambled all the letters to get a new word. The answer phrase, described by each day’s clue, is the wine followed by the longer word. The clue includes the lengths of the answer words in parentheses.
Example:
Person attending a party in honor of a dry red wine (8,9)
Answer:
Cabernet celebrant
What to Submit:
Submit the phrase, with the wine first (as “Cabernet celebrant” in the example), for your answer.
Friday, October 2
Tasty sauce for soaking meat made with an amber-colored fortified wine (7,8)

 

 

WGTB, WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN

The December 2014 Presentation
(Part 1)

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WGTB logo PNG 112x89 Post 36 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.

In this post, I’ll consider the Donohue firm’s December 2014 public presentation to Whitewater on a wastewater upgrade. The full presentation is embedded immediately below. As the discussion is long, in this post I’ll consider the first 36 minutes from the discussion. (This is the initial portion during which Donohue and then City Manager Clapper describe the project. Thereafter, the discussion opens to public comments.)

Donohue Firm’s December 2014 Presentation to Whitewater from John Adams on Vimeo.
 

(Every question in this series has a unique number, assigned chronologically based on when it was asked. All the questions from When Green Turns Brown can be found in the Question Bin.  Today’s questions begin with No. 217.)

217. Donohue’s first technical memo mentions that a goal of Whitewater’s city officials is to sell water (“[t]he value of water was discussed in detail….The option of producing a sellable water product is of major interest to the city.”). Why no mention of that goal here?

218. Donohue’s presentation, by their account, addresses the ‘liquids train’ portion of the project (that is, not the biosolids processing at the plant). Can one have a liquids train project without a biosolids train? (It’s a rhetorical question.) More directly: does a particular liquids train method require a definite biosolids train method? If so, when and which methods are bound in this way?

219. Whitewater, as Donohue outlines it, has two options for phosphorus management: (1) Option One (immediate compliance with phosphorus reduction upon construction) or (2) Option Two, using the so-called “Clean Waters, Healthy Economy Act” without any capital costs. Donohue recommends Option Two.

The obvious question: how much phosphorus does Option Two remove, in absolute terms and relative to Option One? Since Option Two requires a payment in lieu of physical reductions, for Whitewater’s environment doesn’t Option Two’s solution really mean no practical, significant phosphorus reduction at all?

220. Why did Whitewater’s officials choose paying to allow continued levels of phosphorus discharge in the local environment rather than commit to actual, physical reductions in levels of phosphorus discharge?

221. When did City Manager Clapper first choose Option Two? (He presumably chose Option Two – payment in lieu of significant phosphorus reductions – by the time of this 12.16.14 presentation. If it were otherwise, Donohue would be advocating a key approach without the assent of Whitewater’s full-time staff.)

222. What record, if any, does City Manager Clapper have of the basis of his decision on or before 12.16.14 in favor of Option Two (payment in lieu of significant phosphorus reductions)?

Next: The December 2014 Presentation (Part 2).

WHEN GREEN TURNS BROWN: Mondays @ 10 AM, here on FREE WHITEWATER.

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 10.1.15

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Good morning, Whitewater.

A new month begins with partly cloudy skies and a high of sixty. Sunrise is 6:52 and sunset 6:35, for 11h 42m 59s of daytime. The moon is a waning gibbous with 84% of its visible disk illuminated.

Whitewater’s Landmarks Commission meets this evening at 6:00 PM.

On this day in 1908, Henry Ford reveals a production model car that will transform American and global transportation:

On October 1, 1908, the first production Model T Ford is completed at the company’s Piquette Avenue plant in Detroit. Between 1908 and 1927, Ford would build some 15 million Model T cars. It was the longest production run of any automobile model in history until the Volkswagen Beetle surpassed it in 1972.

Before the Model T, cars were a luxury item: At the beginning of 1908, there were fewer than 200,000 on the road. Though the Model T was fairly expensive at first (the cheapest one initially cost $825, or about $18,000 in today’s dollars), it was built for ordinary people to drive every day. It had a 22-horsepower, four-cylinder engine and was made of a new kind of heat-treated steel, pioneered by French race car makers, that made it lighter (it weighed just 1,200 pounds) and stronger than its predecessors had been. It could go as fast as 40 miles per hour and could run on gasoline or hemp-based fuel. (When oil prices dropped in the early 20th century, making gasoline more affordable, Ford phased out the hemp option.) “No car under $2,000 offers more,” ads crowed, “and no car over $2,000 offers more except the trimmings.”

The design was revolutionary:

1908_Ford_Model_TThe Model T was designed by Childe Harold Wills, and Hungarian immigrants Joseph A. Galamb[17] and Eugene Farkas.[18] Henry Love, C. J. Smith, Gus Degner and Peter E. Martin were also part of the team.[19] Production of the Model T began in the third quarter of 1908.[20] Collectors today sometimes classify Model Ts by build years and refer to these as “model years“, thus labeling the first Model Ts as 1909 models. This is a retroactive classification scheme; the concept of model years as we conceive it today did not exist at the time. The nominal model designation was “Model T”, although design revisions did occur during the car’s two decades of production….

The Model T had a front-mounted 177-cubic-inch (2.9 L) inline four-cylinder engine, producing 20 hp (15 kW), for a top speed of 40–45 mph (64–72 km/h). According to Ford Motor Company, the Model T had fuel economy on the order of 13–21 mpg-US (16–25 mpg-imp; 18–11 L/100 km).[21] The engine was capable of running on gasoline, kerosene, or ethanol,[22][23] although the decreasing cost of gasoline and the later introduction of Prohibition made ethanol an impractical fuel for most users.

The ignition system used an unusual trembler coil system to drive the spark plugs, as used for stationary gas engines, rather than the expensive magnetos that were used on other cars. This ignition also made the Model T more flexible as to the quality or type of fuel it used. The need for a starting battery and also Ford’s use of an unusual AC alternator located inside the flywheel housing encouraged the adoption of electric lighting, rather than oil or acetylene lamps, but it also delayed the adoption of electric starting.

Here’s the Thursday game from Puzzability:

This Week’s Game — September 28-October 2
Blended Wines
We have some lovely pairings this week. For each day, we’ve taken the name of a wine, added a letter, and scrambled all the letters to get a new word. The answer phrase, described by each day’s clue, is the wine followed by the longer word. The clue includes the lengths of the answer words in parentheses.
Example:
Person attending a party in honor of a dry red wine (8,9)
Answer:
Cabernet celebrant
What to Submit:
Submit the phrase, with the wine first (as “Cabernet celebrant” in the example), for your answer.
Thursday, October 1
Measuring out helpings of a medium-bodied red wine (5 4,10)