The New, Old Idea

Over these last few weeks, I’ve received messages from readers asking my view of a new digester proposal first mentioned at Council on December 3rd (but discussed, I know, among officials well before that). Like others, I’ve quietly watched the progression of this second digester plan.  (I have posted occasionally at FW about a prior effort.)

I’ve written the same reply to each kind reader: the best initial response wouldn’t possibly be my remarks, but would come, instead, in the form of Frédéric Bastiat’s Gift to Whitewater.

If this were a prudent administration, the foresight that Bastiat teaches would settle consideration of a proposal like this.  I doubt that anyone advancing this plan understands or cares about Bastiat or any of that.  

Of the brief presentation on December 3rd, and a subsequent one on January 21st, one finds an odd combination of ignorance and arrogance. Of the contract for a conflicted, self-interested ‘feasibility study’ now included in the February 4th council packet, one finds a document that would make a prudent municipal attorney demand modifications. 

And yet, and yet, one can expect not only an initial seventy-thousand for this preliminary work, but an insistence thereafter on subsequent steps costing vastly more, for the benefit of powerful interests outside the city (and a few useful flacks within Whitewater, predictably lurking behind the scenes).  

Whitewater is beautiful to her residents, but convenient to others beyond the city merely as a dumping ground.  

Of those watching the new proposal, someone asked me why this municipal administration, relatively new and generally well-received, would risk so much on a waste digester plan.  (The farther it progresses, the greater the risk all around – fiscally, environmentally, and consequently politically.)

Her theory was that it made some sense for the last administration – whose manager was figuratively stumbling out the door – to grasp at a digester as a last, feeble effort to achieve something supposedly amazing.  

In the present case, the City of Whitewater and its municipal administration would assume ongoing, direct responsibility for this project. Why this administration would try another version, one with even greater involvement, seemed puzzling to her. 

For now, I’ve no ready answer.  Even on a list of a hundred choices before Whitewater, I would not have included this.  

There’s much work to be done here, on this new proposal, understanding well that a long, demanding effort waits ahead.  (See, along these lines, Steps for Blogging on a Policy or Proposal.)  

It would not have been demanding work of my choosing, but, to be sure, no one acts in conditions wholly of his or her own choosing.