Cocoposts

Wilderness Truths

Nathan Small blasts Jim Scarantino on Haussamen's blog:

 Unlike Mr. Scarantino, many responsible local citizens and organizations ranging from the League of Woman Voters to the Las Cruces Homebuilders Association support more than empty promises -- they support a plan that can actually bring the dream of permanent protection to reality, a plan that will bring prestige to our county and community and the positive economic development that will surely come with it, a plan that will safeguard the rich habitat and wildlife diversity that lives in places like the Organ Mountains and Broad Canyon, and a plan that is tried and true -- in 24 areas in New Mexico and in 44 states. They support wilderness.

Village Not For Sale - Mostly Sort Of

The Village of Los Ranchos de Albuquerque Mayor says the Village's rural character is not for sale and film production will no longer be allowed in residential zones.  Story in the Albuquerque Journal.  

Funny that.  Seems to me that multiple major political fundraising events held in the Village have been more disruptive to more people.  Huge bush parties at private homes, including the Mayor's, disrupted rural character more than film crews.  Swarming secret service men and presidential motorcades put a harsh on the rural mellow more than once by screwing up traffic city-wide and closing major streets. 

I guess that will be a problem for Mayor Abraham only if President Obama comes to the Village.

Expo You're Fired!

The Albuquerque Journal notes the fate of the State Fair grounds in Albuquerque with snarky reference (if I do say so myself) to the off-handed way that fate was sealed.  

 

We're taking your racing business to Moriarity to help my friend.  So you're fired.  Now let's find you a new job!  

Gov. Bill Richardson thinks the aging Expo New Mexico might want to consider a new line of work, and that could mean the end of the line for the two Albuquerque landmarks.Gov. Bill Richardson thinks the aging Expo New Mexico might want to consider a new line of work, and that could mean the end of the line for the two Albuquerque landmarks. ...

The governor has told Finance Secretary Katherine Miller and Expo General Manager Judith Espinosa to come up with a proposal for a public-private partnership to breathe new life into the 236-acre grounds.

Oh God. No. Not the Wickerman of public private partnership!

That's where your public dollar gets sacrificed to increase someone's harvest.

The fairground's future was an afterthought.  Determining the best use of existing public facilities was not the charge or purpose of the racing commission or it wouldn't be turning out this way, I fear.  

 

Rocky Flats Editorial

Flats Secrecy Taken Too Far By The Denver Post

(...) The U.S. Department of Energy's recently announced plans to digitally copy — then destroy — 500 boxes of records pertaining to the plant will only make matters worse. Legitimate arguments can be made about how cutting-edge advances in software and hardware quickly become outdated, making it very possible that future access to the digitally copied records would be difficult.

More important, though, is how the public perceives the trustworthiness of the DOE.  (...)

The now-infamous Rocky Flats special grand jury is a 16-year-old wound that has never healed. The grand jury investigated environmental crimes at the plant for 2-1/2 years, sifting through hundreds of boxes of evidence and testimony from more than 100 witnesses. Grand jurors were discharged in 1992, days before federal prosecutors crafted a plea agreement with Rockwell International Corporation, one of the contractors that operated the plant.

The jurors have been struggling to be heard ever since, filing federal actions in an effort to get permission to release publicly their allegations and beliefs about what went on at the plant.  A decision last week by Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Matsch to keep much of the jury's contentions under wraps only deepens the air of mystery surrounding Rocky Flats.

The Strangelovian concept is:  the less information made public about what went on, the greater the public perception of trustworthiness.  I'd say that is still working pretty well for DOE.  After all, what could possibly go wrong with production at Los Alamos?   Trust them.   

This is the Way Cities Die

American Airlines to pull out of Oakland International, headline San Francisco Chronicle. 

05-05) 21:07 PDT Oakland -- American Airlines, citing the high cost of fuel, will pull out of Oakland International Airport in September after six decades operating there, airport officials said Monday.

The airline has been running three daily non-stop flights out of the airport to Dallas-Ft. Worth and has been operating at Oakland since 1947.

Reading and republishing the comments of those with whom you agree saves the trouble of writing and leaves more time for lurking.  Commenter Pulpwood places this news in a much much larger context. 

This is the way that cities die. Incompetent corrupt politicians pandering to howling mobs of special interests with nothing to contribute but votes to reelect the politicians. Gary, Indiana. Cleveland, Ohio. Buffalo, New York. Oakland, California. 80 years ago flourishing downtowns, working electric transit systems, civic pride, beautiful carefully built ornate buildings, gardens, trees. Each generation never knows what preceded it. No one is aware of the decline. Like the environment collapsing. One by one, social customs fade, a species disappears. Another neighborhood goes, what propels it forward is a mere reworking of the past. It's not the place, it's the new people and the people that manipulate them and that profit from them that makes a city die.

Pulpwood sounds like a cynical city planner in need of a double Buckaroo Bonsai. 

And some rail service. 

Snuffing Asarco

From the El Paso Times staff editorial:

There appears to be new hope that Asarco will not reopen its copper smelter in El Paso, no thanks to our own state agency, but thanks to the federal government. Indications are the Environmental Protection Agency will soon greatly tighten health standards for allowable airborne lead -- cutting back 93 percent. (...)

We've long said that Asarco is an outdated early 20th-century smoke-belching beast that should not be allowed to operate amid populated areas. Medical data show, according to an Associated Press report Thursday, that lead can be inhaled or ingested after it settles out of the air. It's rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream. It adversely affects many human organs.

We received no help from our own state in keeping El Pasoans healthy. We applaud the actions of the EPA, and hope new lead emission standards will allow for permanent closure of Asarco in El Paso.

Dependent and Obsessed with Real Estate

Dr. Housing Bubble estimates almost $3 trillion in real estate equity is gone and notes Bloomberg on the State of California's $20 billion deficit.   The Dr. says:

Now tell me, what other industries are going to start hiring to boost the so-called phantom housing bottom especially here in California?  Never mind the astounding fact that according to the California Association of Realtors the median price statewide is now off by a stunning 30 percent. It only logically follows that real estate declining will hurt a state that is utterly dependent and obsessed with all things real estate.

Razing Fix

Building demolition is sad.  It is often not about the building.  The destruction of a structure can be an attempt to fix larger problems by scapegoating place.  The place is destroyed but the problems never go far.   

The City attacking a building with a strike force team seems sad and a little scary.  It implies we've learned very little from the past of condemning entire blocks of physical history in the name of eliminating poverty.  Neither can you solve crime and eliminate drugs by killing old motels.

But yeah, American Inn was an eyesore and so it is especially refreshing to see demolition for the purpose of building something new and better.  Oh, but wait.  That was December 2006.  Then is not now.   Now, "owners of the property agreed to pay for the $120,000 demolition. They will sell it as vacant land, perhaps leading to redevelopment".  Perhaps. 

Also demolished - Old Purgy's at Purgatory.  It went the way of the dozer last week.  You can watch them pull it down on the Durango Herald site.

A new vista will greet skiers at Purgatory next winter after the demolition Thursday of Purgy's, which had stood since the ski area's opening in December 1965. 

  Back then, the quirky shingle-covered building was skiers' one-stop shop, housing ski   rentals, ticket sales, restrooms - just two of them - and the only restaurant and bar.

  Though weathered and architecturally dated, the building was heartily eulogized at an   end-of-the-season bash earlier this month. The death blow came Thursday morning, when a crew used a track hoe to claw   away the building's facade, then pulled out the support beams with a heavy truck and cables.

No Tolls I-70

The Colorado Legislature dumped the idea of congestion pricing, in the form of a $5 toll, for I-70.  Truckers, skiers and ski resorts hated the idea  - the trucking industry, especially.  So the recommendation is now for a rail system.   GLWT.

The Denver-Glenwood Springs I-70 section is on the truck route between Chicago and Los Angeles and  the main artery to Aspen, Vail and old mining towns turned to casinos.  It is also the "steepest longest-steep"  freeway anywhere ever.   

From the Denver Post:

(T)he plan to put tolls on I-70 collapsed into a heap of chuckles.  Senate Minority Leader Andy McElhany, a Colorado Springs Republican who sponsored the plan to charge $5 tolls near the Eisenhower Tunnel, laid over his bill until May 26 — Memorial Day. That effectively killed it because the legislature will be adjourned by then.

"When you're sitting in the traffic jams that day," McElhany said to his colleagues with a mischievous smile, "just think about the $5 you could have paid to be out of it."

From an earlier piece of optimism from Toll Roads News:

Tolls were used in the mid-1950s to build the Denver-Boulder Turnpike, now de-tolled US-36. The traffic crisis on the Denver-Glenwood Springs segment of I-70 is caused principally by high-income vacationers and recreationists, so the equity argument for financing improvements with tolls seems strong.

Image from the I-70 Coalition.

Rocket Race Tax

Sierra County's spaceport tax passed.  Promoters evoked the magic word, jobs, a lot and there are cool videos of rocket racing and that vagina-shaped terminal.   What's not to love?  Here's Haussamen's coverage.

Promoters didn't talk about the existing facilities and budgets for space research, the huge capital required for space travel, Peak Oil and precepts of a gloomy economy.  This is just the thing for New Mexico - if this is 1960.  Sustainable economic development?   

The touted business plan describes the "commercialization space pyramid" and transports the reader  back to NMSU freshman economics.   

From the study conclusion:

"(The) economic development return on the investment likely will be positive, although subject to risk, under some scenarios, spectacularly so."

There it is in a nutshell (or space capsule for the faithful).  The bar will make more than the runway.  I'll have another Buckaroo Bonzai.