May meetup - Green Drinks

The last meetup had a small turnout. However, as always, there's always something new to learn. There are many ways people can make our economy more sustainable than it is right now.

For example, in the image on the right is a gentleman who's holding up a blacktop substitute made of recycled tires! Not only does it save waste material from going into our landfills, the roadway surface itself has some rather unique properties.

Since the material is made of former rubber tires, it retains it's shape well. That means vehicle indents due to being set in a parking area are self-repairing. It also is a material that is less susceptible to freeze damage. If water freezes, asphalt is damaged. However, the crevices in that material can allow for ice expansion without being damaged. Also, due to being porous, it passes water through to the underlying ground. This eliminates the need to build water runoff evaporation areas for parking lots. As for cost, it's a bit more per foot than average blacktop. However, areas covered in this surface need less maintenance.

Anyway, it demonstrates that it's sometimes possible to re-purpose former waste materials into something useful. Not only is it sometimes possible, but it's sometimes even profitable!

Media Politics 101. If too many turnout, repeat forum.

There may be some local media bias when it comes to the decision to allow hydrofracking in the area. For example, here's a photo of what appears to be a presentation by our mayor Quill with our former mayor in a place somewhat resembling a city hall like building. However, it wasn't city hall at all! It was at Willard Memorial Chapel. The photo showing empty pews suggests that nobody is interested in the issue. However, the turnout at the last city hall meeting suggests otherwise.

The recent public forums may be related to governor Patterson's final legislative act before he left office to have the DEC investigate hydrofracking and issue permits no earlier than June 2011. So, politicians all around New York are testing public tolerance to the idea of trading renewable water for a short term budget boost.

The fact is, even if pure distilled water were used, the hydrofracking idea is inherently dangerous. No matter what liquid is used, there are going to be nasty things forced up along with the gas. Substances that currently are in an inert state will be disturbed and be introduced into the groundwater. There is no safe way. Doing so is simply a trade of long-term groundwater for short-term money.

Not that the local economy would get much of that. An assumption by politicians is that operations such as this will at least be a temporary a boom to the local economy. However, former oil towns, coal towns and gas towns suggest resource extraction rarely benefits the community. In town after town, the money goes away but the pollution stays. Put it this way. If only your neighbor were to get rich from a hydrofrack lease and you only got potholes in your roads, polluted water and a property tax increase to fix it all, would you still be in favor of it?

Hydrofacking and city hall

In an ideal world, one would take turns governing and being governed. So, I decided to take a trip down to City Hall to see how things were going. Rumor had it that hydrofracking was on the table for discussion.

The first issue was a presentation of a petition to the council to stop accepting tanker trucks full of hydrofrack water into the municipal water treatment system. The woman presenter spoke of the dangers of hydrofracking. They include brackish water (salt), suspended metals and in some cases radio nucleotides. For evidence, she urged the council members to view the movie "Gasland." She also submitted a petition to the council.

Then an opportunity for comment was offered. After the mayor asked again if anyone wanted to speak to the whole council, this was the only time to do so. So, seizing the opportunity, I decided to do an impromptu comment on the matter of energy depletion. I stated I didn't know all the issues behind hydrofracking but from what little I did know, it sounded like a really bad thing. (I also offered to add my name to that petition). However, I wanted to state how it was important to let people know that there are alternatives to home heating. I suggested that heat pumps might be a reasonable alternative to burning natural gas and incentives (or at least lack of penalties) should be in place to encourage their use. They would reduce the need for energy and also potentially stimulate the local economy due to a local company selling them plus there would be a need for local labor to install them. To the mayor's credit, he did point out that some government buildings were heated in this way.

Then, on to scheduled business. The next gentleman named Terry Cuddy got more specific on what he wanted the council to do. He wanted, with the support of a long winded petition, to stop the practice of the city accepting hydrofracking water for processing. Reaction by the council members was to have a closed door session. No resolution was introduced nor voted upon but it did show the council was taking the matter seriously. I also found a major mystery to me was solved. Turns out the Green Drinks I host is at the same time this organization meets. Not that it's a bad thing. However, it might mean Green Drinks may go to another time.

Other issues were brought up and voted upon that probably would qualify as "regular business". Among them, initiatives to encourage tourism. Also, a new program to put "Trisha" on the road to sell businesses the idea of having their activities in Auburn.

After the meeting, I met with Gilda from the city council. She seemed very bright and very responsible which was refreshing to see. Apparently she felt really strongly against the Iraq war. That alone scored major points with me! I think she feels as I do, that the best way to affect government change is from within. So, we started talking about the issues.

I learned a few things. Potentially the most interesting finding was how much money the gas companies offer the city to truck in their water! In some cases, hundreds of thousands. So, the temptation is understandably great to process some waste water to make the city budget balance a bit better. However, what was more interesting was finding out sampling is only taken from specific locations at specific times for what goes in the processing plant. No monitoring, specific to hydrofracking contamination, is done on the output. Very interesting that they have that restriction. Other issues are that the Owasco lake outlet is used both for releasing treated water and also for clean water. I suggested that rules, being what they were, may not sit well with the public. Although the city needs to comply with DEC and EPA rules, it might also be wise that the city verify water quality using an independent source such as a university since there are many people (myself included) that don't totally trust the influences of government. Even if not official, it would probably lend credibility to monitoring. The GIS program at CCC also has access to satellite remote sensing data. I suggested that data could be gathered now to used to monitor environmental changes. Right now, we could establish a baseline.

I also talked a bit about my renewable experiments (of course). She also listed some renewable activities Auburn is doing such as using digesters for methane and experimenting with using dried sewer sludge pellets as a possible power source rather than being trucked to another landfill as is currently the practice. She sensed that I might have some good ideas so she told me of an organization called "Ignite". This organization (or maybe another one) is helping the city review under used properties that could be cleaned up with the assistance of grants (perhaps for brownfield locations). If so, it sounds like a very good organization to be involved with. So, on her advice, I'll probably be checking it out.