Can you believe it? This could not happen in NYC.  The full speech is here in this pdf – EPA Administrator Emphasizes Green Infrastructure in Milwaukee Speech

Check out this excerpt:

“…………………..One of the most prevalent and fasted growing challenges is dealing with storm water runoff which carries chemicals and other debris into local waters and can damage whole stream ecosystems. Right now the conventional regulatory fixes for storm water are to store it and to treat it just like it’s wastewater, which can be very costly to cities and towns on a budget. Milwaukee has been through these costly challenges recently with the wet weather and storms that have passed through lately,” Jackson says.

Jackson says if money were not an issue, separate sanitary and stormwater systems could be a fix, but says it’s a remedy most communities can’t afford.

The administrator says it’s going to take collaborative innovation to solve the problem. Jackson pledged to weave green infrastructure policy into EPA regulations.

“Ways to use our regulatory and policy making heft, if you will, to encourage the kind of things that are already happening in places like Milwaukee,” Jackson says.

She’s talking about incorporating rain gardens, green roofs and other measures that capture and filter rain water naturally. Jackson calls it working with nature, rather than against it.

She sees green infrastructure as a tool to help clean up old contaminated sites. Jackson says her agency will back up the green talk, with money.

“Funding for states and territories and tribes to mitigate nonpoint source pollution through green infrastructure,” Jackson says.

She calls this a new era of clean water protection.

Read the whole article or listen to it:

http://www.wuwm.com/programs/news/view_news.php?articleid=6641#share

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Interesting how the NY Post can get this exclusive, but the community can not get any answers.

Below is the article.  Here is the PDF for the article: Harris Park $14 M Jan 2010

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New York Post – Updated: Thu., Jan. 28, 2010, 1:16 PM

Bronx field now city’s $14M

blunder land

By RICH CALDER, Posted: 2:31 AM, January 19, 2010

A city plan to rebuild one of The Bronx’s biggest sports fields has morphed into a money pit for taxpayers.

Workers renovating Harris Field in Bedford Park recently uncovered contaminated soil under the playing surfaces, helping push the anticipated cost to nearly $14 million, city officials told The Post.

The price tag for the renovation had already gone from the $6.6 million announced in 2007 to $8.7 million, records show.

Now the Parks Department is confirming that it has to add another $5.2 million for cleanup because of the high levels of lead unearthed while workers were preparing to install drainage-system tanks needed to restore the popular park’s six playing fields.

Harris Field used to be part of a reservoir before the city acquired the 15-acre site in 1917.

Department spokeswoman Vickie Karp said it is believed that the park was created with “the use of incinerator ash as fill, which would explain the presence of lead.”

The original playing fields at the park were grass, but the city plans to cover two with synthetic turf.

A Parks Department official wishing to remain anonymous said that contamination wouldn’t be an issue if all the fields were going to be grass but that replacing two with turf requires digging deeper to install the drainage tanks. Karp says this is untrue.

A fiscal 2008 mayoral report showed the Parks Department topped city agencies in cost overruns with projects costing an average of 50 percent more than the original contract price. The city average was 17 percent.

Harris Field is in line to rise by more than 110 percent.

“The project shows just how poorly the city does its due diligence on parks projects,” said Geoffrey Croft, of the nonprofit group New York City Park Advocates, when told of the costs.

The project’s long delays are crippling a popular Little League that plays there.

“The Parks Department only cares about construction, not children,” said Don Bluestone, executive director of the Mosholu Montefiore Community Center.

Bluestone said the nonprofit group’s youth baseball league has gone from 1,000 players to 500 since construction began. He ripped the department for closing the entire park and relocating the league miles away to parks filled with drug dealers and plagued by flooding.

The city’s Web site says construction will be complete by the spring, but Bluestone was preparing to have his league play elsewhere this season.

rich.calder@nypost.com

NEW YORK POST is a registered trademark of NYP Holdings, Inc. (nypost.com , nypostonline.com , and newyorkpost.com are trademarks of NYP Holdings, Inc.), Copyright 2009 NYP Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved. Privacy | Terms of Use

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DEP backtracks on excavation explosives vow

Less than nine months after telling a judge it would not use blasting on a Bronx water tunnel project, the city has gone back on its word – possibly lighting the fuse on a new lawsuit.

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Click here for more details. Water Watch NYC – Everything you ever wanted to know about water in NYC

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Today there is a great Op Ed in the New York Times.  Here is the full story with an excerpt below  – http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/opinion/03herbert.html?_r=2

. …………The American Society of Civil Engineers, in a report released last week, essentially described the state of American infrastructure as dreadful. More than a quarter of the nation’s bridges were rated structurally deficient or functionally obsolete. Public transportation systems and the nation’s dams and levees are generally in sorry shape, many of them more than a half-century old.

Listen to what the report had to say about the water we drink:

“America’s drinking water systems face an annual shortfall of at least $11 billion to replace aging facilities that are near the end of their useful life and to comply with existing and future federal water regulations. This does not account for growth in the demand for drinking water over the next 20 years. Leaking pipes lose an estimated seven billion gallons of clean drinking water a day.”

The society gave the nation’s infrastructure an overall grade of D and said it would require an investment of $2.2 trillion over five years to get it back into decent shape ………………..

And, there is an interesting video I found mentioned in the comments section:  http://www.liquidassets.psu.edu/

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November 28, 2008
Copper’s Every Dip Is Felt in Arizona
By JOHN COLLINS RUDOLF

MORENCI, Ariz. — For this isolated mining town, which lives and dies by the price of copper, the last few years have been a roller coaster ride of steep climbs and sudden dips. Over all, however, the direction seemed to be up.

Copper’s dizzying climb began in 2003, when prices surged in response to booming demand from China and other fast-industrializing economies. The price spike spurred a major revival of Arizona’s once-battered mining industry, and towns like Morenci, once devastated by layoffs, returned to flush times.

This past summer, even as the dire housing market contributed to widespread job losses and other economic woes in Arizona, copper prices reached a record, drawing thousands of new workers to the mines, where jobs were plentiful.

But the arrival of the credit crisis this fall has stalled the mining boom. Reeling financial markets stripped copper of 60 percent of its value in only a few months, and expansion projects in Arizona, the nation’s leading copper-producing state, are being postponed.

A sense of anxiety permeates Morenci, where almost everyone follows copper’s daily rise and fall on financial cable shows and the Internet. “Everybody is just wondering day-to-day what is going to happen,” said Hector Ruedas, a Greenlee County supervisor and member of the Morenci school board who once worked in the mines.

The speed and the depth of the price plunge has taken even longtime industry observers by surprise. “The end has come just incredibly abruptly,” said Nyal Niemuth, chief mining engineer for the Arizona Department of Mines and Mineral Resources. “There weren’t many of us predicting this collapse.”

In late October, Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold, the copper industry’s largest employer in Arizona, announced plans to lay off 600 mine workers in the state. Those layoffs came in addition to hundreds of independent contactors already let go by the company.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/28/business/28copper.html?_r=2&scp=1&sq=price%20of%20copper&st=cse

Click on the link above to continue to read the article and/or return to our page for a chance to comment.

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MONTANA DAM IS BREACHED, SLOWLY, TO RESTORE A SUPERFUND SITE

By JIM ROBBINS, New York Times, Science, May 27, 2008 — MILLTOWN, Mont. — Milltown Dam, a symbol of industrial progress that became a symbol of destruction, was recently breached, and two parts of the Clark Fork River were joined again.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/27/science/27dam.html

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This morning, our good friend from the News at City Hall, Frank Lombardi, describes the strange method by which the people of NYC are taxed once again. Thank you Frank for providing us with vital information concerning the costs, especially the fact that the DEP is spending MORE than it COLLECTS! The simple enough solution to cut costs is lost among the powers that be. Read and Enjoy!

WATER BOARD PONDERS 14.5% HIKE

FRANK LOMBARDI, Daily News City Hall Bureau, Thursday, May 8th 2008

As the Water Board mulls a 14.5% rate hike, the puzzled public wonders: Who, or what, is this (bleepin’) agency?

Think of a stacked deck in a poker game; the house – in this case, City Hall – always wins.

. . . .The collective bill to its 825,000 rate payers for the fiscal year ending June 30 is $2.24 billion. It jumps to $2.54 billion next year, hence the rate hike.

. . . . So, you could say another soaking is in the cards for the city’s property owners.

Listing of board members can be found Web site:

http://home2.nyc.gov/html/nycwaterboard/html/board_members/index.shtml.

Click on the link above to continue to read the article and comment to the Daily News, and/or return to our page for more chances to comment.

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CITY POLS IN WATER FIGHT

By TOM TOPOUSIS, New York Post, May 6, 2008 — A proposal to raise water and sewer rates by 14.5 percent came under fire yesterday from city lawmakers who accused Mayor Bloomberg of using some of the increase to pay for other services, such as for cops and teachers.

Click on the link above to continue to read the article and comment to the Post, and/or return to our page for more chances to comment.

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