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Smart Meters, Questionable Wisdom

1/26/2013

4 Comments

 
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An article over at the Saturday Morning Live website brings up some interesting concerns about the so called "smart meters" being installed by your electric utility to spy on your electrical power consumption. If spy seems too strong of a word, read on: 

You may have heard of the Smart Grid. The Department of Energy is trying to roll this out. Some elements are beneficial, such as automated Smart Meters, which allows the power company to read the meters remotely, without having to send someone walking up to each subscriber's house to read the meter directly. Features to manage generation capacity, and route power automatically is a plus. It saves energy and improves efficiency. 
So far, so good. But the article quotes the Department of Energy website,

A key feature of the smart grid is automation technology that lets the utility adjust and control each individual device or millions of devices from a central location. ~ DOE Website
Concluding that, 

In short, giving government the ability to control our thermostats, our dish washers, our laundry machines, etc. centrally, remotely. That's what oppression is all about, Charlie Brown. You wouldn't willingly allow government agents into your house to set your thermostat, but the effect is the same. The only reason they're not doing that now is that our appliances haven't been fitted with "the other half" of the wireless equipment needed to control them. Watch for "Energy Star" appliances in the coming years that take the ability to control it from you, and give it to government. The front panel controls will allow you to make "suggestions" to your appliance. The real control will be at the central office.
But wait! There's more! In addition to control, there's the privacy aspect. These meters track energy consumption in real time, as this video explains:
The price of electricity used to be sufficient incentive get people to conserve. No longer. Now it seems, we need someone to control our behavior directly. We're just not capable. Of course, someone else knows better, and somehow due to their superior knowledge, intellect and morality, got themselves elected judge, jury and executioner.

And listen to her daddy's song, we believe that we can't be wrong
Ohhh we believe that we can't be wrong ~ Paul McCartney
There are some kooky objections to Smart Meters, however, which threaten to discredit  anyone objecting to them on privacy or libertarian grounds, as the article relates:

We received an email about how smart meters have caused health problems where they have been installed. This is the same stuff we hear about cell phones, and Wi-Fi (it all uses similar wireless technology). An important scientific principle is, "correlation does not imply causation". In other words, it may be merely coincidence. There is no theoretical reason to believe smart meters cause this any more than cell phones and Wi-Fi do, and there is no controlled scientific study that I am aware of that would confirm or deny it (just like global warming). We have a smart meter on our house, and we have no health problems due to it, but again, it is all anecdotal.
You can read the article in its entirety here. 
4 Comments

PLF Offsite Mitigation Extortion Case, Dream of Justice

1/23/2013

1 Comment

 
NEWS FLASH:   WE just learned that the long awaited "Fenton Appeal" has failed under the weight of this county's Critical Areas Ordinance and the notorious cast of bully bureaucrats at PDS.  Read the Hearing Examiner's Summary of Appeal and Decision. Toward the end of the tortured story, in Section III, it explains that given the facts full justice may be found in a court of law.  But otherwise "a modest amount of offsite mitigation" might do.

As for the bureaucrats testimony, the decision failed to mention that the county's "expert witnesses" had no more than one week's training, or that Ecology's most senior witness had no direct experience conducting scientific studies in the field.  But they did have a manual and years of experience throwing the book at people.

Dream of justice, if you can.  It looks like this crushing regulation machine will keep grinding away unchecked.  Maybe the situation can be improved, but it won't happen if this ends here.  As for offsite mitigation shakedowns, take heart:


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PLF Takes Property Rights Case to the Supreme Court
by Brian T. Hodges - January 23, 2013

PLF attorneys are back from Washington, D.C. after arguing a property rights case of national significance to the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month. The case, Koontz v. St. John's River Water Management District, asks whether the Constitution protects property owners from government demands that require them to pay for unrelated public projects in order to receive permit approvals. In Koontz, a Florida land use agency demanded that Coy Koontz, Sr. pay to fix up government-owned property located miles away his property before the agency would issue any of the permits necessary for Koontz to develop his land.


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L to R: Jim Burling, Paul Beard II, and Brian Hodges
Here in the Northwest, we are all-too-familiar with this kind of government shakedown. We have seen cities demand that landowners pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to provide new roads, drains, parks and other public benefits that have no relationship to proposed projects in order to secure permit approvals. The reason this scheme is so popular is simple: because a person has to secure government approval before he or she can make any lawful use of land, the government sees a permit application as a prime opportunity to get something for nothing.

PLF argued to the Supreme Court that the same constitutional principles that limit the government's authority to take land from permit applicants should apply when the government demands cash. After all, both are property and both are protected by the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

The issues raised in Koontz have exposed a sharp divide between those who believe that private property must be protected against government intrusions and those who believe that government must be given all of the authority necessary to achieve its goals. Those divisions were on display during the argument and in the briefs submitted to the Supreme Court (for example, we received a brief arguing that cash demands are essential to fund local government needs that was signed by several attorneys general, including those from Washington, Oregon, and California).

In the days leading up to and following the Koontz argument, PLF attorneys wrote a series of articles discussing the various aspects of the case on the PLF Liberty Blog that are well worth a read.

PLF should receive a ruling in Koontz by the end of June.


Read more on the PLF case if you have time.

If you look through the Fenton appeal decision, you'll find a long part that describes that Fenton met the hydrogeologist (Neugebauer) at a property rights event.  At the hearing, the county attorney took pains to characterize the scientist's passion for truth and his respect for property rights as if those were flaws.  The Hearing Examiner included all that, at length.  Why would a passion for science and respect for rights discredit a truly qualified expert witness?

Reflect that in 1955 quite a few in government didn't care one bit for people who dared to challenge institutions to stand for their rights.  Left, right or undeclared - think about it.  What are rights about, and should they be burdened and frustrated by domineering bullies in power?  Remember Charles Dalton's story?  Government should defend rights, not diminish them.

WE're glad that the Supreme Court is willing to take overreach and property rights seriously.   Rights aren't arbitrary.   They're personal.
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Gateway Pacific Terminal Scoping Comments Close January 21

1/13/2013

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The time for public comment on the Gateway Pacific Terminal is coming to a close. The Whatcom County Planning and Development Services Division website describes the project:

The GPT project, which is being proposed by Pacific International Terminals, Inc., is a multi-user import and export marina terminal for bulk, break-bulk, and other marine cargoes. The project will include new rail loop tracks, covered and open terminal storage areas, and a pier and trestle connection to the terminal storage area. The property is located between the BP Refinery to the north and the INTALCO facility to the south. The project area is located in the Cherry Point Industrial Urban Growth Area (UGA), which is zoned for heavy-impact industrial land use. The property is also designated as part of the Cherry Point Management Area, under the Whatcom County's Shoreline Management Program. The facility is located within the Cherry Point State Aquatic Reserve south of Birch Bay.
The period for scoping comments to the environmental impact statement (EIS) will close on January 21, so time is running out to make your voice heard. 

The scoping period for the environmental impact statement (EIS) for the Gateway Pacific Terminal and Custer Spur modifications begins on September 24 and will conclude on January 21, 2013. During the scoping process, the Co-Lead Agencies, Whatcom County, the Washington State Department of Ecology and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, are interested in your comments on:

• Reasonable range of alternatives
• Potentially affected resources and extent of analysis for those resources
• Significant unavoidable adverse impacts
• Measures to avoid, minimize and mitigate effects of the proposals
Many of the comments WE've heard have generated a lot more heat than light, and they did not address the points described above. If you have reasonable concerns, WE're sure they'd appreciate hearing from you. Send your comments via snail mail,

GPT/BNSF Custer Spur EIS
c/o CH2M Hill
1100 112th Avenue Northeast, Suite 400
Bellevue, WA 98004
or send your comments electronically,
  • Send comment via email
  • Send comment via web form

Again, these comments must be received no later than January 21.
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Big Win for Real Environmental Science – Stormwater TMDL Standard Dashed

1/11/2013

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A very important stormwater case was won in a federal court last week that people here need to know about.

The EPA has the authority to set "total maximum daily loads" (TMDL's) on pollution that degrades water quality.  But the court made it clear that there's a distinction between setting a limit on source pollution and its means of transport.  EPA's legal problem in this case was that they were treating water itself like a pollutant.

In a nutshell, the State of Virginia argued that EPA has no authority to regulate stormwater volume since stormwater without any pollutants is not a pollution source.  (And EPA has no authority to regulate things that are not a pollutant or pollution sources.)   The Attorney General who fought the case explained it here.

EPA has tried to regulate many things based on the presumption of an impact, but if there is not actual impact by the “delivery system” (water) that might carry pollutants, its jurisdiction is questionable.  It was a valid argument, and it won.  Here’s the judge’s rationale, exactly as published:

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Does this case this matter here?   Yes, absolutely.   This ruling is crystal clear - "stormwater runoff is not a pollutant."   WE expect that acknowledgement of this ruling will be fiercely resisted by state regulators and zealots who want to severely limit land use by humans, their pets, and livestock.

The Lake Whatcom situation provides a perfect example of how a bad approach to science – poor theory -- gets memorialized by regulators. The Department of Ecology's TMDL's for Lake Whatcom rely on model data using a program called ESPF, that uses a primitive fate-and-transport model to conclude that residential development is the source of most of the phosphorus in the lake.  WA Ecology's 2008 Lake Whatcom TMDL "Water Quality Study Findings" report repeatedly states that it employs "surrogate measures" to regulate pollutants.

So, TMDL's here are based on model, not observed, data and stormwater is a surrogate (a substitute, or “proxy”) for pollutant (phosphorus) sources. This is very similar to the case decided in Virginia.  In Virginia, the pollutant was "sediment," and here the pollutant is "phosphorus."

The preliminary Lake Whatcom TMDL study's conclusions were careful to include strong recommendations for additional tributary monitoring and additional studies of the contribution of phosphorus from developed properties.  But those recommendations have been only partly followed.

Water quality measurements are taken, true - but the necessary identification of the sources and impacts of the pollutants that stormwater actually carries (fate and transport) have not been conducted. Yet Ecology staff continues to feed water quality data into a model with circular dependencies, claiming that these results confirm the Institute for Watershed Studies conclusions.

As for phosphorus input to the lake, Ecology has estimated that the City of Bellingham's diversion from the Middle Fork of the Nooksack River contributes 300 Kg of phosphorus into the lake every year.  The City acknowledges this phosphorus contribution, but asserts that most of the phosphorus  sinks to the bottom of the lake and does no harm.   That assertion needs to be proven.

Regulators here have been using a shotgun approach by damning stormwater in general.  Using the model may be a convenient "tool" for Ecology, but its results are invalid (and the TMDL's are moot) if causes and sources aren't properly studied.

Biochemistry has established that most phosphorus in the environment occurs naturally.  Therefore saying, "Where there's development, there's more phosphorous" is absurd.   This is particularly true because phosphorus-bearing products aren't being used nowadays; they were banned in the watershed in 2005.  Failing to thoroughly specify and quantify the sources of phosphorus around the lake is not only bad ecological science, Ecology's failure to prove the connection between sources and pollutant TMDL's could be downright negligent.

As for the Virginia case, EPA does not like losing in court. It has an endless supply of taxpayer money, and it’s likely that the agency will continue to fight the State of Virginia.  But for the moment, this is what it is – a big win for science and reason.

More about the case can be found at the Virginia Attorney General's webpage.   Here’s a clip:

"EPA had previously issued an edict that would cut the flow of water into the creek by nearly half, in an effort to address the sediment flow on the bottom of the creek.  In regulating the flow rate of stormwater into the creek, the agency was trying to regulate water itself as a pollutant, rather than the sediment. The attorney general challenged the EPA's action as exceeding the agency's legal authority to regulate pollutants under the Clean Water Act (CWA). These restrictions also would have diverted public funds that could be spent more effectively on stream restoration for Accotink Creek and other waterways in the region.

Judge Liam O'Grady agreed with co-plaintiffs VDOT (represented by the attorney general) and Fairfax County, saying in his ruling that federal law simply does not grant EPA the authority it claims. The Clean Water Act gives the EPA the authority to establish TMDLs - Total Maximum Daily Loads - regulating maximum acceptable levels of pollutants that may be discharged on a daily basis into a particular waterway. The problem for the EPA is that water is not a pollutant under the CWA.  "The Court sees no ambiguity in the wording of [the federal Clean Water Act].  EPA is charged with establishing TMDLs for the appropriate pollutants; that does not give them the authority to regulate nonpollutants," O'Grady said.

"EPA's thinking here was that if Congress didn't explicitly prohibit the agency from doing something, that meant it could, in fact, do it," said Cuccinelli. "Logic like that would lead the EPA to conclude that if Congress didn't prohibit it from invading Mexico, it had the authority to invade Mexico.  This incredibly flawed thinking would have allowed the agency to dramatically expand its power at its own unlimited discretion. Today, the court said otherwise."

EPA also claimed that it could regulate water flow because it was a surrogate measure for regulating sediment.  To that argument, Judge O'Grady responded, "EPA may not regulate something over which it has no statutorily granted power... as a proxy for something over which it is granted power."  He continued, "If the sediment levels in Accotink Creek have become dangerously high, what better way to address the problem than by limiting the amount of sediment permitted in the creek?"

"Stormwater runoff is not a pollutant, so EPA is not authorized to regulate it," O'Grady said.

"EPA was literally treating water itself--the very substance the Clean Water Act was created to protect--as a pollutant," the attorney general noted. "This EPA mandate would have been expensive, cumbersome, and incredibly difficult to implement. And it was likely to do more harm than good, as its effectiveness was unproven and it would have diverted hundreds of millions of dollars Fairfax County was already targeting for more effective methods of sediment control."

A copy of the court's opinion
 can be found here.

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Dear Friends of Working Forest ... an Action Alert!

1/10/2013

2 Comments

 
Don't let this slip by.  Get involved.   A dedicated forester reaches out for public involvement.  (For more background on this story, read a few prior dredges:  here, here, and here.)

Dear Friends of Working Forest,

Your help is needed to make sure our voices are heard by the Whatcom County Council, so they are not pressured to reconvey almost 9,000 of commercial forest lands in the Lake Whatcom watershed for a "low impact" park. The involvement and attendance by so many of you at the September 11th hearing convinced the County Executive and Council to further review the proposed reconveyance. A series of work meetings between the Council and Parks Director are being planned.

Tentatively these meetings will be held during the "Council Committee of the Whole" session, when the following subjects will be discussed. The first meeting on January 15th will be at 9:30 am in the council chambers.


January 15th     The overall conceptual park plan and the recreation aspects of the plan for the Lake Whatcom lands.

January 29th     Forestry consideration when the county controls these forest. What type of forest management plans and how to implement by the county? Councilman's Crawford proposal to keep some of the area available for forest management.

February 12th   A fiscal discussion of the proposed reconveyance.

You will need to check the Council web site for meeting times. They will be open to the public, but most likely not offer a chance for public comments. A good way for input would be an e-mail note to the council at council@co.whatcom.wa.us before each of these sessions, asking questions and making comments on the particular subject. You could also give 3 minute comments at "Open Session" at their evening meeting.

Besides not fully vetting and addressing questions about the proposed reconveyance of these working forests, they have given little consideration to any alternatives. One obvious alternative would leave this land under DNR management, so it could continue to produce timber revenue under the Landscape Plan. Then the county could engage DNR, other private timber land owners, recreation users and others to developed recreation strategies that could greatly expand diverse recreation opportunities even beyond the watershed. We all know that working forest lands can provide great low cost recreation, protect water and wildlife resources, while still being managed for timber revenues.

Please consider becoming involved again in this discussion and feel free to forward this notice to other interested citizens. Contact me if you have any questions.

Thanks for your help,

Tom Westergreen
360-961-0312

2 Comments

Gonna Help Direct the Economy, Are We?

1/7/2013

6 Comments

 
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If somehow you were one of the folks who missed participating in the "extensive community engagement" that the Northwest Economic Council conducted last fall (called the Whatcom Futures Project, a visioning exercise) WE suggest you look at its webpage. Get a load of the comments collected and the vision they drafted.  (There are links to follow down at the bottom of that page.)

After you do, you'll wonder why this exercise would make County Executive Jack Louws or anyone else particularly comfortable with the group's "merger with Whatcom County Council of Governments."   Except - it's so gosh darned exciting.

An announcement was posted by the Herald on December 13th, so this must have been in the hopper a while.  Having seen that latest survey, WE can't imagine why this group would be given a major role in deciding folks' fates instead of being shown the door. 

'Ever heard of them?

The name "Northwest Economic Council" sounds official, doesn't it?  It's had that image a long time.  But it's a private non-profit which has built a nice, job-secure business subsisting on grants for years.  Nobody elects the people who run it.  Those we do elect don't appoint them.  So, like so many outfits in this town, they make a career of inviting decent business people with cachet to sit on their board and the staff gets paid for advising and promoting, and cranking out reports full of hyperbole and boilerplate.

What matters most right now is their "vision" and the expanded planning role they seem to be getting.  Should a private special interest group be that involved in running the public funding  steam-shovel?  This group talks about shaping the community using financial incentives.  What a nice word for... what?  Gifts to the like-minded?  EDI money, which comes from sales tax, is supposed to be used to finance public facilities.  But the fund's use has always been stretched well beyond capital work, contorted over the years.  If this board transition proceeds, WE expect to see a lot more grants landing in the laps of private groups with remote justification.  Beyond that, too much meddling in "economic development" defies the effectiveness of free-market mechanisms that - never forget - are entirely free of cost.

With funding from another special interest group, this self declared "council" held four quick meetings last fall to prove support for their own joint "strategic goals for the community."  By all accounts only about 100 people actually attended - total.  On the strength of that they wrote a 20-year vision for Whatcom County.  Let's put that in proportion.

The events are described on the NW Econ site as “extensive community engagement”, but participation (100/203,000 – which was our 2010 population) was only about a .0004296 sample.  That doesn't even register 0%.  That's mighty extensive engagement.   Now this group, with a straight face, will be mind-melding with the Whatcom County Council of Governments.


(If you're one of the 99.9995704% of the population who missed out on the dot-exercises and donuts, here are the dates, times and places the visioning occurred:
  • Tuesday, September 25 – Blaine – Blaine High School – 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm
  • Wednesday, September 26 – Bellingham – Squalicum Boathouse – 4:30 pm to 6:30 pm
  • Wednesday, October 3 – Maple Falls – East County Regional Resource Center – 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm
  • Thursday, October 4 – Lynden – Lynden Library – 4:00 pm to 6:00 pm)

In all due respect, a smattering of on-line comments and letters have dribbled in since those four meetings.   But the "input" is a sight to behold.  There's plenty of anti-industry sentiment, big appetites for ballooning government services, and of course the ever-popular bent toward "conservation," which really means diminished rural property use to shoo people into dense corridors.  Let's get on with that buy local, stack 'n pack urban future.   Read the hyperbole - that's exactly what it is.

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Jack Louws should advance  paperwork to council about  this EDI board structure, but will he?  If he seeks authorization, it may be in a painful way.  A "CEO" asking for "board approval" is a yukky formality.  Mind you, the transition, as Louws calls it, started anyway last month, with press releases, back slapping, and county website edits that make it appear that all is in order.  Why should we need - like, representatives - thinking and stuff?  "Uh, that's an Executive-appointed board anyhow, and the last exec sure made a lot of friends with that.   And it's only that other money anyway.   Who can say no to the CEO?"

Before it slips into the annals of history, see the current EDI board make-up, created by ordinance, in code at WCC 2.130.  If council allows a change of composition of the board, no more citizens need participate.  Just staff,  lobbying "experts" and officials, public-private partnering.  Imagine the sizzle and dazzle, all that money to dispense, and pitchfests to hold.  Representation always was a farce.

Neither organization has any taxing authority technically.  WCOG has principally been a regional transportation authority, but with a huge budget.  Together, the pair can wreak sweet havoc with their push-poll methods and those special Futurevision glasses.  WCOG can ramp up Smart-Trips and Northwest Economic Council can ramp up the SmartGrowth and we'll all be so happy, with our swell new quality of life!

They're starting with an update of the $600 million+ CEDS list.  Then they can roll up their sleeves and start throwing oodles of money at pet projects and enterprises in the places they fancy.  EDI spending isn't reviewed by the Planning Commission, or a part of the 6-Year Capital Improvement Plan.  While technically County Council must approve EDI recommendations, few recommendations have ever been turned away.

Us?  We the People will keep on paying the sales tax and B&O tax that fills the fund.  It’s more government – without being government.   WE don’t mind having or paying for the government WE choose. But for government to make us pay for its own cheering section – this big extra layer of bureaucracy – no better qualified (and who cares if they were?) – making the most basic life decisions for us, at our expense. It’s unaccountable shadow government that costs us more than money.


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Hang On To Your Life, Liberty and Property!

1/5/2013

0 Comments

 
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Well, your life might be safe for the moment, but your liberty and property are in the cross-hairs. 

Click here to view a presentation describing the complete decimation of normal human activity as it is happening in Northern California, and how they are fighting back, at the website Defend Rural America.

Think it can't happen here? Click here to view the Growth Management Hearings Board decision and order that just came down (it’s dated Jan 4). It is directly related to Futurewise’s attempt to stop rural land use in Whatcom County.  They want more “controls” and limitations of land use, this is all directly related to Whatcom County’s Comprehensive Plan, Rural Element.

WE wonder how much planning people actually need to survive. The answer might lie in the article "Visioning" Liberty vs. Oppression over at the SML website.

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