Sunday, June 27, 2010

Coming Together

The Virginia transportation secretary said a few days ago that the Old Dominion would commit $500 million over the next ten years to Metro, the Washington region’s subway system. The decision cleared the way for the Metro system to place an order for new equipment that is essential to the safe and efficient running of the Metro, the second largest subway network in the U.S. based on ridership. Metro also will increase fares this week, a signal that not all is well with the system, and a move that might push more riders into their cars.


At about the same time that the VA legislature -- the same legislature that has been starving Northern Virginia road and mass transit projects for years -- came to its Metro decision I was having a conversation with a person who I think is pretty knowledgeable about mass transit as it relates to housing.


We were talking about the meaning behind comments made by Housing and Urban Development Secretary (HUD), Shaun Donovan. Secretary Donovan noted that his agency, the Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Energy Department (Energy) planned to work together in the months ahead in order to jump start the the development of more livable and greener communities.


Up to now, the three agencies worked separately and their work often didn't enable the development of greener communities. For example, few people would argue that America’s transportation policy has been automobile focused. Spending on highways in fiscal 2009 was about $40 billion while spending on transit (buses, trains) was about $10 billion.


Virginia’s decision and the federal government’s push to work together can mean a lot for us. For one thing, Metro might one day become the commuter service that it should be, that is a service that reaches more of us, offering us more choices for how to get back and forth not only to work, but to leisure events, too.


If the federal government’s small plans to date succeed, then maybe its efforts will grow and provide the spark that’s needed to transform our suburban neighborhoods into more connected communities. In the process, all of us might drive a little less, burn a little less fossil fuels, walk a little more and burn a little more calories -- together a win for the environment and our nationally expanding waistlines.


Wednesday, June 16, 2010

So, Now What?


The other night President Obama put the full force of his office into play and told all of us that he was royally ticked off with BP. The next day, BP found some spare change and pledged to put the $20 billion that it found into a fund that would pay the costs of the clean-up. Good thing, no doubt.

But with thousands of barrels of oil each day still spilling into the Gulf one mile beneath the surface, there is more at stake than the economic effect of this unprecedented disaster. So, now what?

Political observers are wondering if the disaster will energize the push to move more aggressively toward alternative energy sources that has been stalled on Capitol Hill. I think that if the one and only positive thing that comes from this debacle is that Congress begins to act like it wants to be a steward for the future of America and its citizens and not just a consumer of political chits and develop a real energy policy then that's great.

Because alternative energy needs some policy guidance. Business can't operate in a dark room, not knowing what whim it will bump into next. Already wind energy is struggling in this confusion, according to an article in Renewable Energy World.

But the wind sector may have gotten a shot in the arm. Virginia has reasonable potential to generate power through wind resources, according to analysis done by the Department of Energy. Of course there are problems with wind energy production. Some of the best locations in the state also are some of the most beautiful such as the Virginia Beach area and our mountain locations.

That said, Virginia did recently sign on to a memorandum of understanding (MOU) along with nine other east coast states to form the Atlantic Offshore Wind Energy Consortium. You go, Gov. McDonnell; now you're making sense.

But as anyone who has ever had the misfortune to be party to a MOU, you know that it makes for good PR, but not necessarily great working partnership that are truly effective. What has to happen now is residents of Virginia who want our state to lead or to at least walk real closely behind a leader must make their voices heard in Richmond and in their county governments. There's going to be stiff opposition to the placing of windmills in just about anywhere, let alone pristine places in the Commonwealth.

Maybe they don't have to be sited in our most beautiful places; maybe wind energy can be generated with less intrusion into our wild spaces. I don't know. But just blindly blocking construction through environmental NIMBYism is not going to help us get cleaner energy.



Friday, June 11, 2010

When a Fish is like a Canary

Most of us have heard the story of the canary in the coal mine. It goes something like this: before miners had the technology in place today to detect poisonous air as they dug deeper and deeper into the earth, miners carried a canary down with them. The thinking was that the canary would keel over before the men, an indication that the air was too poisonous to breathe. My guess is that the miners paid pretty close attention to the canary before it dropped dead.

Are we paying attention to the canaries in our environment?

Recently the Potomac River Conservancy released a report on the increasing rate of intersex among fish found in the Potomac and its various tributaries. The report prompted Virginia Representative Jim Moran to sponsor legislation aimed at reducing the presence of chemicals suspected of causing intersex in fish from entering our drinking water. As chairman of an important Congressional committee, Rep. Moran hopes to direct as much as $30 million to fixing this problem.

While fishers can certainly pull up a bunch of fish without this problem, the fact that the presence of intersex fish in what are supposed to be clean waters is increasing should worry all of us.

A lot of the blame can be placed right back at our own doorstep, or more accurately, our medicine cabinets. Improperly disposing of old medicine, vitamins and even in personal care products like shampoo.

More urgently, the supply of these chemicals also is coming from farm run-off resulting from pesticide use, or home lawn care pesticides. Importantly, the problem of household toxins entering our water is not confined to the Potomac and the Chesapeake watershed. An article posted to the National Geographic Society's blog notes that the problem is widespread throughout the U.S.

So the fish are our freshwater canaries. Paying attention to them will probably improve their health and lives and maybe our health and lives, too.