Category Archives: water

haiku, trains, water, writer's challenge

Writer’s Wednesday

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The Mama Kat Writer’s Challenge is upon me once more. The challenge for this week offered the following choices:

1.) Tell us about a lie you told that you later regretted.

2.) Choose a task you’d like someone to complete and write a poem asking them to do it.

3.) Describe a talent you have.

4.) Write a list of ten things on your mind this week.

I decided to do the poems of request for my challenge this week. To make it really challenging for the wordy person that I am, I decided to do them in variant Haiku style. (I disclaim all responsibility for anyone who dies reading this!)

On the subject of getting the train whistles to calm down:

Sorrowfully wailing

Noisy train near

No whistling here

On the federally mandated water treatment:

Sparkling water clear

Federally mandated

You pay for it

-or-

Eight million years OK

One senate session not

Idiots abound

Now it is up to you to do your own challenge.

radio, rant, trivia, water

Wacky Wednesday

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This morning was the normal weekly radio show. I didn’t have a lot to say since the main topic for the week has been water rights. The EPA forced treatment of our water under the new standards will force us to waste (not use in any constructive way) at least 15% of the water we pump from the ground. That means that although we thought we had sufficient water rights to cover the projected growth in usage for the next 35 years, we now need to begin looking for more water to buy to cover our depletions much sooner. I know that people who don’t live in the water short American West don’t have a clue what I’m moaning about. Those who do are going “yup, been there and been burned by stupidity of easterner’s laws before too.”

One of the nice things about doing the radio show is that things here in “small town” have been pretty calm, so I don’t get the raving lunatics calling in. It’s more the attack of the rabidly apathetic – you can’t get them to call for any reason. That means I get to blither on about topics of my own choosing. Sort of like rambling to your self on a blog – you don’t know until later who was listening/reading and only then when they comment on it. For small market radio, the rule of thumb is that if you have 100 listeners, you will get around one comment in the next week. I wonder if there is a similar rule of thumb for comments on blogs. Have you heard of one?

Time to get on with cleaning up the kitchen. I left the dishes after supper and now have to do them before bed. I find that when I’m batching it, I have a tendency not to do things like the laundry and dishes if I don’t do them right away. On the other hand, I’m enough of a neatnik that I can’t stand having the mess sitting around. So I have this internal dialog going on in my head between the angel of neatness and the imp of sloppiness. Add to that the trio of me, myself, and I all babbling at each other and the conversations gets a bit hard to get a word in edgewise. And of course Molly the dog feels free to contribute here two barks as well. Which might explain why I’m so incoherent at times! {*grin*}



Speaking of raving lunatics, what is the one thing least likely to happen to a U.S. citizen on May 22? That was the question we used to give away the dozen donuts on the trivia show that follows my meandering on the radio. My pre-air prediction was < 3 minutes and 2 callers. I hit it on the nose. Leave your guess of the answer in the comments. I will include the answer in tomorrows blog entry.

meeting, potholing, trains, water

A Meeting Up the Road

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I just got back from a meeting of mayors and commissioners in a neighboring county, about 45 miles up the road from here. It was a first since the town hosting the meeting is the arch-rival of our own town with a long history of rivalry going back to the late 1800’s. The mayor of M (as I shall call the neighboring town), Jack, called and invited me to attend last week. You might remember Jack from this post where he arranged for me to be railroaded into the Presidency of District 1 of the Colorado Municipal League. It is kind of funny that Jack and I have developed a relationship to get things done in cooperation just as we are both term limited out of office. I’m gone in November and Jack is done in January.

So I grabbed the city manager and we journeyed up the road to attend the meeting. We weren’t sure what to expect, but expected it to be interesting none the less. We got there and were welcomed with open arms by Jack and the rest of the attendees. It turned out to be a useful meeting all around, as we got to hear what projects each of the towns and the other county were pursuing, what the biggest problems they were facing were, and how they were approaching these issues. And the interesting and unsurprising thing – they face the same problems and issues we face.

The biggest issue for all the attendees was water. Here in the water short American West, you would expect it to be the number one topic and it was. But it was like the old parable of the blind man and the elephant. Each of us had a different aspect of the water problem to consider and as a consequence it looked different but had a common theme. Some of the towns had been slow to recognize the importance of securing decreed water rights earlier and were now in the (expensive) process of acquiring some. Others had adopted long range transport of mountain water shares and were now dealing with the costs and distribution issues. Our city had the foresight to secure water rights, but we are now facing the changing regulations determining out treatment processes as discussed here. Many of the attending cities are very interested in our experience since we are the guinea pig for how to handle the new regulations. That’s because we are the largest city out here and thus get stuck going first through the regulatory maze.

Then there was discussion of nuts and bolts, things like budgets and revenue projections. Topics such as potholing and crack sealing and … One outcome was a chance to coordinate some projects to put together unified bids which might result in lower costs due to overall size. We already have one project underway between our city, M and M’s sister city. It is a project to determine what would be needed to have the various railroad crossings in our communities declared part of a quiet zone. We have ~30 coal trains (one mile long trains transporting coal) a day passing over the tracks that bisect our communities. That wasn’t too bad until the federal regulations on train horns changed a few years ago and they became 100dB+ annoyances at every crossing, even those controlled by gated arms and lights. But there are pathways to make such intersections controlled to a point where the train horn regulations can be abated. The problem is that a city like ours has 7 such intersections and a naive approach can cost more that $1 million per intersection to achieve quiet zone status. So the three cities pooled funds and grants to have an engineering study done to see if there weren’t cost effective methods to achieve quiet. This becomes a further quality of life issue since th number of coal trains will rise to 40-50 in the coming year and may hit 100 or more in a few more years. This is because all the trains are being routed out here rather than through the high population areas due to yet another changed federal regulation.

Well, that should be enough rambling on topics of absolutely no interest to 99% of the readers of this blog.
For extra credit – did you know what potholing was before you read the link?

cold, meeting, water

TGIF

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My cold finally quit running my nose like a faucet, but then morphed into the ache and shiver stage.

It didn’t help any to sit for five hours (we even had lunch in to keep on working) with several others all in various stages of recovery. But at least we won’t have to do this again for at least a month. The bad news is that now the project costs have escalated to ~$24 million and 15% of our water due to additional requirements from the the EPA and CDPHE. At least we have identified some possible funding sources. If I were even more cynical, I’d believe it is all part of the mandatory water conservation plan that we have to file with the project plan. After all, if the water costs the citizens too many $$$s, they will tend to use a lot less. Probably one of the more effective conservation plans.

Today was as warm as it is going to get for the next week or more. The cold front is supposed to blow into the state starting tomorrow and settle in for Christmas. When I talked to my wife up in the mountains, she said they were predicting winds in the 40 mph range coupled with sub-zero temperatures. So the skiers and snowboarders may find it a bit chilly with wind chills in the -50 degree range over the weekend. It shouldn’t be quite so bad down here on the plains.

Tomorrow starts the college football bowl season. On the down side, I need to clean the house  for Christmas, so it may cut into my viewing pleasure a bit. On the up side, it is early enough that it isn’t the most interesting games yet either. All in all about neutral.

Off to have some hot soup and call it an early evening.

cold, EPA, gift, water

I hab a cold!

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It had to happen. I awoke this morning to the familiar runny nose and sense of displacement that could only mean one thing – I have a cold. Given that everyone I have been meeting with for the last couple of weeks has been in some stage of recovery from the cold going around, it was only a matter of time before I became the next victim. So now instead of a well planned post, you’re going to get a random rant and thought as I honk my snorter between keystrokes.

I guess it’s fitting given that I have a five or six hour meeting tomorrow with the engineering firm about our EPA mandated change in water treatment. May as well be miserable and as well as in sticker shock. We are going to have to spend somewhere between $15-20 million to remove the granite decay products from the water here. The levels in the water haven’t changed in 2 or 3 million years, but because the congress critters changed (to levels even the EPA though were “unsupported by scientific evidence”) the limits, all of us out here in the water scarce plains are being forced to spend like loons and waste precious water in the process. We are spending this money to remedy a problem that *might* lead to one (yes 1!) excess death every 300 years in a town of our size. Historical data from the 1900’s on shows no statistical effect from the ever present granite decay products, but … Even the official EPA stats claim that if you drank 2 liters of the water here every day for 70 years, you would increase your chances of getting ill by less than 1 in 10,000. Oh well. It just seems that there are a lot of ways of spending that much money that would produce much better results.

You may remember my words about the community benefactor from this post . Here (if you read this latter, select the 2008-12-17 link in the box at the bottom) is one of the official reports of the unveiling of the gift. They have chosen to honor their son (L and I’s classmate) by donating and naming an oncology center in his name. Thank you Frank and Gloria and family! And here’s to the memory of Dave!

I’m off to snort my honker and drink tea. At the rate of tea consumption today, I’m going to have to become English or give up my coffee drinkers card. {*grin*}


P.S. And I just looked outside and notice that it has snowed some more.