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Saturday, March 24, 2007

Environment - Ethanol; flood buyouts; coal-based power plants

Business Week had a Special Report earlier this week titled "Ethanol's Growing List of Enemies: As demand for the alternative fuel drives corn prices up, an unlikely assortment of groups are uniting with the hopes of cutting government support." The story reports that ethanol opponents:

have different reasons for opposing ethanol. But their common contentions are that the focus on corn-based ethanol has been too hasty, and the government's active involvement—through subsidies for ethanol refiners and high tariffs to keep out alternatives like ethanol made from sugar—is likely to lead to chaos in other sectors of the economy.
The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette had a front-page story last Sunday by Dan Stockman headlined "Flood buyouts leave green space, memories behind." The story reports that the city is changing its policy on buy-outs in flood prone area:
Kennedy said that if the city had bought just four houses a year between 1982 and 2002, dozens of homes damaged in the Flood of ’03 might not have existed, saving millions of dollars in damage and freeing volunteers and resources to fight the flood elsewhere.

Because the city targets buyouts in areas that are most flood-prone and most difficult to protect, he said, most of the city’s buyouts would have been in areas that were hit hard in 2003, such as Junk Ditch.

The city did buy houses between 1982 and 2002, but only when large grants came in, rather than buying a few houses every year regardless.

Director of Public Works Greg Meszaros said that had the city bought houses every year in addition to those bought through grants, as many as 150 houses might have been torn down before the flood hit. Most of those would have been in areas that were devastated in 2003 and again in 2005, officials said.

But now, thanks to an increase in the city’s stormwater fee from $2.20 a month to $3.65, the city is dedicating $500,000 a year for five years to buying houses. Combined with federal grants and other money, entire neighborhoods are disappearing.

“Multiplied year after year, it makes a difference,” Meszaros said. “It’s a momentum thing, so we’re actually spending a little faster than we thought.”

Some areas can be protected with flood walls and levees. Others cannot be protected and are targeted for buyouts. * * *

Many experts say the best way to beat a flood is to avoid it. By recognizing there are some areas that should never be built on, millions of dollars in damage and the emotional cost of ruined lives could be avoided every year. Junk Ditch, which was originally a wetlands, is often cited as an example of a neighborhood that should never have happened.

That issue of the Journal Gazette also had an editorial praising the policy change. It concludes:
Some areas can be protected by levees and flood walls, but others cannot. For those areas the only way to prevent flood damage is to demolish the building and create green space to collect floodwater when the rivers rise. City leaders were right to add home buyouts to their flood-fighting strategy.
From last Sunday's Indianapolis Star, see this lengthy story by Maureen Groppe, headlined "Emission critical: Hoosier state's plentiful coal, high-polluting power plants and manufacturing base face uncertain hurdles under proposed environmental reform."

Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 24, 2007 11:10 AM
Posted to Environment