Springfield tea party 2/27/09

[DeanMoore]

But if you put government in charge of creating infrastructure, you usually don't create jobs. look at Ranch Seco Power plant in Sacramento in the 70-80s. Billions over budget building it, then its staffed using affirmitave action standards, with people from the unemployment office. I remember when it did run for a day or two, it was the lead story on the nightly news. Weekly drug raids, ect. Fortunatley Babcock and Wilcox built a decent plant with adequate safetys.

and then when the public was tired of it not running, and SMUD was tired of being embarassed by its bad press, they tear it down. (despite offers to buy it. - that would be more embarassing)

[OA 5599]

Originally Posted by DeanMoore

But if you put government in charge of creating infrastructure, you usually don't create jobs. look at Ranch Seco Power plant in Sacramento in the 70-80s. Billions over budget building it, then its staffed using affirmitave action standards, with people from the unemployment office. I remember when it did run for a day or two, it was the lead story on the nightly news. Weekly drug raids, ect. Fortunatley Babcock and Wilcox built a decent plant with adequate safetys.

and then when the public was tired of it not running, and SMUD was tired of being embarassed by its bad press, they tear it down. (despite offers to buy it. - that would be more embarassing)

Power plants are generally built by utility companies...not the federal government (with the exception of large dams, but none of those have been constructed in decades). Infrastructure construction most certainly produces jobs due to the demand for construction workers, contractors, engineers, and equipment to build infrastructure. Our infrastructure is what keeps this country going, and without a well-functioning system to keep people and good flowing, the country would literally shut down.

FYI, the eastern half of the country is currently undergoing the beginning phases of a second era of nuclear power, with permits submitted for around 30 plants, including another one in Callaway County, MO.

[DeanMoore]

SMUD is a municipal owned utility.

but my observations from being in the construction industry, is many of those jobs rebuilding roads and bridges, are people that are already employed by the sector that already does that kind of work. you aren't going to get a lot of new jobs, you are going to have already employed people busier. that's great for large established construction companies, but it will fall into Obama,s cop out provision (save or create jobs) this will save many more existing jobs, than create new ones.
leaving the economy alone, and letting the chips fall, would be much quicker, and saved just as many.

my proposal for infrastructure, is based on new construction. not only saving existing jobs by repairing roads ect, but to bury electric lines, along roadsides in a standardized manner. this requires much less skill, and few people are doing it now, so it will be a net increase in jobs, plus it would reap benefits for decades. ice storms woudl mean you are stuck at home, not stuck in a shelter, utilities could spend money on improvements instead of repairs.

I applaud the 30 permits in process, I would suggest we need 170 more nationally. Since nuclear isnt easily turned down at night, we need more hydroelectric for peak times. We need pumped hydroelectric, as well as manmade aquifers to retain storm water in flood prone areas. We need pipelines to use that stored flood water and transport it to drought areas, and for general agriculture.
Wouldnt it be nice if we could use the flood water from last years iowa floods to irrigate crops in california now? I realize thats a little extreme in time and location, but as the aquifer in the great plains gets lower, it makes sense to move excess water there for later use. yes we then have to dredge river routes more, but we are already doing that as well.

These new projects would create new jobs because they arent being done currently,

And I'm not saying don't do the roads and bridges, I've been yelling from the housetop for years.
It just doesn't create as many new jobs as people think. The few companies that I would trust to important jobs like roads (they need to be done right, not depression-era busy work) they already have skilled employees, many working reduced shifts now. they would just be busier.

A few new jobs? sure, but not as many as advertised in these porkulus packages.

[OA 5599]

The reason electric lines aren't buried is that it is far, far cheaper to build the overhead types, even through they may get destroyed by ice and high winds. Burying every electric line would cost billions and billions of dollars, and the cost-to-benefit ratio is still quite low. If it was cheaper to bury them in the first place, the utility companies would have already done it.

Moving water from the Midwest to the high plains and California was discussed a lot in the 60's and 70's. For all practical purposes, it is completely unfeasible. It would cost billions upon billions of dollars to build the thousands of miles of aqueducts. Additionally, you have to pump the water up over the Rocky Mountains which takes a LOT of electricity. This is of course all assuming the states in the Midwest are willing to just give up their water to California...which they most certainly are not. The water would either be so expensive that no one in the west or high plains could afford it, or the government would have to subsidize the water with our tax dollars, hurting the rest of the country as a whole.

Some large-scale infrastructure projects are actually needed, while others are not. Most of the Bureau of Reclamation water projects in California serve little more than to subsidize corporate farmers with cheap water, who then make huge profits from our tax dollars. They sell the water to the farmers at a price much less than it actually costs to build and maintain the infrastructure to transport it. Many of the dams built by the TVA will never have benefits equaling or exceeding their construction costs and environmental damages.

I'm all for infrastructure, but only when it has undergone legitimate cost-benefit analyses, and actually benefits the nation as a whole rather than then a select few.

[Inoxkeeper]

Originally Posted by OA 5599

The reason electric lines aren't buried is that it is far, far cheaper to build the overhead types, even through they may get destroyed by ice and high winds.

Are you sure about that? I assumed lines weren't buried because the technology to do so didn't exisit 50-60 years ago when power lines where first installed across the country

[OA 5599]

Originally Posted by Inoxkeeper

Are you sure about that? I assumed lines weren't buried because the technology to do so didn't exisit 50-60 years ago when power lines where first installed across the country

Formally, no I'm not sure. I knew some people in the Ozarks who wanted to run underground lines to their place, but it would have been a lot more expensive than running overhead lines. It does make sense though, as clearing some trees and putting in a pole every few hundred feet is a lot less labor-intensive than digging through the rocky soil of the Ozarks, especially because you'd still have to clear land to bury them in the first place.

I assume that if the utilities could save money by burying lines underground, they would.

[Inoxkeeper]

Originally Posted by OA 5599

Formally, no I'm not sure. I knew some people in the Ozarks who wanted to run underground lines to their place, but it would have been a lot more expensive than running overhead lines. It does make sense though, as clearing some trees and putting in a pole every few hundred feet is a lot less labor-intensive than digging through the rocky soil of the Ozarks, especially because you'd still have to clear land to bury them in the first place.

I assume that if the utilities could save money by burying lines underground, they would.

Let's split the pot on this one...50/60 years ago buring lines wasn't possible.
New(er) construction...poles are still cheaper than digging.

My subdivision did bury our lines, we have only lost power once in 15 years and that was for a very brief time. Plus not having the poles in the subdivision really looks better.

[DeanMoore]

PG&E resisted burying lines in the high sierras for decades. When a couple of town sued because of long outages after storms, they were forced to bury, or buy everybody a local generator. They buried lines in the right of way along the state highways, and local roads (no clearing needed, and its pretty hard for Joe homeowner to accidentally dig into them) and behold, it took only a few years to pay off.

I'm not saying it wouldn't cost a lot of money, the obama plan is already costing us trillions with no guarantee of any additional results over already planned projects.

National buried lines would eliminate outages, and injuries and deaths associated with them, as well as repairs done afterwards. They are still fixing hurricane damage in Houston. If it were all buried, there would be no cost for repairs. Here in the Ozarks, thousands of folks were cut off with broken connections. CU's own projections say that with a conversion program they have access to through FEMA the average cost to homeowners is around $520. (from the house to the road) I think they mandated new construction to be buried. As for burying deep into our area's rock, I would put them in conduit under the sidewalks and streets. Shallower, yet little risk of being breached. Plus the roads are already going there.
Save money on yearly repairs, additional contractors being brought in, no new poles ($1000 each) a grand will usually trench enough to get well past the next pole. Much less spent on tree trimming by the utility, and they are able to bill for use because the power is on.

Plus lets remember that our electrical grid is something that we will be leaving behind to our posterity. We cant only think of today, but 100 yrs from now. the reason we are heading into massive infrastructure collapse, was short-sighted planning. We have managed to keep it patched up for quite a while, but its catching up.

Now I'm talking about branch lines, not regional transmission lines, but there is technology for that as well. gas-filled lines are still in its infant stage, but is being used in Europe. plus my additional power plants would reduce the need for some of that grid.

[DeanMoore]

Aren't many of the lakes in southern and central Missouri the result of Depression-era dam construction?

I would suggest that the commerce that resulted from creating reservoirs, has long since paid for itself.

And as for water in California, agriculture needs a lot of water in a hot area. I dont mind letting farmers have cheap water if it results in cheap food. poor people need to eat as well.
what really ticked me off, was having our water rationed in northern California (where much of it comes from) so they can pump it into the ocean to protect whatever fish they think is in trouble this week. (It changes from year to year)
I'm all for protecting the environment, but the government that is telling people to take three less showers a week, is the same government that wont force Chinese tankers to purge their ballast tanks out at sea, instead they do it in the bay, and then we get aggressive crabs attacking our levies in the delta, and killing off the native species. (then its our fault the affected species is dying off, because we take too many showers)

[OA 5599]

Some are, some aren't. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe most of the lakes on the White River were built in the 40's and 50's, with the exception of Taneycomo.

In Missouri they may have paid for themselves, but this is certainly not the case for reservoirs everywhere. In the 70's the TVA started construction of a dam on the Little Tennessee River in Tennessee when an endangered fish was found in the stream. This led to construction being stopped, and it was brought to light that the amount of money it would cost even to finish the half-built dam would never be recovered in the economic benefits from the dam (in this case to produce more hydroelectric power). The dam ended up getting built anyway as a waste of taxpayers money and a damage to the natural environment. The people that benefited were the construction companies and engineers who built the dam.

Such was also the case with the Teton Dam in Idaho that failed during the 70's. It was built more or less for political reasons - some representative wanted a project for his district - and the only people it was going to benefit were farmers in the area, who would be given a source of heavily-subsidized water, even though Idaho has enormous groundwater reserves. The dam ended up being built in a less-than-ideal spot, again, due to political reasons, and failed as a result, destroying hundreds of square miles of farmland and towns. Again, the only people that benefited were the construction companies and the local economy, and the nation as a whole suffers. It was all pork really. An interesting book to read about this is Cadillac Desert, although I can't remember the author at the moment.

I guess what I'm getting at is that infrastructure needs to be built for legitimate reasons, rather than just a pork project which benefits the district of some representative at the expense of the nation as a whole. This applied to highways, burying of power lines, etc. If it could be shown that burying power lines leads to lower maintenance and replacement costs over time, then yes I would fully support such a project. You would have to estimate the average service life of each type of power line, the probability that the line would be damaged due to ice/high winds, and the cost of construction and replacement of each type.

I think a lot of the problems with water rationing in the West is that people expect to be able to live in an arid or semi-arid climate, yet have green lawns and golf courses. If you are going to live somewhere dry, you are going to have to sacrifice some greenness. I love visiting the West for hiking and skiing, but I wouldn't want to really live in most of it because I don't like dry climates and enjoy green lawns and trees.