Why Not Here?
Among the items on the Common Council's to-do list for July are approving the resolution declaring the sewer separation project a Type II action or an alternative resolution declaring the project an Unlisted action and reviewing six bids for a solar power purchase agreement to acquire electricity for municipal buildings. Wouldn't it be nice if, to address both these problems, the City were contemplating something truly innovative? Read this: "Portland Just Installed Water Pipes That Generate Electricity!"
Thanks to Virginia Martin for bringing this to our attention
COPYRIGHT 2015 CAROLE OSTERINK
We can turn the question around and ask "Why so 20th century?"
ReplyDeleteToday's sewer separation plan is more like something out of the 1940s, decades behind the city's previously approved runoff plan from 1984.
The '84 plan incorporated temporary storage until water levels subsided in the treatment plant. At that point, the runoff water could be treated too (a.k.a. gray infrastructure).
Since the '80s, green infrastructure has taken off in so many directions. Even the EPA is finally embracing GI, because it turns out that figures for impaired waters in New York State are worse from urban/streetwater runoff than they are from Combined Sewer Overflows (255 to 75 state-wide impairments in 2010).
So what's the City of Hudson's new idea?
Dump all of it straight into the surrounding, natural waters. And not even into the mainstem Hudson River where it has a chance to disperse, but into a semi-sequestered wetlands which we're simultaneously turning into a recreation area.
It's well worth asking, "Why so 1940s?"
Where does this obtuseness come from?