August 26, 2003
From the desk of Jane Galt:We get mail
I've been meaning to write about the sorry fate of the grid connection between Connecticut and Long Island that was scotched by interstate politicking as an example of just why it's so hard to expand the grid in our increasingly interconnected world. But I didn't have time. Which just goes to show that good things come to those who wait, because reader Ritesh Bansal did it for me, better:
The Cross sound cable (also called Transenergie) was a plan to pipe power in to juice-starved Long Island by running an offshore cable down from Canada and shooting it across the sound from New Haven to LI. So far so good, till it got to New Haven.Now, I know of this bizarre affair as somebody I knew was working for "Save the Sound". These watermelons alleged that the heat given off by the cable, which was buried in a 8 foot wide trench dug from New Haven to LI, would damage oyster beds in LI sound. These oyster beds were commercial farmed not endangered species. Moreover, how long is LI Sound from New Haven to Queens? 60-80 miles? Whats an 8 foot wide trench?
So this cable which was buried in 2001-2002 remained unlit till the great blackout last week when an FERC emergency order lit it.
To top it off, CT AG Blumenthal to cater to the watermelon lobby in '01-'02 filed an suit to block the cable from being lit.
How will the grid ever be modernized if an *offshore* cable has to go through 5 years of delay getting permits from every 3-4-5 letter agency, state and federal, only then to be derailed by environmentalist?
We deserve the grid we have - after all we value commercially farmed oysters over human life and comforts. The Transenergie cable provides an extra 330MW of juice, without constructing new power stations, with zero new emissions and the watermelons even nix that.
I'd also like to point out that Connecticut's economy is unlikely to be brought to its knees by damage to its vital oyster-farming industry, though this may seem counter-intuitive to those who do not realize that Connecticut's dependance on marine activity for its economic lifeblood has been in steady decline since the publication of Moby Dick.
So why did the AG block it? Because Connecticut's fifty or so oyster farmers are more important to his career prospects than the population of Long Island, and because the world is full of people who seem to have learned their science from comic books.
Reminds me of the stalled plan to widen runway of SFO (San Francisco International) by a couple of feet. Environmentalist charge that the wetland next to the runway will be destroyed, never mind that the so call wetland was a by-product of the original runway construction.
SFO is one of the least popular airport for pilots due to the narrow runways, and of course, weather.
Assignment: A 500-word theme on why it is OK to call environmentalists Communists ("watermelons") and it is not OK to call Republicans fascists, by the beginning of class tomorrow.
Back on topic: Based on news reports, it looks to me like a straight holdup. Connecticut doesn't want to be the backup power source to Long Island unless it gets something in return. The environmental stuff is just a fig leaf for Connecticut politicians; the state's Department of Environmental Protection has signed off on the cable. It is unclear that any major enviro group is opposing the project, and accordingly it seems peculiar to blame it on the enviro lobby.
What's wrong with learning science from comic books? Hmmmm?
Re: Bigfire's comment --
The San Francisco airport wants to fill in about several hundred acres of the bay. (640 acres = 1 square mile.) That does not strike me as self-evidently trivial.
Are you...are you saying that there's no Phantom Zone?
Re: alkali
I'm not saying it's trivial. What I'm saying is that the argument offered by the opponent of the widening is not valid. The environment they're trying to protect is wholey man made.
With the legendary bad weather at SFO, instrument only landing is problematic with the runways so close to each other.
Alkali: Because these particular environmentalists act like communists. Nobdoy suggested (here, at least) that every "environmentalist" is a watermelon. The original mention, after all, referred to their lack of science-clue, which is something proper environmentalists don't lack.
It's just as OK to call any Republican (why do you single out a political party, to compare to a vague label like "environmentalist"? Perhaps "conservative" would be a more appropriate comparison? On the other hand, it's more obviously false, so...) who actually acts like a fascist, a fascist, and just as wrong to claim "all Republicans are evilbadfascists".
Is that clear? I know it's under 500 words, but feel free to add postmodernist gibberish for padding on your own. As a philosophy student, I saw more than enough of that to have any stomach for writing it.
Are you...are you saying that there's no Phantom Zone?
Dew yew...know...the muffin man?
Sigivald writes:
Because these particular environmentalists act like communists.
Subject to my earlier reservations about whether there was any serious opposition to this project among environmentalists, pray tell, in what respect?
"If you can't believe what you read in comic books, what can you believe?" --- Bullwinkle
Back on topic: Based on news reports, it looks to me like a straight holdup. Connecticut doesn't want to be the backup power source to Long Island unless it gets something in return. The environmental stuff is just a fig leaf for Connecticut politicians; the state's Department of Environmental Protection has signed off on the cable. It is unclear that any major enviro group is opposing the project, and accordingly it seems peculiar to blame it on the enviro lobby.
Yup, it seems to be a straight holdup, at least according to this Newsday article. I don't know what Alkali counts as a "major enviro group". How about Connecticut Fund for the Environment, whose outreach director said a slew of proposed Sound-crossing cables represents big threats to the Sound, just as it bounces back from years of no-oxygen zones, pollution and shellfish depletion.
"This is Connecticut out here," Lorimier said, gesturing to the Sound from his table at the harbor's Rusty Scupper restaurant. "This is a prime resource of the state and it's not something that we're going to throw away to merchant lines."
I don't know what "merchant lines" are, but he sounds like a Commie to me!
Seriously, the legal excuse for blocking use of the 24-mile cable is that it wasn't buried as deep as the permit required along one 700-foot section (the company says there was rock in the way). But Connecticut's Attorney General, who has been fighting against the cable being put in use, always mentions environmental concerns even though, as Alkali noted, the Connecticut DEP approved the plans.
I guess the real question is whether the people of New Haven have veto power over any transmissions lines in their area. I'd think that, once reasonable environmental concerns are allayed, the answer should be no.
(There's a lot of irony in this story. The cable crosses from New Haven to Shoreham, the site of the nuclear plant that LILCO built in the 1970s and early 80s. In 1997, LILCO was taken over by the same public authority, LIPA, formed to decommission Shoreham in the first place; the excuse for closing Shoreham was also environmental, and claims the area couldn't be evacuated if necessary. And LIPA is being run by Richard Kessel, who was heavily involved in shutting down Shoreham. Kessel is basically a politician (appointed, mostly; I don't think he's ever run for anything), hence the "Screw Connecticut" comment.)
PJ/Maryland writes:
I don't know what Alkali counts as a "major enviro group".
The Connecticut Fund for the Environment isn't what I'd call a behemoth. Its annual report for the last fiscal year reports revenues of $900K. I would call the Sierra Club or EDF or Friends Of The Earth or something like that a major environmental group.
I would point out that the outreach director is referring to concerns about multiple new cables or pipelines, which raises a different issue than whether this particular cable should be switched on.
To be clear: I agree that there don't appear to be any major enviro issues here; what I'm questioning is whether it is really environmentalists who are causing the holdup in switching on the cable, as opposed to Connecticut politicians who are trying to achieve some other end under an environmental pretext. (Whether those politicians are right or wrong in doing so is a separate question I'm not really interested in.)
I guess the real question is whether the people of New Haven have veto power over any transmissions lines in their area. I'd think that, once reasonable environmental concerns are allayed, the answer should be no.
I understand that power lines are under state regulatory control (as opposed to gas pipelines, which are under federal control), so maybe Connecticut does have a veto. Whether that is a good policy is a question I really don't have an opinion about.
Alkali,
I reported in the article to Megan and the person who I knew was fighting the cable worked for Save the Sound. If you have'nt heard Save the Sound is probably the most active environmental group in Eastern CT. They were fighting tooth and nail against this cable.
Ironically, parts of south western CT (Greenwich-Westport) corridor are part of the grid with NY and the deal was they would get some juice from this cable.
What really rankles me is that the quality of life issues. When power goes out especially in the summer there are deaths - especially among the old and infirm. The import of electric power goes beyond running mp3 players and the pool. For some people it is a matter of life and death. That said, it should be priced under a free market system so price signals can drive supply and vice versa. The current situation where the interest of a few lobster fishermen who *lease* the seabed to farm oysters supersedes those of hundreds of thousands of people (millions?) in LI/NYC defies logic on economic and environmental grounds.
The greens blocked this cable because of a simple fact: the machinery of the modern industrial state is anathema to them (as long as they get to use it). Electricty generation and transmission, drilling and mining, highways and transportation infrastructure - these are all activities that provide the substrate of modern industrialized existence. NIMBY has been replaced by BANANA - Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone.
Assignment: A 500-word theme on why it is OK to call environmentalists Communists ("watermelons") and it is not OK to call Republicans fascists, by the beginning of class tomorrow.
Please. As if portsiders forebear from calling Republicans fascists.
On a tangent, Connecticut's economy does have substantial dependence on marine activity. Most of the nation's nuclear submarine fleet was and is built and maintained in Groton, CT by Electric Boat.
Still, the power cable probably doesn't bother them much.
The people of Long Island are incredibly rich, and they whine about the injustice of a plight that is their own making. First, they threw away a perfectly good $6 billion nuclear power power plant(Shoreham). Now they are trying to shutdown the two operating nuclear power plants in Ct., but complaining at the same time about how Ct. won't send them more power.
Let them stew in the heat.
"The people of Long Island are incredibly rich, and they whine about the injustice of a plight that is their own making."
Indeed. This blog has an inexplicable fascination with the anti-energy agendas of environmental groups in Nantucket and Connecticut... but a blind spot when it comes to the anti-energy agendas of much larger numbers of Republican voters near the Shoreham and Indian Point nuclear plants.
The Republicans of Sue Kelly's district voted for a pro-nuclear President yet they draw the line at putting Bush's policy into action in their own backyards. But why deal with Republican hypocrisy when it's easier to smash watermelons?
Why aren't people complaining about the hysteria in northern Westchester and Putnam counties?
This sort of thing makes me glad I live in Texas. Where we have our very own power grid. The rest of the country is a mess (in regards to power, anyway.)
"This sort of thing makes me glad I live in Texas. Where we have our very own power grid. The rest of the country is a mess (in regards to power, anyway.)"
Amen. We Texans do a far better job of marginalizing the idiot environmental fanatics---and hypocritical NIMBYs. Texans have no idea what it is to experience long term power outages other than those that are weather related. Oh well, we are superior people who have the right to look down upon those living in California and the Northeast region of this country. God truly loves us.
By the way, it was the Democrats who are responsible for our power grid. Republicans were the minority party (and held their convention in a phone booth) during that time period.
Alas, today’s Democrats are mostly flakes who do great harm to our nation.
David - very true about the Democrat thing... except you have to keep in mind that a Texas democrat would probably be considered a Republican anywhere else in the country. We have VERY few true dems down here.
There is a paradox lurking back there. I think it is: "How can you solve environmental problems without getting rid of the environmentalists?" Or is it "The only response to NIMBYism is to put it in their front yards."
and
Lester Brown, Robert Kennedy, Walter Cronkite, Emmet Kelly. The real question here is: Why does anybody take these clowns seriously?
Today in the NYTimes, we have another enviro-gem:
Mr. Fitch, general manager of the Princeton [MA] Municipal Light Department, is planning to upgrade his wind farm. The town-owned utility is overseeing a $4 million project to replace the eight older windmills with two gargantuan modern ones. The current system generates enough electricity for about 1 percent of the town's 1,450 households; the new one, expected to be in place next year, is to satisfy roughly 40 percent of the town's appetite for power.Princeton MA is in central Massachusetts and is the sort of place that Walter Cronkite thinks the Nantuckett sound windmills should be put.. . .
Even in Princeton, which has been home to eight wind turbines since 1984, some residents oppose the installation of the two larger machines. "The ones they're proposing to put up there are massive," said John Bomba, who since 1988 has owned a restaurant and banquet center that are within sight of the existing windmills. "It's going to impact my business, which is mostly high-end weddings. It will change the atmosphere."
Mr. Bomba, like the opponents of the Cape Wind Project, emphasized that he was "for renewable energy, but we think there are appropriate locations and sites for it."
My punchline is that an enviromentalist is somebody who wants to be a problem not solve one. Until they become laughingstocks, we will not have a prayer of solving any of these problems.
Seems rather simple to me, have the company that owns the line pay the oystermen for any decreases in oyster yield that could be tied to the line in a court of law.
If oysters are really so minor to the economy and the power from this line so essential to millions of people, then the additional cost of compensating oystermen would be trivial in the big scheme of things.
What is interesting is how anti-environmentalists will bring out the communist label yet they are the ones advocating trumping the rights of a few (fishermen) for the benefit of the many. I don't know how best to handle property rights to this body of water but if you take property rights seriously then you don't get to trump them just because its something that will benefit lots of people.
And Ms. Atlas Shrugged:
Have you realized that the invisible hand of the free free free global market is also ineffectual with the strong, national chauvinsitc fist of USA goverment enforcing the rules?
[ For a while, I've been arguing that Canada essentially blackmails drug companies into selling their products at low prices with the implicit threat to break the patents if the drug companies do not cooperate. Ridiculous, some critics have said; if that happened, the WTO would step in.
Apparently not. The WTO has just cut a deal to let countries that break patents, such as India and Brazil, export their drugs. The agreement is very limited in scope. But it goes to show that pharma companies are right to be worried about the support from governments -- ours and others -- for maintaining their intellectual property.]
Gosh, I thought the rules of free free free trade could enforce themselves without nasty government meddling.
Comments are Closed.