A land planning alert from Roy Earnest

The Department of Transportation has several Ester-area projects on its slate. Roy Earnest sent me this note about the plans:

The STIP (Statewide Transportation & Improvement Program) is money set for the future at best and money that can be pulled at any time when it is at its worst. Please keep in mind that nothing is for certain when looking at monies set to future programs. The Gold Hill Bike trail in probably the firmest of the three projects that fall under STIP. Futher letters from the community are helpful but the ranking (or points given to the program) are high and the project looks like a go.

The Old Nenana and the Potter road project are both well place point wise but letter or comment to the DOT (specifically to Margaret Carpenter) are needed and necessary.

First, the Potter road to Destiny Drive (Name: Cripple Creek Road upgrade has an ID number 24522. The upgrade will use asphalt concrete to pave the existing gravel surface, including realignment of the substandard series of curves. The road will give better access to VFD and residents. The project is slated to begin and end work in 2010. If this upgrade interests or affect you directly please let Ms. Carpenter know at margaret.carpenter@alaska.gov.

The Old Nenana/Ester Hill Rehabilitation Project has an ID number of 7461

Project Description:
Rehabilitation along the ONH will include improving shoulders, drainage, signage, and guardrails.

Issues:
1. The Old Nenana Highway has steep grades, narrow roadway (20-22 feet), poor pavement conditions, and steep slopes. The sharp curve at the bottom of the hill is an issue to the DOT so they are looking into safety-related improvemnets. Because this area is especially hazadous in the winter when the road gets icy, there is probably going to be some kind of change in this area.

2. Recreation traffic on the ONH has increased ten-fold. The UAF ski team, Fairbanks Cycling club and walkers are all users of the road. A bike trail would be the most safest answer the money nedded for this kind of upgrade is large.

3. Fairbanks North Star Borough continues to sell off large tracts of land. They are in the process of trying to build a subdivision with 31 lots on it. The increase trafic load in the next 5 years alone are staggering.

Answers:

Widen the ONH wide enough for driver visibility and recreation users dafety. Upgrade the road to a asphalt surface that does not come apart every year due to substandard chipseal and poor foundation. Either a trail on the side or standalone seems appropriate.

The deadline for public comment is Friday, October 16. Please comment!

A little Fourth of July problem

Her Editorship made a tactical error regarding the reportage on the Ester Fourth of July Parade: no lists.

Every year, the volunteers at signup create a big long list of who got what paper plate number. They give this to the judges, who assign prizes and make up names for the awards. Then they award them, hilarity is had, much bribery imbibed, and a lot of chaos ensues. Then, if the Publisher has been on the ball and asked them nicely ahead of time, they hand this precious information over to her and she publishes a story with the list of who and what in The Ester Republic.

Alas, Her Editorship, being preoccupied with playing her ukelele, FORGOT about this all-important detail. So she has no lists to work from. Which means the story in the Republic is going to be awfully short. If you know which award went to who, please let me know. The judges only have a hazy, incomplete memory of the event....

Emma Creek West: they still haven't fixed that public planning process

Attention Esteroids! The borough (read: the Land Management department) is planning to go forward with Emma Creek West. From the Butteris:

I did talk to Karrie Shaw, and she confirmed that they are indeed going to try and push through the subdivision, as a considerable amount of money has already been spent in the planning process. She did mention the possibility of putting in some sort of firebreak down the hill to mitigate fire hazard, and both State Forestry DNR and the Borough Division of Emergency Services confirmed that they have been approached by Paul Costello regarding this. She did not have much more information (for me, anyway) than that when I talked to her.

Paul Costello, the head of the Land Management department, contacted Bruce Jamieson to let him know that there will be a public meeting June 22, 6:30 pm at the Noel Wien Library to discuss the plan and listen to comments from the neighborhood. There is no agenda as yet.

[Addendum: Costello has cancelled the meeting. It will be rescheduled for sometime in July or August. For more information, contact Bruce Jamieson at 479-4673.]

As we have seen in past attempts to develop land around here, there have been many flaws in the designs of subdivisions, not least of which is a disregard for the impact of traffic, small size and poor proportions of the lots involved, and a lack of notification and engagement of the neighborhood. This time, it looks like Costello is making an effort to let the Ester Planning Committee know with sufficient advance warning, which is nice. Still, the word is trickling out rather slowly.

One large problem observed previously was a disconnect between the Department of Land Management and the Department of Community Planning;also, the public doesn't have much input to the whole process until fairly late in the game. When the first brouhaha over land on the Old Nenana Highway came up, the Ester Community Association and the borough mayor, Jim Whittaker, met at Hartung Hall. The outcome of that meeting was that Ester needed to come up with a land use/community plan to determine the best use of the land, and get it approved by the borough, or else the borough would simply develop piecemeal with the land nomination process it has (see the borough's parcel nomination map and guide—a 13-page PDF). Without that plan, the borough bulls ahead and we go from crisis to crisis. Voila, here we are again: another crisis brewing.

Two Rivers came up with a community land use plan; we can do the same. Unfortunately, when the chair of the ECA's community planning committee, Roy Earnest, left town, and the dust settled from Emma Creek East, the committee more or less dissolved. One good thing that remains from the original committee, however, is the e-mail list, and people have been keeping an eye on the borough so we don't get surprised again. Bruce and Sandy Jamieson and a few others have been keeping in contact with Costello et al., which has helped, and now Roy Earnest and family are back, and Roy's ready to plunge right back into the planning whirlwind (Roy had served on the planning commission or an advisory board with the borough, too, if I recall correctly).

The borough provides a handy guide to the public planning process, How to Participate in Land Use Decisions (another 13-page PDF). There are several places where meetings are supposed to be listed; this one at Noel Wien is not in the public notices, nor anywhere else that I could find, even though this is supposed to happen next week.

The borough certainly did not notify the local paper!

On the question of being a nuke-free zone

Memory is a tricky thing. In 2003, three resolutions were introduced to the Ester Community Association at the spring meeting. They were published in the Republic and a poll conducted during the Fourth of July Picnic, where they were overwhelmingly approved by poll participants. However, the actual vote on them did not take place until the fall meeting, at which point two of the three were withdrawn and the one remaining, on making Ester a PATRIOT Act-free zone, was passed.

So when Mike Musick spoke at the GVEA meeting recently (fourth video in the member comments), saying that Reeves' plan to install a modular nuclear power generator might require a bit of discussion with the community association because Ester had declared itself a nuclear-free zone, he was only partly correct. Although the formal resolution was introduced and a public poll conducted, the resolution itself was not passed.

Mark Simpson referred to these resolutions as "hare-brained" in his August 2003 piece in the Republic, "Assemblies and Agendas," but now we are faced with the actual possibility of nuclear power in our neighborhood. Mark's main issue was with what he saw as the politicization of the ECA:

You see, it’s not the anti-PATRIOT Act stance I’m disgusted with—it’s the hijacking of an honorable, useful, apolitical association of people to fulfill the aims of some short-sighted political activists. It puts the ECA on a level with the Berkeley City Council, forever passing wacky pronouncements, rather than the Peace Corps, actively engaged in bettering lives. The ECA could host a forum, a debate, or a “teach-in,” or rent its hall to others to do so, but it best serves its members by remaining above the fray.

I saw the no-nukes resolution then not as a political issue, but as a health and safety issue, and I still do. And now is when having our community on record about it in the form of a resolution would have been a good thing.

The few people I've spoken with out here or conversed with via Facebook about the nuclear power plant aren't taking it seriously. They seem to see it as a quack idea with no real merit. However, two other commentators at the GVEA meeting besides Musick spoke about it, and they seemed to be taking it quite seriously. (The first spoke in favor of it, the second pointed out the hazards of it.) I think it's a mistake not to treat this as a genuine possibility. From what I've read, the Hyperion power plant would be an order of magnitude of improvement over the large-scale types that are causing such problems around Fort Greely [PDF] (not to mention the big headline-grabbers like Chernobyl).

Even if Reeves decides the price tag is too steep, the fact remains: small-scale nuclear power is fast becoming the Next Big Thing, despite the ever-present and apparently intrinsic drawback to this kind of power: mind-bogglingly long-lasting deadliness. It is becoming cheaper, more accessible, and more tempting to communities across the world as a power resource, and Reeves won't be the last Alaskan to think about it as a reasonable option.

Note: Bill Stringer wrote a letter to the editor in yesterday's News-Miner about the waste heat problem a small generator might cause. In the comments, it is quite clear that there are many people who see nuclear power as a feasible option for Alaska. A few useful links in the comments include:

New Commercial Reactor Designs, a list from the Energy Information Administration of the US government;

"Galena Electric Power—A Situational Analysis," the draft final report prepared for the Department of Energy by ISER and dated Dec. 15, 2004;

and a list of civilian nuclear accidents from Wikipedia.

Reeves wants to do WHAT!?, or, nuclear power for Ester

Oh good god.

Found this first on Fairbanks Open Radio, and now in an article by Dermot Cole in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner: John Reeves has applied for a permit to install a portable nuclear power plant on a 4-acre lot near Ester. He makes the following nonsensical claims: that nuclear energy is the "cleanest, safest, cheapest form of energy available" (um, yeah, when it's 93 million miles away).

Before I get into the details of this, here's the date for the public hearing on the permitting:

Tuesday, May 19, 7 pm, FNSB Planning Commission. You can e-mail the entire commission at planning@co.fairbanks.ak.us.

Hyperion Power Generation, the company Reeves would like to work with, is creating small, self-contained modular power plants, rather like the Toshiba company's proposed modular power plant for Galena. (As of last year, this power plant was still scheduled for permitting approval with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.)

Hyperion's modules are smaller than Toshiba's by quite a bit (only about two meters cubed) and use no weapons-grade material. Here's how the Guardian describes them:

The reactors, only a few metres in diameter, will be delivered on the back of a lorry to be buried underground. They must be refuelled every 7 to 10 years. Because the reactor is based on a 50-year-old design that has proved safe for students to use, few countries are expected to object to plants on their territory.

Let's see: "clean".

The biggest problem with nuclear power is the waste, both mining waste and power industry waste. The Star (Toronto) describes the problem succinctly:

The fact is the units would still produce nuclear-fuel waste – a football-sized amount for each reactor – and while it would be collected by Hyperion and managed at a central location, a large part of the population believes it immoral to create and leave behind highly toxic waste for future generations.

Can a company like Hyperion be trusted to transport, collect and manage this waste from potentially thousands of sites?

And will Hyperion be around for thousands of years to look after its mess? Will the governments of the countries in which these potential sites are to be located be stable enough to properly regulate the nuclear industry and plants within their borders, again, for thousands of years?

To claim that they are "greenhouse gas-emission free" is nonsensical, just as it is for anything these days. Transporting the module back and forth every 7 to 10 years is going to require something in the way of fuel, and there is no industrial equipment manufactured today that doesn't rely on fossil fuels somewhere in its creation. Mining uranium, of course, has its own set of problems above and beyond greenhouse gas emissions (the uranium mining industry has a lousy health and safety record).

Side note to Alaska's political bloggers: any of you recall the Elim student protest and Palin's mining plans for the Seward Peninsula? The student blog doesn't appear to have been updated since September 2007, but there's some more news items that showed up in 2008. Northwest Alaska isn't he only place that needs to be thinking about this question, though: Bokan Mountain near Ketchikan is described as Ucore Uranium's "flagship property".

[I really don't get why Palin is so pro-mining and so unfriendly toward renewable industries like fishing (which bring in more money than mining!).]

"Safest":

I'm not sure what these companies think they are doing, trying to sell nuclear power plants to people in a state riddled with fault lines and volcanoes and flooding rivers. I read a ludicrous claim somewhere (can't find it now...) that because an item is buried, it would be safe from earthquake. Um, what? the earth moves, and not just on the surface—down for miles! And radioactive material, if it gets loose, is decidedly unsafe. In any quanitity.

There are a couple of big advantages that these small modular-type power generators have over the traditional sort of nuclear power plant. One of them is no mechanical systems: no moving parts, nothing to break down and cause havoc thereby. The other is that the expense in building and maintaining them is considerably less than with a big plant. The uranium hydride used as fuel is far less nasty than the fuel typically used in nuclear power plants. And it's not going to be useful for people intending to make their own nuclear weapons.

Now let's address "cheapest."

Typical large-scale nuclear power has been heavily subsidized. There's no way it could compete with oil, coal, wind. solar, geothermal--any other method. It's the most expensive form of power generation out there, excepting maybe using a gadzillion mice on excercise wheels...and most estimates of cost never even touch the expense of guarding the waste properly from 260,000 years...mostly because the plan is to bury it in the ground and forget about it. The mini-nuke option is cheaper, by a lot, but it still doesn't address this long-term problem and expense.

I'm wondering. The borough didn't have any zoning plans for wireless phone transmitter towers, so they popped up all over and caused a fuss. I'm betting they don't have any zoning in place regarding nuclear power plants, either.

For those of you who might want to see how a publisher really works

This is the shipping area. Not quite cleaned up from the Big Move (yeah, I know what that sounds like, and moving is rather a pain...)

Now, just so you don't think I'm completely slatternly, here's a view of the shelves (made by the Noble Spousal Unit) for the back issues (80 out of 121):



ADDENDUM: I just noticed that I had already posted two of my messy-room photos, so I've deleted them, but if you want to see the paper-piled desk and the boxes of junk/stuff to burn/files not yet put away, then look below.

Flying press releases

ZAP! ZING! POW!

The Immoral Minority uncovered some juicy press releases flung back and forth between Governor Sarah Palin and Representative Jay Ramras. Dermot Cole's got some good excerpts, too. Tssssss! Hoo, they're hot. Palin's complaining that Jay's ignoring her and all the good stuff that the state did for Emmonak and other Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta villages, and says he's picking on her, just like a good old boy. Jay, in a dudgeon, is "shocked and appalled" and has called the governor's "derogatory comments" "fool-hardy and Clinton-esque [sic]".

Well, this little catfight may be entertaining, but I know that Jay Ramras has in fact been working for quite a few months at the very least, with UAF, on getting the Bush communities a measure of food self-sufficiency. And Sarah and the state executive branch haven't distinguished themselves in the Leaping to the Rescue Department, much less the Preparing for and Nipping Disasters in the Bud Department. Good thing the public at large has been helping out.

Andrew Halcro puts it nicely:

The dire situation in Western Alaska was not a surprise. Former Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, warned of impending problems due to a poor fishing season when he was fired by Governor Palin in July. The Alaska Federation of Natives warned of the looming crisis at their annual convention in October.

In response to a growing crisis in villages like Emmonak and Kotlik, Representative Ramras spearheaded a food drive to help gather donations to help his fellow Alaskans. His efforts have been extremely successful.

Dear, dear, dear.

Emmonak: this is outrageous

The rural-urban divide in Alaska has never been more stark. Here's a village in the middle of economic/subsistence meltdown, so to speak, and there's hardly anything in the news about it. The villages are starting to have to choose between food and fuel oil. Back in the bad old days, people starved and died if there wasn't enough food. There was no alternative. However, we're supposedly living in modern times, in the richest state in the richest country in the world. This isn't supposed to happen in the safety net that civilization should provide.

How the hell can this occur?

Well, for one thing, our whole civilization, and in particular our state, is geared toward dependence on nonrenewable fuels and extraction and exploitation of natural resources--again, in particular the nonrenewable ones. We aren't geared toward sustainable practices and renewable resources. In some ways, the plight of this village could very well be the plight of Alaska in relation to the rest of the world: we're a colony, utterly dependent on Outside to keep us going. Emmonak's situation is a grim microcosmic example of what Alaska could find itself foundering in should we find our economic or transportation links to the Lower 48 cut or reduced.

Part of the issue here is that Palin doesn't seem to think it too urgent to keep the position of rural advisor filled. She left it unfilled for the first year of her administration, and it's been vacant again ever since Rhonda McBride resigned last October.

Another part is that it isn't like no one saw this coming. Emmonak's been jumping up and down about problems ever since the barges couldn't get through last fall. Remember that? But even before that, there's been rumbling of a building emergency. When even Hugo Chavez down in Venezuela was able to tell that heating fuel prices were having a serious effect on the villages of Alaska, why couldn't we do something about it? Chavez sent emergency supplies a year ago. Did Palin?

Well, as Kodiak Konfidential points out, Chavez is saving the villages' bacon once again. Oil state Alaska, getting foreign assistance from Venezuela:

Venezuelan government officials wasted no time in reinstating the program, which saved some 180,000 US households around $260 apiece in 2008. That covered about one month's heating bill.

Among the beneficiaries of the 100 gallons of heating oil per household were 65 Indian tribes, including those in Alaska, Montana, and South Dakota.

Alejandro Granado, the chairman, president, and chief executive officer of Citgo Petroleum, the Venezuelan government's Houston-based oil subsidiary, said he discussed the plan to renew the program with Chávez on Wednesday morning.

The decision "is the result of a strong commitment and a big effort on the part of Citgo and our shareholders in light of the current global financial crisis and its impact on the oil industry in general," Mr. Granado said in a press statement.

Pretty humiliating, wouldn't you say, Sarah? Too bad so little was done about this after the first oil handout. Maybe if we'd had a rural advisor in office this might have been anticipated and SOMETHING DONE ABOUT IT.

Here's some posts about Emmonak:

Alaska Real quotes from the original letter to the editor, and gives a followup.

Progressive Alaska has also been spreading the word across the blogosphere.

Mudflats rightly asks if anyone is listening.

And Denis Zaki of Alaska Report is flying out to Emmonak to film.

If you want to help, you can contact any one of several organizations in Emmonak:

City of Emmonak, (907) 949-1227/1249
Emmonak Sacred Heart Catholic Church Pastoral Parish Council Chairman, (907) 949-1011.

To assist with offsetting heating fuel costs, call Emmonak Corporation, (907) 949-1129/1315/1411

For distribution of food, contact the tribal council:
Emmanok Tribal Council
P.O. Box 126
Emmanok, AK 99581
(907) 949-1720

You can also donate to Dennis Zaki to fly him there so he can cover the story; anything beyond the cost of the trip will go to the emergency relief.

Cartoonist's literary reading

Jamie Smith, cartoonist and wiseacre, will be giving a literary reading on Saturday, January 3rd, 7 pm at the Bear Gallery at Alaskaland (a.k.a. "Pioneer Park" for you newcomers to Fairbanks). (Whose bright idea was it to hold one of these right after New Year's?) This is part of the Fairbanks Arts Association Reading Series. Jamie is an instructor of drawing and sequential art at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and a regular contributor to the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, The Ester Republic, and now the Anchorage Press.

It may seem odd at first blush, but cartoons and literature are not mutually exclusive. Jamie's presentation will be on "Image + Text", a quick & dirty introduction to the field of sequential art, plus a show & tell of some classic & contemporary examples + discussion of graphic novels.

One example of the literary power of the medium that comes to mind right off the bat is Maus: A Survivor's Tale, by Art Spiegelman, about the difficult relationship between a survivor of the Holocaust and his son (among other things). There are others that I'm sure you can come up with.

The talk ought to be interesting, and should broaden the perspectives of would-be writers. (One problem many graphic novel authors have is in being accepted as "real" writers by the rest of the literary crowd. Same prejudice exists with regard to cartooning and sequential art as "real" art. Still, these attitudes are slowly fading as people become more informed about the medium and good-quality works become available to a larger audience.)

Planning and the Tower of Power

The News-Miner has a story today on the proposed Parks Ridge Alaska DigiTel cell phone tower:

Public planners at the Fairbanks North Star Borough said the tower would be “out of character” in the rural neighborhood. The borough’s planning commission unanimously agreed Tuesday night to deny GCI’s request for special, “conditional use” permission to build.

Luke Hopkins is working on zoning rules regarding towers like this.

While it hasn't been discussed in the articles about the cell phone tower, there have been concerns raised in the comments on them about the health effects of cell phones and cell phone transmission towers. Mostly, the commentators dismiss the two or three people talking about this (among them Doug Yates) as kooks, but looking through Google Scholar and the National Cancer Institute, it's pretty clear that the jury is still out—and the idea that cell phones could pose a long-term danger is most definitely not a kooky one. Many respected researchers are investigating the topic.

The problem is not a new one, really: the question of electrosmog and cell phone tower siting was the subject of an international conference held in Salzburg, Austria, back in 2000.

More on the cell phone tower

The company in question is DigiTel, and the tower would be 180 feet tall, with blinking red lights to ward off airplanes. Alaska DigiTel has put in about a dozen towers in the Fairbanks area, and while this makes communication easier, a lot of neighborhoods are getting pretty pissed off at the company.

Aside from the negative impact on property values and aesthetics, the residents of the Parks Ridge Road area are concerned about precedent: if this tower can go in here, then one can go in on any ridgeline residential neighborhood. One very valid question the residents have is that if even an area zoned residential (supposedly this zoning is for the express purpose of securing an area from commercial or industrial purposes) can be used for this, then what's the point of zoning it residential? It renders the zoning meaningless.

Leon Lynch has written an excellent letter to the editor of the News-Miner on this.

A planning meeting on this tower will be held at the borough December 9. Comments can be sent directly to the planning commission (reference CU2009-003 - include your name and address).

The News-Miner has had several articles and opinion pieces on cell phone towers recently:

Birch Hill cellphone tower needs a new final resting place--outside cemetery, by Dermot Cole, August 25

Unseen hazards tower above eyesore, Community Perspective by Douglas Yates, September 8

Cemetery's future remains uncertain, by Rebecca George, September 11

Cell phone towers sprouting up in Fairbanks, by Chris Eschelman and Rebecca George, September 14

City of Fairbanks unsure of whose property cell phone tower is on, by Rebecca George, September 14

Local officials ponder cell phone tower zoning issues, staff report, September 29

City of Fairbanks may benefit financially from cell tower, DigiTel, by Rebecca George, October 16

Mark Musitano, 452-5542, is the contact person for the Parks Ridge neighborhood group.

Cell phone tower trouble brewing

A property owner in the Parks Ridge area wants to lease part of his property to a cell phone company so they can put up a tower. Having a tower there would certainly improve reception for those of us here in the broadcast shadow, but the property owner's neighbors are none too happy about the plan. Kate Hall called me up about this on Sunday to explain: the tower (hole already dug although the permit hasn't yet been secured) would be only 14 feet from the property line (making the man's next-door neighbor unhappy and being within the right of way). People are evidently concerned about the tower's proximity (lots of kids in the neighborhood, worries about the viewshed, broadcasting tower in a residential neighborhood, etc.). Kate told me she'd send me information on the situation, but I haven't got it yet. There will be a planning board meeting at the borough on this in early December.

Dermot Cole has brought up the issue of cell phone towers in his column--the Birch Hill Cemetery has been abused with a tower, setting a bad precedent. It seems to me part of the same pattern of poor planning (or no planning) that plagues the Fairbanks area. Or perhaps it's not so much the planning but the land management. The planning board frequently gets trumped by Paul Costello's department (required to Make Money) or the borough assembly.

More to come.