Weekend Watch and Reads : The Shovel Ready Edition

"Using long, drawn-out processes to put money into circulation to meet an emergency is like mailing a letter to the fire department to tell them that your house is on fire."  

    - Thomas Sowell on the CBO's analysis showing only a small portion of  public works package will be spent this year.

According to Wordspy the first reported use of the term "shovel ready" was in the Worchester Telegram & Gazette in February 22, 1995. 

Five weeks ago, Barack Obama urged passage of a massive economic stimulus package, vowing that it would "create millions of jobs by making the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s." However, the bill passed by the House yesterday dedicates only about 5 percent of the $819 billion measure to highway, mass transit, and rail projects, analysts said. Read more at Boston Globe.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors has identified 4,029 “shovel ready” projects that could create more than 271,000 jobs in 2009 and 2010 for an investment of $23.4 billion. View Projects in Your Neighborhood.

Comparison of House and Senate Economic Recovery Bills Funding. (House Funding passed floor on 1/28 in billions | Senate Funding passed committees on 1/27 in billions)

• Clean Water State Revolving Fund (6.0|4.0)
  
• Drinking Water State Revolving Fund (2.0|2.0)
  
• Rural Water and Waste Disposal (1.5|1.4)
  
• Corps of Engineers (4.5|4.6)
  
• Watershed Infrastructure (.4|.1)
  
• Highway Infrastructure (30|27.60)
  
• Amtrak (.8|.85)
  

From the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Read the whole list.

The following is an excerpt from the 2009 ASCE Report Card for America's Infrastructure

DAMS    D
As dams age and downstream development increases, the number of deficient dams has risen to more than 4,000, including 1,819 high hazard potential dams. Over the past six years, for every deficient, high hazard potential dam repaired, nearly two more were declared deficient. There are more than 85,000 dams in the U.S., and the average age is just over 51 years old.
DRINKING WATER    D-
America's drinking water systems face an annual shortfall of at least $11 billion to replace aging facilities that are near the end of their useful life and to comply with existing and future federal water regulations. This does not account for growth in the demand for drinking water over the next 20 years. Leaking pipes lose an estimated seven billion gallons of clean drinking water a day.
LEVEES    D-
More than 85% of the nation's estimated 100,000 miles of levees are locally owned and maintained. The reliability of many of these levees is unknown. Many are over 50 years old and were originally built to protect crops from flooding. With an increase in development behind these levees, the risk to public health and safety from failure has increased. Rough estimates put the cost at more than $100 billion to repair and rehabilitate the nation's levees.
INLAND WATERWAYS    D-
The average tow barge can carry the equivalent of 870 tractor trailer loads. Of the 257 locks still in use on the nation's inland waterways, 30 were built in the 1800s and another 92 are more than 60 years old. The average age of all federally owned or operated locks is nearly 60 years, well past their planned design life of 50 years. The cost to replace the present system of locks is estimated at more than $125 billion.
WASTEWATER    D-
Aging systems discharge billions of gallons of untreated wastewater into U.S. surface waters each year. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the nation must invest $390 billion over the next 20 years to update or replace existing systems and build new ones to meet increasing demand.

ASCE Recommends the following 5 solutions.

1. Increase Federal Leadership in Infrastructure
   
2. Promote Sustainability and Resilence
   
3. Develop Infrastructure Plans.
   
4. Address Life-cycle Costs
   
5. Increase and Improve Investment from all stakeholders
   

And finally,Variety is reporting that the classic 1980’s TV show The A-Team is about to be made into a Hollywood movie, directed by Joe Carnahan and produced by Ridley and Tony Scott. They’re aiming for a June 2010 release date.

Weekend Watch & Reads : Manatees and Abandoned Nuclear Lighthouses

Different Water Perspectives

• How manatees could provoke more water supply challenges. Link
  
• An Australia Newspaper writes about how the US copes with drought. Link
  
• An Alabama view of long-running tri-state water war.  Link 

Abandoned Nuclear Lighthouses. Amazing Pictures.  I am not sure if I would go into these. 

  

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Georgia Water Science Center, announced recently a newly-published easy to read fact sheet entitled Hydrologic Streamflow Conditions for Georgia. Thanks Andrea for the heads up. Visit it here: http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2008/3099/ 

Foreign competition and roller-coaster fuel prices didn't help South Carolina's shrimpers, who say they've ended their worst season on the water since 2005. Post and Courier News Article

And finally,

Bill sent only two emails. George sent no emails. However, the National Security Agency has approved a $3,350 smartphone -- inevitably dubbed the "BarackBerry" -- for Obama's use. From CNN

Deconstructing the Lincoln Memorial Reflection Pool

What a concert yesterday. I don't ever remember watching an outside concert for the inauguration. I guess we have had them before. What I enjoyed just as much as watching the performers was seeing the crowds of people surrounding the Lincoln Memorial Reflection Pool. Thousands of people all bundled up beside this one pool. 

When Pierre L'Enfant drew up a plan for a city 10-miles square and centered on the Congress House (Capitol), there were no plans past the Washington monument in the mall area.  In fact, the area where the Lincoln Memorial stands was the Potomic River.

L'Enfant's Plan

In 1901 Senator James McMillan of Michigan organized the Senate Park Commission, later known as the McMillan Commission, to undertake a new plan for the Mall. The McMillan Plan extended the Mall by filling the river to form the sites for the future Lincoln Memorial and Jefferson Memorial. I am pretty sure permitting this fill was not a concern.

McMillan Commission Plan (Notice the pool was conceived as a cross)

The Lincoln Memorial was sited by the McMillan Commission and designed by architect Henry Bacon. Construction for the memorial began in 1914, but it did not open to the public until 1922. The Reflecting Pool was also designed by Bacon and was constructed after the Lincoln memorial was built between 1922 and 1923. 

The pool is 2,029 feet long, 167 feet wide, and is about 18 inches deep on the sides and 30 inches deep in the middle. It holds approximately 6,750,000 gallons of water. Material excavated for the pool was used to landscape around the Lincoln Memorial.

Construction of the pool

So how did they waterproof the pool? The bottom was covered in cinders, followed by alternate layers of asphalt and tar paper. A final layer of slate was then laid on top. North Carolina Mt. Airy granite was used for the sides.

Ice skating on the pool was very popular when it first opened. It was reported on Feb 19, 1923, that by midafternoon there were 500 skaters enjoying the pool. People enjoyed skating in the park so much that there was some consideration in 1920s t0 add pipes and chillers to ensure the pool could be used all wintertime for skating. This idea was abandoned, however, after the price was reported to be $500k.

Notice anything strange in the next picture?  Temporary buildings were erected during World War I and World War II to the north and south of the Reflecting Pool.  Two wooden walkways were built over the pool during World War II. After some protest, these walkways were removed after the war in 1947.

Learn more about the Mall: Save the Mall

Weekend Watch & Reads

TVA is still cleaning up that coal spill. I created a video of some of the cleanup images.

Good

• Can you live with just 13 gallons of water of water a day. Check out Water for the Ages.
• Rain is a good thing. Lake Hartwell is now up Six Feet. Greenville News
• A new 30 acre plant in Spartanburg SC, can produce 100 million pounds of recycled PET plastic each year for reuse in bottles, which is equivalent to 2 billion 20-ounce plastic bottles. Some say this is the world's largest plastic bottle-to-bottle recycling plant. AJC
• Coastal Carolinas chosen for National Environmental Study. McClatchy Newspapers.
• NOAA has established no fish zones off the Southeast coast.

NOAA has established eight separate marine protected areas encompassing a total of 529 square nautical miles in south Atlantic federal waters to shield deep-water fish species and their habitats from fishing. All fishing for snappers, groupers, tilefishes, grunts, porgies, and sea basses is prohibited throughout the protected areas, which are located off the coast from North Carolina south to Florida. NOAA.

• Obama's National Agenda for Drinking Water. Michael at Waterwired
  

Impact

• The impacts to 4.8 miles of streams and more than 3,900 acres of wetlands represent the largest destruction of wetlands ever permitted in North Carolina. News & Observer
  
• Six New Reservoirs for Atlanta? AJC.
• Two New Nuclear Plants in Georgia draws protest. Some say they would use 80 million gallons of water per day out of the Savannah River Basin Morris News Service

Litigation

• South Carolina's attorney general wants the U.S. Supreme Court to block Duke Energy and others from intervening in the state's federal lawsuit against North Carolina. Associated Press.
  
• Georgia failed in its last-ditch effort to save a 2003 agreement that would have given metro Atlanta more water from Lake Lanier. AJC

How Do You Ditch a Plane Over Water?

I still can not believe those pictures of the US Airways Flight 1549 floating in Hudson yesterday. What a miracle. I kept wondering, however, how a pilot technically prepares a plane for a water landing besides minimizing speed and staying in control. I found my answer this morning. Pilots actually have a "Ditching Button."

From the NYtimes:

Ditching can be tricky. The first step is to extend the slats and the flaps, the movable surfaces on the front and back edges of the wings that allow the plane to fly more slowly and to descend to just over the water’s surface.

Another step is to hit the “ditching button,” which seals the openings in the plane. One is the intake, where the engines grab air to pressurize and force it into the cabin, essential to high-altitude flight. Another is the valve at the back that lets air out.

When the plane is flying low enough, it will generate its own cushion of air, a phenomenon called “ground effect,” that lets it fly even more slowly.

“The whole point is to get the airplane slow, to minimize the damage and the forces on the airplane,” said John Cox, a safety consultant who flew the A320 for US Airways and USAir for six years.

From the Globe and Mail:

Passenger jets are designed to remain buoyant long enough to let passengers exit after landing. When the doors are opened, inflatable emergency slides automatically deploy, then detach from the aircraft so they can be used as life rafts.

When pilots face an emergency landing caused by power failure, water is often preferable to dry land, which is typically covered with obstacles such as buildings, power lines, hills or roads. In general, ditching follows the same flying principles as landing on a paved runway. “You want to minimize the speed and stay in control,” said a pilot for one major U.S. airline. “You just treat it like a landing, but you leave the gear up.”

Thank You and Lots of Free Stuff

A big thank you to all who read this blog. Watercrunch is now 2 years old. In Internet time, I suppose it is the same age as me.

I had no idea when I started writing that it would become an enduring hobby of mine.  Two years ago I wondered if there was enough material to blog solely about water.  This answer was solved quickly. I can say material has never been a problem. Here are 7 of my most popular posts this year:

• Meet Lake Hartwell, the Drought's Newest Poster Child
  
• Where's the Handle? : My First Dual Flush Toilet
  
• Should You Buy a Low-Flow Showerhead?
  
• Five Ways to Store Water in an Emergency
  
• Year in Review : Drought 2008
  
• The Adventures of the Incredible Shrinking Lake
  
• Deconstructing the Fastest Pool in the World
  

I have one rule of thumb with this blog - If it feels like work, don't blog today.  I really try to write when I feel like I have something unique to say and have sufficient time and interest. Time is of short supply.  Your attention is a gift and I'm grateful. I will continue my best to make your attention worth it. 

Since I can not pay you all year-end bonuses, I thought I would share some free web services that you may not know about. Enjoy.

1.  Do you Bookmooch?   BookMooch is an online community for exchanging used books. There is no cost to join or use the web site: your only cost is mailing your books to others.  This has been great way for me to clear some books out of the house.  Check out some of my books I am giving away.

2.  Don't have time to read books?  There is no excuse with Dailylit.  They email you installments of books.  Last fall I did one of Tom Peter's business books and loved it.

3.  Need to get your groove on?  I think I have tried all the audio streaming services, but right now I am grooving out to Grooveshark.  Any song you want is available to be streamed all for free and all is legal. I love it.

4.  Ready to start your own blog?  A few years ago the Blogger platform was really behind, however, Google rebuilt it and this year they have been on a roll releasing great features. Hey its free, give it a try.

5.  Want to watch a movie online?  I have tried Hulu and its O.K., but nothing beats Watch Instantly on Netflix. Technically it's not free, but it's free with a $8.00 membership to Netflix.  I bought the  $99 Roku standalone device for the TV this fall.  It absolutely rocks. Great picture quality and they are about to release multiple channels besides Netflix.  This was my number one gadget for 2008. I think it even beats my Kindle.

6.  Tired of this liquidity crunch?  You have got to try Mint.com.  It has helped me this past year keep up with our family's finances.

7. Load up your ipod with great free podcasts.  I travel a good bit in the car and podcasts have really been the caffeine to my brain. I even got rid of my satellite radio.  Some of my favorites  include "This American Life" and "Science Friday".

How Do You Clean Up a Fly Ash Spill?

In short, lots of people and lots of equipment. Helicopters. Amphibious Trackhoes. Barge-mounted Vacuum Suction Devices. Floating Booms. Boats of all sizes.

Over 200 workers are working day and night to cleanup this spill (see map and video). This weekend the TVA will start temporary dust control spraying to minimize dust and erosion from the spill by spraying seed and straw using a helicopter. For areas that they can't assess by air, the TVA will use an amphibious vehicle to spread the seed and straw. Get ready for folks claiming a green cover-up, since after the seed is sprayed, the area will appear green in color for about two months.

On Sunday, I wrote about the floating Cenospheres, now I actually have some pictures. I also have a picture of the temporary underwater rock containment weir that is being constructed to inhibit the downstream movement of ash solids and sediment resulting from the spill.

Pictures from TVA.