Monday, March 28, 2005

Oops!?!?!!!???

Be careful about what you pray for….

I have been informed that I have been appointed to the Pueblo Area Council Of Governments (PACOG) Citizens Advisory Council (CAC) for Transportation.

I received the notification of my appointment by the council last Friday.

I’ve been in something of a state of bemusement since then, as I gave my chances of appointment a probabilty of less than .1. [Note: For the non-math-inclined less than 10%; closer to 1-in-100.

I do love practicing the skills necessary to put things in their proper place at the proper time. That’s what logistics is all about. The military teaches it with a certain sense of ‘fervor’. It gives you a sense that peoples’ lives might, actually, heaven forefend…depend upon it.

So be it….

...I’m appointed. I’ll serve here for the duration; a year. I’ll find it educational and an interesting exercise of all the skills, that ALL of you, whether you, like-it-or-not, have paid to equip me. [Note: I have to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed the Army’s Logistics Executive Development Course (LEDC). I got so bent out of shape that whatever it was that came out of it was so much better than what went in.]

I hope to apply everything I’ve been given, by the Army and authorities higher than that, is exorcised, properly….

Regards….

Friday, March 18, 2005

A Good Place to Meet

Well met, indeed….

An unexpected bonus from the city-sponsored presentation of Historitecture’s Adam Thomas to the city the other night.

Dave Cockrell introduced me to Michael Atlas-Acuña. He is involved with Temple Emanuel near 13th and Grand. It came up that we were looking for another place to meet and Mike was kind enough to offer their facilities. We haven’t seen their place ourselves, yet. But we hear it is great. Looking forward to getting to know Mike et al better.

Thanks Mike. And thanks, Dave.

City Council Will Discuss Recycling

A message passed on from City-County Health.

*** Public Service Announcement ***

City Hall (Corner of Union and Grand)
March 21, 2005
6:30 pm

City Council will be discussing recycling, mandatory trash and pay-as-you-throw this Monday.

“On Monday, March 21, there will be a presentation by the City County Health Department on recycling.  The main theme of the March 5 Recycling Forum was the need to clean up our neighborhoods and the possibility of mandating trash services citywide, incorporating curbside recycling and the pay-as-you-throw method.  I promised I would have Council discuss it along with any recommendations you might have.  The pay-as-you-throw method provides incentives for recycling by reducing your trash, saving money for each resident customer and reducing the tipping fee for haulers—the more recyclables are collected.
-Councilman Dr. Bill Sova” 

For information on this or other recycling issues please contact, Juanita Rodriguez, Environmental Coordinator, 583-4924.

Sarah R. Bruestle
Environmental Coordinator/Public Health Information Officer
Pueblo City-County Health Department
Environmental Health Division
131 S. Main Street
Pueblo, CO 81003
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
phone (719)583-4526
fax     (719)583-4322
pager (719)583-3217
http://www.co.pueblo.co.us/pcchd/

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

CDOT I-25 Alternate Thoughts

A difference of opinion on the necessity to widen I-25 through Pueblo.

Nice article in the Pueblo Chieftain today; thanks to James Amos. It announces that CDOT has begun its Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) development for the effort to widen I-25 through Pueblo.

The part I tend to disagree with is towards the end where Dave Miller, the project chief at CDOT, says….

The proposed Super Slab toll road won’t affect the I-25 project, Miller said. That project would be privately funded and operated, offering a limited-access expressway east of I-25 between Pueblo and Fort Collins.

An estimated 75 percent of the traffic on I-25 in Pueblo are local motorists, Miller said, so the slab won’t change the need to widen I-25.

Seventy-five percent of the vehicles travelling on I-25 could well be local motorists. However, I don’t think they’re all driving 18-wheelers. At least I don’t see that many on neighborhood streets. Lots of diesel-fueled full-sized pick-ups. But not 5-ton diesel tractors. Let alone those massive trailers.

If we talk about ‘footprint’, an 18-wheeler takes up a LOT more space than does a pick-up truck. Let alone a standard passenger car. If a lot of that 18-wheeler traffic moves to the proposed Super-Slab, then that is going to have a rather ‘signficiant’ impact on the amount of traffic flowing through Pueblo. There will be more room for the four-wheel variety. Not to mention less noise from some fool trucker jack-braking as he approaches the curve.

But we might want to think ahead on how much interstate highway we might need in the longer run.

Mr. Miller goes on to say…

“We would still need the three lanes in each directions to accommodate future traffic,” he said.

I agree. I’d like to be a bit proactive and anticipate the sort of fiascos we’ve seen going on in burgs to the north of us; Denver’s T-Rex, Colorado Springs long suffering with widening it’s segment of I-25. Supposedly, I’ve heard tell that Pueblo is to be the next growth community along the Front Range. I think that is correct. Especially considering how expensive and exasperating life is in places north of us. We should prepare, accordingly.

But, if the Super-Slab IS going to happen, and confidence is ‘high’, we might want to rethink what sort of work will best suit Pueblo.

Do we need to merely widen the interstate? Or, would it be better, more esthetic and more becoming our desires to make Pueblo a more attractive city to live and work in?

There were other plans offered on how to expand the interstate through town a few years ago. Not only a widened interstate, but a freeway or, better yet, a parkway. These latter would be much more pleasant to drive on, for local traffic. And, it would reduce, even further, the desire for 18-wheelers to use this particular stretch of highway. It would make the Super-Slab much more attractive to their commercial efforts.

I think we should re-visit the idea of making I-25 through Pueblo, a Business I-25, i.e., a parkway.

Monday, March 14, 2005

Chickens Rule!

Them chickens come home to roost in a most poetic fashion.

See Cox & Forkum’s latest contribution to the world of politics and political correctness. I think it is particularly interesting that Churchill chose the title of his paper so ‘well’.

Mother Would Not Approve

My mother, who grew up during the Depression, would not approve of what the City is trying to sell.

After a few days absence, I was browsing the collected Chieftains, when I ran across this public notice:

The City of Pueblo will be accepting sealed bids for used office furniture and obsolete inventory determined to be surplus by the City of Pueblo…
Miscellaneous Used Office Furniture - Desks, Chairs, Filing Cabinets, Etc.
Miscellaneous Office Supplies - New - Copy Paper, Labels, File Folders, Etc.
Miscellaneous Maintenance Items - New - Sprinkler Parts, Light Bulbs, Water Hose, Miscellaneous Tools, Etc.

Okay, the used office furniture is reasonable. Desks produced before computers, or before desktop computers, usually don’t work well in today’s modern offices. Chairs just get too scrungy for words. And sometimes you end up in an office where vertical files don’t work and you need laterals.

But, “new” copy paper? “New” file folders? Mother would not approve. She would say it’s a matter of use it up, make it do, wear it out. She, and I, just don’t understand. Has the City stopped using copy machines? Is it now running to Kinko’s for all it’s copying needs? Has it stopped filing papers? Is it now putting all memos, records, the applications we fill out, etc., on computer disc and then tossing the paper? (Is the paper being recycled?) Why did the City buy new paper and folders, only to turn around and sell them at garage sale prices?

And what about the “maintenance items?” Did the systems they were purchased for suddenly disappear in a flood? Why does the City no longer have a use for light bulbs and water hose? Are they only using sunlight in offices and carrying water in buckets as cost-cutting measures?

Is this need to sell excess stuff the result of many years slow accumulation, or bad planning on some manager’s part?

This taxpayer wants to know.

Saturday, March 12, 2005

Money Solves [Almost] All Problems

Good news for Nebraska U….

Watching the on-going fiasco at Colorado University, from the perspective of a Nebraska U alumnus (class of ‘75, double major microbio/chem), I can feel nothing but joy for my alma mater. [Note: I do appreciate a well honed sense of school pride. I see it every year here in town with the annual Bell competition between the distaff’s school and the school that serves where we live now. It fills me with hope for the future. In the Army, we refer to it as Fighting Spirit and it is what wins battles and wars. Hey! Aren’t we in one of those now?]

As some wag put it in the form of a toast in some drinking bout amongst officers of an army in contact with its enemy, “Confusion to the enemy!” And I agree….in a friendly sort of way. And face it, what can be more confusing than the politically-correct environs of the Republic of Boulder? Seriously. Look at what PC has got them into. Sex scandals, fraud and perhaps, as of recent reports, even worse.

I’m not surprised that the CU president has resigned. It probably should have happened a long time ago, when the damage to that great educational institution would have been less tramatic. But that’s PC for you. There is a higher bar for the concept of ‘shame’ amongst the PC. Just look at Paris Hilton. As some pundit put it, “Paris Hilton is proof that one cannot die of ‘shame’”. [Note: It probably has something to do with the aluvial ground they ‘stand’ on. They’ve learned how to jump. As opposed to people who stand on a form of ground that is set in stone.]

So now CU’s approach to dealing with the cretin is to pay-off the character and ‘Move On’. Nothing about public hearings and ‘disbarring’, or whatever they do to ‘defrock’ a tenured professor, for being a lying [and possibly worse] so-and-so.

It can only bode well for the University of Nebraska, in the long run; barring their falling into the same trap the denizens of Boulder have forced CU into.

One would think that since CU is the educational institution of the entire state, the rest of the state would try to do something about it. But I suspect that since most of the rest of the state thinks of the Republic of Boulder the way I do, ignore it, not much is going to change. That is, unless the rest of us get our act together to say we’re sick and tired of this silliness that subjugates our childrens’ education to the ever-changing winds of PC.

However, from the Nebrasakan perspective, this is ‘great’ news. And most especially if CU persists in its PC proclivities. Who knows? In a couple of years time, we’ll clobber THEM in a series of Thanksgiving Day rivalry games.

P.S. I’m game for friendly wagers on future football games between these two schools. Just e-mail me. You should be an alumn of CU to wager against me as a one of NU. My usual wager is a six-pack of the winner’s favorite carbonated beverage in 12-oz containers.

Friday, March 11, 2005

Recycling: A Worst Case Scenario

The following is based on the observation of humans when they’re forced to do something.

Let’s look at a worst case scenario for mandatory, fee-based curbside recycling. We’ll start by looking at what we know:

We know that two City Councilmen, who are also business owners, report that their business trash bins are always full of other people’s trash. People either can’t afford, or won’t pay, to have their trash hauled away, so they dump it in a handy business’s container.

We know that when my previous employer had paper recycling with bins marked for white paper, greenbar paper and colored paper, people paid absolutely no attention to the different categories and not only mixed up the different kinds of paper, but also threw in plastic candy wrappers, newspapers, and the kraft paper wrappers that packaged reams of copy paper. The end result was a contaminated waste product that sold for far less money than it would have had it been sorted correctly. Remember this was in a fairly controlled environment. The employees were, in a sense, recycling as part of their job duties.

We know from the comments of a gentleman at the Recycling Forum on March 5, 2005 that when the State Hospital was burning newspapers in some sort of heating plant, they were contaminated with bottles which shattered when the newspapers were shredded prior to burning and which caused lethal lung problems for several of his co-workers.

Based on these observations, I predict that the following will happen:

Some people who don’t want to be bothered and who can easily afford the fee, will not participate at all.

Some people, not really wanting to be bothered with recycling, will put a token newspaper or pop can into the recycling containers, and put the rest in with their regular trash. This will hurt the recycling program and it won’t do much to reduce the amount of material going into the landfills.

Some people, not seeing any difference between recyclables and other trash, and figuring that they must pay for the recycling, will put all their trash into the recycling containers and cancel their trash pickup services. This will hurt the recycling program and the trash haulers.

Others won’t pay attention to the fine points and will simplify the recycling to include all paper, including slick ads and junk mail; all glass, including broken Pyrex; and all plastics, including unrecyclable numbers. Again, the result will be a contaminated, and probably unusable, waste product.

And you will have some people who will resent the mandates of the City and deliberately put inappropriate items into the recyclables.

Other people won’t rinse containers or remove labels before putting items into the recycling bins. If recycling isn’t done every week, a certain number of compulsively neat people will only put out a a few days’ worth of recyclables, and put the rest into their other trash pickup because they can’t stand to have a pile of newspapers or few empty bottles sitting around for a week or two. Pueblo has a lot of small homes where adding three or four recycling containers will take up very valuable space. My home is very large, but it was built in an era when people burned their trash every day or two and there’s barely room for a standard-sized waste can in the kitchen, let alone a stack of recycling bins.

By mandating recycling and asking people to pay a fee, the City is very likely setting up the program to fail.

Sunday, March 06, 2005

The Recycling Forum — 050305

Critical observations on the Recycling Forum of 5 March 2005

I attended the meeting, graciously organized and hosted by the 2010 Commission and Paul Brown. Kudos to them for setting up this town hall activity. It’s a shame places like Denver and the surrounding townships don’t do as much. Another reason that this is a great place to live.

Down to business. I won’t reiterate everything that you can read by others here or in the Chieftain. However, there are some things that came out from the presentations and comments from the panel that stuck in my mind and I’d like to share them with all of you.

First off there is the image of the ugly monsters we’ve purportedly established over the last hundred years here in Pueblo. I’m talking about the landfills that are already in existence. According to one of the presenters on the panel there is a threat that they will begin

< ¡horror! >

‘leaching’. Indeed. One is already

< ¡shudder! >

‘leaching’. It is being monitored by the state, so we should get some kind of warning before we have to start getting all our water and truck farm produce from the Alamosa Valley not to forget shooting, burning and burying in quicklime the cat for eating the grass.

It came out a bit later, thanks to some of the citizens, that the ‘leaching’ problem stems mostly, if not completely, from landfills generated before the government discovered the problem and implemented criteria for landfill construction and management to forestall such problems. This means that leaching is not understood to be a problem with landfills that have been established, in accordance with standards, since such rules went into effect.

Yes, there are landfills that do have serious problems. These are old pre-regulated landfills. However, there are none around Pueblo, to the best of everyone’s knowledge, as reported yesterday. There is one old landfill that is ‘leaching’, but no tests have indicated that anything hazardous is in the effluant. It might be one closed before people started throwing old motor oil and batteries into the mix.

This brought to mind a question about what caused the concern over leaching. What was the source of the contaminants in these landfills? Nobody mentioned that during the meeting. So I’m left asking, was it the materials we were targeting for mandatory recycling? Glass? Steel, aluminum or tin cans? Newsprint? Are these things, when mixed with rainwater and dirt the source of the carcinogens that are implied to be in the ‘leaching’? I kind of doubt it. If they were, I doubt if we’d be using them for containing our food products and such. And newsprint is 100% biodegradable. When it ‘leaches’, it’s used by other plants to help them grow in a constructive way.

So, if it’s not glass, metal or paper that is the source of the leaching concern, what is? What can be done about it, that hasn’t been done already? We no longer allow dumping of petroleum products, lead-acid batteries or other materials hazardous to the environment. we add more materials to that list as they become evident.

So why all this concern about leaching? Is someone practicing a bit of fear-mongering? If so, why? Ignorance? Something worse?

[Note: I think I’ll watch Robert Preston in The Music Man, tonight.

We surely got trouble!
Right here in River City.
With a capital “T” and I do mean “T”;
And that stands for TRASH!]

The really telling item came out towards the end of the forum. After people stopped coming to the podium to address their questions and comments. After the panelists had made their final statements, someone in the audience to the left of me asked a question that elicited a telling response from one of the panel. The question was something to the effect of “When will we realize a benefit from this recycling?”

The panelist who answered explained it something like this.

A company will be contracted to operate the recycling facility that is built. After that company realizes a certain level of revenue from the operation of the recycling facility and operations, all other money will come back to the city.

Get that? The city coffers will benefit from this, directly. The citizens of the city will benefit, if at all, indirectly.

So, we have people shelling out $3-4 per month to whomever to run this recycling operation. Any profit realized from it, over and above the profit limit stated in the contract with the operator of the recycling facility will go to the city.

Folks. This, as it stands now, is nothing more, nothing less, than another tax, wrapped up in the mantle of recycling.

If the City Fathers would like to dissuade the citizens of this city that it is NOT a tax, then they will write the ordinance and the contract to read that all money received by the city will go to reduce the payments to participate in recycling. After the citizens are not paying for recycling, then the money goes into the city coffers.

Saturday, March 05, 2005

Report from the Public Forum on Recycling

A large number of folks offered facts and opinions on the idea of fee-based, mandatory curbside recycling in the City.

The Public Forum on Curbside Recycling produced a lot of good discussion although I must say certain topics were given short shrift.

Sarah Bruestle, of the City-County Health Department, pointed out that leachates from landfills can cause cancer, birth defects, etc., but did not cite numbers of cases occurring due to leachates in Pueblo. She also said that the State Health Department is monitoring one of Pueblo’s old landfills, but did not say what that monitoring showed. Is there a problem or not? Just because something is being monitored does not mean there is a problem.

Nor were any hard numbers regarding the number of tons of various recyclables given. Yes, the recitation of these numbers would have been boring, but I would have felt reassured that these numbers are, in fact, available to justify costs and to use in recruiting manufacturers who use recyclable materials to the area.

Nor has anyone defined “success” for a curbside recycling program. This is important and no one has addressed it. Is the goal to reduce the amount of material going into the landfill? Is the goal to earn a certain amount of money from the materials? Or is the goal, as I suspect, just getting everyone to look like they are recycling by having bins on their curbs? Remember, nothing is actually recycled until it’s made into something else.

Several people opined that voluntary recycling won’t work (i.e., be successful, however that’s defined) because it won’t generate enough recyclable material.

Other people opined that mandatory recycling won’t work because people still won’t go along with it and it will cost too much to impose it on everyone.

Some commenters made the point that if recycling is actually worthwhile, private business would have already filled the void with recycling services so irresistible that everyone would already be participating.

Others pointed out that adding the recycling trucks to the streets will cause a lot of wear and tear on them. Other costs include added fuel and water usage. Still others pointed out that if you really want to reduce what goes into the landfill, we could burn the trash.

Others, mostly waste management firms, pointed out that individual companies do offer programs and that the free market should be allowed to work without forcing anything on residents.

Dave Galli, Pueblo City Manager, said that since Requests for Proposals are out, City Council cannot vote on imposing fees or anything else until at least August 1, 2005. The RFPs ask for plans where the recyclables will be picked up at residences and a processing facility will be built.

The Forum was sponsored by the 2010 Commission of Pueblo.

Thursday, March 03, 2005

Stopping the Madness

The simple solution to Mad Cow disease in the United States.

With the news that there have been multiple incidents of Mad Cow detected in Canada, it is only natural that we should have no business with our neighbors in the Great White North regarding any animal husbandry associated with the bovine species.

Canada has been ‘hurt’ by the decision of a federal court not to open our borders to Canadian beef products. That’s too bad for Canadian beef people. It’s GREAT news for American ranchers.

Why is that? Because in spite of the short-term pain they may experience from a depressed market. It means that we, as a nation, will come out of this situation in a few short years. That is if, and only if, our ranchers, and the related industries, can restrain themselves.

My concern is that some cretin will be inamoured of the low prices Canadians will be offering to sell off whatever they have on hand at the moment. That someone might decide to smuggle illegal products into these here United States and spread this outrageous infection into our own food supply. Such an infestation would be EXTREMELY costly to irradicate. So costly that I think the entire beef industry would be destroyed. No one would trust a beef product for the next decade or longer.

Therefore, the only solution that will be effective, in my honest opinion, will be to go draconian, NOW.

  • Any herd that is determined to have had contact with a “Mad Cow” will be exterminated and the land they have grazed upon given over to fallow for 20 years. Or until no prions can be detected in any SQUARE INCH of the soil they grazed upon. [Note: There is an island off the English coast that no one can visit for a hundred years, last I checked. Anthrax…]

  • Any rancher or related industry owner and/or employee who deals with contaminated materials should be, on conviction, imprisoned for negligent homicide or some degree of murder, depending upon mens rea, if someone contracts and dies of Mad Cow Syndrome.

  • While their victims live, they can file civil suits against the source of their disease as a hobby. Let the culprets pay the medical bills and end up filing bankruptcy. Not their victims. [Note: Sounds like an ‘interesting’ form of the lottery. Certainly another form of ‘full time employment’ for lawyers.] I like the idea of the employees who know about this being held accountable. It focuses more eyes upon the situation.

Yeah. Some people around here are going to suffer from this, economically and culinarily. [Note: I do enjoy a great piece of beef. Especially if it is properly aged.] But think about the people who would suffer otherwise.

Personally? I’m not buying any beef for the next year or two, at least, as a result of the previous year of revelations in the Great White North and Washington state. [Note: You can chalk that decision up to my undergrad work as a microbiologist, emphasis in pathogens. These prions are ‘very scary’.]

Recycling: 2010 Commission Holds Public Forum on Curbside Recycling

More on the Recycling Meeting Saturday. Via Paul Brown, Pueblo 2010 Commission, Chair, Phone: (719) 542-6670. Also read the previous article on what you’ll likely be asked to do.

The Environmental & Governance Task Forces of the 2010 Commission of Pueblo are holding a Public Forum to obtain citizen thoughts and recommendations to present to Pueblo City Council on the proposed City Ordinance for Curbside Recycling The Forum will be at 10:00 a.m. Saturday morning, March 5, 2005 in the Rawlings Public Library, Meeting Room B, 100 E. Abriendo.

The Forum will begin with three brief presentations. The first one will describe the Reasons to Recycle, by Sarah Bruestle, Pueblo City-County Health Department Environmental Coordinator.  The second one will describe Recycling in other Colorado Communities, by Marjorie Griek, Director of the Colorado Association for Recycling.  The third one will describe Recycling Options the Pueblo City Council is considering, by Dr. Bill Sova, Pueblo City Council Work Session Chair.

There will then be a ninety minute time period reserved for citizens to either make comments or ask questions.  Each presentation will be limited to 3 minutes to allow for as much citizen input as possible.

M.D. “Butch” Batchelder, 2010 Commission Secretary-Treasurer will be the moderator.  The public is encouraged to attend and make their thoughts known.  For information call 542-6670.

Recycling: The Real Nitty Gritty

Is recycling really as easy as proponents make it sound? While you read the following, imagine that you have arthritis in your hands, or a vision problem.

Let’s look at the real nitty-gritty of recycling. It sounds easy. Just put your glass in one bin, newsprint in another, metal in a third, and plastics in a fourth, instead of putting it in the trash. But it’s not that easy.

This was the procedure when I recycled in Englewood:

First, if the item was a container, it had to be rinsed out. This was so any leftover food wouldn’t draw pests and leftover chemicals wouldn’t hurt anyone handling the bottle. Let’s face it, you don’t want the trash man or a passing child stung by the wasps trying to get at the pop bottles.

Labels had to be removed. I never got it straight if the entire label had to come off, or whether it was okay if a little paper and adhesive were left. At any rate, most labels have to be soaked off with water (a scarce resource) and the foiled labels never really come off. Other labels are applied with a lot of very strong, messy adhesive. My arthritic mother will never be able to get those off.

If you’re recycling newspapers, you have to separate the “slick” paper from the newsprint. Most of us do this while we’re reading the paper, but if you don’t have a chance for a day or two, you’re going to have to take time to do it anyway. And you can’t put old phone books or paperbacks in the bin, even though they’re printed on foolscap, too, because the adhesives in the spines will gum up the works.

For bottles, you have to remove the caps. Obviously, metal and plastic caps can’t go in with the glass bottles and plastic caps have to come off the plastic bottles because they probably aren’t the same kind of plastic. I never understood whether you were also supposed to try to remove the anti-tampering ring that’s left on a lot of bottle necks, but I can tell you that trying to remove them involves sharp instruments and a high risk of incurring deep puncture wounds requiring tetanus shots.

Then, you have to keep track of what’s recyclable and what’s not. I noticed on Pueblo’s City-County Health Department website that green glass is not on the list. Only colorless and brown. (If you’re really interested in recycling, only drink brands of beer in clear or brown bottles, not green. Heineken is out.) You can’t recycle tempered glass, like chipped Fire King pie plates, nor can you recycle the glass from light bulbs, even if you break out the metal parts. And you can’t recycle plastic that isn’t a number one or a number two, even if it does have a little triangular recycling symbol on it. Trying to read the numbers on clear containers isn’t always easy. Even if there was a “1” or a “2” they sometimes didn’t take them for some obscure reason. And, while aluminum cans are very recyclable, old aluminum window frames present problems.

Next, the stuff had to go into the correct bin, which you also had to find space for. Newsprint in the yellow bin, bottles in the green bin and metal in the red bin. They weren’t labelled, so you had to write it down or remember it. Actually, I don’t think it mattered, since whoever picked the stuff up could easily see what was in the different bins, but those were the instructions.

Finally, and this was one of the most difficult things, you had to keep track of whether or not this was recycling week, since they only picked up recyclables every other week. Englewood had an ordinance that said you couldn’t put any sort of trash out more than 12 hours before pickup. Therefore, you couldn’t just leave the bins out every week or all the time. If you missed a week, you had four weeks worth of stuff before it got picked up again. Once I ended up with six weeks’ worth, which was a lot considering the Denver papers are a lot bigger than the Chieftain.

In short, you want me to spend time and resources (including water and temporary storage space) getting these items ready for recycling and you expect me to pay a fee on top of it? Get real.

The 2010 Commission is sponsoring a Public Forum on Recycling at the Rawlings Library this Saturday from 10 am to noon.

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Another Reason James Lileks Should Avoid Chuck E. Cheese

It’s getting to be a hostile environment.

James “the Bleat” Lileks is no big fan of Chuck E. Cheese. At least according to what he writes in his week-day blog. He seems to endure it for the sake of his beloved daughter, Gnat, who craves fats, carbs and a smattering of protein amid a thousand other scampering, hyper-active kids in a sensory-overload environment that would have OSHA down on it like ugly on an ape, if it were a steel mill. It would be too unsafe. But since it’s for kids, OSHA doesn’t shut down Chuck E. Cheese.

No, they’ll let the police do it for them. Here’s an incident in Aurora.

From the looks of it, the Aurora PD could take some lessons from Pueblo PD on Public Relations.

I found it particularly interesting that the Aurora police hauled the guy off, leaving his 3 and 7 year-old children unattended in the midst of the BAU pandemonium of Chuck E. Cheese during the dinner feeding frenzy. I would guess that as sauce for the poor sap’s goose, they’d throw in charges of child endangerment and child neglect.

Well, at least the Aurora PD officer could distinguish his taser from his service piece, as opposed to Marcy Noriega of the Madera PD in California. Poor Everado Torres, didn’t fare so well. Must have been a poor training problem on the part of the police academy Marcy graduated from.

March 2005 Pueblo Neighborhood Partnership Meeting

An After Action Report.

Attended the monthly meeting of the Pueblo Neighborhood Partnership (PNP) yesterday, before heading home to put together the rest of the food and stuff for last nights OHNO Quarterly General Meeting.

Lots of interesting information was being passed around by the PNP group. And a very informative presentation by representatives of the Colorado Springs Utilities regarding the planned Southern Delivery System (SDS).

Points to keep in mind….

  • This saturday, 5 Mar 05, at 10:00 am, at the public library there will be one of a few public forums on the plans to implement mandatory curb-side recycling throughout Pueblo. This will be one of the few opportunities to give your opinion on this proposal.

As I understand it, there will be a panel of people from the city government and possibly some recyclers. They will speak on the matter and field questions from the public. Each member of the public attending the meeting who wishes to speak, will be alloted about 3 minutes in which to express themselves. Three minutes is not a whole lot of time. So if there are complicated issues, and what ISN’T complicated about this, people should coordinate their presentation in order to avoid stealing each others’ thunder and providing the planners and decision makers with the most complete set of concerns.

  • As a result of last month’s Human Relations Commission (HRC) meeting over on the Eastside, regarding the untimely shooting death of Daniel Pino, the Pueblo Police Department is going over into a PR blitz. Part of this will be a “Citizens Academy”. It is intended to “enhance your knowledge on the everyday efforts of the Police Department!”

It is scheduled to take place every Tuesday and Thursday between 6 and 29 April 2005. It starts at 6:00 pm and runs to 10:00 pm at the Pueblo Police Department’s Training facilities. The classes will cover history of the police department, patrol function, arrest control [UP AGAINST THE CAR! HANDS ON THE HOOD!], Firearms, SWAT, Bomb Squad, Police Driving, K-9s [Niiiiiice doggieeee….] and building searches. There will be additional information on various departments such as investigations, Gangs, Narcotics and D.A.R.E.

Sounds interesting. Can I repell with the SWAT team? Pat Heine likes the Australian repell technique best. I think it’s highly useful myself. Especially since you have your weapon at the ready with your free hand. However, my favorite is the free repell, i.e., no wall for foot support, as in descent from a hovering heliocopter. [Note: Just try to avoid carrying the heavy radio. I wound up coming in head-down on that occassion. Fortunately the pilot didn’t bob me into the ground.]

When I asked if Steve Guttenberg, of the infamous Police Academy movie series, was going to put in a guest appearance I got an evil look. And, please, don’t ask them about Citizens on Patrol….

  • A follow-up meeting to the HRC meeting mentioned immediately above, is planned, but the date is not set. Probably later this month. It is requested that each neighborhood should send someone to represent them on a panel to be composed of the neighborhoods. Personally? I think this is a great idea. If there are issues, they are not limited to any one neighborhood, as the police patrol all of Pueblo. Additional information will be forthcoming.

  • The Southern Delivery System (SDS) was presented by a team from Colorado Springs.

They provided a lot of useful information about their perspective on the project. Here are my observations:

[1] They think that they have been misrepresented in the Pueblo Chieftain. That some articles in the paper are giving ‘misinformation’. I’m not sure which ones, as they did not ennumerate the perceived misinformations published there.

[2] It IS ‘their water’, in accordance with court rulings. Therefore they have rights under the law to use it.

[3] As most of the water in question comes from the Western Slope, it is not managed as water that is what I’d call ‘native’ to the Arkansas River. Therefore, Colorado Springs has the right, by court ruling, to ‘use to extinction’. This gives me pause for concern. Extinction is a serious word. It means use it all up and return nothing.

My question here is what is the impact on the people in the lower Arkansas River area? The people from Colorado Springs said their action would not dry up the Arkansas, but if they take their share and use it to extinction, as they have the legal authority to, I don’t see any of that water helping people downstream from here. I’m looking forward to seeing the Environmental Impact Statement on this matter. Will it address that?

[4] Phase I of the SDS will take 10-50 million gallons of water per day from the Arkansas and re-route it through Colorado Springs and, if any is left, back to the Arkansas River via Fountain Creek. The speaker said that about 50% would be returned. The report is not out on what the impact of pumping an additional 25 million gallons of water per day down the Fountain will do vis-a-vis increased potential for flooding. That’ll be part of the Environmental Impact Statement.

It’s an interesting project. And a complicated one. My personal opinion is that part of the project’s flood mitigation program should be to build a dam on the Fountain in the vicinity of I-25 mile marker 115. Such a structure would eliminate the chance of a major flood on the Fountain through Pueblo. It would also provide a great recreational opportunity.

There was a comment that the Fountain is not a good place to build a dam due to soil conditions. Well, that would not outweigh the need for a dam to avoid flooding. All we need is a good cloud-burst in Ute Pass, above Manitou Springs, and we’d see parts of Colorado Springs washing past the Target store. Followed shortly thereafter by the Target store itself…the Union Pacific rail line to the east of I-25 at 13th, then parts of I-25’s 13th Street interchange…..etc., etc., etc.

What would be the cost of all that damage repair, direct and indirect, as opposed to building a good dam?