Environment
Will ORC comply with mining, storm water and land use permit conditions?
On July 2 an incident occurred at the Bunker Hill construction site of a new processing facility for Oregon Resources Corp. Three contractors were involved, West Coast Contractors, CCC Electrical out of San Antonio and a concrete pumping firm from Bandon (sorry don’t have name) that caused serious electrical shock to a worker. OSHA is conducting an investigation and will release no further details until complete.
As of Monday, ORC has been building the ten story steel structure without the benefit of a permit or third party inspections. Leslie Berri of State Buildings and Codes in Salem responded to the matter in this email.
Thanks for your call – To-date, the project has approved permits for concrete and piling…….project managers have applied for and are awaiting their building permit. BCD and project staff are still negotiating about some of the plan details.
Last weekend, one of the project subcontractors began erecting steel without permission from the project superintendent. The superintendent immediately stopped the work and to our knowledge no unpermitted activity has occurred since. They are currently pouring concrete for which they have a permit.
Building Codes staff is in discussions with the project managers about assessing a fine related to the unpermitted steel work but no decisions have been made.
This image and several others taken yesterday morning were forwarded to BCD this morning.
Naturally, the big question for residents near the proposed mining sites is if ORC is willing to ignore Oregon laws regarding construction, will they comply with all the conditions of their various mining, storm water and land use permits? Dan Smith, Joseph Drew and Todd Lessard were all involved in another strip mining operation in Georgia in 2003 called Iluka Resources. Like ORC, Iluka was owned by an Australian company. If the best management practices and behavior of Iluka are any indication of what we can expect in Coos County, the answer is NO!
Residing on my and several other local computers are gigabytes of photos, lawsuits and press clippings all related to the environmental and economic mess Iluka left behind when it filed bankruptcy after three years eliminating the handful of local jobs it provided and tried to slink out of Brantley County, Georgia.
Over the next few weeks several of us will be wading through these documents and presenting pertinent information here and offering it to other local media.
Oops! ORC forgets to get building permits for processing facility
Oregon Resources, the strip mining operation promising to bring jobs and prosperity to Coos County, failed to obtain the necessary permits in advance of the start of construction of their new plant near Bunker Hill. State Buildings and Codes confirms today that plans were submitted recently but the company will have to pay an additional $14,000 to obtain permits and provide engineer certification the structure, as built to date, is safe.
Meanwhile, what about all those jobs? Local unions are noticing that out of state subcontractors are doing most of the work and bringing their labor force with them rather than hiring locally.
Then there is the tragic story of another strip mining operation in Florida and Georgia, one that didn’t go well for the environment or the local economy, filing bankruptcy after only three years. Not surprisingly, Dan Smith, Joseph Drew and Todd Lessard were deeply involved with that company. One can easily imagine Dan Smith telling the local leadership down there,.. “hey we are here to stay, I have even built a house here”
Electricity blackouts increase 124% and infrastructure crumbles
Economist Paul Krugman points out the dangerous after effects of trying to make government smaller
The lights are going out all over America — literally…a country that once amazed the world with its visionary investments in transportation, from the Erie Canal to the Interstate Highway System, is now in the process of unpaving itself: in a number of states, local governments are breaking up roads they can no longer afford to maintain, and returning them to gravel.
And a nation that once prized education — that was among the first to provide basic schooling to all its children — is now cutting back.
Another grave sign our infrastructure is in dire need of shoring up is the increase in blackouts in the US. CNN reports a 124% in non disaster related blackouts
During the past two decades, such blackouts have increased 124 percent — up from 41 blackouts between 1991 and 1995, to 92 between 2001 and 2005, according to research at the University of Minnesota.
In the most recently analyzed data available, utilities reported 36 such outages in 2006 alone.
“It’s hard to imagine how anyone could believe that — in the United States — we should learn to cope with blackouts,” said University of Minnesota Professor Massoud Amin, a leading expert on the U.S. electricity grid.
Without reliable energy everything comes to a standstill. Without energy we cannot even repair the existing infrastructure. Energy, human sweat included, is critical to a sustainable economy so relying on a system that is clearly breaking down, whatever the reason, is a flawed strategy.
This should make microgrids more and more attractive as both a way to avert blackouts but also to generate badly needed revenue for local economies.
Ducted fans are so easy to drive, watch the LIM being spun by a little fan
Here is proof ducted fans can be driven by a light breeze. The 24″ fan started the 2 meter LIM from a dead stop with no assist. When wind tumbles over the top of a building there is a velocity gain of 180%… so a light 8mph breeze becomes a viable 14mph energy producing wind if you place a ducted fan in its path. Wait til you see it operate in a Class 2 hurricane.
At right is the base complete with brake and access for the electronics
Coos County Commission vote to accept findings of Pacific Connector hearings officer
Not surprisingly, Coos County Commissioners voted unanimously (Bob Main held his nose) to accept the findings of hearings officer Andrew Stamp with a few minor amendments. For those who had read both Stamp’s findings and the comments submitted, it was obvious neither the commissioners, the planning department or Stamp had actually read all the comments and evidence submitted. The commissioners seemed more focused upon grammatical and spelling errors in Stamp’s findings than matters raised during the comment period.
Main, reminded the audience of the wonderful but empty promises of the 12″ pipeline and those of Methane Energy. Main noted that if the BOC were empowered by the legislature he would have asked to impose potential penalties of $1,000 per day for the first week of any violations, $5,000 per day for the second week not corrected and $10,000 per day every day thereafter.
Ultimately, today’s acceptance by the BOC of the unaddressed evidence will benefit the argument with the Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA).
Coos County Commission look at Pacific Connector Pipeline tomorrow
For property owners facing the threat of eminent domain encroachments on their property, tomorrow’s meeting is likely to be very emotional. Will the two ‘development-friendly’ commissioners move to rubber stamp the pipeline or will they take some time to consider the impacts? The May 20th hearing was jam packed with property owners opposed to the project and only one person, Gino Landrum, spoke in favor of the pipeline in a hearing that went on til almost midnight.
There is another factor to consider with respect to setting a precedent allowing the energy choices of Californians to supersede the property rights of Oregonians. Most transmission corridors are multi-modal. Gas transmission, electric
transmission, etc… run along the same corridor and there is some logic behind doing this. Nevertheless, at a conference this spring in Portland, OPT, the wave energy group stated they planned to transmit the power generated from the proposed project off the coast of Coos Bay via a new line corresponding with the Pacific Connector pipeline. When the hearings officer was here in May, I asked the Williams group if the easement they are hoping to obtain included room for an accompanying overhead electric transmission line. They said no. They were only taking land via eminent domain for their pipeline.
Assuming both are correct, what I fear is that if the wave park is built and they WILL need new transmission lines to sell the power, again to power hungry California, they will piggy back on the precedent already set. Using the ‘for the public good’ argument established by the first line, more land will be taken from the abutting land owners to accommodate the transmission towers. The Coalition for Fair Transmission Policy suggests FERC be prudent in burdening others unfairly who stand not to gain from their actions…
…Commission is examining how to allocate the costs of new transmission projects in a way that ensures that electric customers do not pay for projects from which they receive no benefits. “It is critically important that the ultimate beneficiaries of this Commission’s regulatory effort be consumers, especially in this difficult economic climate,” said Sue Sheridan, Coalition President and Chief Counsel. “Consumers can’t be asked to bear the burden of additional costs if they receive little or no economic or reliability benefits.”
It is interesting to note that even Governor Arnold Schwarznegger is a member of the coalition. Effectively, allowing the rights of property owners to be trod upon is socializing the life style choice of people hundreds of miles away, people who choose to use LNG rather than renewable energy sources.
Tuesday, August 3rd: 1:30 p.m. – The Coos County Board of Commissioners will Deliberate on the Hearings Officer’s recommendation of the Pacific Connector Land Use Application. The Board of Commissioners will not take additional evidence or testimony beyond what was presented to the Hearings Officer. Event will take place in the Planning Department Conference Room (Owen Building) of the Coos County Courthouse Annex, 201 N. Adams, Coquille, OR (This is the same meeting room where the May 20th Hearing took place.)
Meeting notice on-line here
A different view of transmission lines
My column up at Sustainable Business Oregon
Practically, it is hard to imagine a technology that wastes 2.2 kilowatt-hours for every single kilowatt-hour produced is surviving into the 22nd century. Let’s hope it doesn’t; it simply isn’t sustainable. We should be imagining that next century now — one without a crisscross labyrinth of ugly transmission lines, one with thousands of independently functioning renewable energy microgrids.
Time to start imagining the next century rather than sinking more money into the last century’s folly.
Making the grid ‘smarter’ is not the answer
With all the talk about modern smart grids and the call for increased transmission to deliver new renewable energy to consumers, eager to reduce dependence on fossil fuels, little attention is given to how antiquated and inefficient long distance transmission is. A March 2009, National Geographic article, citing the Energy Information Administration points out, “…for every kilowatt-hour used, 2.2 are “lost” as that energy is generated and sent over transmission lines.”
Hardly a sustainable business model, centralized power production only works for the monopolized utilities because the ratepayer is compelled to pay for their inefficiency by the PUC. The centralized grid delivery system is like taking the mountain to Mohammad except as energy demands increase the mountain keeps getting bigger and further and further away.
As promising as smart grid technology seems the primary goal is better load matching and therefore fewer wide scale blackouts, not efficiency. Smart grids will be effective for managing over spinning events that have wind farms producing excess power and redirecting it elsewhere but it does nothing to reduce wheeling or thermal losses.
Today’s central grid is based on Edison’s 1882 Pearl Street Station in Manhattan, serving less than 500 customers. More than 100 years later advancements in transmission technology have been mainly around stepping up voltage higher and higher to make the ever increasing distances required by building power plants out of sight of the urban centers.
Perhaps because the ratepayer picks up the tab for these losses little has been done to reduce them and the resultant CO2 emissions. Add in the enormous environmental footprint associated with thousands of miles of transmission lines hundreds, even thousands of feet wide, making the central grid ‘smarter’ is perpetuating 19th century technology into a 21st century world.
Cost estimates to improve the central grid vary widely with one suggesting $46B worldwide within the next five years. Investing just 10% of that money into developing utility scale clean storage technology would help eliminate the need for a central grid.
Producing power at the point of consumption, implementing wide scale distributed energy makes more and more sense, environmentally and economically. Smart microgrids can employ multiple renewable technologies such as rooftop wind and solar without any of the losses associated with the central grid.
Practically, it is hard to imagine a technology that wastes 2.2 kilowatt-hours for every single kilowatt-hour produced surviving into the 22nd century. Let’s hope it doesn’t, it simply isn’t sustainable. We should be imagining that next century now, hopefully one without a crisscross labyrinth of ugly transmission lines, something with thousands of independently functioning renewable energy microgrids.
Centralized power grid a giant lightning rod
As a proponent of microgrids, seeing more and more stories like this one about the imminent cyclical solar storms damaging the central grid, is encouraging if not, well, downright scary.
Over the past thirty years, Kappenman has accumulated a vast and compelling body of evidence indicating that sooner or later a major blast of EMP (electromagnetic pulse) from the Sun, a space weather Katrina, will knock out the electrical power grid and bring society to its knees.
“Historically large storms have a potential to cause power grid blackouts and transformer damage of unprecedented proportions. An event that could incapacitate the network for a long time could be one of the largest natural disasters we could face,” he declares. A bluff, friendly man, half science nerd, half overgrown farm boy, Kappenman insists that solar EMP blasts the size of those that occurred in 1859 (before society was electrified) and 1921(before the power grid had developed to the point where it played any significant role) would today result in large-scale blackouts lasting for months or years.
Kappenman contributed to an oft quoted report entitled ‘Severe Space Weather Events’ documenting the horrific cost in both lives and dollars should severe magnetic storms hit. Perpetuating the centralized grid, even if we make it ‘smart’, is simply perpetuating a bad idea. A March 2009 National Geographic article by Peter Miller, points out that ‘…for every kilowatt used, 2.2 are “lost” as that energy is generated and sent over transmission lines .
The world’s power grids, of which the United States has the most extensive, have in essence become giant antennas for space weather blasts. Just as a lightning rod attracts any lightning bolts that might otherwise strike a roof, the power grid, which is designed specifically to be extremely efficient at conducting electricity, attracts space weather bolts. Problem is that, unlike lightning rods, the power grid is gravely vulnerable to such shocks.
Microgrids offer a much better business model, especially in terms of efficiency and definitely reliability.
Rogue River Wind introduces radically new relativistic generator
Coquille, Oregon
Rogue River Wind, Ltd, (RRW) an Oregon renewable energy company has acquired the rights to a revolutionary new relativistic generator (REM) design. RRW is the developer of a ducted fan wind turbine, the V-LIM, capable of operating in low, high and turbulent winds up to Class 2 hurricanes. The V-LIM requires an equally robust, high bandwidth, direct drive generator capable of capitalizing on these powerful kinetic forces. The higher the RPM the more power the REM produces.
Until now modern generator technology began with Barlow and Faraday in England, and rather quickly matured through the dynamo into the recognizably modern generator by about 1900. The REM design represents the first radical design departure in generators since that time.
The REM has no inductive wound coils. Plasma or laser cutters cut continuous and precise shapes simplifying manufacture. There is no inductive steel significantly reducing total weight. The design incorporates a magnet topology that requires only 1/5 the neodymium used in traditional generators. As a low resistance device there are no heating or cooling concerns.
The generator uses no flux targets so there is no magnetic hysteresis. The generator has low internal loss and no thermal loss. The generator operates at a high bandwidth, requires low starting torque and has zero cogging. The direct drive generator can be scaled and stacked to replace existing generators in traditional wind turbines and eliminate the need for gearboxes and reduce the weight at the top of a tower by over 2/3. These combined features result in a 15% efficiency gain over contemporary generator designs.
The general topology can be elementally reconfigured into all different generator design aspects and parameters, from axial to radial. It can function as stacked element generator in a traditional BIG WIND megawatt power mode, or as the power-generating element in a wind turbine based micro grid configuration.
The REM can be used in a radial mode as wheel based motor in an electric vehicle design, or in water driven electrical generation modes. It can replace any traditional field coil or rare earth permanent magnet generator design in most applications, as an efficient coupling element between a mechanical power input, and an electrical power output. It can even be a stepper motor in a disk drive mechanism.
The generator is available for license in any application where generators are required.
For information please contact Mary Geddry, CEO Rogue River Wind, Ltd, at 800-490-8060 x210
DEQ approves ORC NPDES 1200 A storm water permit UPDATED
From Bill Mason at DEQ “After careful review and consideration of the comments received on the NPDES 1200-A “Application for Oregon Resource Corporation’s chromite mine proposal, DEQ approved registration of the to the NPDES 1200-A on June 28, 2010″
Will post more later including the full text of the findings and conditions of the permit
As promised ORCResponseFinal(6-28-2010) the official response. Here is a sample
6. Comment: It is unacceptable that the agencies are relying on data supplied by a company that was hired by ORC to do their impact analysis because the consultant will be biased in favor of their client. [29]
Response: The review of ORC’s 1200-A application and supporting materials was consistent with normal agency practice. DEQ and DOGAMI typically rely on information submitted by a permit applicant and the applicant’s consultant to determine whether registration to the 1200-A will be approved.
Kindra Arnesan Louisiana resident details BP response, ponies and balloons
“BP doesn’t care about us”, says Kindra Arnesan. She is right, they don’t care about the ‘small people’.
(hat tip/Rachel Maddow)
Why FONSI and SCDC are losing their power base
For a multitude of reasons I have been very critical of FONSI and SCDC and taken some pains to point out the folly of following their worm’s eye view of business and job creation. Jon Barton, President of FONSI has penned another ‘woe is us’ attack on those perceived to “…work hard to kill projects that could bring a good measure of economic success to our area.” Therein lies the problem, the belief by someone like Barton that because people object to dirty industry they oppose economic success.
Based upon the discussions I have had around the county I am willing to bet that if I offered 200 family wage jobs in a clean green industry like renewable energy production and the supporting industries and Jon Barton, et al, offered 200 family wage jobs strip mining and importing foreign LNG, most people given a choice would choose my green jobs over the finite jobs offered by the dirtier industries. One of the issues that came out at the SDAT meetings this week are jobs but the issue to me is what kind of jobs. There is no interest amongst my children to work in a service based economy and my kids aspire to better jobs than fork lift operators and truck drivers (no offense intended). The industries promoted by FONSI and SCDC do not inspire education or inspired thinking… they are simply hard labor to promote profits for foreign shareholders, and even to pay the income taxes of those shareholders.
I have attended at least a dozen public meetings over the last three months and the one thing that keeps being driven home is that activists score big points.
FONSI and SCDC promote a modern day version of serfdom and expect county residents to be grateful. Yet those of us who “wear slogan T-shirts, wave placards and chant” are just as supportive of success and prosperity we just categorize it much differently. FONSI is not scoring points because it refuses to acknowledge that jobs are available through clean industry and chooses to alienate those who do by making short sighted comments accusing opposing views of being ‘anti’ prosperity. It reveals their ignorance OR their self serving agenda.
BP is still number one provider of oil to US Department of Defense
Despite mounting evidence that BP is a bad actor and a bill penidng in the Senate, the nation is now caught deciding whether national security, ie, supplying adequate fuel to the military is more critical than protecting the gulf coast and billions of dollars in fishing and tourism.
The amendment was put forward by Illinois Democrat Luis Gutierrez. “There is ample evidence leading up to and including the current disaster in the Gulf of Mexico that BP is not a ‘responsible source’ and shows a consistent disregard for federal law and the lives and livelihoods of Americans,” Gutierrez said. The bill is currently in the Senate.
The ‘lives and livelihoods of Americans’ is clearly not at the top of BP’s list of priorities. Consider this expose´ from Rachel Maddow about the lack of readiness for such a disaster. Below that, satirist Lewis Black and Keith Olbermann compare BP CEO, Tony Hayward to Baghdad Bob of the initial invasion into Iraq. Funny if it weren’t so true.
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