Chicago Daily Observer

The Pioneer Press has endorsed three incumbents for “Sewer Board”, that is, commisioners of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District.

The paper touts efforts at “use of short-distance electric cars, the distribution of barrels to capture rain water that county residents can then reuse for gardening and landscaping purposes” and top priorities such as “environmental protection”.

It is baffling to read that the same people who managed the 900 Million Gallons of raw sewage poured into Lake Michigan last month, are somehow described as environmentally responsible due to support for electric cars.

The Deep Tunnel project is the least tractable public works in a Water District with a long history of uncontrolled spending and lack of results. Even after spending $3 billion on this 30 year project, the Metropolitan area still suffers from severe flooding, with no end in sight.

The MWRD has an answer though. You can Read More...

GOOD NEWS PENDING! The back order supply is being manufactured as you read this. We do not have a delivery date, but are expecting to have a firm date in a couple weeks.

It is with grave apologies to all who have been inconvenienced by the situation. Our current list of back-ordered rain barrels will be the first fulfilled when the new shipment of rain barrels become available. We will post the news here, try to reach you by phone if you are on this list, or send an email if you would like. Add your email address here by alerting us: publicaffairsinfo@mwrd.org.

Future orders will be limited to on-line credit card sales only. No product will be provided unless you have a receipt as a “pre-sold” item. Instructions for pick up on future orders will also be posted here when the supply line is filled.

Mayor Daley has suggested that flooding in Chicago could have been prevented if residents put out barrels to collect rainwater running off roofs of houses. The Tribune has it that 90 Billion Gallons of storm runoff went into Lake Michigan during the weekend downpour.

With around 7 Million people in Chicago, that would be 12,857 gallons collected per Chicago resident, or 233 barrels per person (at 55 Gallons per barrel). A container holding 12,857 gallons would measure 1718 cubic feet or approximately 12ft x 12ft x 12ft…..so merely having 7 million tanks at 12×12x12 would have prevented the flood, sounds easy enough.

Steel tanks at 1/8 in thick would weigh in at 3700 pounds, so 7 million of these tanks would total approximately 25,900,000,000 pounds of steel. Steel costs approximately $630 per ton, So the Mayor is suggesting for a mere $8 Billion we could have prevented the flood, ... Read More...

No big surprise, but the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District dumped a large amount of raw sewage into Lake Michigan yesterday. Per the Chicago Sun-Times, “the heavy rain prompted the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District to open the North Shore Channel locks in Wilmette at 6:30 a.m. and Chicago River locks near Navy Pier at 10:15 a.m. A third gate at 130th and Torrence was opened at 5:15 p.m”.

The “Deep Tunnel”, the $3 Billion metropolitan drainage system, was full as of 7:30 AM on Saturday, prompting the MWRD to open the locks releasing 4 Billion gallons/hour of runoff mixed with raw sewage into Lake Michigan. The MWRD states that 1% of the liquid poured in the lake was raw sewage, still equating to a staggering 40 (ed. calculation corrected from 4) Million gallons/hour of raw sewage dumped into the lake.

The MWRD website notes a Confirmed ... Read More...

Barack Obama has made his economic thinking excruciatingly clear, so it also is clear that his running mate should have been not Sen. Joe Biden, but Rumpelstiltskin.

He spun straw into gold, a skill an Obama administration will need in order to fulfill its fairy-tale promises.

Obama recently said he would “require that 10 percent of our energy comes from renewable sources by the end of my first term — more than double what we have now.” Note the verb “require” and the adjective “renewable.”

By 2012 he would “require” the economy’s huge energy sector to — here things become comic — supply half as much energy from renewable sources as already is being supplied by just one potentially renewable source. About 20 percent of America’s energy comes from nuclear energy produced using fuel rods, which, when spent, can be reprocessed into fresh fuel.

Tooling around Western Springs today I noticed a truck from Allied Waste (AW), my garbage company, in front of me. For the first time, I saw as it turned a sort of billboard on the side which proudly declared that because of recycling efforts on the part of AW across the county last year, 41 million trees were saved. 41 million.

Apparently, Allied Waste considers this a grand thing. But I couldn’t help but wonder – even if recycling does save trees – why are we bothering to? Newsflash, trees grow back. Fast. They are probably the ultimate renewable resource. Moreover, recycling efforts have a real cost. From the pollution from the chemicals used to recycle, to the trucks sent to pick up the recyclables, to the money spent by municipalities to subsidize the recycling – money which could go to schools or police instead – the idea of “saving ... Read More...

The Natural Resources Defense Council has observed that Lake Michigan shoreline beaches top the nation in closures due to high bacteria contamination, with the Kathy Osterman (Mrs. Bruce DuMont) beach being above safe levels 12 out of 12 times tested.

Though it seems unlikely that the tests are all that accurate or scientific…Abion Beach was tested 289 times in 2007, while Loyola Ave Beach was never tested, the results are distressing, but expected.

The NRDC does not take the investigation very far, stating under the heading “Causes of Closing and Advisories” that “All of Illinios beach closures were due to monitoring that revealed elevated bacteria levels from unknown sources of contamination”.

This despite the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District dumping 233 Million Gallons of raw sewage, in August 2007 which may have increased the bacteria count a bit.

Ah, Bensenville, glorious Bensenville—it’s become my home away from home since I realized that Mayor Daley intended to plow over about 15 percent of it to make way for another one of his Great Ideas, in this case the O’Hare Modernization Program. Before our green mayor is done he will have spent well over $15 billion expanding O’Hare just in time for the collapse of the airline industry. Hey, how’s that for planning?

The Natural Resources Defense Council filed a federal court appeal Wednesday, alleging that BP Whiting’s air permit will allow an expanded refinery to emit substantially more pollution than the Clean Air Act allows.

The environmental group hopes the lawsuit will send BP and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management back to the drawing board to draft a new, more stringent permit.

To know the Chicago River is to get down to water level and float along what Gary Mechanic describes as a “highway that flows through the heart of Chicago.”

Seeing this highway from 60 feet above on a bridge is simply not the same experience as seeing the powerful persona of the river “from the river’s point of view,” said Mechanic, president of the Illinois Paddling Council, an umbrella organization for Illinois paddling clubs.

Despite the coldest and snowiest Midwest winter in decades, global warming has taken over the Congressional calendar. This week Congress will vote on a bill that is designed to regulate so-called “greenhouse” gas emissions through something called a “cap and trade” system. Not since rationing in World War II, has the US contemplated such a draconian interference in the economy. While cap and trade is unlikely to pass this year, every major presidential candidate supports the approach. In other words, it will be back.
The bill, which is named “America’s Climate Security Act,” would actually set up two cap and trade systems – one for most types of “greenhouse” gases (mainly carbon dioxide) and another for hydro-fluorocarbons.
Under these systems, the federal government would set a maximum limit on the emission of certain gasses. This is the “cap.” Under this cap it would sell or give-away permits to ... Read More...

A pop quiz: When was Chicago supposed to run out of landfill capacity and we’d all have to start eating our garbage?

Answer? I don’t know exactly, but it was some time past, according to environmentalists who warned that in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s the city—and the rest of the country—would run out of places to dump the garbage. Adding to the crisis mentality were scary claims that leaking toxic substances and methane would poison and asphyxiate the populace. Somebody had to “do something,” and fast.

So, Chicago and other municipalities stampeded into adopting solid waste recycling programs. Americans suddenly were “educated” or forced into massive recycling efforts, separating paper, cans, plastic and other materials from the oozing, dripping, rotting stuff. Recycling became a matter of given truth in the bible of the caring, even though the net benefits were, and in some quarters still are, in doubt.

Among ... Read More...

Indiana regulators on Thursday issued the final environmental permit needed for BP PLC to start work on a planned $3.8 billion expansion of its oil refinery along Lake Michigan.

The air emissions permit still needs approval from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, but the state action allows BP to start construction work at the Whiting refinery.

An environmental group that fought the project called the state’s review “drive-by permitting” and said it was considering its options for appealing the decision.

Project foes have raised concerns about increases in carbon dioxide and other pollutants coming from the expanded refinery about 20 miles southeast of downtown Chicago.

Earlier this month Seattle mayor Greg Nickels proposed slapping a 20-cent tax on disposable plastic shopping bags as a way to encourage retailers and shoppers to switch to reusable alternatives. Meanwhile, Chicago’s approach to plastic bag problems is alternately being characterized as a great first step and a missed opportunity.

Governments around the world have been working to reduce litter, cleanup costs, resource waste, and ecosystem damage caused by plastic bags, in most cases by implementing bans or heavy taxes on them. In Chicago, 39th Ward alderman Margaret Laurino has convened meetings with environmental advocates and business leaders to try to come up with a city ordinance mandating that they be recycled.

I was picking up my kids at their church youth group recently, and as I did they handed me a flyer: it’s the fall mission project to help save lives from the scourge of Malaria in the third world, particularly Africa, and the church has partnered with a missionary group active in the area. The mechanism for saving lives lost to the plague of malaria? Mosquito nets, with a natural insecticide on them.

I will probably buy a net or two. This is a solid evangelical church, and I want to support it in any way I can.

I just wish I could contribute to a DDT fund.

Seriously.

The charity rightly recounts that over a million lives in the third world are lost each year to Malaria. Some estimates put it at three million, and yes it’s mostly pregnant women and children. Hundreds of millions more are sickened ... Read More...

So Al Gore is the joint winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Admittedly, he has to share it with the United Nations’ climate change panel – but, even so, I think we need to declare an international smugness alert.

The former US Vice-President has already taken over from Michael Moore as the most sanctimonious lardbutt Yank on the planet. Can you imagine what he’ll be like now that the Norwegian Nobel committee has given him the prize?

More to the point, can you imagine how enormous his already massive carbon footprint will become once he starts jetting around the world bragging about his new title?

FORMER VICE PRESIDENT and avid environmentalist Al Gore is set to speak Oct. 17 at the Economic Club of Chicago in the Grand Ballroom of the Hyatt Regency.

By now, the derision and laughter created by Al Gore winning the Nobel Peace Prize is old news. But if you still don’t believe that it was politically inspired, you might want to consider from whence it sprang.

The five-person committee that awards the prize is a creature of the Norwegian parliament, the Storting. The body, controlled by the Labour Party, has, you might say, something of a leftist tilt. Here are some of its recent high jinks:

Firms face quota deadline

Norway’s center-left government has issued a warning to 140 companies that still don’t have enough women on their boards of directors: Appoint more, or be dissolved.

Government [Equality] minister Karita Bekkemellem intends to enforce Norway’s law requiring that at least 40 percent of the boards of stocklisted companies be made up of female directors….

There I was attending the “naturallyheatlhykids.com” expo at Navy Pier held last weekend.

I’m all for healthy kids. I have four young ones, and I’d like to keep them healthy.

It’s the “naturally” part that gets me a little curious. “Natural” as in “nature.” Hmm. Isn’t “nature” what mankind has been fighting against for eons? I mean, when you think about it “nature”. . . kills people. In fact, the entire march of civilization has pretty much been one of, well, overcoming nature. Maybe that’s why people live on average about 40 years longer now than they did at the turn of the 20th century. Not only that, but even with all the “chemicals” in our culture we are healthier than ever before, and rates of virtually every kind of adult and childhood cancer are falling. Not just the rates of death but the rates of cancer occurrence itself, including ... Read More...