Can we imagine how beautiful and economically successful in the long term Baltimore would be if we had CIVIL ENGINEERS from 4,000 year ago Babylon rather than today's LIVE FOR TODAY SHIP OF FOOLS? We must allow our natural flood plains and wetlands revert back to what they do best----CREATE A NATURAL DEPOSIT FOR FLOOD WATERS.
Because these development issues are so CRITICAL and we are in the midst of vital infrastructure building let's take one more week to look at the movers and shakers of today's development. We showed the actual public policy that leads to BUILD TO FAIL----let's look at civil institutions creating these bad civil policies.
We talked about BUSH/CHENEY and Halliburton et al global development corporations as being ground zero for BUILD TO FAIL. They moved trillions of dollars to those global 1% through FRAUD then used patronage to build that 5% global Wall Street player white, black, and brown citizens tied to development MOVING FORWARD POLICIES OF BUILD TO FAIL.
The US never had stellar civic leadership in regards to development---but the word CONSERVATIVE to the right wing and the words social progressive to the left wing kept development these 300 years in national interest
The Blog of Propaganda The United States has been unique because of its famous "American Dream." A national idea of success and happiness. But how has idea come to be? Although Andrew Truslow Adams' The Epic of America , originally defined the term, how has the definition been altered to an idea of "super"-success and fame? To find the answer one only needs to look at pop-culture to see the obvious propaganda surrounding the United States. Further examination will also show that the alteration began long ago and has been a staple in the country's history. In the following blog, I will explore how propaganda has defined the American Dream and persuaded people to chase after its success.
The CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH was built on propaganda. The national media sold the idea of GOLD IN THEM THERE HILLS because the global 1% wanted to develop CA by bringing lots and lots of people to build towns so they painted images of wealth. THE AMERICAN DREAM of early 1800s. Our native citizens and our wagon train settlers lost life in this development so the US has always been a LAND OF OPPORTUNITY FOR A GLOBAL 1% DRIVEN BY PROPAGANDA.
DOES HISTORY HAVE TO REPEAT ITSELF? WE ARE BEING HELD HOSTAGE TO A BUILD TO FAIL THIS TIME COMING INTO CLIMATE CHANGE, TRIBUTE STATE NATURAL RESOURCE DESTRUCTION---NOT END TIMES BUT DELIBERATE DEVELOPMENT TO FAIL 99% OF WE THE PEOPLE.
ENTER CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA EMPIRE-BUILDING NEO-LIBERALISM ----DOING ANYTHING TO ACCUMULATE AS MUCH WEALTH YOU CAN -----CIVIL ENGINEERING TO FAIL.
Let's rebuild New Orleans yet again so the next hurricane with greater intensity can blow it down again killing the wealth of 99% of citizens in homes, property, small businesses----while those global % and that 5% of player tied to contracting businesses move all our government tax to CIVIL FAILURE. THIS is why America is in decline and a FAILED STATE. Those global Wall Street Baltimore Development FAKE 'labor and justice' 5% GREEKS and freemasons working for the global 1% PRETENDING to help those poor, the old, the children, those needing jobs.
Maria weakens to Category 2, Puerto Rico dealing with threat of dam failure
Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty Images
Death toll rising in Puerto Rico and Caribbean after Hurricane Maria barrels through
Fears in storm-battered Puerto Rico have shifted to a failing dam as the U.S. territory reels from the devastating impact of Hurricane Maria.
Early Saturday morning, the National Weather Service said failure of the Guajataca Dam in northwest Puerto Rico is "imminent" and could cause "life-threatening flash flooding" downstream on the the Guajataca River. Dam operators said it began to show signs of failing, causing flash flooding, on Friday around 2:10 p.m. ET.
"Move to higher ground now," the National Weather Service urged residents in the area. "This is an extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation."
At a press conference Friday afternoon, Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello said all available resources were sent to evacuate people near Lake Guajataca, where the dam at the northern end is in danger of breaking. This evening NWS San Juan tweeted that nearly 8,000 people live in the could be affected. Earlier in the day the number given had been an estimated 70,000 people.
Maria weakened to a Category 2 hurricane Sunday, with maximum sustained winds of 110 mph as of 5 a.m. ET. The storm at the time was moving toward the north at 9 mph and its eye was located about 530 miles south-southeast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, according to the National Hurricane Center.
The storm is still projected to stay off the East Coast, but tropical storm or hurricane watches could be put in effect for the Carolina or Mid-Atlantic coasts on Sunday with tropical storm-force winds currently extending 240 miles from the eye.
The death toll in storm-hit areas is rising as Hurricane Maria continued to barrel through the Caribbean on Saturday, three days after its landfall in Puerto Rico left the island in the dark.
At least 24 people have died in the storm, including 15 in Dominica, seven in Puerto Rico and two in Guadeloupe.
Maria came ashore in Puerto Rico early Wednesday as a powerful Category 4 hurricane with 155 mph winds -- the first Category 4 to hit the island since 1932. The storm wiped out the island's power grid and dumped 20 to 30 inches of rain in 24 hours, with some areas seeing 40 inches locally.
There is potential for the death toll in Puerto Rico to rise, the island's secretary of the department of safety said Friday.
Although Maria has hurtled past the island, Puerto Rico will see heavy rainfall through Saturday from the storm's trailing rain bands, likely an additional 3 to 6 inches, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Water supplies on the island are lacking because of the lack of power, Rossello said. In addition, the water agency suffered "severe damage," he said.
Rossello has also extended a curfew and ban on alcohol sales on the island from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. ET through Sunday.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo departed for Puerto Rico on Friday to bring donated supplies to the island and assess the need after Puerto Rico's governor made a request for aid. Cuomo traveled with members of the National Guard as well as New York congresswoman and Puerto Rico native Nydia Velázquez.
Residents of Puerto Rico's hard-hit north coast were seen wading through floodwater inside what's left of their homes this week.
Every vulnerable house should be considered "completely or partially destroyed," and every flood-prone area was damaged, Rossello said.
ABC News correspondents observed widespread destruction in the town of Guaynabo, about 10 miles south of San Juan where trees and power lines were downed and storefronts and building facades had crumbled. Neighborhoods in Guaynabo were filled with waist-deep floodwaters and destroyed homes that were apparently not built to any kind of code.
Guaynabo resident Ramon Caldero and his family hunkered down in their kitchen during the storm, which caused part of the ceiling to collapse in his sister's room.
"I was worried," Caldero told ABC News on Thursday. "My sister was screaming."
Christy Caban of Nashville, Tennessee, rode out the storm with her husband and 13-month-old baby in their hotel room just east of San Juan.
"We don't have power, we don't have water," Caban told ABC News on Thursday.
Puerto Rico's emergency management agency said 100 percent of the island had lost power by Wednesday afternoon, noting that anyone with electricity was using a generator. The governor said today that ships are arriving with generators.
Abner Gomez Cortes, executive director of the agency, told ABC News more than 12,000 people are currently in shelters, and hospitals are running on generators. Two hospitals -- one in Caguas and one in Bayamon -- were damaged in the storm.
In a news conference Saturday, Rossello said 9 deaths were blamed on the storm.
Running water has been restored for 20 percent to 25 percent of the island, or about 320,000 customers, and about 25 percent of telecommunications are working, primarily in the San Juan metropolitan area.
Meanwhile, telecommunications throughout the island have "collapsed," Cortes said, describing the storm as unprecedented.
Multiple transmission lines sustained damage, according to Ricardo Ramos, director of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority. Ramos said he hopes to start launching helicopters by this weekend to begin inspecting the lines.
The curfew Rossello imposed a curfew on the island Wednesday from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. ET, which was initially ordered through Saturday, has been extended indefinitely, and the hours changed to 7 p.m. to 5 a.m.
Puerto Rico narrowly missed landfall by Hurricane Irma two weeks ago, with the Category 5 storm traveling just north of the U.S. territory. The island suffered heavy rain and wind, but nothing near the widespread damage incurred by Maria.
Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on Thursday, President Donald Trump said Hurricane Maria "absolutely obliterated" the U.S. territory and "totally destroyed" its power grid, but that the recovery process will begin soon with "great gusto."
Puerto Rico "got hit with winds, they say they’ve never seen winds like this anywhere," Trump added.
On the forecast track
Maria passed near Turks and Caicos on Friday. The storm's core is expected to turn toward the north by Saturday night, moving away from the Bahamas and into the open waters of the western Atlantic Ocean, according to the National Hurricane Center.
On Friday, the National Hurricane Center warned a "dangerous storm surge" coupled with "large and destructive waves" will raise water levels by as much as 9 to 12 feet above normal tide levels in parts of Turks and Caicos and the Southeast Bahamas. And through Saturday, Maria was expected to produce up to 20 inches of rain in parts of Dominican Republic and Turks and Caicos.
Though Maria is forecast to gradually weaken next week as the hurricane moves into the cooler waters of the Atlantic Ocean, little change in strength is forecast during the next 48 hours, according to the National Hurricane Center.
The diminishing storm will move between Bermuda and the eastern coast of the United States before likely heading further east and out to sea sometime next week, according to the latest forecast models.
The storm's path is still expected to steer clear of the U.S. mainland.
"At this point, I don’t think Maria will have any major impacts to the mainland besides the high surf and rip currents," ABC News senior meteorologist Max Golembo said Friday.
Ground swells generated by Maria's intense winds are increasing along parts of the southeastern U.S. coast and Bermuda. Ground swells also continue to affect Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the northern coast of Hispaniola, Turks and Caicos and the Bahamas. These swells will likely cause "life-threatening surf and rip current conditions," according to the National Hurricane Center.
Other Caribbean islands devastated
Maria also did severe damage to other Caribbean islands without making landfall.
Dominica's prime minister, Roosevelt Skerrit, told ABS Television on Thursday that at least 15 people have died and many homes are destroyed beyond repair. The death toll in the island nation is likely to rise and search and rescue missions are ongoing. At least 16 additional people are missing in some communities, he said.
“We have many deaths, but it is a miracle that we do not have hundreds of deaths in the country,” Skerrit told ABS Television.
According to Skerrit, the island has no electricity and only limited telecommunications have been restored since the storm. Some villages are now only accessible by sea or via helicopter
The prime minister told ABS Television that his home's roof was ripped off during the storm and he had to take cover under a bed to protect himself from falling debris.
While wiping away tears during the emotional interview, Skerrit issued an urgent appeal for desperately needed aid, namely water, tarps and baby supplies.
“It’s going to take us a very long time to get back,” he said.
Reuters
Damaged homes from Hurricane Maria are shown in this aerial photo over the island of Dominica, Sept.19, 2017.
Hartley Henry, an adviser to Dominica's prime minister, told reporters via WhatsApp on Wednesday that his country has suffered a "tremendous loss of housing and public buildings" since the storm hit, ripping off roofs and tearing doors from hinges. Dominica's main general hospital "took a beating" and "patient care has been compromised," he said.
"The country is in a daze -- no electricity, no running water," Henry said via a WhatsApp message. "In summary, the island has been devastated."
The Ross University School of Medicine, based in Portsmouth, Dominica, announced Wednesday on Facebook that it is attempting to make contact with all of its students. More than 1,400 students and faculty have signed the registration sheet so far, and the school has reached out to the family members of more than 700 others, who informed them that they are safe.
In Guadeloupe, officials announced Wednesday two people were killed and two others were missing in the storm's wake.
France's Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said some 80,000 people in Guadeloupe -- around 40 percent of the population -- were without electricity Wednesday. Many roads there are impassible due to flooding and French Navy planes have not been able to assess the damage on the island due to bad weather conditions.
In Martinique, about 70,000 homes were without electricity and 50,000 homes did not have access to safe drinking water Wednesday. Fallen trees and downed power poles have blocked many roads there, Collomb said.
Police and soldiers have been deployed in both Martinique and Guadeloupe to ensure security. More than 3,000 first responders are on the French Caribbean islands, according to Collomb.
The U.S. Department of State sent a message of solidarity Wednesday to the people of Dominica and all across the Caribbean who were affected by Maria.
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Why do New Orleans and Baltimore have the highest murder rate? They have the WORST CIVIC LEADERS.
When we allow the global 1% now appearing as GLOBAL BANKING/GLOBAL HEDGE FUNDS those having stolen all US wealth from massive ROBBER BARON FRAUDS----be the investors in rebuilding our US cities we will have FAILED STATE CIVIL ENGINEERING. Bloomberg is the face of this as BOSS TWEED for WALL STREET so he as others drives the funding made available in our US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones---Baltimore directly tied to Bloomberg via GLOBAL JOHNS HOPKINS which is global because it was tops in gains through massive frauds.
OUR US CITIES DO NOT NEED PATRONAGE FROM THE VERY PEOPLE WHO FLEECED OUR US CITIES.
CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA ALL HAVE THEIR CONNECTIONS NOW TO THESE HEDGE FUNDS SO THEIR POLITICAL MACHINES DRIVE CIVIL ENGINEERING TO FAIL.
Baltimore Board of Estimates is that civic agency tied to Baltimore Development and Greater Baltimore Committee black, white---not so much brown yet 5% global Wall Street players all flashing those GREEK/freemason signs to send a quick buck to FAILED CIVIL ENGINEERING. Well, the Mayor of Baltimore has his/her Greek friends and they are tied to this freemason group so all contracting awards go to them WHO CARES THAT THE DEVELOPMENT IS FAILED? Our 99% of citizens do----and they are constantly told these FAILED CIVIL ENGINEERING PLANS give them jobs, jobs, jobs and temporary housing before they are washed away....pushed out through eminent domain.
THOSE DASTARDLY 5% GLOBAL WALL STREET PLAYERS KNOW THIS-----CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA NOW TRUMP.
So, Bloomberg was given his VENTURE CAPITAL fund to buy governors and mayors in US cities FAKE ALT RIGHT ALT LEFT---working for global 1%. So, Bloomberg was given his VENTURE CAPITAL fund to buy governors and mayors in US cities FAKE ALT RIGHT ALT LEFT---working for global 1%. Ben Jealous was given his venture capital fund to do the same ----as we have a WARNOCK in Baltimore with this same kind of fund existing only as conduits for global 1% deciding our US city development ---AND THEY ARE ALL SHIP OF FOOLS---only talent---lying, cheating, and stealing.
OH, REALLY MITCH LANDRIEU???????? FAITH-BASED IN WHAT????????.
“Everything we do here has a nonprofit component, a faith-based component, a philanthropic component and a government component,” says New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu. (J.D. Lasica/SocialMedia.biz)
How Bloomberg’s Still Changing the Way Cities Operate
Bloomberg Philanthropies and other organizations have poured an unprecedented amount of money into making cities more innovative and collaborative. What happens when the money runs out?
by J.B. Wogan | April 2015
(Shutterstock; Illustration by Michele Melcher)
For five consecutive years, New Orleans had the highest murder rate of any U.S. city its size. It was a distinction that Mayor Mitch Landrieu was eager to shed when he assumed office in 2010. But the city was still recovering from the one-two punch of Hurricane Katrina and the national recession. “What we inherited was a city teetering on the edge of bankruptcy,” Landrieu says. It didn’t have the financial resources to deal with its crime problem by simply increasing police manpower.
So the mayor went where the money was: to outside organizations that are in the business of partnering with cities. He pursued foundations and nonprofits. He courted private companies and other levels of government. And he was successful. Indeed, Landrieu may be the current champion among American mayors when it comes to public-private partnerships. In last year’s budget, New Orleans received more than $15 million from state and local foundations alone. So many positions in city government receive some kind of outside funding -- including state and federal grants -- that the mayor’s office can’t count them all. Private funders have paid for computer programmers, a climate adaptation officer, and a civil engineer focused on pedestrians and bicyclists, along with many other positions.
Landrieu says his constituents now realize that New Orleans can’t survive without help from outsiders. “Literally everything we do here has a nonprofit component, a faith-based component, a philanthropic component and a government component,” he says.
The most consequential of Landrieu’s decisions was to apply for a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies, which was offering several million dollars each to cities willing to create an “innovation team” of in-house consultants that would apply data-oriented problem-solving to urban challenges. The team members -- some were longtime public employees and others came from the private sector -- would be sent to troubled city agencies. The premise behind the Bloomberg grants was that a team from the mayor’s office could make government more effective at relatively little cost by teaching public employees how to be more collaborative, strategic and focused on measurable results. Unlike most foundation grants, this money wasn’t tied to a specific policy area. Its sole mission was to stimulate innovative management practices.
That appealed to Landrieu. “It fit perfectly into our governing model,” he says. “We found them and they found us and we hugged really tightly.”
The New Orleans team’s top priority was to do something about the murder rate. They reviewed crime data and convened police, academics and social services agencies. For years, local law enforcement officials had insisted that New Orleans did not have a gang problem. The team’s review revealed that to be wrong. Most of the murders were the product of petty disputes involving a relatively small number of people in a few neighborhoods. In other words, gang warfare. That led to targeting support services and law enforcement in gang hot spots. The results were dramatic. The murder rate began to decline in 2013, and in 2014 there were fewer murders in New Orleans than in any year since 1971. It’s true that many cities have experienced falling murder rates in recent years, but New Orleans had seen little of this improvement until the innovation task force moved in.
“Everything we do here has a nonprofit component, a faith-based component, a philanthropic component and a government component,” says New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu. (J.D. Lasica/SocialMedia.biz)
The news from New Orleans was exactly what Michael Bloomberg had hoped to hear. Bloomberg began his national innovation campaign in 2010, while he was still serving as mayor of New York City. His foundation sought to spread an entrepreneurial spirit to local governments around the country. In 2011, Bloomberg Philanthropies awarded a total of $24 million to five cities: Atlanta; Chicago; Louisville, Ky.; Memphis, Tenn.; and New Orleans. The mayors of those cities weren’t required to pursue any particular agenda. They simply had to demonstrate that they were entrepreneurial.
So far, every city has had a success story to report. Memphis reduced its retail vacancy rate by 30 percent in key commercial corridors. Atlanta found housing for almost a quarter of its chronically homeless population. Chicago cut the licensing time for new restaurants by 33 percent. Louisville redirected about a quarter of its low-severity 911 calls away from emergency rooms and into a doctor’s office or urgent care center. The first round of results encouraged Bloomberg Philanthropies to announce another $45 million last year to support 12 more U.S. cities.
Municipal governments have rarely been given private grants of that magnitude before. Foundations have worked alongside city officials for decades to address specific policy issues, such as alleviating poverty, but the Bloomberg grants are moving urban philanthropy in a new direction. Foundations are starting to see ways that they can trigger structural and cultural change in city governments, says Ben Hecht, president and CEO of Living Cities, a nonprofit with a board made up of foundation presidents. (Disclosure: The Governing Institute has partnered with Living Cities and the Citi Foundation on the City Accelerator, a project focused on innovations for low-income residents.) “A tall soda thing or an obesity thing -- those can come and go with the whim of the mayor,” Hecht says. “But if you actually change the way government operates and it becomes the new normal, that’s a real change. That’s enduring.”
Five years ago, about a dozen mayors came to New York to discuss ways that the Bloomberg Philantrophies could help municipal government function better. The mayors described structural problems that were holding them back, such as employees’ fear of risk-taking and a lack of coordination across departments. James Anderson, who oversees Bloomberg programs on government innovation, used the conversation as a springboard for learning how municipalities solve organizational inertia.
Anderson, a former communications director in the Bloomberg administration, assembled a team of ex-city hall employees for the project. They studied more than a dozen promising initiatives in cities and countries around the world, from Baltimore to England to Malaysia. Anderson’s team came back with a prescriptive model for how municipal bureaucrats could be more inventive, data-driven and collaborative with nongovernmental partners.
A lot of the model comes directly from the style of government Bloomberg introduced in New York. During the Bloomberg years, New York City earned a reputation for trying a raft of new ideas, particularly in social policy. In 2006, his administration launched the Center on Economic Opportunity, which uses government funding to attract additional private money to test promising antipoverty strategies. In one case, New York City emulated successful programs in Brazil and Mexico, where the governments were offering cash assistance to low-income households on the condition that they meet benchmarks for school attendance, quarterly grades and preventive health.
The center has operated more than 60 programs in the past nine years, each receiving its own third-party evaluation. So far, more than a dozen programs that didn’t demonstrate a positive impact have been discontinued. Others that yielded positive results have received an expansion in funding. To a significant extent, it is an effort to apply techniques of venture capitalism to a public environment.
After Anderson and his team published a report on their review of innovative global practices, Bloomberg Philanthropies wrote a playbook with discrete steps a government can take to be innovative. The model boils down to a few key elements: researching best practices, trying new ideas, partnering with other agencies or outside groups, and tracking performance with data. “We have a lot of confidence in the model,” Anderson says. “We’ve seen it produce results in five cities on very different issues under different mayors with different leadership styles.”
It’s important to understand just how ambitious these grants really are. Most of the local press coverage in each team’s host city focuses on the size of the grants and the social ills that mayors want solved. Reducing violence and homelessness are laudable objectives, but in this case, they’re byproducts of a larger long-term plan. The ultimate goal is to better understand what innovation is and how it can be scaled up from a single office to an entire municipal government, from one city to a nation of cities. If that happened, the argument goes, mayors would be much better at managing any number of problems that seem overwhelming today.
As interested as they profess to be in the problems of cities, most major national foundations have been skittish about giving money directly to a mayor’s office. Sometimes they have insisted that cities lead the way first with funds from their own tax base; in other cases, they have feared a city might be too dysfunctional to be worth the investment.
Besides these worries, foundations have had another reason for being reluctant to plunge too deeply into urban government practices: the risk of backlash. In the early 20th century, a philanthropy supported by John D. Rockefeller paid for federal agriculture agents to help farmers prevent pests from destroying cotton crops in the South; in return, the foundation became the subject of public attacks by members of Congress who accused Rockefeller of using his private wealth to bypass the democratic process and influence public policy. Ultimately, Congress passed a law that paid for the agents directly and prohibited the philanthropy from further involvement in the program that it helped launch.
In more recent times, Bill and Melinda Gates have invested tens of millions of dollars in specific reforms to the public education system. Their preference for charter schools, tying teacher evaluations to student performance on standardized tests and establishing national education standards has drawn the ire of teachers unions and Tea Party activists. Critics argue that these policy prescriptions undermine local control over education and force teachers to dedicate too much time to test preparation.
So far, Bloomberg’s grants to cities haven’t stoked the same kinds of fears about an interloping billionaire meddling where he’s not wanted. It’s hard to pin an ideological or partisan label on them because they aren’t tied to any policy outcome in particular. Policy choices are up to the mayors.
Some of the warm receptions that the Bloomberg grants have received may be a function of how new they are. The first round finished only last year, and while cities have eagerly publicized the strides they’ve made, the details of how innovation teams work aren’t widely understood by the public. But the lack of criticism also reflects the foundation’s willingness to give mayors broad discretion in how the money is used. “It’s very powerful when cities are able to use our tools in areas where they’re hurting most or they see the greatest opportunity,” Anderson says. “When that happens, the city is going to be especially aggressive in its work.”
The innovation grants are but one example of recent partnerships between cities and foundations. In fact, Bloomberg Philanthropies alone has given nearly $150 million to more than 70 municipalities in the past five years for experiments in government innovation. At least 10 cities have added a chief community service officer with funding they received from the Bloomberg and Rockefeller foundations. Seventeen U.S. cities now have a dedicated staff position focused on climate resilience, also paid for by Rockefeller. Many of the tech-savvy Code for America fellows who embed in city governments for a year have their salaries covered by foundations. As municipalities lost substantial amounts of revenue during the recession, many mayors showed an eagerness to accept financial assistance from foundations. These represent just a slice of the much larger and older effort by foundations to influence urban policy, though traditionally the support has focused on narrow subjects that aligned with a foundation’s mission, such as public education, child welfare or criminal justice.
Michael Bloomberg began his national innovation campaign in 2010, while he was still serving as mayor of New York City. (AP)
Prominent skeptics do exist. As the field of city foundation partnerships evolves, says Albert Ruesga, CEO of the Greater New Orleans Foundation, mayors should be wary of relationships that erode democratic decision-making. “Cities have the power to levy taxes,” Ruesga says. “I don’t think it’s healthy for cities to forgo levying taxes for central public services and goods, thinking that they might get that money from private sources. There’s a price to civilization and we need to be willing to pay that price in our taxes.”
Ruesga is quick to point out that he doesn’t object to the innovation grants as they have been employed so far. That’s in part because they aren’t being used to pay for core services, such as hiring more police officers or keeping a park open to the public. The money is being spent on what may seem like the risky proposition of changing local government culture. But it isn’t displacing anything else in the budget. “The bet feels like a long shot to people,” Ruesga says. That’s exactly when foundations can and should pay for municipal work, he argues, when it involves experimentation that likely wouldn’t get public funding.
Landrieu, however, thinks he’s reached a point where he can justify using public money to pay not just for the projects started by the Bloomberg innovation team, but also for the team itself. Last year, the city spent $300,000 on team activities, about a quarter of their annual cost. (All cities had to match a third of the Bloomberg grant.)
“You don’t even have to sell it to the city council. They want you to do more of it,” Landrieu says. The challenge is making sure the city has room in the budget for a new service, but he seems committed to doing that. “When the philanthropic money runs out, you’ve got to grow your economy or raise your fees or cut in other ways to pay for that service.” The reason he’s willing to make room in the budget isn’t just the impressive results so far, but the method that made them happen. The innovation model, he says, has the potential to address any number of other problems the city still needs to tackle.
New Orleans is not the only city focused on how to sustain its innovation team once the grant money runs out. In Memphis, the city council set aside $200,000 last summer to keep its team around for another year. “We planned from day one asking the question, ‘How do we keep this going?’” says Memphis Mayor A.C. Wharton. “This is not just a flash in the pan. I think it will become a permanent part of how cities do business.”
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My white 5% are tied to Baltimore Development, Greater Baltimore Committee, and global Johns Hopkins---doing ANYTHING GLOBAL 1% TELLS THEM and of course here are our 5% black players with Urban League, NAACP et al being local----these are the folks BUILDING TO FAIL----just to move revenue to those 1% global contracting corporations enriched during BUSH/CHENEY and their fleecing of US Federal agencies. These smiling faces are saying SHOW ME THE MONEY AND WE WILL BUILD ANYTHING AND ANYWHERE YOU TELL US. These are the people we shake our fists at when our seniors are sitting underwater, communities washed away, and there is no city revenue to go to social welfare. WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% WHO ALLOW OURSELVES TO BE SOLD ON THE POWER OF A CHAMBER OF COMMERCE IN BUILDING OUR LOCAL ECONOMIES WILL ALWAYS HAVE BUILT TO FAIL. THIS IS CORPORATE CONTROLLED GOVERNMENT----THAT IS THE OPPOSITE OF CITIZEN-CONTROLLED GOVERNMENT.
If we place REAL citizens in our city council and as mayor concerned for communities and families ---THEY will make sure CIVIL ENGINEERING is PUBLIC INTEREST.
The purpose of a government of, by, and for the people is to have WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% hiring FROM A CHAMBER OF COMMERCE businesses to build CIVIL projects WE DESIGN. We have allowed this dynamic to FLIP.
Let's hold those 5% global Wall Street players BLACK, WHITE, AND BROWN accountable for FAILED CIVIL ENGINEERING and stop shaking our fists at those simply getting ready to continue MOVING FORWARD.
Maryland's new Black Chamber of Commerce ready 'to slay dragons'
Alicia Jones-McLeod, executive director of the Maryland Black Chamber of Commerce, Ron… more
Maryland Black Chamber of Commerce
By Carley Milligan – Associate Editor, Baltimore Business Journal
Feb 9, 2017, 14:35pm
Ron Busby captivated the audience Wednesday night in the Silver Spring Civic Center as he told the story of how he grew his father's cleaning company from $150,000 in annual revenue, to $15 million, over 10 years.
He sprinkled in details on the challenges black-owned entrepreneurs often face when trying to start a business. Limited access to capital, a lack of advocacy and poor credit, were just a few that he mentioned.
As president and CEO of U.S. Black Chambers Inc., Busby's presence at the Maryland Black Chamber of Commerce's first official event was a step toward the new chamber's goal to improve the very problems Busby mentioned.
The Maryland Black Chamber of Commerce is the newest black chamber of commerce in the country, having officially launched in August. The chapter is the 122nd black Chamber of Commerce in the nation.
The chamber and its executive director Alicia Jones McLeod have big plans for the year, including partnering with Busby and the Greater Baltimore Black Chamber of Commerce, growing its memberships, fundraising, securing sponsors and building a legislative agenda for 2018 to jumpstart the growth of black-owned businesses in the state.
It's a hefty to-do list, but Jones McLeod said she is looking forward to a great year.
She first approached Busby with the idea of starting the Maryland Black Chamber months ago. He helped her create a strategy, set goals and lay the groundwork for the chapter. Jones McLeod said she left his office that day walking on clouds.
"I felt like, 'I need to go out and slay dragons and make the world a better place'," she said.
Today the chamber has seven, soon to be eight, board members and about 30 members. It costs $150 a year for a business of one to five employees and higher fees depending on company size.
The chamber's next step is to raise enough capital to pay its staff and hold more free outreach events for its members, and to locate a bank and a large hotel or hospitality service to sponsor them, Jones McLeod said. Ideally, the company will be one looking to meet its minority quota, or expand its reach into the minority community.
"Nobody wants to provide money for free," she said. "That's our bang for the buck."
The chamber will also be seeking funds from state and local government agencies.
Since the the chamber represents black businesses across the state, it is partnering with the Greater Baltimore Black Chamber of Commerce. The two nonprofits already have two events planned, including a post legislative briefing with the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland to develop an agenda for next year.
To prepare, each chapter is in the process of sending out surveys to black businesses across the state to get feedback from the community on what they want to see happen in Annapolis next year.
Jones McLeod wants the new chamber to become a conduit for black businesses by providing information to its members on how to start a business in Maryland and introducing them to people who can help with that process.
"There's no point in spending hours searching for an answer that someone could tell you in a minute," she said.
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This is what we hear in Baltimore when we hear someone say IT'S OUR TURN----meaning black 5% global Wall Street players are going to receive PATRONAGE to BUILD TO FAIL ---CIVIL ENGINEERING and they think this is good for black citizens in US cities.
'The chamber and its executive director Alicia Jones McLeod have big plans for the year, including partnering with Busby and the Greater Baltimore Black Chamber of Commerce'
So, we have this small group of people who no doubt will receive patronage BONES thrown as CHINESE-SIZE FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES take all of MARYLAND REAL ESTATE. Who will end having all the wealth from these few decades of installing this SUPER-DUPER FAILED CIVIL ENGINEERING? The global 1% ----who will lose all their wealth and end under the bus? Those 5% global Wall Street players and 99% OF WE THE PEOPLE THE US CITIZENS AND OUR NEW IMMIGRANT CITIZENS.
We have spoken often about goals of OPEN GOV. While sold as DEMOCRATIZING----pretending it is US citizens our government data is opening to-----all that CITY STAT----NOW STATE STAT real estate and socioeconomic data being sold to global investment firms who will drive the development in our US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones.
The space is called the OpenGov Hub.
Every time we go to a BALTIMORE DEPARTMENT OF PLANNING---for real estate information saying we are going to plan a civic development ANTENNAE rise from employees in these city agencies wondering WHO THE HECK I THOUGHT I WAS when Baltimore has a 30 year-old MASTER PLAN-----so our US city planning departments are being filled with people who PLAN TO FAIL CIVIL ENGINEERING ---they are wanting to send our tax revenue over and over and over to fix FAILED DEVELOPMENT rather than actual plan a CIVIL SOCIETY THAT SUCCEEDS.
WHO APPOINTS THESE FAILED CIVIL ENGINEERS? OUR US CITY MAYORS---WHO DOES EXACTLY AS HE/SHE IS TOLD BY GLOBAL BALTIMORE DEVELOPMENT, GREATER BALTIMORE COMMITTEE WORKING FOR GLOBAL 1%.
This is why FIXED AND RIGGED ELECTIONS IN OUR US CITIES IS SO IMPORTANT TO CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA----
Baltimore and Maryland's development contract bidding is so RIGGED----contractors from around the nation KNOW they don't have an in on development so 99% of Maryland and Baltimore citizens are soaked over and over in fraudulent contract awards that are all DESIGNED TO FAIL.
How Cities Can Collaborate With Citizens (on Deadline) to Solve Problems
by Citiscope | June 26, 2015
Jean-Louis Sarbib (left), Dennis Whittle (middle) and Nathaniel Heller (right) are promoting a new process for solving city-level problems. They call it "GovCombinator." (Christopher Swope)
By Christopher Swope
On the fifth floor of a glassy office building here, just a few blocks from the White House, there’s an experiment in workplace serendipity that may some day change how cities solve problems.
In a spacious office suite with rows of desks and widescreen computer monitors, 160 people employed by 32 NGOs and social enterprises go to work. In one way or another, all are engaged on issues related to open government and transparency, either in the United States or overseas.
The space is called the OpenGov Hub. It’s the creation of Nathaniel Heller, who led a small accountability-focused group now based there. It started as a place for bootstrapping organizations like Heller’s to break free of their tiny offices and enjoy a roomier space with broadband connections, videoconference hookups and a room for hosting events.
What the initiative turned into is a place where social connections can flourish. The lunchroom became a place for likeminded people to network while heating up pasta. Ideas began to hatch. New friends began introducing each other to potential funders and partners. For a handful of groups based at the Hub, such conversations coalesced into the founding of a new startup focused on creating a more bottom-up approach to development aid.
“First it was an infrastructure win for all the organizations here,” Heller says of OpenGov Hub. “But then we started to see joint projects and joint problem solving and some of the groups coming together to do things without any engineering.”
Co-working spaces are nothing new, of course, and Heller knew this wasn’t the first time a startup had been born in one. But the Hub’s success as a catalyzer — and the work so many of the NGOs based there do with city governments — got him and one of the startup’s founders, Dennis Whittle, talking one day over lunch. What if you could bring the same methods and serendipitous collisions of ideas into local government? What if you had city officials co-working alongside open-government advocates and technologists? Could it make for more creative public policy?
Policy Sprinting
Those questions led Heller and Whittle to a new idea. They call it the “GovCombinator” — the name is a takeoff of Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley seed fund.
The concept is to create a co-working space where high-level city officials would sit side-by-side with people from civil society, business groups and the other stakeholders needed to solve discrete urban problems. The exact mix of people would change depending on the issue under consideration, which might be something like deciding on a new bike route or figuring out how to implement a new ordinance.
The idea goes beyond office space. The second key component is a deadline. Work at the Combinator would be condensed into a “sprint” of perhaps 100 days. This concept is borrowed partially from the world of software development, with its focus on achieving iterative improvements that build over time. It’s also borrowed from Nadim Matta’s Rapid Results Institute, which has had success with training and facilitating teams to make real progress on problems like homelessness or AIDS prevention over short periods of time.
The GovCombinator is an idea that still exists mostly on whiteboards. But it’s beginning to get its first test half a world away in Nairobi. Meanwhile, Heller, Whittle and other partners are working on launching pilots in Mexico City, Kansas City and in their own backyard of Washington. The idea is to have the network of four cities share their experiences and, if it works, to grow to more cities.
The idea has gained the attention of Rose Gill Hearn, a principal with the Bloomberg Associates consulting group. She has been able to help generate some interest in the project with cities she works with, as well as offering feedback on how it might work.
“What GovCombinator does is it embeds civil-society actors in city hall, so to speak.” Hearn says. “So you have civil society working together with the government officials who have the power to change policy, do a contract, set an initiative and act on the information coming from very valuable resources.”
Not a Task ForceIt may be easier to describe the GovCombinator idea not by what it is but by what it is not.
It’s not co-working in a traditional sense. Most people working out of the Combinator would only do so for 100 days at a time and probably only part time. It’s also not an incubator or an accelerator, as the goal is solving policy questions, not launching a startup. And it’s not a retreat — there would simply be too much actual work taking place.
Heller is also careful to note that GovCombinator would be different from a task force. “We’re intentionally trying to not do that here,” he says. “The big difference is task forces are often internal to government. They’re often not empowered to do a whole lot in terms of implementation or execution. We’re trying to expand the circle of influence and bring in a host of nongovernmental actors.”
Another comparison Heller steers around is the “hackathon,” where cities team up with software developers for a couple of days, often a weekend, to build new mobile apps. “What happens the Monday after the hackathon or the policy jam?” Heller says. “Ninety-nine times out of a hundred that’s the end of it — there’s no follow through and a lot of disappointment.”
On the other hand, if GovCombinator is successful, “it can be where ideas from those hackathons and policy jams land on Monday morning,” Heller continues. “Let’s slot it in for the next sprint. We know what the problem is, but give it 50 or 100 days to really sort it out.”
What most separates the GovCombinator concept from these other participatory systems is the intense focus on building social connections. “We’re talking 100 days, plus or minus parts of a day, week after week,” Heller says. “What we’re after here is to build up the soft tissue of trust between people, the social capital. We’re trying to bring personalities and people and their aspirations and fears and wants back into this process of citizen engagement. And our theory is that regular co-location is one way to get there.”
The Kaya Experience
While the Combinator is not quite live anywhere yet, some of these ideas have been getting a test run in Nairobi. Al Kags, the co-founder of a “think-and-do tank” called the Open Institute, runs a co-working space in the Kenyan capital called the Kaya. It’s modeled partly on the OpenGov Hub in Washington, with flavors of other tech hubs in Nairobi.
One of the biggest issues in Kenya these days is the implementation of a devolution law passed last year. Authority over many government functions is passing to 47 newly created counties. Kags sees this moment, as county officials work on figuring out their new responsibilities, as a ripe time to test some of the Combinator concepts.
“There’s a lot of pressing problems,” he says, noting that government and civil-society organizations in Kenya have historically had an adversarial relationship. “There’s a need for people in the policy space to come together and work together, and a need for people in government to work closely together with civil society, academia and the private sector.”
As Heller did with the OpenGov Hub, Kags worked hard to curate the mix of people at the Kaya. There’s a handful of civil-society groups working on devolution questions, as well as consultants, a young political party and an association of freelance journalists. When county officials from around Kenya are in Nairobi, they’ll often spend a day or two working out of the Kaya.
“We’ve succeeded in enabling the idea of sharing a space with government officials, who come on a regular basis to hang out at the Kaya,” Kags says. “When you have formal meetings, the conversation has to address this or that. Here, we’re catalyzing informal conversations between the various sectors.”
Currently, a group at the Kaya is four months into a six-month sprint focused on building transparency structures into county governance. One product of the sprint is an online portal called the Devolution Hub, a clearinghouse of information related to Kenya’s devolution law. Another product is the Open County Dashboard, which aggregates county-level data and allows for comparisons. There is also a lot of discussion around the best frameworks for transparency.
One lesson Kags has taken away from the experiment is that it can be tricky to get the social mix right. Initially, a tech startup working on devolution was based at the Kaya. But he says there was a bit of a culture clash between the younger and sometimes loud tech workers and the civil society and government people, most of whom were older. The tech workers have moved out, Kags says, noting: “We agreed to keep the Kaya as a space for policy wonks.”
Kags is also finding that it’s a lot of work managing the space and facilitating the social dynamics within the group. Initially he thought this would be a one-person job, but he says he’s realizing it’s a lot more.
“Figuring out how to manage the personalities is a skill required in itself,” he says. “We spend a lot of time talking to people, ensuring that conversations are happening, monitoring closely how those relationships are going and resolving disagreements or misperceptions when they come up. We don’t want people to lose faith. They need to feel comfortable.”
Building the Plane
Kansas City, in the U. S. state of Missouri, is eager to give the GovCombinator idea a try. Mayor Sly James and other top city officials have not only like the concept, but they say they want to see it housed right at City Hall. The main thing holding them back at the moment is office space. The plan is to convert an underutilized employee lounge into a co-working space, but they’re trying to find as much as $250,000 to do the renovation.
Kate Bender, with the city’s Office of Performance Management, says there are a number of public issues that would be well-suited to run through the Combinator. Many are related to transportation questions in the city center, such as ways to encourage biking and walking and how to handle the parking needs of a growing downtown population. Other candidates include a “smart city” plan to use sensors to collect data along a new streetcar line as well as some questions around implementing new development-permitting processes.
“These are ongoing projects that have a lot of stakeholders and cross-sector collaboration,” Bender says. “But there’s no physical space or methodology around convening them.”
Issue selection is an important part of the Combinator concept. A topic for a sprint would need to be high-profile enough to sustain the interest from a mayor and his or her deputies, as well as other stakeholders. But it also would have to be limited enough in scope to be solvable within the 100-day timeframe. “It’s not a lot of time,” Heller says. “It’s probably not the place to solve existential, generational problems like race relations. Although you could narrow that topic and maybe work on it in a particular neighborhood.”
Heller and Whittle imagine that a Combinator could have three sprints running simultaneously, each with a different cast of stakeholders. One topic would be chosen in a top-down fashion — whatever the mayor wants it to be. Another topic would be more bottom-up, coming from the public through a crowdsourcing mechanism. The third topic would come from the middle, via nominations put forward by city managers.
Still, there are lots of ways some of this could go wrong.
First, there’s scheduling. Would enough of the right people be able to vanish from their own offices, bosses and colleagues to work out of the Combinator — at least part-time — for three months? Heller thinks getting buy-in from mayors’ offices upfront will be key to getting participants to show up.
Then there’s public perceptions. Would the public see the Combinator as just another back room where insiders strike deals? Heller says citizen voices would be ably represented through civil-society groups. But the question of who would watchdog work in the Combinator and how remains a bit fuzzy.
But the biggest question is whether the Combinator would really create better public policy. That would be almost impossible to measure. The real test is likely to be whether participants finishing a sprint feel it was a more efficient and effective way to get their work done.
Heller acknowledges that there are lots of unresolved questions. But his experience with the “unintentional coolness and magic that happens from co-working” suggests it’s worth finding out what the answers might be.
“We’re building the plane while we’re flying it,” Heller says. “None of us can guarantee it will work the way we want it to. I suspect two years from now it will look somewhat different, but it will be informed by experience and hopefully expertise. We’re lucky to have a shot at trying it.”
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WHITING TURNER ENGINEERING corporation is just that corporation able to grow from local to global by being the one winning RIGGED CONTRACT AWARDS over several decades----BALTIMORE HAS NO PUBLIC WORKS OR PUBLIC AGENCY filled with civil engineers working to build in PUBLIC INTEREST. Here in Baltimore we have WHITING SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING tied to GLOBAL JOHNS HOPKINS graduating many of our FAILED CIVIL ENGINEERS working to build civic infrastructure for global 1% corporate sustainability that leaves 99% of WE THE PEOPLE BEHIND. As with our US universities bound to NEO-LIBERAL ECONOMICS ONLY-----neo-liberal economics says ---MOVE WEALTH TO THE GLOBAL 1% ANYWAY YOU CAN and our civil engineering at these same universities create the ETHICS AND MORALS of BUILDING TO FAIL to move wealth to the top again-----no matter what.
'Heller acknowledges that there are lots of unresolved questions. But his experience with the “unintentional coolness and magic that happens from co-working” suggests it’s worth finding out what the answers might be'.
The idea that our US city development cannot be DELIBERATE and is based largely on WAITING AND SEEING---is tied to SMART CITY US CITIES DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE MASSIVE INDUSTRIAL planning ----waiting and seeing-------OH, REALLY????? Don't we already know to where all this goes?
It is because Baltimore has NO PUBLIC AGENCY filled with PUBLIC CIVIL ENGINEERS who would be shouting against MOVING FORWARD CIVIL ENGINEERING ----and we have a construction MONOPOLY with patronage contract awards that we get FAILED CIVIC ENGINEERING. Look at all these categories of engineering -----what does City of Baltimore have regarding engineering? We have failed public transportation and traffic management and routing-----we have failed water and sewage engineering----we have failed environmental engineering----AND failed mechanical engineering. This exists not because graduates are not intelligent or capable---it happens because they are taught FAILING CIVIC ENGINEERING.
Engineering Departments at The Johns Hopkins University
DepartmentDegree LevelDepartment ChairDisciplineGeography and Environmental Engineering
Engineering Mechanics
Environmental Engineering Science & Management
Biomedical Engineering
General Engineering
Mechanical Engineering
Applied Biomedical Engineering
Civil Engineering
Information Systems Engineering
Information Systems & Technology
Information Assurance
Technical Management
Systems Engineering
Applied Physics
Applied & Computational Mathematics
Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute
Robotics
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Computer Science
Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering
Materials Science and Engineering
Applied Mathematics & Statistics
DepartmentDegree LevelDepartment ChairDiscipline
Advertise
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BLOOMBERG GLOBAL WALL STREET meets CIVIL ENGINEERING with goals of moving wealth continually to these same global 1% throwing bones at those dastardly 5% civil engineering corporations white, black, and brown.
When we watch Baltimore's downtown being developed on a flood plain with huge high-rise apartment and corporate office building concrete only broken by small corporate landscaping climbing the hill of city central ----we are seeing FAILED CIVIL ENGINEERING. What drives this is MAXIMIZED PROFIT-MAKING CORPORATE CAMPUSES ----we listen to talk of GREEN BUILDINGS as they design civil constructs that LAUGH IN THE FACE OF ALL CIVIL ENGINEERING LOGIC.
Students come to Johns Hopkins because Hopkins has one talent----it markets itself as best in every education category and sells that by opening employment to graduates doing FAILED CIVIL ENGINEERING as A BUSH/CHENEY technique of moving money BUILDING TO HAVE TO REBUILD TO HAVE TO REBUILD----This is to whom we shout WAKE UP -----and these are often those 5% players SHOW ME THE MONEY AND WE WILL BUILD ANYTHING WE ARE TOLD.
America was led by our local public universities over these global IVY LEAGUES for centuries. Global IVY LEAGUES like Harvard and Yale had graduates busy overseas building empire while our local government was filled with graduates of our public universities actually wanting to BUILD TO SUCCEED. So, our environmental engineers actually looked at flood zones and sea-level vs hill-------our mechanical engineers actually looked at roads and bridge construction tied to population growth and traffic------our structural engineers actually considered foundation stability ----and built with civil engineering ethos---TO LAST. We are tearing down IRON RAILING having lasted a century and replacing it will aluminum that will last a few decades AT MOST.
OUR CIVIL ENGINEERS ARE CRITICAL FOLKS---WHEN WE ALLOW THE TERM 'BEST OF THE BEST' become the most connected of the connected to global 1% -----we get CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA FAILED CIVIL ENGINEERING.
2017 Johns Hopkins Engineering Design Day
Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering
Published on May 8, 2017
Johns Hopkins Engineering Design Day is the culmination of the Johns Hopkins translational education experience and provides students with the opportunity to display their research, engineering solutions, and prototypes. Students demonstrate their ability to apply knowledge and skills to tackle real-world challenges. Read more: https://hub.jhu.edu/2017/05/08/design... Full schedule: https://engineering.jhu.edu/events/de...
Who are those civil engineers in San Diego, LA, San Fran building what we described last week -----bringing hundreds of millions of citizens to US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES built right on the most compromised real estate in America ? So, compromised they cannot develop EVACUATION PLANS for 99% of WE THE PEOPLE?
These are the GLOBAL IVY LEAGUE universities that used to graduate students to build corporate empire overseas now filling our local US city agencies-----they are those 5% players moving wealth to those global 1% with the ethos and morals saying BUILD TO FAIL IS OK --------not all 99% of grads from our IVY LEAGUES aspire to these goals----but that 5% global Wall Street player receiving those patronage bones----filling our US city agencies are indeed-----why do 99% of WE THE PEOPLE ALLOW our IVY LEAGUE campuses to become global hedge funds killing our CIVIL ENGINEERING BUILDING ONLY FOR GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUS 1%?
It really, really matters who we allow to be MAYOR----when they APPOINT the agency heads tied to these bad development goals.
'Stanford Engineering Future
Stanford University School of Engineering
Published on Jan 7, 2016
In early 2015, Stanford Engineering formed a committee and asked them two strategic questions: In what areas can the School of Engineering make significant world‐changing impact, and how should the school be configured to address the major opportunities and challenges of the future? The committee emerged with a vision for the future of the school across three critical areas: Research, Education, and Culture. Explore http://soefuture.stanford.edu to learn where Stanford School of Engineering goes from here'.
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I live in a community that auto insurers deem HIGH-RISK because of all the car accidents. We have accidents at my corner of N 25th in Charles Village over and over and over ---it's amazing citizens cannot get through a simple intersection.
We can be sure alcohol and drug use is behind some of this---but know what? Our traffic signals are the worst in the nation for timing-----here we see why people seem to always be wanting to RUN YELLOW LIGHTS.
Yellow lights having a window of change to red have data showing less accidents. WE KNOW THAT. Traffic lights timed to change in ways that allow major arteries east/west====north/south TO FLOW FREELY for blocks and blocks have drivers able to make progress without having to stop every few blocks at that next RED LIGHT. It is this constant stopping every few blocks that have drivers wanting to RACE TO BEAT THAT YELLOW LIGHT.
We can shout all we want about personal responsibility ---human nature will always win. We have known that for thousands of years----we have had civil engineers knowing this and many city planning and engineering departments ACTUALLY PUT TIME INTO THIS MECHANICAL ENGINEERING PUBLIC WORKS/TRAFFIC. When we get mad over traffic accidents in our communities----please look at this BASIC TRAFFIC ENGINEERING solution.
BALTIMORE HAS THE WORST IN THE NATION TRAFFIC LIGHT ENGINEERING---LET'S TALK TO THIS MAN-----
DOING MATH WITHOUT A LICENSE.....who is hired to do city engineering here in Baltimore-----it is outsourced to whatever corporation is tied to a Mayor's GREEK/FREEMASON 5% player----
We have in our US city public works traffic engineers who cannot do the math---OR who are told not to put the time into REAL TRAFFIC ENGINEERING.
“It is a civic duty,” he said, explaining his persistence. “I don’t want any money. I just want information to be known about the traffic signals, and how I was treated.”
Yellow-Light Crusader Fined for Doing Math Without a License
By PATRICIA COHENAPRIL 30, 2017
Mats Jarlstrom, at the intersection in Beaverton, Ore., where his wife received a red-light camera ticket. Credit Amanda Lucier for The New York Times
Mats Jarlstrom acknowledges that he is unusually passionate about traffic signals — and that his zeal is not particularly appreciated by Oregon officials.
His crusade to make traffic lights remain yellow longer — which began after his wife received a red-light camera ticket — has drawn some interest among transportation specialists and the media. But among the power brokers in his hometown, Beaverton, it has elicited ridicule and exasperation.
“They literally laughed at me at City Hall,” Mr. Jarlstrom recalled of a visit there in 2013, when he tried to share his ideas with city counselors and the police chief.
Worse still was getting hit recently with a $500 fine for engaging in the “practice of engineering” without a license while pressing his cause. So last week, Mr. Jarlstrom filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court against the Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying, charging the state’s licensing panel with violating his First Amendment rights.
“I was working with simple mathematics and applying it to the motion of a vehicle and explaining my research,” said Mr. Jarlstrom, 56. “By doing so, they declared I was illegal.”
The lawsuit is the latest and perhaps most novel shot in the continuing campaign against the proliferation of state licensing laws that can require costly training and fees before people can work. Mr. Jarlstrom is being represented by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian organization partly funded by the billionaire brothers and activists Charles G. and David H. Koch.
Conservatives are not the only ones worried that willy-nilly licensing requirements for occupations from hair braiding to florists are constricting employment and economic growth. The Obama administration and labor economists across the political spectrum have also criticized what they see as unnecessary and expensive work restrictions.
Most of the lawsuits brought by the institute against state licensing boards argue that they are unconstitutionally interfering with individuals’ right to earn a living. They complain that the boards are more interested in keeping out competition than protecting consumers against inept practitioners.
What is unusual about Mr. Jarlstrom’s case is that it does not involve any commercial pursuits, advertising or other moneymaking efforts. Instead, he accuses the board members in his suit of interfering with free speech.
“These boards have become the new censors,” said Wesley Hottot, an Institute for Justice lawyer who is representing Mr. Jarlstrom. “They think that the First Amendment does not apply to them.”
Eric Engelson, communications coordinator for the Oregon board, said the board would not comment since the litigation was pending. The board, a semi-independent panel whose members are appointed by the governor, funds itself through licensing and registration fees.
Mr. Jarlstrom does not have an engineering license issued by the state board. He is a self-employed consultant who tests audio products and repairs, upgrades and calibrates test instruments. But he did earn a bachelor’s degree in electronics engineering in Sweden, where he was born. He has also spent a couple of years researching traffic light timing intervals, which included consulting with one of authors of the original 1959 mathematical formula used as a basis for programming traffic light signals.
Nonetheless, the Oregon board, after a nearly two-year investigation, assessed a $500 civil penalty because Mr. Jarlstrom called himself “an excellent engineer” in one of several emails to the board and informed the Washington County sheriff that he “invented and publicly released a new extended solution” to the problem of yellow lights in traffic flow.
The board explained it had “opened a law enforcement case” against Mr. Jarlstrom “for the unlicensed practice of engineering,” and cited his attempts to publicize his review, critique and recalculations of the current formulas in use.
“This is a broad pattern of this board,” Mr. Hottot said, adding that he has seen similar actions other states.
Last year, for example, the Oregon board opened an investigation into Allen Alley, the Republican candidate for governor, because a political ad stated: “I’m an engineer and a problem solver.” Although Mr. Alley has a mechanical engineering degree from Purdue University and worked as an engineer for Ford and Boeing, the board said that he was not registered in Oregon as a professional engineer.
And in 2014, the board fined a retiree with 40 years experience in engineering $500 for testifying on his daughter’s behalf in a property suit without saying his registration was in retirement status.
“They have tried to silence people like Mats who have critiqued engineering projects, and that’s dangerous,” Mr. Hottot said. “This board does not have a monopoly over the dictionary and cannot redefine the word ‘engineer.’”
Mr. Jarlstrom probably would never have become obsessed with traffic light algorithms had his wife, Laurie, not gotten a ticket in 2013 for driving her white Volkswagen through the intersection of Southwest Allen Boulevard and Lombard Street in Beaverton 12 one-thousandths of a second after the light turned red.
She promptly paid the $260 fine, but Mr. Jarlstrom said he was intrigued by how the red-light camera operated. After extensive research, he concluded that the timing formula did not account for the extra moments it takes for a slowing car to make a legal right turn. Yellow lights should be long enough for the driver to cross, he argues.
After being laughed out of City Hall, a determined Mr. Jarlstrom brought a federal lawsuit in 2014 against Beaverton, complaining that the too-short yellow lights endangered public safety. A judge dismissed the suit.
Undeterred, Mr. Jarlstrom continued his campaign, tirelessly writing to public officials, media outlets and transportation experts.
“It is a civic duty,” he said, explaining his persistence. “I don’t want any money. I just want information to be known about the traffic signals, and how I was treated.”
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As someone taking public transportation buses around Baltimore I was pulling my hair when I first started riding Baltimore buses BECAUSE OF THIS LACK OF TRAFFIC ENGINEERING. It DOUBLES the time for a bus to move from downtown to only two miles away dealing with stopping every few blocks. It is these same mid-town communities between downtown and breaking out to the county where THE MOST CAR ACCIDENTS HAPPEN.
'The most dangerous cities to drive in after Washington are Baltimore';
That of course does not address the civil engineering of road construction that never changes. We are seeing the downtown ENTERPRISE ZONE global corporate campus development leaving all these same roads in place with all the new water and sewage pipeline being laid -----under road engineering that is the worst in the nation.
All of this occurs in a city like Baltimore because the CITY PLANNING ----THE MASTER PLAN---is always a goal several decades ahead so the 99% of citizens living in Baltimore communities today or a few decades ago are forced to live with BAD ROAD ENGINEERING because we are all waiting for MOVING FORWARD DOWNTOWN AS ONE GREAT BIG PORT OF BALTIMORE INDUSTRIAL ZONE.
Our downtown Baltimore road engineering is so bad because all that Port of Baltimore INTERSTATE/RAILROAD coming in to the port is the GOAL---not what we need living in our communities today.
HEALTHY LIVING
08/28/2013 01:31 pm ET Updated Oct 28, 2013
Which State Has The Most Car Accidents?
Getty
By Karen Brooks
AUSTIN, Texas, Aug 28 (Reuters) - The best drivers in the United States live in northern Colorado, while motorists on the crowded roadways of Washington, D.C., are twice as likely to crash as the national average, according to Allstate America’s Best Drivers Report released this week.
Drivers in the nation’s capital get involved in crashes once every 4.8 years on average, compared with a national average of once per decade. The most dangerous cities to drive in after Washington are Baltimore; Providence; Hialeah, Florida and Glendale, California.
New York drivers have crashes on average once every 7.3 years, while those in Chicago and Houston crash once every 8 years.
By way of comparison, the average driver in Fort Collins, Colorado, crashes every 13.9 years. The next-safest cities were Boise, Idaho; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Brownsville, Texas and Madison, Wisconsin.
The report, released Tuesday, surveyed Allstate insurance claims over 2011 and 2012 in 200 of the United States’ largest cities to determine how often drivers there have crashes.
The company uses the two-year time frame in each annual report to mitigate any spikes in the numbers due to weather events or similar unusual influences on the statistics.
Allstate drivers make up about 10 percent of all insured motorists nationwide, the report said.
The report draws distinctions between driving in big cities, where traffic, emergencies, public transportation and simply getting lost pose more dangers, and small-town driving, where high speed limits, fewer crosswalks and large vehicles are among the most common threats.
Indeed, almost all of the 20 cities with the safest drivers have less than half a million residents, the largest of them Tucson, Arizona, with 524,000 residents and crashes happening to drivers about once every 11.4 years - similar to Lincoln, Nebraska, which is about half the size.
Larger or more crowded cities landed on the bottom of the list. The 20 least safe cities for drivers include Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Newark and Miami.
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US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones have had captured development agencies these few decades. Here in Baltimore we have that global Wall Street Baltimore Development ---community associations tied to that development corporation with leaders simply MOVING FORWARD THAT MASTER PLAN from 1990s. The citizens in each community are led to believe they are participating in civic activities as below-----what we see are the 5% global Wall Street Baltimore Development 'labor and justice' organizations pretending 99% of citizens are participating in planning that has global 1% investment firms tied to global development contractors tied to global energy/transportation/public works corporations designing these US CITY FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES. Absolutely NOTHING coming from 99% of Baltimore citizens. Like RIGGED ELECTIONS we are watching as citizens are made to PLAY AT BEING CITIZENS.
'But the biggest question is whether the Combinator would really create better public policy. That would be almost impossible to measure. The real test is likely to be whether participants finishing a sprint feel it was a more efficient and effective way to get their work done'.
This CITY PLANNING COMBINATOR format is tied to the below START UP VENTURE CAPITALIST PATRONAGE funding of temporary businesses to those 5% players made to feel they are participating in US city economies when they are FODDER. Those whose ideas are said to become incorporated with Board of Estimate bid winning on development projects often have NO ABILITY IN CIVIL ENGINEERING----it's a bone toss that wastes our local TAX REVENUE that could be REALLY developing our communities.
This is how a BUSH/CHENEY/CLINTON would have bought those 5% overseas when building Foreign Economic Zones----throwing millions at local sovereign citizens to be PLAYERS while moving wealth to the top. That is what this structure does in our US city planning-----it is why Baltimore loses billions of dollars over a few decades tied to the need of patronage for that 5% player ---having no talent in CIVIL ENGINEERING.
About Y Combinator
June 2014
Contents
Y Combinator provides seed funding for startups. Seed funding is the earliest stage of venture funding. It pays your expenses while you’re getting started.Some companies may need no more than seed funding. Others will go through several rounds. There is no right answer; how much funding you need depends on the kind of company you start.
At Y Combinator, our goal is to get you through the first phase. This usually means: get you to the point where you’ve built something impressive enough to raise money on a larger scale. Then we can introduce you to later stage investors—or occasionally even acquirers.
More Than Money
We make small investments in return for small stakes in the companies we fund.All venture investors supply some combination of money and help. In our case the money is by far the smaller component. In fact, many of the startups we fund don’t need the money. We think of the money we invest as more like financial aid in college: it’s so people who do need the money can pay their living expenses while Y Combinator is happening.
See a list of the benefits and resources available to YC founders here.
What happens at Y Combinator? The most important thing we do is work with startups on their ideas. We’re hackers ourselves, and we’ve spent a lot of time figuring out how to make things people want. So we can usually see fairly quickly the direction in which a small idea should be expanded, or the point at which to begin attacking a large but vague one.
The questions at this stage range from apparently minor (what to call the company) to frighteningly ambitious (the long-term plan for world domination). Over the course of three months we usually manage to help founders come up with initial answers to all of them.
Though we fund all types of startups, we’re especially interested in web/mobile applications. We’ve been thinking about that problem longer than anyone else, and by now can visualize much of the space of possibilities.
The second most important thing we do is help founders deal with investors and acquirers. Yes, we can make introductions, but that part is easy. We spend much more time teaching founders how to pitch their startups to investors, and how to close a deal once they’ve generated interest. In the second phase we supply not just advice but protection; potential investors are more likely to treat you well if you come from YC, because how they treat you determines whether in the future we’ll steer deals toward or away from them.
We also get the startups we fund incorporated properly with all the standard paperwork, avoiding legal time-bombs that could cause serious hassles and delays later. We introduce founders to lawyers who will often agree to defer payment for legal work. We regularly help startups find and hire their first employees. We can help with intellectual property questions, like what to patent, and when. One of the least publicized things we do, for obvious reasons, is mediate disputes between founders. No startup thinks they’re going to need that, but most do at some point.
The kind of advice we give literally can’t be bought, because anyone qualified to give it is already rich. You can only get it from investors.
Format
Y Combinator has a novel approach to seed funding: we fund startups in batches. There are two each year, one from January through March and one from June through August. During each cycle we fund multiple startups.Applying for funding is also different at Y Combinator. Instead of submitting a business plan or making a slide presentation, you just fill out an application form. We invite the most promising groups to meet us in person, and we make funding decisions immediately afterward.
Most of the founders in each startup we fund (and always the CEO) are expected to move to the Bay Area for the duration of the three month cycle. During those three months we host a dinner once a week at Y Combinator, and at each dinner we invite an expert in some aspect of startups to speak. Typically speakers include startup founders, venture capitalists, journalists and executives from well-known technology companies. Speakers often end up advising or investing in startups they meet at the dinners.
About ten weeks in, we host Demo Day where all the startups can present their products and services to a specially selected audience. Ten weeks turns out to be enough for most groups to create a convincing prototype. In fact, many launch in less than ten weeks.
Y Combinator is occasionally described as a boot camp, but this is not really accurate. We probably get called that because we fund a lot of startups at once, and most have to move to participate. But the similarities end there; the atmosphere is the opposite of regimented.
Funding startups in batches works better for everyone than the usual approach. It’s more efficient for us, but also better for the startups, who probably end up helping one another at least as much as we help them.
Because we fund such large numbers of startups, Y Combinator has a huge alumni network, and there’s a strong ethos of helping out fellow YC founders. So whatever your problem, whether you need beta testers, a place to stay in another city, advice about a browser bug, or a connection to a particular company, there’s a good chance someone in the network can help you.
Philosophy
We think hackers are most productive when they can spend most of their time hacking. Our goal is to create an environment where you can focus exclusively on getting an initial version built.In any startup, the first couple months tend to be the most productive of all. Those first months define the company. So anything you can do to maximize their effects is probably a good idea.
We seem to have succeeded in creating a good environment, because many founders have told us that the first ten weeks of Y Combinator were the most productive period of their lives.
We try to interfere as little as possible in the startups we fund. We don’t take board seats or many of the other powers investors sometimes require. We offer lots of advice, but we can’t force anyone to take it. We realize that independence is one of the reasons people want to start startups in the first place. And frankly, it’s also one of the reasons startups succeed. Investors who try to control the companies they fund often end up destroying them.
One concrete consequence is that Y Combinator funding lets you sell early, if you want to. It can sometimes make sense to sell yourself when you’re small for a few million, rather than take more funding and roll the dice again.
If you take a large amount of money from an investor, you usually give up this option. But we realize (having been there) that an early offer from an acquirer can be very tempting for a group of young hackers. So if you want to sell early, that’s ok with us. We’d make more if you went for an IPO, but we’re not going to force anyone to do anything they don’t want to.
Why are we so flexible? Not (just) because we’re nice people. We realize that, as it gets cheaper to start a company, the balance of power is shifting from investors to hackers. We think the way of the future is simply to offer hackers the best possible deal.
Our goal is to be the preferred source of seed funding, and to be that we have to do right by everyone. The good hackers all know one another, so if the groups we fund feel they’re getting a bad deal, no one will want funding from us in the future. And later stage investors (especially VCs) also tend to know one another, so if the companies we seed end up being broken in any way, no one will want to invest in them in the future.
So far we seem to be on track, because both the startups we’ve funded and their next round of investors seem happy with us.
________________________________________
WHAT ARE ALL THOSE 99% US CITIZENS WHO USED TO FILL OUR LOCAL PUBLIC WORKS ENGINEERING AGENCIES DOING? They are getting online civil engineering degrees and told they are not SKILLED ENOUGH for global corporate hiring----ergo, foreign skilled civil engineers filling jobs who are simply those global 2% working for US CITY LOOKING LIKE ASIAN FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES
Overseas goes that 99% of WE THE PEOPLE to civil engineering jobs when they used to be our local government civil engineers working for PUBLIC INTEREST
Civil Engineering BSCE Degree
Prepare to Design and Develop the World’s Infrastructure
When you complete The University of Texas at Tyler’s bachelor of science in civil engineering degree, you are ready to take part in the planning, design, construction and operation of facilities essential to modern life, ranging from transit systems to offshore structures to space satellites.
Nearly 100% of UT Tyler civil engineering graduates find jobs upon graduation.
Get the opportunity for hands-on design assignments, starting with introductory courses.
ABET Logo
Be prepared to pass the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) Exam, your first step after graduation to becoming a civil engineer.
Accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET, http://www.abet.org.
UT Tyler civil engineering program graduates have gone on to jobs ranging from working with state highway departments and oil companies to designing buildings and water systems.
Bachelor’s in Civil Engineering: Build Basics. Explore Innovation.
Develop sound fundamentals in the engineering field’s key disciplines: structural, hydrology, transportation, construction, geotechnical, environmental and surveying.
Focus your capstone experience on an actual engineering project. Past capstones have involved UT Tyler students in designing the UT Tyler Art Complex, completing the University Center and realigning Lazy Creek and Patriot Avenue.
Study in a program that complies with the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Body of Knowledge guide, the new industry educational standard.
Network with peers as a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) student chapter that features speakers, sponsors activities like the concrete canoe competition and AISC Steel Bridge Competition, and keeps students connected with their career profession.
Complete a professional internship for academic credit in the civil engineering field.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, starting salaries in the civil engineering field are among the highest paid to college graduates.
Career opportunities are broad and available worldwide.
_______________________________________
We are not going to a continued discussion of global corporations controlling all our US city public agencies LIKE VEOLIA ENVIRONMENTAL capturing more and more and more our our US city agencies -----Baltimore tied to them the earliest. Along with global corporations controlling all water and sewage pipeline and civil engineering comes the movement of our local public agencies being staffed with civil engineers tied to making sure civil engineering is PUBLIC INTEREST----and below we see a BALTIMORE CITY PUBLIC WORKS OFFICIAL in CHOW MOVING FORWARD our US city water and waste development just as FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES OVERSEAS----driven by global corporate campuses-----driven by GLOBAL VEOLA stock holders-----MR Chow does not work for 99% of WE THE PEOPLE IN BALTIMORE and he is easily SHAMED at Baltimore Board of Estimates meetings in outsourcing contracts filled with rigging-----with a city having the worst in the nation LEAD WATER PIPE ENGINEERING DEBACLE being left unattended----AND with city water and waste pipeline rebuilding filled with broken water mains cheap repairs
The Baltimore Public Works on our water and sewage has been one long case of BAD CIVIL ENGINEERING---and yet the person placed at the head ------the 5% player----is made ENGINEER OF THE YEAR IN MARYLAND.
Veolia and Tampa Bay Water, FL, Water Treatment Partnership2003 NCPPP Infrastructure Award Winner
Project Location: Tampa, Florida
Public Sector Partner: Tampa Bay Water
Contact Name: Michelle Robinson, Assistant to General Manager for Communications, 727.791.2304, mrobinson@tampabaywater.org
Private Sector Partner: Veolia Water North America
Contact Name: Christie Kaluza, Marketing Communications Manager, 281.985.5481, christie.kaluza@veoliawaterna.com
Project Summary
Tampa Bay Water (TBW) is Florida’s largest public wholesale water supplier. Its members include Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas counties and the cities of Tampa, St. Petersburg and New Port Richey that together, serve approximately 2 million customers. The regional water agency draws on average 167 million gallons of water per day (MGD) from the Floridian Aquifer as well as from three other surface water sources – the Hillsborough River, Alafia River and Tampa Bypass Canal.
I have personally stood before Mr Chow SHAMING him on what is the worst of civil engineering regarding water and waste. Why is Chow being named a GREAT ENGINEER? Below we see him speaking about the need for more and more municipal bond debt tied to more Federal US Treasury debt tied to global corporate partnerships like VEOLA ENVIRONMENT all of which KILLS OUR LOCAL CIVIL ENGINEERING FOR 99% OF BALTIMORE CITIZENS.
BIO – Rudolph S. Chow, P.E.
Rudolph S. Chow, P.E., was appointed the Director of the Baltimore City Department of
Public Works (DPW) by the Honorable Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, effective February 1,
2014.
Mr. Chow brings more than 30 years of executive and managerial experience from both the
water industry and public works. He most recently served as Deputy Director of Baltimore City ’s DPW and was its Bureau Head for Water and Wastewater for three years prior to
becoming the Deputy.
The Department serves over 1.8 million residents of the City and the five surrounding counties with a combined Operating and Capital budget exceeding $1B annually.
Mr. Chow’s swift rise to DPW director is a direct reflection of his transformational agenda and visionary
leadership, which is designed to restore the City’s prominence in the water industry and the public works arena, and make DPW a best-in-class organization.
Prior to his arrival in Baltimore, Mr. Chow spent 27 years with the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC) in Laurel, MD. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Civil Engineering from George Washington University and a Master’s Degree in Environmental and Water Resources Engineering from University of Maryland College Park. He is a registered Professional Engineer in the States of Maryland and Delaware. He is an active member in ASCE, AWWA, WEF, WRF, NACWA, AMWA, APWA, and SWANA and serves on a number of boards and committees.
CHOW is the latest PUPPET of global Johns Hopkins and what is MOVING FORWARD in public works civil engineering for our WATER AND WASTE will be a DISASTER for 99% of citizens. Below we see CHOW hawking for municipal bond debt that will come back and bite city water rate-payers for debt NOT NEEDED to rebuild the entire Baltimore water and waste----THE CITY HAS THAT REVENUE. So, Chow is not the great CIVIL ENGINEER----he is that great 5% player.
'As Congress plans to consider a comprehensive tax reform proposal later this year, AMWA encourages members of this committee who prioritize affordable water infrastructure investments to stand up in support of tax-exempt municipal bond interest'.
Testimony of
Rudolph S. Chow, P.E.
Director, Department of Public Works
City of Baltimore, Maryland
On Behalf of the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies
Before the U.S. House of Representatives
Energy and Commerce Committee
Environment Subcommittee
Hearing on Reinvestment and Rehabilitation of Our Nation’s
Safe Drinking Water Delivery Systems
March 16, 2017
A wide range of drinking water, wastewater, stormwater, water reuse, recycling,
and desalination projects expected to cost in excess of $20 million are all eligible for WIFIA loan assistance–with WIFIA funding available to cover up to 49 percent of the
total project costs. WIFIA also accommodates smaller communities faced with lower-cost projects, as the program will offer loans to a project costing as little a
s $5 million in a community of 25,000 people or fewer.
The next several months will mark
an exciting time for WIFIA. Late last year
Congress appropriated $20 million to support WIFIA loans in 2017–with $3 million reserved to cover administrative expense
s at EPA. EPA expects to leverage the remaining $17 million
into more than $1 billion worth of loans to communities
across the United States. In January EPA subsequently circulated its first notice of funding availability to begin the process of soliciting WIFIA funding applications, with an April
10 deadline for communities to submit initial letters of interest that describe their potential WIFIA projects.
This timeframe could allow the first WIFIA loan funds to get
out the door to chosen applicants by t
he end of the year. Looking ahead, WIFIA is authorized as a pilot program only through the 2019 fiscal year. Should WIFIA’s initial round of funding prove successful, AMWA will urge
Congress to quickly reauthorize the program to build on and sustain this initial momentum.
Tax-Exempt Municipal Bonds
The most critical federal water infrastructure financing assistance mechanism is perhaps also the most overlooked during infrastructure policy discussions.
And though decisions on the fate of this mechanism will ultimately be made outside of this committee,
it is important for all members of Congress to be aware of its essential role in financing water infrastructure.
Since the federal tax code was established in 1913 interest earned on municipal bonds has been
exempt from federal income taxes. According to the Congressional Research Service, tax-exempt municipal bonds are the most prevalent water infrastructure financing mechanism, with at least 70 percent of U.S. water utilities relying on them to pay for infrastructure improvements. And a study completed last month by AMWA and the National Association of Clean Water Agencies found that in 2016 alone
9 communities across the United States issued nearly $38
billion in tax-exempt municipal bonds to finance water,
sewer, and sanitation projects.
Municipal bonds make infrastructure investments more affordable for communities because the lack of a federal tax
on their interest payments leads investors to charge lower interest rates than they otherwise would. These lower interest rates directly translate to lower financing costs, and thus more affordability for local water and wastewater ratepayers.
Without this tax benefit, water and wastewater utilities across the county would pay about 25 percent more in financing costs over their bond payback periods–essentially an additional tax on water infrastructure investment that would be borne by water utility ratepayers of all income levels.
In Maryland alone, cities and towns across the state issued roughly $46.5 million worth of tax-exempt municipal bonds to support water and wastewater infrastructure
projects in 2016. AMWA’s data indicates that fully taxing municipal bond interest would increase local financing costs on this debt by nearly $20 million over the expected
payback periods. Put another way, these increased financing costs represent about 42 percent of the value of Drinking Water and Clean Water State Revolving Fund assistance
delivered to Maryland in 2016.
As Congress plans to consider a comprehensive tax reform proposal later this year, AMWA encourages members of this committee who prioritize affordable water infrastructure investments to stand up in support of tax-exempt municipal bond interest.
Failing to maintain this effective and equitable subsidy
would drastically increase the cost of water infrastructure financing and permanently reduce the affordability of
water service to ratepayers in communities nationwide.
_______________________________________
American Metropolitan Water Association AMWA is GLOBAL VEOLA ENVIRONMENTAL tied to global IVY LEAGUE hedge funds----it has no attachment to our city public agencies and it is HAWKING FOR THESE SAME GLOBAL WALL STREET FRAUDULENT municipal bond deals. We don't have EXCELLENT CIVIL ENGINEERS in these US city public works agencies---we have 5% players.
US city citizens have paid water bill taxes for several decades ---enough to rebuild the entire Baltimore City water system THREE TIMES. Those taxes were MISAPPROPRIATED to grow global Johns Hopkins overseas. If we had REAL CIVIL ENGINEERS working for 99% of citizens they would not be loading more debt AND they would not be tying our public water to global corporations.
NO-TALENT CIVIL ENGINEERS MUST GO-----WE GET RID OF THEM BY GETTING RID OF US CITY MAYORS APPOINTING THEM ---CHOW IS SIMPLY TRANSFORMATIVE.
As we have shouted------US cities having LEAD WATER PIPES is no accident-----we have known for thousands of years how dangerous lead in AQUADUCTS is to public health and we had back in EISENHOWER era these same PUBLIC WORKS decisions being made by the same power structure then as today.
Here we are getting ready to rebuild our US city public water system allowing the same global 1% only more powerful and more disconnected to public health than ever before create CIVIL ENGINEERING AROUND WATER SUPPLIES tied to global corporations not caring at all for public interest.
Who are we leaving CIVIL ENGINEERING control of a vital rebuilding of our US city water and sewage? The same CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA failed engineering ethos caring not at all for the ability of 99% of citizens having SAFE AND PLENTIFUL FRESH WATER.
Maryland Schools Find High Lead Levels in Water
April 10, 2016 8:43 AM
(Photo credit Raul Arboleda/AFP/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON -- Harford County Public Schools officials weren’t surprised when tap water sampled last year at a classroom building for third-to-fifth graders at Youth’s Benefit Elementary showed lead at 130 parts per billion, nearly nine times the federal standard.
The well-water system serving the 43-year-old building in Bel Air has tested above 15 ppb eight times since 1993, making it among Maryland’s most consistent transgressors of the Environmental Protection Agency’s action level. Lead poisoning in children can cause brain and kidney damage, and while no amount of lead exposure is deemed safe, the EPA rule calls for water systems to keep levels below 15 ppb.
Harford County schools spokeswoman Jillian Lader said the school system has supplied Youth’s Benefit with bottled water since 2009, secured the water fountains, posted warnings at taps and sent all the required notices to parents and guardians. She said a more permanent solution is coming in August 2017, when the nearly 550 students and staff are scheduled to move into a new, $37 million school with an EPA-compliant water system.
That kind of spending is beyond the reach of most of the 28 small water systems statewide that have reported lead levels above the federal standard at least once between Jan. 1, 2013 and Sept. 30, 2015. Seven of the water systems serve primary or secondary schools, and most rely on bottled water or chemical treatment to reduce corrosion of lead-bearing pipes. The Baltimore city school system has supplied bottled water to all its schools since 2007 due to high lead levels from the plumbing.
Laura Runyeon fought for a new Youth’s Benefit school as president of the school’s PTA in 2012, citing lead levels as one reason. She said the elementary school complex was first targeted for replacement in 1996.
“We had been on the project list for many years,” said Runyeon, now a school board member in the county northeast of Baltimore. “Because of funding restrictions and other shifts in priorities, the capital projects list in the county had been delayed a number of times.”
Laytonsville Elementary in Montgomery County, just outside Washington, D.C., was on bottled water for years, starting in the 1990s, to keep students from drinking well water that has exceeded the lead rule in nine of 10 sampling periods since 1993. County public schools spokesman Derek Turner said the school system continues to provide bottled water, at a cost of $1,500 a year, despite completion last year of a $300,000 connection to the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission’s EPA-compliant water system.
“We haven’t done a review of the pipes that were in the school already. We don’t want to take a chance, so we’re just keeping them on bottled water,” he said.
The Somerset County public school system has dealt repeatedly with high lead levels at Deal Island Elementary School, serving about 150 students, teachers and staff on the Eastern Shore. A pipe replacement project, completed in 1997, was followed by installation of a chemical treatment system after sampling in September 2014 detected excessive lead in tap water from one classroom sink, said Sean Kenny, a Maryland Department of the Environment regulatory and compliance engineer. The school system provided bottled water for the rest of that school year at a cost of about $1,000, said Daniele Haley, supervisor of facilities and capital planning.
Sampling at the school last year showed lead at an EPA-compliant 9 ppb, down from 16 in 2014.
The testing procedure requires samples from at least five taps, and one bad tap can skew the results for the entire system. That’s what happened in 2014 at The Jefferson School, a special-education facility near Frederick owned by the Baltimore-based Sheppard Pratt Health System. Four samples tested below 15 ppb but one from a sink in the school finance office tested at 186, said Sheppard Pratt spokeswoman Jessica Kapustin. Maryland Department of the Environment spokesman Jay Apperson confirmed the story and said the problem was corrected by replacing the faucet and supply lines.
The three other schools reporting elevated lead readings in recent years are all private institutions, and one of them has closed.
Indian Creek Lower-Middle School in Crownsville reported 25 ppb from sampling in 2014 but 0 ppb from follow-up sampling last year after filtration systems were installed and all water fountains and some faucets were replaced.
Most Blessed Sacrament School in Berlin reported 19 ppb in 2014, but no excessive lead in 2015. The school has installed new corrosion control equipment, Apperson said.
Free State Montessori School in Fork, reported 18 ppb in samples collected in 2014. The school closed last June, Apperson said.
________________________________________
'The Right Of Minnesota Engineers To Decide Pipe Material ...'
Below we see what is ALREADY QUESTIONABLE decisions yet again on what kind of material these water pipeline will use-------this time we see a push for PLASTIC PIPELINE-----know what we learned from plastic containers for our drinks? The plastic chemicals leach into our drinks creating the same kinds of brain damage as that lead in pipes.
If WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% had problems back in the 1950s with CIVIL ENGINEERS tied to US city public works----we have SUPER-SIZED problems today ----MOVING FORWARD civil engineering over what pipeline material to use----will operate just as it does overseas in Foreign Economic Zones----third world civil engineering ON THE CHEAP.
The Right Of Minnesota Engineers To Decide Pipe Material ...www.concretepipe.org/wp-content/uploads/May-2016...The Right Of Minnesota Engineers To Decide Pipe Material Could Be At Risk ... When civil engineers contemplate pipe suitability for culverts ... Water Resources ...
ENGINEERING MINNESOTA
MY PERSPECTIVE
The Right Of Minnesota Engineers To
Decide Pipe Material Could Be At Risk
By Jason Kruger, B. S. C. E.
A legislator should not determine which type of knee implant device an orthopedic surgeon must use . . . The same should
hold true for civil engineers specifying storm sewer and
culvert pipe materials.
Minnesota’s city, county, state and consulting civil engineers
are currently free to determine which type of culvert and storm
sewer material is suitable for their projects. It’s a civil engineer’s professional right and duty to select concrete, plastic or metal pipe – possibly at the exclusion of the others -- based on sound engineering principles, judgement, their own experiences as civil engineers, and economics.
This right was further emphasized on July 6, 2012 when the
FHWA’s new MAP-21 highway reauthorization included the
following:
“Section 1525 - STATE AUTONOMY FOR CULVERT PIPE
SELECTION.” Not later than 180 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall modify section 635.411 of title 23, Code of Feral Regulations (as in effect on the date of enactment of this Act), to ensure that States shall have the autonomy to determine culvert and storm sewer material types to be included in the construction of a project on a Federal-aid highway.”
Additionally, on city and county state-aid projects, the Minnesota Department of Transportation allows city, county and consulting engineers to determine the most appropriate pipe material for their projects.
However, this right to engineering autonomy is being threatened around the U.S. at the state and local level, and the threat could reach Minnesota. Since early 2015, bills in over 10 states - and even a few counties - have been introduced at the behest of the plastic pipe industry. On the surface, these bills appear benign, oftentimes requiring that state and local governments must simply allow the use of “acceptable piping material” on storm sewer and culvert projects. But how does one define “acceptable piping material?”
Pipe materials are simply not equal. Concrete, plastic and metal pipe each have their own unique structural characteristics and installation requirements, and these differences are considerable.
When civil engineers contemplate pipe suitability for culverts and storm sewers, they consider several engineering factors, including (but not necessarily limited to): soil loads, vehicle live loads, bedding factor, availability of engineered granular embedment material, extent of field inspection, local experience, and utility contractor reputation.
Civil engineers also consider economics:
pipe material cost,
granular backfill cost (varies with each pipe material type),
expected pipe service life, local experience, and differences in
contractor installation costs for concrete, plastic and metal pipe.
Although the Minnesota legislature has yet to deliberate the
aforementioned, civil engineering professional organizations are
clearly against the idea. For example, the American Council of
Engineering Companies (ACEC), representing civil engineering
consulting firms across Minnesota and the U.S., takes the position that consulting civil engineers should be allowed to determine which type of pipe material is the most appropriate for a given project, whether it be plastic, metal or concrete. To use an analogy, most folks can agree that a legislator should not determine which type of knee implant device an orthopedic surgeon must use – it should be the orthopedic surgeon’s years of training and experience that ultimately determines the knee implant material. The same should hold true for civil engineers specifying storm sewer and
culvert pipe materials.
The American Water Works Association (AWWA) also steadfastly opposes this type of legislation. In a national memo to municipalities, the AWWA states:
“...The AWWA is neutral as to which
materials utilities select for infrastructure
projects. While AWWA believes that there
is an application for all types of material,
we also know that not all materials are
equally suitable for all applications. We
have members who feel very strongly
(both positively and negatively) about the
different pipe materials that are available.
The AWWA Water Utility Council’s
opposition to the legislation, however, is
based on the negative effect that this effort
would have on the ability of utilities and
design professionals to continue to best
serve their communities by maintaining
control over material selection...”
Civil engineers should be free to select the
right pipe for the job. Public safety isn’t
a political issue, it’s a social issue. The
decisions necessary to preserve that safety
should be left to licensed professional
engineers already using sound engineering
principles and personal knowledge gained
through years of experience.
(Jason Kruger is Technical Resource
Director for the Minnesota Concrete
Pipe Association.
____________________________________________
Please be engaged citizens and KNOW what today's civil engineers in your neck of the woods is using as they rebuild our US city water and sewage----a state having used LEAD WATER PIPES in the 1950s is likely to make that same BAD CIVIL ENGINEERING decision yet again........as in Baltimore.
WE WILL BE TOLD GLOBAL VEOLA ENVIRONMENT'S DECISIONS ARE PROPRIETARY---
'The purpose of this new partnership between Veolia and WatchFrog is the production and commercialization of this measurement tool that will help to measure the elimination of these pollutants in wastewater treatment processes.
Veolia's existing proprietary tertiary wastewater treatment technologies, including ActifloCarb, remove emerging micro pollutants such as endocrine disruptors. Combined with the oxidizing action of ozone, the process can eliminate more than 95 % of endocrine disruptors and their byproducts'
PROPRIETARY WASTEWATER TREATMENT TECHNOLOGIES.
Please take a look at these pipe materials and the conditions for which they are fit and REMEMBER------the manufacturing of these products are often CORRUPT------we need a functioning city public health department but US cities do not have this today so be that engaged citizens to KNOW what is being placed under our roads.
There’s A Perfect Pipe For Every Water And Wastewater Project
Aging infrastructure is a prime concern in the water and wastewater world. And with good reason. According to a 2007 EPA survey, the nationwide infrastructure need is estimated at $334.8 billion from January 2007 through December 2027. The largest portion of that figure – $200.8 billion – represents needs in water transmission and distribution projects.
Municipalities indeed face a gigantic task: Many pipes are nearing the end of their life spans, and the time to choose a replacement has arrived. In a long-term project like pipe replacement, where life span can exceed 100 years, proper material choice is critical. Here, we examine the most common types of municipal pipe material along with a general guide of the strengths, weaknesses and uses for each.
Ductile iron pipe
Cast-iron pipe, which is the predecessor of ductile iron, is part of the infrastructural backbone of this country. Currently, more than 600 municipalities boast 100-year-old working cast-iron pipe systems, and more than 20 have pipe that’s reached the 150-year mark.
“It’s held up very well,” says Gregg Horn of the Ductile Iron Pipe Research Association. “Our argument would be if the infrastructure needs to be rehabilitated that ductile iron would offer a similar or better service than cast iron.”
Primarily used on the water side, ductile iron is a cast product manufactured almost entirely from ferric scrap. The pipe’s materials are 95 percent recycled, a feature that has helped it earn a SMaRT sustainable product certification. Ductile and clay pipe are the only products in the buried infrastructure industry to claim this bragging right.
Despite its strength, ductile pipe is subject to corrosion from aggressive environments caused by acids, either in the interior of the pipe from acidic sewage materials or on the exterior from acidic soil conditions. To combat the problem in water service, the inside of the pipe is lined with a cement mortar lining, which protects the pipe and forms a barrier. Sewers can be a little more challenging for ductile iron, so a special internal pipe lining is sometimes needed.
“It also improves the hydraulics and helps water through the pipe,” Horn says. “Its good flow characteristics are maintained. We’re not that worried about internal corrosion from water.”
The Ductile Iron Pipe Research Association has been researching external corrosion for decades, and its most recent recommendation is an enhanced polyethylene encasement. Horn references a recent case study in which workers dug up and examined ductile iron pipe that was installed in 1958 in Lafourche Parish, La.
“When you peel the polyethylene off, the pipe looks beautiful. It looks brand-new,” he says. “If you protect against external corrosion, there’s really nothing that can go wrong.”
Steel pipe
Steel pipe, which was first introduced in the early 1800s, has a long history of use in the United States, and has been recognized for its excellent resistance to high internal pressures and pressure surges. Large-diameter steel piping is most often used in pressure pipes for water and wastewater applications. It can be made using three methods: seamless, welded and casting mold.
Like other metal pipes, steel is prone to corrosion, so it is lined with an asphalt coating when used in water mains to protect against acidic water. This also retains its good flow characteristics. The drawback to the various coatings and linings is that they can be damaged during installation.
Steel’s primary benefit is brute strength. Cracking typically doesn’t occur, and under abnormal loads, the material bends rather than breaking.
Vitrified clay pipe
Clay pipe has been used for millennia, with the earliest examples dating to 4000 B.C. The material was used in Mesopotamia, the Minoan civilization and the Roman Empire, and has a long pedigree of city sewer system applications. But today’s clay pipe is nothing like those early examples. Nor is it anything like what was prominently used in the United States in the 1950s and ’60s.
“Most people who aren’t familiar with modern clay pipe associate it with something that’s been in their system for more than 100 years, and they’re different,” says Jeff Boschert of the National Clay Pipe Institute. “Their opinion of the product is based off of something that isn’t made anymore.”
Primarily used in gravity-flow sanitary sewer systems, vitrified clay pipe has improved greatly in this age of technology. Computer-controlled kiln firing means the final product is uniform and meets quality standards. Gone are the laminations in the pipe body thanks to a high densification extruding process.
“Years ago, there were probably 100 different factories manufacturing a porous product that needed glazing on the interior and exterior,” Boschert says. “But the modern-day pipe is tight, dense and nonporous. The body of the material itself is totally different and stronger.’
The joints have also evolved. Decades ago, clay pipe did not have a factory-applied joint, which meant infiltration and exfiltration along with root intrusion and loss of pipe support. Now, joints are factory-applied using polyester with an O-ring or a polyurethane material that creates a leak-free joint. Although the pipe is rigid, the flexible compression joints provide forgiveness if the ground moves.
Clay, which has an average compressive strength of 18,000 psi, can also be used as a direct jacked pipe in trenchless applications. Vitrified clay jacking pipe was introduced to the trenchless market in 1992, and since then, it has been used in pilot-tube microtunneling, slurry microtunneling, static pipe bursting and sliplining applications.
Vitrified clay pipe really shines in highly corrosive environments, even in the presence of sewer gases and solvent-based chemicals. The only chemical known to affect clay pipe is hydrofluoric acid, which is not likely to be found in sanitary sewers.
“No pipe material can hold a candle to the corrosion-resistant properties of clay pipe,” Boschert says. “Many breweries have used it because of its corrosion resistance and temperature parameters.”
Clay pipe is valued for its longevity, corrosion-resistant properties and sustainability. However, it does have some limitations: It is typically limited to gravity-flow applications, and the maximum pipe length is 10 feet due to the kiln firing process.
Concrete pipe
Concrete, which is one of the world’s most common building materials, is used in both gravity flow and pressure pipe. Precast gravity-flow pipe is manufactured in several shapes, including round, elliptical, arched and box, and is used in sanitary sewers, storm drains and culverts. Concrete pressure pipe, which is a separate classification, is primarily used for potable water.
“Concrete pipe is pretty simple,” says Matt Childs, president of the American Concrete Pipe Association. “You’ve got a big, strong, heavy pipe, and as long as you don’t mess it up, it’s going to be there for a really long time. We’ve got pipe that’s been in the ground for 150 years.”
This rigid pipe system is 85 percent dependent on pipe strength and only 15 percent dependent on the soil envelope for underlying support, which makes it a good candidate for low-lying or marshy environments.
“Our biggest advantage is durability, strength and longevity,” Childs says. “We also have very good flow characteristics because we have a smooth surface.”
Despite its durability, concrete is susceptible to H2S attacks, and in extremely acidic soil, it can corrode. To combat these problems, concrete pipe can be coated with a plastic liner, and special measures can be used to prevent corrosion in acidic soils.
“We do like to be honest and say that you have to plan for it,” Childs says.
Just like with any other pipe material, concrete pipe can fail due to improper installation. Childs reinforces a common theme in the industry: installation is key.
“If there’s a failure, typically it’s the installation,” he says. “We can have problems with a contractor driving over a pipe before it’s installed … maybe driving heavy equipment over the top to cause heavy compacting. We have problems with installation, too. If it’s not put in straight, we can run into cracks.”
HDPE pipe
Borrowing technology first used by the gas and oil industry, high-density polyethylene pipe has also become a popular choice for water and wastewater applications because of its noncorrosive, highly flexible characteristics. Also, its heat-fused joints mean zero water loss, which is an important quality as worldwide water value increases.
“In other countries, water is gold. Not in the United States,” says Camille Rubeiz, director of engineering at the Plastics Pipe Institute. “[Water loss] is unacceptable. Today we have new technologies, and they should be embraced.”
This fusion process creates an unbreakable bond and a joint as strong as the rest of the pipe. HDPE is also highly resistant to corrosion and has a low failure rate, which further decreases life span costs. But Rubeiz states that proper planning, design, installation and inspection are essential when using HDPE.
“It’s very forgiving, but that is really a weakness because it can get abused,” he says, referring to installation shortcuts. “We’re not buying a T-shirt that we can throw away after Christmas. This is a 100-year project. Utilities, consultants and contractors have to be given enough time and resources to do a project well.”
Municipalities in earthquake-prone areas should consider HDPE because of its flexibility and ductility. According to a report by the Water Research Foundation, which studied recent earthquakes and their implications on U.S. water utilities, HDPE capably withstood tremendous seismic activity. The study states that in the 2010 Chile earthquake, for instance, “while the rest of the water system suffered thousands of damaged pipes, no HDPE pipe was damaged.” The report recommends HDPE for common distribution pipes and service laterals in high seismic zones.
HDPE is available in sizes from 1/2 to 65 inches, covering everything from service lines to distribution and transmission mains. Its use has expanded across Europe, and according to Rubeiz, nearly 90 percent of new pipe installations in Europe are HDPE.
“When installers and designers follow the book, there should be no issues,” he says. “All conditions need to be considered at design. There shouldn’t be shortcuts on something you want to last more than 100 years.”
PVC pipe
Polyvinyl chloride, which scientists first stumbled upon in the 19th century, is one of the oldest synthetic materials. It wasn’t until World War II, however, that demand for the material accelerated when it was used to insulate wiring on military ships. In the decades following, PVC use skyrocketed, and now it’s commonly used for sanitary sewers and potable water distribution lines. PVC is a thermoplastic, meaning it can be softened and reformed, and a fusible version is now available, which competes with HDPE in trenchless construction.
This pipe is very corrosion resistant and is often used to coat other materials that are affected by acidic conditions. In a 2008 study by the Water Research Foundation titled “Impact of Hydrocarbons on PE/PVC Pipes and Pipe Gaskets,” researchers concluded that PVC is also impervious to gasoline, the most common hydrocarbon contaminant.
This corrosion resistance translates to a low failure rate. A 2012 survey by Utah State University indicated that when compared to cast iron, ductile iron, concrete, steel and asbestos cement, PVC had the lowest failure rate, with only 2.6 failures per 100 miles of pipe per year.
“This is space-age stuff,” says Bruce Hollands, executive director of the PVC Pipe Association of North America. “It’s a high-technology material that removes corrosion completely from the equation.”
Cost is a large reason why municipalities are drawn to PVC. Even when including backfill and labor expenses, PVC is typically a less expensive replacement option than other materials. Hollands states that in some situations, a 70 percent savings can be realized when using the material.
That said, PVC is not without some limitations.
“There are two reasons you wouldn’t use PVC,” Hollands says. “You wouldn’t specify it for situations with operating pressures higher than 305 psi, and you wouldn’t use it in an application that requires temps above 140 degrees. These conditions, however, are extremely rare in water and sewer systems.”
An American Water Works Association Research Foundation study estimates the life expectancy of PVC to be in excess of 110 years. Pipe sizes range from 4 to 60 inches for both sewer and water applications. The 54- and 60-inch-diameter water pipes are a relatively new addition to PVC and are currently not as widely available.
Making decisions
Pipe material selection can be a complex process, filled with politics, preconceived ideas and budget parameters. And to complicate the matter, municipal leaders must now navigate through marketing hype as manufacturers fight for a piece of the infrastructure pie.
What it boils down to is considering uses, soil conditions and reasons for previous failures, and then making a well-informed materials decision. After all, if all goes well, a pipe replacement decision should only come around once every hundred years.
Because these development issues are so CRITICAL and we are in the midst of vital infrastructure building let's take one more week to look at the movers and shakers of today's development. We showed the actual public policy that leads to BUILD TO FAIL----let's look at civil institutions creating these bad civil policies.
We talked about BUSH/CHENEY and Halliburton et al global development corporations as being ground zero for BUILD TO FAIL. They moved trillions of dollars to those global 1% through FRAUD then used patronage to build that 5% global Wall Street player white, black, and brown citizens tied to development MOVING FORWARD POLICIES OF BUILD TO FAIL.
The US never had stellar civic leadership in regards to development---but the word CONSERVATIVE to the right wing and the words social progressive to the left wing kept development these 300 years in national interest
The Blog of Propaganda The United States has been unique because of its famous "American Dream." A national idea of success and happiness. But how has idea come to be? Although Andrew Truslow Adams' The Epic of America , originally defined the term, how has the definition been altered to an idea of "super"-success and fame? To find the answer one only needs to look at pop-culture to see the obvious propaganda surrounding the United States. Further examination will also show that the alteration began long ago and has been a staple in the country's history. In the following blog, I will explore how propaganda has defined the American Dream and persuaded people to chase after its success.
The CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH was built on propaganda. The national media sold the idea of GOLD IN THEM THERE HILLS because the global 1% wanted to develop CA by bringing lots and lots of people to build towns so they painted images of wealth. THE AMERICAN DREAM of early 1800s. Our native citizens and our wagon train settlers lost life in this development so the US has always been a LAND OF OPPORTUNITY FOR A GLOBAL 1% DRIVEN BY PROPAGANDA.
DOES HISTORY HAVE TO REPEAT ITSELF? WE ARE BEING HELD HOSTAGE TO A BUILD TO FAIL THIS TIME COMING INTO CLIMATE CHANGE, TRIBUTE STATE NATURAL RESOURCE DESTRUCTION---NOT END TIMES BUT DELIBERATE DEVELOPMENT TO FAIL 99% OF WE THE PEOPLE.
ENTER CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA EMPIRE-BUILDING NEO-LIBERALISM ----DOING ANYTHING TO ACCUMULATE AS MUCH WEALTH YOU CAN -----CIVIL ENGINEERING TO FAIL.
Let's rebuild New Orleans yet again so the next hurricane with greater intensity can blow it down again killing the wealth of 99% of citizens in homes, property, small businesses----while those global % and that 5% of player tied to contracting businesses move all our government tax to CIVIL FAILURE. THIS is why America is in decline and a FAILED STATE. Those global Wall Street Baltimore Development FAKE 'labor and justice' 5% GREEKS and freemasons working for the global 1% PRETENDING to help those poor, the old, the children, those needing jobs.
Maria weakens to Category 2, Puerto Rico dealing with threat of dam failure
- By Morgan Winsor
- JULIA JACOBO
Hector Retamal/AFP/Getty Images
Death toll rising in Puerto Rico and Caribbean after Hurricane Maria barrels through
Fears in storm-battered Puerto Rico have shifted to a failing dam as the U.S. territory reels from the devastating impact of Hurricane Maria.
Early Saturday morning, the National Weather Service said failure of the Guajataca Dam in northwest Puerto Rico is "imminent" and could cause "life-threatening flash flooding" downstream on the the Guajataca River. Dam operators said it began to show signs of failing, causing flash flooding, on Friday around 2:10 p.m. ET.
"Move to higher ground now," the National Weather Service urged residents in the area. "This is an extremely dangerous and life-threatening situation."
At a press conference Friday afternoon, Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello said all available resources were sent to evacuate people near Lake Guajataca, where the dam at the northern end is in danger of breaking. This evening NWS San Juan tweeted that nearly 8,000 people live in the could be affected. Earlier in the day the number given had been an estimated 70,000 people.
Maria weakened to a Category 2 hurricane Sunday, with maximum sustained winds of 110 mph as of 5 a.m. ET. The storm at the time was moving toward the north at 9 mph and its eye was located about 530 miles south-southeast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, according to the National Hurricane Center.
The storm is still projected to stay off the East Coast, but tropical storm or hurricane watches could be put in effect for the Carolina or Mid-Atlantic coasts on Sunday with tropical storm-force winds currently extending 240 miles from the eye.
The death toll in storm-hit areas is rising as Hurricane Maria continued to barrel through the Caribbean on Saturday, three days after its landfall in Puerto Rico left the island in the dark.
At least 24 people have died in the storm, including 15 in Dominica, seven in Puerto Rico and two in Guadeloupe.
Maria came ashore in Puerto Rico early Wednesday as a powerful Category 4 hurricane with 155 mph winds -- the first Category 4 to hit the island since 1932. The storm wiped out the island's power grid and dumped 20 to 30 inches of rain in 24 hours, with some areas seeing 40 inches locally.
There is potential for the death toll in Puerto Rico to rise, the island's secretary of the department of safety said Friday.
Although Maria has hurtled past the island, Puerto Rico will see heavy rainfall through Saturday from the storm's trailing rain bands, likely an additional 3 to 6 inches, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Water supplies on the island are lacking because of the lack of power, Rossello said. In addition, the water agency suffered "severe damage," he said.
Rossello has also extended a curfew and ban on alcohol sales on the island from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. ET through Sunday.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo departed for Puerto Rico on Friday to bring donated supplies to the island and assess the need after Puerto Rico's governor made a request for aid. Cuomo traveled with members of the National Guard as well as New York congresswoman and Puerto Rico native Nydia Velázquez.
Residents of Puerto Rico's hard-hit north coast were seen wading through floodwater inside what's left of their homes this week.
Every vulnerable house should be considered "completely or partially destroyed," and every flood-prone area was damaged, Rossello said.
ABC News correspondents observed widespread destruction in the town of Guaynabo, about 10 miles south of San Juan where trees and power lines were downed and storefronts and building facades had crumbled. Neighborhoods in Guaynabo were filled with waist-deep floodwaters and destroyed homes that were apparently not built to any kind of code.
Guaynabo resident Ramon Caldero and his family hunkered down in their kitchen during the storm, which caused part of the ceiling to collapse in his sister's room.
"I was worried," Caldero told ABC News on Thursday. "My sister was screaming."
Christy Caban of Nashville, Tennessee, rode out the storm with her husband and 13-month-old baby in their hotel room just east of San Juan.
"We don't have power, we don't have water," Caban told ABC News on Thursday.
Puerto Rico's emergency management agency said 100 percent of the island had lost power by Wednesday afternoon, noting that anyone with electricity was using a generator. The governor said today that ships are arriving with generators.
Abner Gomez Cortes, executive director of the agency, told ABC News more than 12,000 people are currently in shelters, and hospitals are running on generators. Two hospitals -- one in Caguas and one in Bayamon -- were damaged in the storm.
In a news conference Saturday, Rossello said 9 deaths were blamed on the storm.
Running water has been restored for 20 percent to 25 percent of the island, or about 320,000 customers, and about 25 percent of telecommunications are working, primarily in the San Juan metropolitan area.
Meanwhile, telecommunications throughout the island have "collapsed," Cortes said, describing the storm as unprecedented.
Multiple transmission lines sustained damage, according to Ricardo Ramos, director of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority. Ramos said he hopes to start launching helicopters by this weekend to begin inspecting the lines.
The curfew Rossello imposed a curfew on the island Wednesday from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. ET, which was initially ordered through Saturday, has been extended indefinitely, and the hours changed to 7 p.m. to 5 a.m.
Puerto Rico narrowly missed landfall by Hurricane Irma two weeks ago, with the Category 5 storm traveling just north of the U.S. territory. The island suffered heavy rain and wind, but nothing near the widespread damage incurred by Maria.
Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on Thursday, President Donald Trump said Hurricane Maria "absolutely obliterated" the U.S. territory and "totally destroyed" its power grid, but that the recovery process will begin soon with "great gusto."
Puerto Rico "got hit with winds, they say they’ve never seen winds like this anywhere," Trump added.
On the forecast track
Maria passed near Turks and Caicos on Friday. The storm's core is expected to turn toward the north by Saturday night, moving away from the Bahamas and into the open waters of the western Atlantic Ocean, according to the National Hurricane Center.
On Friday, the National Hurricane Center warned a "dangerous storm surge" coupled with "large and destructive waves" will raise water levels by as much as 9 to 12 feet above normal tide levels in parts of Turks and Caicos and the Southeast Bahamas. And through Saturday, Maria was expected to produce up to 20 inches of rain in parts of Dominican Republic and Turks and Caicos.
Though Maria is forecast to gradually weaken next week as the hurricane moves into the cooler waters of the Atlantic Ocean, little change in strength is forecast during the next 48 hours, according to the National Hurricane Center.
The diminishing storm will move between Bermuda and the eastern coast of the United States before likely heading further east and out to sea sometime next week, according to the latest forecast models.
The storm's path is still expected to steer clear of the U.S. mainland.
"At this point, I don’t think Maria will have any major impacts to the mainland besides the high surf and rip currents," ABC News senior meteorologist Max Golembo said Friday.
Ground swells generated by Maria's intense winds are increasing along parts of the southeastern U.S. coast and Bermuda. Ground swells also continue to affect Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the northern coast of Hispaniola, Turks and Caicos and the Bahamas. These swells will likely cause "life-threatening surf and rip current conditions," according to the National Hurricane Center.
Other Caribbean islands devastated
Maria also did severe damage to other Caribbean islands without making landfall.
Dominica's prime minister, Roosevelt Skerrit, told ABS Television on Thursday that at least 15 people have died and many homes are destroyed beyond repair. The death toll in the island nation is likely to rise and search and rescue missions are ongoing. At least 16 additional people are missing in some communities, he said.
“We have many deaths, but it is a miracle that we do not have hundreds of deaths in the country,” Skerrit told ABS Television.
According to Skerrit, the island has no electricity and only limited telecommunications have been restored since the storm. Some villages are now only accessible by sea or via helicopter
The prime minister told ABS Television that his home's roof was ripped off during the storm and he had to take cover under a bed to protect himself from falling debris.
While wiping away tears during the emotional interview, Skerrit issued an urgent appeal for desperately needed aid, namely water, tarps and baby supplies.
“It’s going to take us a very long time to get back,” he said.
Reuters
Damaged homes from Hurricane Maria are shown in this aerial photo over the island of Dominica, Sept.19, 2017.
Hartley Henry, an adviser to Dominica's prime minister, told reporters via WhatsApp on Wednesday that his country has suffered a "tremendous loss of housing and public buildings" since the storm hit, ripping off roofs and tearing doors from hinges. Dominica's main general hospital "took a beating" and "patient care has been compromised," he said.
"The country is in a daze -- no electricity, no running water," Henry said via a WhatsApp message. "In summary, the island has been devastated."
The Ross University School of Medicine, based in Portsmouth, Dominica, announced Wednesday on Facebook that it is attempting to make contact with all of its students. More than 1,400 students and faculty have signed the registration sheet so far, and the school has reached out to the family members of more than 700 others, who informed them that they are safe.
In Guadeloupe, officials announced Wednesday two people were killed and two others were missing in the storm's wake.
France's Interior Minister Gerard Collomb said some 80,000 people in Guadeloupe -- around 40 percent of the population -- were without electricity Wednesday. Many roads there are impassible due to flooding and French Navy planes have not been able to assess the damage on the island due to bad weather conditions.
In Martinique, about 70,000 homes were without electricity and 50,000 homes did not have access to safe drinking water Wednesday. Fallen trees and downed power poles have blocked many roads there, Collomb said.
Police and soldiers have been deployed in both Martinique and Guadeloupe to ensure security. More than 3,000 first responders are on the French Caribbean islands, according to Collomb.
The U.S. Department of State sent a message of solidarity Wednesday to the people of Dominica and all across the Caribbean who were affected by Maria.
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Why do New Orleans and Baltimore have the highest murder rate? They have the WORST CIVIC LEADERS.
When we allow the global 1% now appearing as GLOBAL BANKING/GLOBAL HEDGE FUNDS those having stolen all US wealth from massive ROBBER BARON FRAUDS----be the investors in rebuilding our US cities we will have FAILED STATE CIVIL ENGINEERING. Bloomberg is the face of this as BOSS TWEED for WALL STREET so he as others drives the funding made available in our US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones---Baltimore directly tied to Bloomberg via GLOBAL JOHNS HOPKINS which is global because it was tops in gains through massive frauds.
OUR US CITIES DO NOT NEED PATRONAGE FROM THE VERY PEOPLE WHO FLEECED OUR US CITIES.
CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA ALL HAVE THEIR CONNECTIONS NOW TO THESE HEDGE FUNDS SO THEIR POLITICAL MACHINES DRIVE CIVIL ENGINEERING TO FAIL.
Baltimore Board of Estimates is that civic agency tied to Baltimore Development and Greater Baltimore Committee black, white---not so much brown yet 5% global Wall Street players all flashing those GREEK/freemason signs to send a quick buck to FAILED CIVIL ENGINEERING. Well, the Mayor of Baltimore has his/her Greek friends and they are tied to this freemason group so all contracting awards go to them WHO CARES THAT THE DEVELOPMENT IS FAILED? Our 99% of citizens do----and they are constantly told these FAILED CIVIL ENGINEERING PLANS give them jobs, jobs, jobs and temporary housing before they are washed away....pushed out through eminent domain.
THOSE DASTARDLY 5% GLOBAL WALL STREET PLAYERS KNOW THIS-----CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA NOW TRUMP.
So, Bloomberg was given his VENTURE CAPITAL fund to buy governors and mayors in US cities FAKE ALT RIGHT ALT LEFT---working for global 1%. So, Bloomberg was given his VENTURE CAPITAL fund to buy governors and mayors in US cities FAKE ALT RIGHT ALT LEFT---working for global 1%. Ben Jealous was given his venture capital fund to do the same ----as we have a WARNOCK in Baltimore with this same kind of fund existing only as conduits for global 1% deciding our US city development ---AND THEY ARE ALL SHIP OF FOOLS---only talent---lying, cheating, and stealing.
OH, REALLY MITCH LANDRIEU???????? FAITH-BASED IN WHAT????????.
“Everything we do here has a nonprofit component, a faith-based component, a philanthropic component and a government component,” says New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu. (J.D. Lasica/SocialMedia.biz)
How Bloomberg’s Still Changing the Way Cities Operate
Bloomberg Philanthropies and other organizations have poured an unprecedented amount of money into making cities more innovative and collaborative. What happens when the money runs out?
by J.B. Wogan | April 2015
(Shutterstock; Illustration by Michele Melcher)
For five consecutive years, New Orleans had the highest murder rate of any U.S. city its size. It was a distinction that Mayor Mitch Landrieu was eager to shed when he assumed office in 2010. But the city was still recovering from the one-two punch of Hurricane Katrina and the national recession. “What we inherited was a city teetering on the edge of bankruptcy,” Landrieu says. It didn’t have the financial resources to deal with its crime problem by simply increasing police manpower.
So the mayor went where the money was: to outside organizations that are in the business of partnering with cities. He pursued foundations and nonprofits. He courted private companies and other levels of government. And he was successful. Indeed, Landrieu may be the current champion among American mayors when it comes to public-private partnerships. In last year’s budget, New Orleans received more than $15 million from state and local foundations alone. So many positions in city government receive some kind of outside funding -- including state and federal grants -- that the mayor’s office can’t count them all. Private funders have paid for computer programmers, a climate adaptation officer, and a civil engineer focused on pedestrians and bicyclists, along with many other positions.
Landrieu says his constituents now realize that New Orleans can’t survive without help from outsiders. “Literally everything we do here has a nonprofit component, a faith-based component, a philanthropic component and a government component,” he says.
The most consequential of Landrieu’s decisions was to apply for a grant from Bloomberg Philanthropies, which was offering several million dollars each to cities willing to create an “innovation team” of in-house consultants that would apply data-oriented problem-solving to urban challenges. The team members -- some were longtime public employees and others came from the private sector -- would be sent to troubled city agencies. The premise behind the Bloomberg grants was that a team from the mayor’s office could make government more effective at relatively little cost by teaching public employees how to be more collaborative, strategic and focused on measurable results. Unlike most foundation grants, this money wasn’t tied to a specific policy area. Its sole mission was to stimulate innovative management practices.
That appealed to Landrieu. “It fit perfectly into our governing model,” he says. “We found them and they found us and we hugged really tightly.”
The New Orleans team’s top priority was to do something about the murder rate. They reviewed crime data and convened police, academics and social services agencies. For years, local law enforcement officials had insisted that New Orleans did not have a gang problem. The team’s review revealed that to be wrong. Most of the murders were the product of petty disputes involving a relatively small number of people in a few neighborhoods. In other words, gang warfare. That led to targeting support services and law enforcement in gang hot spots. The results were dramatic. The murder rate began to decline in 2013, and in 2014 there were fewer murders in New Orleans than in any year since 1971. It’s true that many cities have experienced falling murder rates in recent years, but New Orleans had seen little of this improvement until the innovation task force moved in.
“Everything we do here has a nonprofit component, a faith-based component, a philanthropic component and a government component,” says New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu. (J.D. Lasica/SocialMedia.biz)
The news from New Orleans was exactly what Michael Bloomberg had hoped to hear. Bloomberg began his national innovation campaign in 2010, while he was still serving as mayor of New York City. His foundation sought to spread an entrepreneurial spirit to local governments around the country. In 2011, Bloomberg Philanthropies awarded a total of $24 million to five cities: Atlanta; Chicago; Louisville, Ky.; Memphis, Tenn.; and New Orleans. The mayors of those cities weren’t required to pursue any particular agenda. They simply had to demonstrate that they were entrepreneurial.
So far, every city has had a success story to report. Memphis reduced its retail vacancy rate by 30 percent in key commercial corridors. Atlanta found housing for almost a quarter of its chronically homeless population. Chicago cut the licensing time for new restaurants by 33 percent. Louisville redirected about a quarter of its low-severity 911 calls away from emergency rooms and into a doctor’s office or urgent care center. The first round of results encouraged Bloomberg Philanthropies to announce another $45 million last year to support 12 more U.S. cities.
Municipal governments have rarely been given private grants of that magnitude before. Foundations have worked alongside city officials for decades to address specific policy issues, such as alleviating poverty, but the Bloomberg grants are moving urban philanthropy in a new direction. Foundations are starting to see ways that they can trigger structural and cultural change in city governments, says Ben Hecht, president and CEO of Living Cities, a nonprofit with a board made up of foundation presidents. (Disclosure: The Governing Institute has partnered with Living Cities and the Citi Foundation on the City Accelerator, a project focused on innovations for low-income residents.) “A tall soda thing or an obesity thing -- those can come and go with the whim of the mayor,” Hecht says. “But if you actually change the way government operates and it becomes the new normal, that’s a real change. That’s enduring.”
Five years ago, about a dozen mayors came to New York to discuss ways that the Bloomberg Philantrophies could help municipal government function better. The mayors described structural problems that were holding them back, such as employees’ fear of risk-taking and a lack of coordination across departments. James Anderson, who oversees Bloomberg programs on government innovation, used the conversation as a springboard for learning how municipalities solve organizational inertia.
Anderson, a former communications director in the Bloomberg administration, assembled a team of ex-city hall employees for the project. They studied more than a dozen promising initiatives in cities and countries around the world, from Baltimore to England to Malaysia. Anderson’s team came back with a prescriptive model for how municipal bureaucrats could be more inventive, data-driven and collaborative with nongovernmental partners.
A lot of the model comes directly from the style of government Bloomberg introduced in New York. During the Bloomberg years, New York City earned a reputation for trying a raft of new ideas, particularly in social policy. In 2006, his administration launched the Center on Economic Opportunity, which uses government funding to attract additional private money to test promising antipoverty strategies. In one case, New York City emulated successful programs in Brazil and Mexico, where the governments were offering cash assistance to low-income households on the condition that they meet benchmarks for school attendance, quarterly grades and preventive health.
The center has operated more than 60 programs in the past nine years, each receiving its own third-party evaluation. So far, more than a dozen programs that didn’t demonstrate a positive impact have been discontinued. Others that yielded positive results have received an expansion in funding. To a significant extent, it is an effort to apply techniques of venture capitalism to a public environment.
After Anderson and his team published a report on their review of innovative global practices, Bloomberg Philanthropies wrote a playbook with discrete steps a government can take to be innovative. The model boils down to a few key elements: researching best practices, trying new ideas, partnering with other agencies or outside groups, and tracking performance with data. “We have a lot of confidence in the model,” Anderson says. “We’ve seen it produce results in five cities on very different issues under different mayors with different leadership styles.”
It’s important to understand just how ambitious these grants really are. Most of the local press coverage in each team’s host city focuses on the size of the grants and the social ills that mayors want solved. Reducing violence and homelessness are laudable objectives, but in this case, they’re byproducts of a larger long-term plan. The ultimate goal is to better understand what innovation is and how it can be scaled up from a single office to an entire municipal government, from one city to a nation of cities. If that happened, the argument goes, mayors would be much better at managing any number of problems that seem overwhelming today.
As interested as they profess to be in the problems of cities, most major national foundations have been skittish about giving money directly to a mayor’s office. Sometimes they have insisted that cities lead the way first with funds from their own tax base; in other cases, they have feared a city might be too dysfunctional to be worth the investment.
Besides these worries, foundations have had another reason for being reluctant to plunge too deeply into urban government practices: the risk of backlash. In the early 20th century, a philanthropy supported by John D. Rockefeller paid for federal agriculture agents to help farmers prevent pests from destroying cotton crops in the South; in return, the foundation became the subject of public attacks by members of Congress who accused Rockefeller of using his private wealth to bypass the democratic process and influence public policy. Ultimately, Congress passed a law that paid for the agents directly and prohibited the philanthropy from further involvement in the program that it helped launch.
In more recent times, Bill and Melinda Gates have invested tens of millions of dollars in specific reforms to the public education system. Their preference for charter schools, tying teacher evaluations to student performance on standardized tests and establishing national education standards has drawn the ire of teachers unions and Tea Party activists. Critics argue that these policy prescriptions undermine local control over education and force teachers to dedicate too much time to test preparation.
So far, Bloomberg’s grants to cities haven’t stoked the same kinds of fears about an interloping billionaire meddling where he’s not wanted. It’s hard to pin an ideological or partisan label on them because they aren’t tied to any policy outcome in particular. Policy choices are up to the mayors.
Some of the warm receptions that the Bloomberg grants have received may be a function of how new they are. The first round finished only last year, and while cities have eagerly publicized the strides they’ve made, the details of how innovation teams work aren’t widely understood by the public. But the lack of criticism also reflects the foundation’s willingness to give mayors broad discretion in how the money is used. “It’s very powerful when cities are able to use our tools in areas where they’re hurting most or they see the greatest opportunity,” Anderson says. “When that happens, the city is going to be especially aggressive in its work.”
The innovation grants are but one example of recent partnerships between cities and foundations. In fact, Bloomberg Philanthropies alone has given nearly $150 million to more than 70 municipalities in the past five years for experiments in government innovation. At least 10 cities have added a chief community service officer with funding they received from the Bloomberg and Rockefeller foundations. Seventeen U.S. cities now have a dedicated staff position focused on climate resilience, also paid for by Rockefeller. Many of the tech-savvy Code for America fellows who embed in city governments for a year have their salaries covered by foundations. As municipalities lost substantial amounts of revenue during the recession, many mayors showed an eagerness to accept financial assistance from foundations. These represent just a slice of the much larger and older effort by foundations to influence urban policy, though traditionally the support has focused on narrow subjects that aligned with a foundation’s mission, such as public education, child welfare or criminal justice.
Michael Bloomberg began his national innovation campaign in 2010, while he was still serving as mayor of New York City. (AP)
Prominent skeptics do exist. As the field of city foundation partnerships evolves, says Albert Ruesga, CEO of the Greater New Orleans Foundation, mayors should be wary of relationships that erode democratic decision-making. “Cities have the power to levy taxes,” Ruesga says. “I don’t think it’s healthy for cities to forgo levying taxes for central public services and goods, thinking that they might get that money from private sources. There’s a price to civilization and we need to be willing to pay that price in our taxes.”
Ruesga is quick to point out that he doesn’t object to the innovation grants as they have been employed so far. That’s in part because they aren’t being used to pay for core services, such as hiring more police officers or keeping a park open to the public. The money is being spent on what may seem like the risky proposition of changing local government culture. But it isn’t displacing anything else in the budget. “The bet feels like a long shot to people,” Ruesga says. That’s exactly when foundations can and should pay for municipal work, he argues, when it involves experimentation that likely wouldn’t get public funding.
Landrieu, however, thinks he’s reached a point where he can justify using public money to pay not just for the projects started by the Bloomberg innovation team, but also for the team itself. Last year, the city spent $300,000 on team activities, about a quarter of their annual cost. (All cities had to match a third of the Bloomberg grant.)
“You don’t even have to sell it to the city council. They want you to do more of it,” Landrieu says. The challenge is making sure the city has room in the budget for a new service, but he seems committed to doing that. “When the philanthropic money runs out, you’ve got to grow your economy or raise your fees or cut in other ways to pay for that service.” The reason he’s willing to make room in the budget isn’t just the impressive results so far, but the method that made them happen. The innovation model, he says, has the potential to address any number of other problems the city still needs to tackle.
New Orleans is not the only city focused on how to sustain its innovation team once the grant money runs out. In Memphis, the city council set aside $200,000 last summer to keep its team around for another year. “We planned from day one asking the question, ‘How do we keep this going?’” says Memphis Mayor A.C. Wharton. “This is not just a flash in the pan. I think it will become a permanent part of how cities do business.”
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My white 5% are tied to Baltimore Development, Greater Baltimore Committee, and global Johns Hopkins---doing ANYTHING GLOBAL 1% TELLS THEM and of course here are our 5% black players with Urban League, NAACP et al being local----these are the folks BUILDING TO FAIL----just to move revenue to those 1% global contracting corporations enriched during BUSH/CHENEY and their fleecing of US Federal agencies. These smiling faces are saying SHOW ME THE MONEY AND WE WILL BUILD ANYTHING AND ANYWHERE YOU TELL US. These are the people we shake our fists at when our seniors are sitting underwater, communities washed away, and there is no city revenue to go to social welfare. WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% WHO ALLOW OURSELVES TO BE SOLD ON THE POWER OF A CHAMBER OF COMMERCE IN BUILDING OUR LOCAL ECONOMIES WILL ALWAYS HAVE BUILT TO FAIL. THIS IS CORPORATE CONTROLLED GOVERNMENT----THAT IS THE OPPOSITE OF CITIZEN-CONTROLLED GOVERNMENT.
If we place REAL citizens in our city council and as mayor concerned for communities and families ---THEY will make sure CIVIL ENGINEERING is PUBLIC INTEREST.
The purpose of a government of, by, and for the people is to have WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% hiring FROM A CHAMBER OF COMMERCE businesses to build CIVIL projects WE DESIGN. We have allowed this dynamic to FLIP.
Let's hold those 5% global Wall Street players BLACK, WHITE, AND BROWN accountable for FAILED CIVIL ENGINEERING and stop shaking our fists at those simply getting ready to continue MOVING FORWARD.
Maryland's new Black Chamber of Commerce ready 'to slay dragons'
Alicia Jones-McLeod, executive director of the Maryland Black Chamber of Commerce, Ron… more
Maryland Black Chamber of Commerce
By Carley Milligan – Associate Editor, Baltimore Business Journal
Feb 9, 2017, 14:35pm
Ron Busby captivated the audience Wednesday night in the Silver Spring Civic Center as he told the story of how he grew his father's cleaning company from $150,000 in annual revenue, to $15 million, over 10 years.
He sprinkled in details on the challenges black-owned entrepreneurs often face when trying to start a business. Limited access to capital, a lack of advocacy and poor credit, were just a few that he mentioned.
As president and CEO of U.S. Black Chambers Inc., Busby's presence at the Maryland Black Chamber of Commerce's first official event was a step toward the new chamber's goal to improve the very problems Busby mentioned.
The Maryland Black Chamber of Commerce is the newest black chamber of commerce in the country, having officially launched in August. The chapter is the 122nd black Chamber of Commerce in the nation.
The chamber and its executive director Alicia Jones McLeod have big plans for the year, including partnering with Busby and the Greater Baltimore Black Chamber of Commerce, growing its memberships, fundraising, securing sponsors and building a legislative agenda for 2018 to jumpstart the growth of black-owned businesses in the state.
It's a hefty to-do list, but Jones McLeod said she is looking forward to a great year.
She first approached Busby with the idea of starting the Maryland Black Chamber months ago. He helped her create a strategy, set goals and lay the groundwork for the chapter. Jones McLeod said she left his office that day walking on clouds.
"I felt like, 'I need to go out and slay dragons and make the world a better place'," she said.
Today the chamber has seven, soon to be eight, board members and about 30 members. It costs $150 a year for a business of one to five employees and higher fees depending on company size.
The chamber's next step is to raise enough capital to pay its staff and hold more free outreach events for its members, and to locate a bank and a large hotel or hospitality service to sponsor them, Jones McLeod said. Ideally, the company will be one looking to meet its minority quota, or expand its reach into the minority community.
"Nobody wants to provide money for free," she said. "That's our bang for the buck."
The chamber will also be seeking funds from state and local government agencies.
Since the the chamber represents black businesses across the state, it is partnering with the Greater Baltimore Black Chamber of Commerce. The two nonprofits already have two events planned, including a post legislative briefing with the Legislative Black Caucus of Maryland to develop an agenda for next year.
To prepare, each chapter is in the process of sending out surveys to black businesses across the state to get feedback from the community on what they want to see happen in Annapolis next year.
Jones McLeod wants the new chamber to become a conduit for black businesses by providing information to its members on how to start a business in Maryland and introducing them to people who can help with that process.
"There's no point in spending hours searching for an answer that someone could tell you in a minute," she said.
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This is what we hear in Baltimore when we hear someone say IT'S OUR TURN----meaning black 5% global Wall Street players are going to receive PATRONAGE to BUILD TO FAIL ---CIVIL ENGINEERING and they think this is good for black citizens in US cities.
'The chamber and its executive director Alicia Jones McLeod have big plans for the year, including partnering with Busby and the Greater Baltimore Black Chamber of Commerce'
So, we have this small group of people who no doubt will receive patronage BONES thrown as CHINESE-SIZE FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES take all of MARYLAND REAL ESTATE. Who will end having all the wealth from these few decades of installing this SUPER-DUPER FAILED CIVIL ENGINEERING? The global 1% ----who will lose all their wealth and end under the bus? Those 5% global Wall Street players and 99% OF WE THE PEOPLE THE US CITIZENS AND OUR NEW IMMIGRANT CITIZENS.
We have spoken often about goals of OPEN GOV. While sold as DEMOCRATIZING----pretending it is US citizens our government data is opening to-----all that CITY STAT----NOW STATE STAT real estate and socioeconomic data being sold to global investment firms who will drive the development in our US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones.
The space is called the OpenGov Hub.
Every time we go to a BALTIMORE DEPARTMENT OF PLANNING---for real estate information saying we are going to plan a civic development ANTENNAE rise from employees in these city agencies wondering WHO THE HECK I THOUGHT I WAS when Baltimore has a 30 year-old MASTER PLAN-----so our US city planning departments are being filled with people who PLAN TO FAIL CIVIL ENGINEERING ---they are wanting to send our tax revenue over and over and over to fix FAILED DEVELOPMENT rather than actual plan a CIVIL SOCIETY THAT SUCCEEDS.
WHO APPOINTS THESE FAILED CIVIL ENGINEERS? OUR US CITY MAYORS---WHO DOES EXACTLY AS HE/SHE IS TOLD BY GLOBAL BALTIMORE DEVELOPMENT, GREATER BALTIMORE COMMITTEE WORKING FOR GLOBAL 1%.
This is why FIXED AND RIGGED ELECTIONS IN OUR US CITIES IS SO IMPORTANT TO CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA----
Baltimore and Maryland's development contract bidding is so RIGGED----contractors from around the nation KNOW they don't have an in on development so 99% of Maryland and Baltimore citizens are soaked over and over in fraudulent contract awards that are all DESIGNED TO FAIL.
How Cities Can Collaborate With Citizens (on Deadline) to Solve Problems
by Citiscope | June 26, 2015
Jean-Louis Sarbib (left), Dennis Whittle (middle) and Nathaniel Heller (right) are promoting a new process for solving city-level problems. They call it "GovCombinator." (Christopher Swope)
By Christopher Swope
On the fifth floor of a glassy office building here, just a few blocks from the White House, there’s an experiment in workplace serendipity that may some day change how cities solve problems.
In a spacious office suite with rows of desks and widescreen computer monitors, 160 people employed by 32 NGOs and social enterprises go to work. In one way or another, all are engaged on issues related to open government and transparency, either in the United States or overseas.
The space is called the OpenGov Hub. It’s the creation of Nathaniel Heller, who led a small accountability-focused group now based there. It started as a place for bootstrapping organizations like Heller’s to break free of their tiny offices and enjoy a roomier space with broadband connections, videoconference hookups and a room for hosting events.
What the initiative turned into is a place where social connections can flourish. The lunchroom became a place for likeminded people to network while heating up pasta. Ideas began to hatch. New friends began introducing each other to potential funders and partners. For a handful of groups based at the Hub, such conversations coalesced into the founding of a new startup focused on creating a more bottom-up approach to development aid.
“First it was an infrastructure win for all the organizations here,” Heller says of OpenGov Hub. “But then we started to see joint projects and joint problem solving and some of the groups coming together to do things without any engineering.”
Co-working spaces are nothing new, of course, and Heller knew this wasn’t the first time a startup had been born in one. But the Hub’s success as a catalyzer — and the work so many of the NGOs based there do with city governments — got him and one of the startup’s founders, Dennis Whittle, talking one day over lunch. What if you could bring the same methods and serendipitous collisions of ideas into local government? What if you had city officials co-working alongside open-government advocates and technologists? Could it make for more creative public policy?
Policy Sprinting
Those questions led Heller and Whittle to a new idea. They call it the “GovCombinator” — the name is a takeoff of Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley seed fund.
The concept is to create a co-working space where high-level city officials would sit side-by-side with people from civil society, business groups and the other stakeholders needed to solve discrete urban problems. The exact mix of people would change depending on the issue under consideration, which might be something like deciding on a new bike route or figuring out how to implement a new ordinance.
The idea goes beyond office space. The second key component is a deadline. Work at the Combinator would be condensed into a “sprint” of perhaps 100 days. This concept is borrowed partially from the world of software development, with its focus on achieving iterative improvements that build over time. It’s also borrowed from Nadim Matta’s Rapid Results Institute, which has had success with training and facilitating teams to make real progress on problems like homelessness or AIDS prevention over short periods of time.
The GovCombinator is an idea that still exists mostly on whiteboards. But it’s beginning to get its first test half a world away in Nairobi. Meanwhile, Heller, Whittle and other partners are working on launching pilots in Mexico City, Kansas City and in their own backyard of Washington. The idea is to have the network of four cities share their experiences and, if it works, to grow to more cities.
The idea has gained the attention of Rose Gill Hearn, a principal with the Bloomberg Associates consulting group. She has been able to help generate some interest in the project with cities she works with, as well as offering feedback on how it might work.
“What GovCombinator does is it embeds civil-society actors in city hall, so to speak.” Hearn says. “So you have civil society working together with the government officials who have the power to change policy, do a contract, set an initiative and act on the information coming from very valuable resources.”
Not a Task ForceIt may be easier to describe the GovCombinator idea not by what it is but by what it is not.
It’s not co-working in a traditional sense. Most people working out of the Combinator would only do so for 100 days at a time and probably only part time. It’s also not an incubator or an accelerator, as the goal is solving policy questions, not launching a startup. And it’s not a retreat — there would simply be too much actual work taking place.
Heller is also careful to note that GovCombinator would be different from a task force. “We’re intentionally trying to not do that here,” he says. “The big difference is task forces are often internal to government. They’re often not empowered to do a whole lot in terms of implementation or execution. We’re trying to expand the circle of influence and bring in a host of nongovernmental actors.”
Another comparison Heller steers around is the “hackathon,” where cities team up with software developers for a couple of days, often a weekend, to build new mobile apps. “What happens the Monday after the hackathon or the policy jam?” Heller says. “Ninety-nine times out of a hundred that’s the end of it — there’s no follow through and a lot of disappointment.”
On the other hand, if GovCombinator is successful, “it can be where ideas from those hackathons and policy jams land on Monday morning,” Heller continues. “Let’s slot it in for the next sprint. We know what the problem is, but give it 50 or 100 days to really sort it out.”
What most separates the GovCombinator concept from these other participatory systems is the intense focus on building social connections. “We’re talking 100 days, plus or minus parts of a day, week after week,” Heller says. “What we’re after here is to build up the soft tissue of trust between people, the social capital. We’re trying to bring personalities and people and their aspirations and fears and wants back into this process of citizen engagement. And our theory is that regular co-location is one way to get there.”
The Kaya Experience
While the Combinator is not quite live anywhere yet, some of these ideas have been getting a test run in Nairobi. Al Kags, the co-founder of a “think-and-do tank” called the Open Institute, runs a co-working space in the Kenyan capital called the Kaya. It’s modeled partly on the OpenGov Hub in Washington, with flavors of other tech hubs in Nairobi.
One of the biggest issues in Kenya these days is the implementation of a devolution law passed last year. Authority over many government functions is passing to 47 newly created counties. Kags sees this moment, as county officials work on figuring out their new responsibilities, as a ripe time to test some of the Combinator concepts.
“There’s a lot of pressing problems,” he says, noting that government and civil-society organizations in Kenya have historically had an adversarial relationship. “There’s a need for people in the policy space to come together and work together, and a need for people in government to work closely together with civil society, academia and the private sector.”
As Heller did with the OpenGov Hub, Kags worked hard to curate the mix of people at the Kaya. There’s a handful of civil-society groups working on devolution questions, as well as consultants, a young political party and an association of freelance journalists. When county officials from around Kenya are in Nairobi, they’ll often spend a day or two working out of the Kaya.
“We’ve succeeded in enabling the idea of sharing a space with government officials, who come on a regular basis to hang out at the Kaya,” Kags says. “When you have formal meetings, the conversation has to address this or that. Here, we’re catalyzing informal conversations between the various sectors.”
Currently, a group at the Kaya is four months into a six-month sprint focused on building transparency structures into county governance. One product of the sprint is an online portal called the Devolution Hub, a clearinghouse of information related to Kenya’s devolution law. Another product is the Open County Dashboard, which aggregates county-level data and allows for comparisons. There is also a lot of discussion around the best frameworks for transparency.
One lesson Kags has taken away from the experiment is that it can be tricky to get the social mix right. Initially, a tech startup working on devolution was based at the Kaya. But he says there was a bit of a culture clash between the younger and sometimes loud tech workers and the civil society and government people, most of whom were older. The tech workers have moved out, Kags says, noting: “We agreed to keep the Kaya as a space for policy wonks.”
Kags is also finding that it’s a lot of work managing the space and facilitating the social dynamics within the group. Initially he thought this would be a one-person job, but he says he’s realizing it’s a lot more.
“Figuring out how to manage the personalities is a skill required in itself,” he says. “We spend a lot of time talking to people, ensuring that conversations are happening, monitoring closely how those relationships are going and resolving disagreements or misperceptions when they come up. We don’t want people to lose faith. They need to feel comfortable.”
Building the Plane
Kansas City, in the U. S. state of Missouri, is eager to give the GovCombinator idea a try. Mayor Sly James and other top city officials have not only like the concept, but they say they want to see it housed right at City Hall. The main thing holding them back at the moment is office space. The plan is to convert an underutilized employee lounge into a co-working space, but they’re trying to find as much as $250,000 to do the renovation.
Kate Bender, with the city’s Office of Performance Management, says there are a number of public issues that would be well-suited to run through the Combinator. Many are related to transportation questions in the city center, such as ways to encourage biking and walking and how to handle the parking needs of a growing downtown population. Other candidates include a “smart city” plan to use sensors to collect data along a new streetcar line as well as some questions around implementing new development-permitting processes.
“These are ongoing projects that have a lot of stakeholders and cross-sector collaboration,” Bender says. “But there’s no physical space or methodology around convening them.”
Issue selection is an important part of the Combinator concept. A topic for a sprint would need to be high-profile enough to sustain the interest from a mayor and his or her deputies, as well as other stakeholders. But it also would have to be limited enough in scope to be solvable within the 100-day timeframe. “It’s not a lot of time,” Heller says. “It’s probably not the place to solve existential, generational problems like race relations. Although you could narrow that topic and maybe work on it in a particular neighborhood.”
Heller and Whittle imagine that a Combinator could have three sprints running simultaneously, each with a different cast of stakeholders. One topic would be chosen in a top-down fashion — whatever the mayor wants it to be. Another topic would be more bottom-up, coming from the public through a crowdsourcing mechanism. The third topic would come from the middle, via nominations put forward by city managers.
Still, there are lots of ways some of this could go wrong.
First, there’s scheduling. Would enough of the right people be able to vanish from their own offices, bosses and colleagues to work out of the Combinator — at least part-time — for three months? Heller thinks getting buy-in from mayors’ offices upfront will be key to getting participants to show up.
Then there’s public perceptions. Would the public see the Combinator as just another back room where insiders strike deals? Heller says citizen voices would be ably represented through civil-society groups. But the question of who would watchdog work in the Combinator and how remains a bit fuzzy.
But the biggest question is whether the Combinator would really create better public policy. That would be almost impossible to measure. The real test is likely to be whether participants finishing a sprint feel it was a more efficient and effective way to get their work done.
Heller acknowledges that there are lots of unresolved questions. But his experience with the “unintentional coolness and magic that happens from co-working” suggests it’s worth finding out what the answers might be.
“We’re building the plane while we’re flying it,” Heller says. “None of us can guarantee it will work the way we want it to. I suspect two years from now it will look somewhat different, but it will be informed by experience and hopefully expertise. We’re lucky to have a shot at trying it.”
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WHITING TURNER ENGINEERING corporation is just that corporation able to grow from local to global by being the one winning RIGGED CONTRACT AWARDS over several decades----BALTIMORE HAS NO PUBLIC WORKS OR PUBLIC AGENCY filled with civil engineers working to build in PUBLIC INTEREST. Here in Baltimore we have WHITING SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING tied to GLOBAL JOHNS HOPKINS graduating many of our FAILED CIVIL ENGINEERS working to build civic infrastructure for global 1% corporate sustainability that leaves 99% of WE THE PEOPLE BEHIND. As with our US universities bound to NEO-LIBERAL ECONOMICS ONLY-----neo-liberal economics says ---MOVE WEALTH TO THE GLOBAL 1% ANYWAY YOU CAN and our civil engineering at these same universities create the ETHICS AND MORALS of BUILDING TO FAIL to move wealth to the top again-----no matter what.
'Heller acknowledges that there are lots of unresolved questions. But his experience with the “unintentional coolness and magic that happens from co-working” suggests it’s worth finding out what the answers might be'.
The idea that our US city development cannot be DELIBERATE and is based largely on WAITING AND SEEING---is tied to SMART CITY US CITIES DEEMED FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONE MASSIVE INDUSTRIAL planning ----waiting and seeing-------OH, REALLY????? Don't we already know to where all this goes?
It is because Baltimore has NO PUBLIC AGENCY filled with PUBLIC CIVIL ENGINEERS who would be shouting against MOVING FORWARD CIVIL ENGINEERING ----and we have a construction MONOPOLY with patronage contract awards that we get FAILED CIVIC ENGINEERING. Look at all these categories of engineering -----what does City of Baltimore have regarding engineering? We have failed public transportation and traffic management and routing-----we have failed water and sewage engineering----we have failed environmental engineering----AND failed mechanical engineering. This exists not because graduates are not intelligent or capable---it happens because they are taught FAILING CIVIC ENGINEERING.
Engineering Departments at The Johns Hopkins University
DepartmentDegree LevelDepartment ChairDisciplineGeography and Environmental Engineering
- Undergraduate
- Graduate
- Environmental Engineering
Engineering Mechanics
- Undergraduate
- Mechanical Engineering
Environmental Engineering Science & Management
- Graduate
- Environmental Engineering
Biomedical Engineering
- Undergraduate
- Graduate
- Biomedical Engineering
General Engineering
- Undergraduate
- Engineering (General)
Mechanical Engineering
- Undergraduate
- Graduate
- Mechanical Engineering
Applied Biomedical Engineering
- Graduate
- Biomedical Engineering
Civil Engineering
- Undergraduate
- Graduate
- Civil Engineering
Information Systems Engineering
- Graduate
- Computer Science (inside engineering)
Information Systems & Technology
- Graduate
- Computer Science (inside engineering)
Information Assurance
- Graduate
- Computer Science (inside engineering)
Technical Management
- Graduate
- Other Engineering Disciplines
Systems Engineering
- Undergraduate
- Graduate
- Other Engineering Disciplines
Applied Physics
- Graduate
- Other Engineering Disciplines
Applied & Computational Mathematics
- Graduate
- Other Engineering Disciplines
Johns Hopkins University Information Security Institute
- Graduate
- Computer Science (inside engineering)
Robotics
- Graduate
- Other Engineering Disciplines
Electrical and Computer Engineering
- Undergraduate
- Graduate
- Electrical/Computer Engineering
Computer Science
- Undergraduate
- Graduate
- Computer Science (inside engineering)
Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering
- Undergraduate
- Graduate
- Chemical Engineering
Materials Science and Engineering
- Undergraduate
- Graduate
- Metallurgical and Matrls. Engineering
Applied Mathematics & Statistics
- Undergraduate
- Graduate
- Other Engineering Disciplines
DepartmentDegree LevelDepartment ChairDiscipline
Advertise
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BLOOMBERG GLOBAL WALL STREET meets CIVIL ENGINEERING with goals of moving wealth continually to these same global 1% throwing bones at those dastardly 5% civil engineering corporations white, black, and brown.
When we watch Baltimore's downtown being developed on a flood plain with huge high-rise apartment and corporate office building concrete only broken by small corporate landscaping climbing the hill of city central ----we are seeing FAILED CIVIL ENGINEERING. What drives this is MAXIMIZED PROFIT-MAKING CORPORATE CAMPUSES ----we listen to talk of GREEN BUILDINGS as they design civil constructs that LAUGH IN THE FACE OF ALL CIVIL ENGINEERING LOGIC.
Students come to Johns Hopkins because Hopkins has one talent----it markets itself as best in every education category and sells that by opening employment to graduates doing FAILED CIVIL ENGINEERING as A BUSH/CHENEY technique of moving money BUILDING TO HAVE TO REBUILD TO HAVE TO REBUILD----This is to whom we shout WAKE UP -----and these are often those 5% players SHOW ME THE MONEY AND WE WILL BUILD ANYTHING WE ARE TOLD.
America was led by our local public universities over these global IVY LEAGUES for centuries. Global IVY LEAGUES like Harvard and Yale had graduates busy overseas building empire while our local government was filled with graduates of our public universities actually wanting to BUILD TO SUCCEED. So, our environmental engineers actually looked at flood zones and sea-level vs hill-------our mechanical engineers actually looked at roads and bridge construction tied to population growth and traffic------our structural engineers actually considered foundation stability ----and built with civil engineering ethos---TO LAST. We are tearing down IRON RAILING having lasted a century and replacing it will aluminum that will last a few decades AT MOST.
OUR CIVIL ENGINEERS ARE CRITICAL FOLKS---WHEN WE ALLOW THE TERM 'BEST OF THE BEST' become the most connected of the connected to global 1% -----we get CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA FAILED CIVIL ENGINEERING.
2017 Johns Hopkins Engineering Design Day
Johns Hopkins Whiting School of Engineering
Published on May 8, 2017
Johns Hopkins Engineering Design Day is the culmination of the Johns Hopkins translational education experience and provides students with the opportunity to display their research, engineering solutions, and prototypes. Students demonstrate their ability to apply knowledge and skills to tackle real-world challenges. Read more: https://hub.jhu.edu/2017/05/08/design... Full schedule: https://engineering.jhu.edu/events/de...
Who are those civil engineers in San Diego, LA, San Fran building what we described last week -----bringing hundreds of millions of citizens to US FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES built right on the most compromised real estate in America ? So, compromised they cannot develop EVACUATION PLANS for 99% of WE THE PEOPLE?
These are the GLOBAL IVY LEAGUE universities that used to graduate students to build corporate empire overseas now filling our local US city agencies-----they are those 5% players moving wealth to those global 1% with the ethos and morals saying BUILD TO FAIL IS OK --------not all 99% of grads from our IVY LEAGUES aspire to these goals----but that 5% global Wall Street player receiving those patronage bones----filling our US city agencies are indeed-----why do 99% of WE THE PEOPLE ALLOW our IVY LEAGUE campuses to become global hedge funds killing our CIVIL ENGINEERING BUILDING ONLY FOR GLOBAL CORPORATE CAMPUS 1%?
It really, really matters who we allow to be MAYOR----when they APPOINT the agency heads tied to these bad development goals.
'Stanford Engineering Future
Stanford University School of Engineering
Published on Jan 7, 2016
In early 2015, Stanford Engineering formed a committee and asked them two strategic questions: In what areas can the School of Engineering make significant world‐changing impact, and how should the school be configured to address the major opportunities and challenges of the future? The committee emerged with a vision for the future of the school across three critical areas: Research, Education, and Culture. Explore http://soefuture.stanford.edu to learn where Stanford School of Engineering goes from here'.
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I live in a community that auto insurers deem HIGH-RISK because of all the car accidents. We have accidents at my corner of N 25th in Charles Village over and over and over ---it's amazing citizens cannot get through a simple intersection.
We can be sure alcohol and drug use is behind some of this---but know what? Our traffic signals are the worst in the nation for timing-----here we see why people seem to always be wanting to RUN YELLOW LIGHTS.
Yellow lights having a window of change to red have data showing less accidents. WE KNOW THAT. Traffic lights timed to change in ways that allow major arteries east/west====north/south TO FLOW FREELY for blocks and blocks have drivers able to make progress without having to stop every few blocks at that next RED LIGHT. It is this constant stopping every few blocks that have drivers wanting to RACE TO BEAT THAT YELLOW LIGHT.
We can shout all we want about personal responsibility ---human nature will always win. We have known that for thousands of years----we have had civil engineers knowing this and many city planning and engineering departments ACTUALLY PUT TIME INTO THIS MECHANICAL ENGINEERING PUBLIC WORKS/TRAFFIC. When we get mad over traffic accidents in our communities----please look at this BASIC TRAFFIC ENGINEERING solution.
BALTIMORE HAS THE WORST IN THE NATION TRAFFIC LIGHT ENGINEERING---LET'S TALK TO THIS MAN-----
DOING MATH WITHOUT A LICENSE.....who is hired to do city engineering here in Baltimore-----it is outsourced to whatever corporation is tied to a Mayor's GREEK/FREEMASON 5% player----
We have in our US city public works traffic engineers who cannot do the math---OR who are told not to put the time into REAL TRAFFIC ENGINEERING.
“It is a civic duty,” he said, explaining his persistence. “I don’t want any money. I just want information to be known about the traffic signals, and how I was treated.”
Yellow-Light Crusader Fined for Doing Math Without a License
By PATRICIA COHENAPRIL 30, 2017
Mats Jarlstrom, at the intersection in Beaverton, Ore., where his wife received a red-light camera ticket. Credit Amanda Lucier for The New York Times
Mats Jarlstrom acknowledges that he is unusually passionate about traffic signals — and that his zeal is not particularly appreciated by Oregon officials.
His crusade to make traffic lights remain yellow longer — which began after his wife received a red-light camera ticket — has drawn some interest among transportation specialists and the media. But among the power brokers in his hometown, Beaverton, it has elicited ridicule and exasperation.
“They literally laughed at me at City Hall,” Mr. Jarlstrom recalled of a visit there in 2013, when he tried to share his ideas with city counselors and the police chief.
Worse still was getting hit recently with a $500 fine for engaging in the “practice of engineering” without a license while pressing his cause. So last week, Mr. Jarlstrom filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court against the Oregon State Board of Examiners for Engineering and Land Surveying, charging the state’s licensing panel with violating his First Amendment rights.
“I was working with simple mathematics and applying it to the motion of a vehicle and explaining my research,” said Mr. Jarlstrom, 56. “By doing so, they declared I was illegal.”
The lawsuit is the latest and perhaps most novel shot in the continuing campaign against the proliferation of state licensing laws that can require costly training and fees before people can work. Mr. Jarlstrom is being represented by the Institute for Justice, a libertarian organization partly funded by the billionaire brothers and activists Charles G. and David H. Koch.
Conservatives are not the only ones worried that willy-nilly licensing requirements for occupations from hair braiding to florists are constricting employment and economic growth. The Obama administration and labor economists across the political spectrum have also criticized what they see as unnecessary and expensive work restrictions.
Most of the lawsuits brought by the institute against state licensing boards argue that they are unconstitutionally interfering with individuals’ right to earn a living. They complain that the boards are more interested in keeping out competition than protecting consumers against inept practitioners.
What is unusual about Mr. Jarlstrom’s case is that it does not involve any commercial pursuits, advertising or other moneymaking efforts. Instead, he accuses the board members in his suit of interfering with free speech.
“These boards have become the new censors,” said Wesley Hottot, an Institute for Justice lawyer who is representing Mr. Jarlstrom. “They think that the First Amendment does not apply to them.”
Eric Engelson, communications coordinator for the Oregon board, said the board would not comment since the litigation was pending. The board, a semi-independent panel whose members are appointed by the governor, funds itself through licensing and registration fees.
Mr. Jarlstrom does not have an engineering license issued by the state board. He is a self-employed consultant who tests audio products and repairs, upgrades and calibrates test instruments. But he did earn a bachelor’s degree in electronics engineering in Sweden, where he was born. He has also spent a couple of years researching traffic light timing intervals, which included consulting with one of authors of the original 1959 mathematical formula used as a basis for programming traffic light signals.
Nonetheless, the Oregon board, after a nearly two-year investigation, assessed a $500 civil penalty because Mr. Jarlstrom called himself “an excellent engineer” in one of several emails to the board and informed the Washington County sheriff that he “invented and publicly released a new extended solution” to the problem of yellow lights in traffic flow.
The board explained it had “opened a law enforcement case” against Mr. Jarlstrom “for the unlicensed practice of engineering,” and cited his attempts to publicize his review, critique and recalculations of the current formulas in use.
“This is a broad pattern of this board,” Mr. Hottot said, adding that he has seen similar actions other states.
Last year, for example, the Oregon board opened an investigation into Allen Alley, the Republican candidate for governor, because a political ad stated: “I’m an engineer and a problem solver.” Although Mr. Alley has a mechanical engineering degree from Purdue University and worked as an engineer for Ford and Boeing, the board said that he was not registered in Oregon as a professional engineer.
And in 2014, the board fined a retiree with 40 years experience in engineering $500 for testifying on his daughter’s behalf in a property suit without saying his registration was in retirement status.
“They have tried to silence people like Mats who have critiqued engineering projects, and that’s dangerous,” Mr. Hottot said. “This board does not have a monopoly over the dictionary and cannot redefine the word ‘engineer.’”
Mr. Jarlstrom probably would never have become obsessed with traffic light algorithms had his wife, Laurie, not gotten a ticket in 2013 for driving her white Volkswagen through the intersection of Southwest Allen Boulevard and Lombard Street in Beaverton 12 one-thousandths of a second after the light turned red.
She promptly paid the $260 fine, but Mr. Jarlstrom said he was intrigued by how the red-light camera operated. After extensive research, he concluded that the timing formula did not account for the extra moments it takes for a slowing car to make a legal right turn. Yellow lights should be long enough for the driver to cross, he argues.
After being laughed out of City Hall, a determined Mr. Jarlstrom brought a federal lawsuit in 2014 against Beaverton, complaining that the too-short yellow lights endangered public safety. A judge dismissed the suit.
Undeterred, Mr. Jarlstrom continued his campaign, tirelessly writing to public officials, media outlets and transportation experts.
“It is a civic duty,” he said, explaining his persistence. “I don’t want any money. I just want information to be known about the traffic signals, and how I was treated.”
________________________________________
As someone taking public transportation buses around Baltimore I was pulling my hair when I first started riding Baltimore buses BECAUSE OF THIS LACK OF TRAFFIC ENGINEERING. It DOUBLES the time for a bus to move from downtown to only two miles away dealing with stopping every few blocks. It is these same mid-town communities between downtown and breaking out to the county where THE MOST CAR ACCIDENTS HAPPEN.
'The most dangerous cities to drive in after Washington are Baltimore';
That of course does not address the civil engineering of road construction that never changes. We are seeing the downtown ENTERPRISE ZONE global corporate campus development leaving all these same roads in place with all the new water and sewage pipeline being laid -----under road engineering that is the worst in the nation.
All of this occurs in a city like Baltimore because the CITY PLANNING ----THE MASTER PLAN---is always a goal several decades ahead so the 99% of citizens living in Baltimore communities today or a few decades ago are forced to live with BAD ROAD ENGINEERING because we are all waiting for MOVING FORWARD DOWNTOWN AS ONE GREAT BIG PORT OF BALTIMORE INDUSTRIAL ZONE.
Our downtown Baltimore road engineering is so bad because all that Port of Baltimore INTERSTATE/RAILROAD coming in to the port is the GOAL---not what we need living in our communities today.
HEALTHY LIVING
08/28/2013 01:31 pm ET Updated Oct 28, 2013
Which State Has The Most Car Accidents?
Getty
By Karen Brooks
AUSTIN, Texas, Aug 28 (Reuters) - The best drivers in the United States live in northern Colorado, while motorists on the crowded roadways of Washington, D.C., are twice as likely to crash as the national average, according to Allstate America’s Best Drivers Report released this week.
Drivers in the nation’s capital get involved in crashes once every 4.8 years on average, compared with a national average of once per decade. The most dangerous cities to drive in after Washington are Baltimore; Providence; Hialeah, Florida and Glendale, California.
New York drivers have crashes on average once every 7.3 years, while those in Chicago and Houston crash once every 8 years.
By way of comparison, the average driver in Fort Collins, Colorado, crashes every 13.9 years. The next-safest cities were Boise, Idaho; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Brownsville, Texas and Madison, Wisconsin.
The report, released Tuesday, surveyed Allstate insurance claims over 2011 and 2012 in 200 of the United States’ largest cities to determine how often drivers there have crashes.
The company uses the two-year time frame in each annual report to mitigate any spikes in the numbers due to weather events or similar unusual influences on the statistics.
Allstate drivers make up about 10 percent of all insured motorists nationwide, the report said.
The report draws distinctions between driving in big cities, where traffic, emergencies, public transportation and simply getting lost pose more dangers, and small-town driving, where high speed limits, fewer crosswalks and large vehicles are among the most common threats.
Indeed, almost all of the 20 cities with the safest drivers have less than half a million residents, the largest of them Tucson, Arizona, with 524,000 residents and crashes happening to drivers about once every 11.4 years - similar to Lincoln, Nebraska, which is about half the size.
Larger or more crowded cities landed on the bottom of the list. The 20 least safe cities for drivers include Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Newark and Miami.
____________________________________________
US cities deemed Foreign Economic Zones have had captured development agencies these few decades. Here in Baltimore we have that global Wall Street Baltimore Development ---community associations tied to that development corporation with leaders simply MOVING FORWARD THAT MASTER PLAN from 1990s. The citizens in each community are led to believe they are participating in civic activities as below-----what we see are the 5% global Wall Street Baltimore Development 'labor and justice' organizations pretending 99% of citizens are participating in planning that has global 1% investment firms tied to global development contractors tied to global energy/transportation/public works corporations designing these US CITY FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES. Absolutely NOTHING coming from 99% of Baltimore citizens. Like RIGGED ELECTIONS we are watching as citizens are made to PLAY AT BEING CITIZENS.
'But the biggest question is whether the Combinator would really create better public policy. That would be almost impossible to measure. The real test is likely to be whether participants finishing a sprint feel it was a more efficient and effective way to get their work done'.
This CITY PLANNING COMBINATOR format is tied to the below START UP VENTURE CAPITALIST PATRONAGE funding of temporary businesses to those 5% players made to feel they are participating in US city economies when they are FODDER. Those whose ideas are said to become incorporated with Board of Estimate bid winning on development projects often have NO ABILITY IN CIVIL ENGINEERING----it's a bone toss that wastes our local TAX REVENUE that could be REALLY developing our communities.
This is how a BUSH/CHENEY/CLINTON would have bought those 5% overseas when building Foreign Economic Zones----throwing millions at local sovereign citizens to be PLAYERS while moving wealth to the top. That is what this structure does in our US city planning-----it is why Baltimore loses billions of dollars over a few decades tied to the need of patronage for that 5% player ---having no talent in CIVIL ENGINEERING.
About Y Combinator
June 2014
Contents
Y Combinator provides seed funding for startups. Seed funding is the earliest stage of venture funding. It pays your expenses while you’re getting started.Some companies may need no more than seed funding. Others will go through several rounds. There is no right answer; how much funding you need depends on the kind of company you start.
At Y Combinator, our goal is to get you through the first phase. This usually means: get you to the point where you’ve built something impressive enough to raise money on a larger scale. Then we can introduce you to later stage investors—or occasionally even acquirers.
More Than Money
We make small investments in return for small stakes in the companies we fund.All venture investors supply some combination of money and help. In our case the money is by far the smaller component. In fact, many of the startups we fund don’t need the money. We think of the money we invest as more like financial aid in college: it’s so people who do need the money can pay their living expenses while Y Combinator is happening.
See a list of the benefits and resources available to YC founders here.
What happens at Y Combinator? The most important thing we do is work with startups on their ideas. We’re hackers ourselves, and we’ve spent a lot of time figuring out how to make things people want. So we can usually see fairly quickly the direction in which a small idea should be expanded, or the point at which to begin attacking a large but vague one.
The questions at this stage range from apparently minor (what to call the company) to frighteningly ambitious (the long-term plan for world domination). Over the course of three months we usually manage to help founders come up with initial answers to all of them.
Though we fund all types of startups, we’re especially interested in web/mobile applications. We’ve been thinking about that problem longer than anyone else, and by now can visualize much of the space of possibilities.
The second most important thing we do is help founders deal with investors and acquirers. Yes, we can make introductions, but that part is easy. We spend much more time teaching founders how to pitch their startups to investors, and how to close a deal once they’ve generated interest. In the second phase we supply not just advice but protection; potential investors are more likely to treat you well if you come from YC, because how they treat you determines whether in the future we’ll steer deals toward or away from them.
We also get the startups we fund incorporated properly with all the standard paperwork, avoiding legal time-bombs that could cause serious hassles and delays later. We introduce founders to lawyers who will often agree to defer payment for legal work. We regularly help startups find and hire their first employees. We can help with intellectual property questions, like what to patent, and when. One of the least publicized things we do, for obvious reasons, is mediate disputes between founders. No startup thinks they’re going to need that, but most do at some point.
The kind of advice we give literally can’t be bought, because anyone qualified to give it is already rich. You can only get it from investors.
Format
Y Combinator has a novel approach to seed funding: we fund startups in batches. There are two each year, one from January through March and one from June through August. During each cycle we fund multiple startups.Applying for funding is also different at Y Combinator. Instead of submitting a business plan or making a slide presentation, you just fill out an application form. We invite the most promising groups to meet us in person, and we make funding decisions immediately afterward.
Most of the founders in each startup we fund (and always the CEO) are expected to move to the Bay Area for the duration of the three month cycle. During those three months we host a dinner once a week at Y Combinator, and at each dinner we invite an expert in some aspect of startups to speak. Typically speakers include startup founders, venture capitalists, journalists and executives from well-known technology companies. Speakers often end up advising or investing in startups they meet at the dinners.
About ten weeks in, we host Demo Day where all the startups can present their products and services to a specially selected audience. Ten weeks turns out to be enough for most groups to create a convincing prototype. In fact, many launch in less than ten weeks.
Y Combinator is occasionally described as a boot camp, but this is not really accurate. We probably get called that because we fund a lot of startups at once, and most have to move to participate. But the similarities end there; the atmosphere is the opposite of regimented.
Funding startups in batches works better for everyone than the usual approach. It’s more efficient for us, but also better for the startups, who probably end up helping one another at least as much as we help them.
Because we fund such large numbers of startups, Y Combinator has a huge alumni network, and there’s a strong ethos of helping out fellow YC founders. So whatever your problem, whether you need beta testers, a place to stay in another city, advice about a browser bug, or a connection to a particular company, there’s a good chance someone in the network can help you.
Philosophy
We think hackers are most productive when they can spend most of their time hacking. Our goal is to create an environment where you can focus exclusively on getting an initial version built.In any startup, the first couple months tend to be the most productive of all. Those first months define the company. So anything you can do to maximize their effects is probably a good idea.
We seem to have succeeded in creating a good environment, because many founders have told us that the first ten weeks of Y Combinator were the most productive period of their lives.
We try to interfere as little as possible in the startups we fund. We don’t take board seats or many of the other powers investors sometimes require. We offer lots of advice, but we can’t force anyone to take it. We realize that independence is one of the reasons people want to start startups in the first place. And frankly, it’s also one of the reasons startups succeed. Investors who try to control the companies they fund often end up destroying them.
One concrete consequence is that Y Combinator funding lets you sell early, if you want to. It can sometimes make sense to sell yourself when you’re small for a few million, rather than take more funding and roll the dice again.
If you take a large amount of money from an investor, you usually give up this option. But we realize (having been there) that an early offer from an acquirer can be very tempting for a group of young hackers. So if you want to sell early, that’s ok with us. We’d make more if you went for an IPO, but we’re not going to force anyone to do anything they don’t want to.
Why are we so flexible? Not (just) because we’re nice people. We realize that, as it gets cheaper to start a company, the balance of power is shifting from investors to hackers. We think the way of the future is simply to offer hackers the best possible deal.
Our goal is to be the preferred source of seed funding, and to be that we have to do right by everyone. The good hackers all know one another, so if the groups we fund feel they’re getting a bad deal, no one will want funding from us in the future. And later stage investors (especially VCs) also tend to know one another, so if the companies we seed end up being broken in any way, no one will want to invest in them in the future.
So far we seem to be on track, because both the startups we’ve funded and their next round of investors seem happy with us.
________________________________________
WHAT ARE ALL THOSE 99% US CITIZENS WHO USED TO FILL OUR LOCAL PUBLIC WORKS ENGINEERING AGENCIES DOING? They are getting online civil engineering degrees and told they are not SKILLED ENOUGH for global corporate hiring----ergo, foreign skilled civil engineers filling jobs who are simply those global 2% working for US CITY LOOKING LIKE ASIAN FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES
Overseas goes that 99% of WE THE PEOPLE to civil engineering jobs when they used to be our local government civil engineers working for PUBLIC INTEREST
Civil Engineering BSCE Degree
Prepare to Design and Develop the World’s Infrastructure
When you complete The University of Texas at Tyler’s bachelor of science in civil engineering degree, you are ready to take part in the planning, design, construction and operation of facilities essential to modern life, ranging from transit systems to offshore structures to space satellites.
Nearly 100% of UT Tyler civil engineering graduates find jobs upon graduation.
Get the opportunity for hands-on design assignments, starting with introductory courses.
ABET Logo
Be prepared to pass the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) Exam, your first step after graduation to becoming a civil engineer.
Accredited by the Engineering Accreditation Commission of ABET, http://www.abet.org.
UT Tyler civil engineering program graduates have gone on to jobs ranging from working with state highway departments and oil companies to designing buildings and water systems.
Bachelor’s in Civil Engineering: Build Basics. Explore Innovation.
Develop sound fundamentals in the engineering field’s key disciplines: structural, hydrology, transportation, construction, geotechnical, environmental and surveying.
Focus your capstone experience on an actual engineering project. Past capstones have involved UT Tyler students in designing the UT Tyler Art Complex, completing the University Center and realigning Lazy Creek and Patriot Avenue.
Study in a program that complies with the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) Body of Knowledge guide, the new industry educational standard.
Network with peers as a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) student chapter that features speakers, sponsors activities like the concrete canoe competition and AISC Steel Bridge Competition, and keeps students connected with their career profession.
Complete a professional internship for academic credit in the civil engineering field.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, starting salaries in the civil engineering field are among the highest paid to college graduates.
Career opportunities are broad and available worldwide.
_______________________________________
We are not going to a continued discussion of global corporations controlling all our US city public agencies LIKE VEOLIA ENVIRONMENTAL capturing more and more and more our our US city agencies -----Baltimore tied to them the earliest. Along with global corporations controlling all water and sewage pipeline and civil engineering comes the movement of our local public agencies being staffed with civil engineers tied to making sure civil engineering is PUBLIC INTEREST----and below we see a BALTIMORE CITY PUBLIC WORKS OFFICIAL in CHOW MOVING FORWARD our US city water and waste development just as FOREIGN ECONOMIC ZONES OVERSEAS----driven by global corporate campuses-----driven by GLOBAL VEOLA stock holders-----MR Chow does not work for 99% of WE THE PEOPLE IN BALTIMORE and he is easily SHAMED at Baltimore Board of Estimates meetings in outsourcing contracts filled with rigging-----with a city having the worst in the nation LEAD WATER PIPE ENGINEERING DEBACLE being left unattended----AND with city water and waste pipeline rebuilding filled with broken water mains cheap repairs
The Baltimore Public Works on our water and sewage has been one long case of BAD CIVIL ENGINEERING---and yet the person placed at the head ------the 5% player----is made ENGINEER OF THE YEAR IN MARYLAND.
Veolia and Tampa Bay Water, FL, Water Treatment Partnership2003 NCPPP Infrastructure Award Winner
Project Location: Tampa, Florida
Public Sector Partner: Tampa Bay Water
Contact Name: Michelle Robinson, Assistant to General Manager for Communications, 727.791.2304, mrobinson@tampabaywater.org
Private Sector Partner: Veolia Water North America
Contact Name: Christie Kaluza, Marketing Communications Manager, 281.985.5481, christie.kaluza@veoliawaterna.com
Project Summary
Tampa Bay Water (TBW) is Florida’s largest public wholesale water supplier. Its members include Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas counties and the cities of Tampa, St. Petersburg and New Port Richey that together, serve approximately 2 million customers. The regional water agency draws on average 167 million gallons of water per day (MGD) from the Floridian Aquifer as well as from three other surface water sources – the Hillsborough River, Alafia River and Tampa Bypass Canal.
I have personally stood before Mr Chow SHAMING him on what is the worst of civil engineering regarding water and waste. Why is Chow being named a GREAT ENGINEER? Below we see him speaking about the need for more and more municipal bond debt tied to more Federal US Treasury debt tied to global corporate partnerships like VEOLA ENVIRONMENT all of which KILLS OUR LOCAL CIVIL ENGINEERING FOR 99% OF BALTIMORE CITIZENS.
BIO – Rudolph S. Chow, P.E.
Rudolph S. Chow, P.E., was appointed the Director of the Baltimore City Department of
Public Works (DPW) by the Honorable Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, effective February 1,
2014.
Mr. Chow brings more than 30 years of executive and managerial experience from both the
water industry and public works. He most recently served as Deputy Director of Baltimore City ’s DPW and was its Bureau Head for Water and Wastewater for three years prior to
becoming the Deputy.
The Department serves over 1.8 million residents of the City and the five surrounding counties with a combined Operating and Capital budget exceeding $1B annually.
Mr. Chow’s swift rise to DPW director is a direct reflection of his transformational agenda and visionary
leadership, which is designed to restore the City’s prominence in the water industry and the public works arena, and make DPW a best-in-class organization.
Prior to his arrival in Baltimore, Mr. Chow spent 27 years with the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission (WSSC) in Laurel, MD. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Civil Engineering from George Washington University and a Master’s Degree in Environmental and Water Resources Engineering from University of Maryland College Park. He is a registered Professional Engineer in the States of Maryland and Delaware. He is an active member in ASCE, AWWA, WEF, WRF, NACWA, AMWA, APWA, and SWANA and serves on a number of boards and committees.
CHOW is the latest PUPPET of global Johns Hopkins and what is MOVING FORWARD in public works civil engineering for our WATER AND WASTE will be a DISASTER for 99% of citizens. Below we see CHOW hawking for municipal bond debt that will come back and bite city water rate-payers for debt NOT NEEDED to rebuild the entire Baltimore water and waste----THE CITY HAS THAT REVENUE. So, Chow is not the great CIVIL ENGINEER----he is that great 5% player.
'As Congress plans to consider a comprehensive tax reform proposal later this year, AMWA encourages members of this committee who prioritize affordable water infrastructure investments to stand up in support of tax-exempt municipal bond interest'.
Testimony of
Rudolph S. Chow, P.E.
Director, Department of Public Works
City of Baltimore, Maryland
On Behalf of the Association of Metropolitan Water Agencies
Before the U.S. House of Representatives
Energy and Commerce Committee
Environment Subcommittee
Hearing on Reinvestment and Rehabilitation of Our Nation’s
Safe Drinking Water Delivery Systems
March 16, 2017
A wide range of drinking water, wastewater, stormwater, water reuse, recycling,
and desalination projects expected to cost in excess of $20 million are all eligible for WIFIA loan assistance–with WIFIA funding available to cover up to 49 percent of the
total project costs. WIFIA also accommodates smaller communities faced with lower-cost projects, as the program will offer loans to a project costing as little a
s $5 million in a community of 25,000 people or fewer.
The next several months will mark
an exciting time for WIFIA. Late last year
Congress appropriated $20 million to support WIFIA loans in 2017–with $3 million reserved to cover administrative expense
s at EPA. EPA expects to leverage the remaining $17 million
into more than $1 billion worth of loans to communities
across the United States. In January EPA subsequently circulated its first notice of funding availability to begin the process of soliciting WIFIA funding applications, with an April
10 deadline for communities to submit initial letters of interest that describe their potential WIFIA projects.
This timeframe could allow the first WIFIA loan funds to get
out the door to chosen applicants by t
he end of the year. Looking ahead, WIFIA is authorized as a pilot program only through the 2019 fiscal year. Should WIFIA’s initial round of funding prove successful, AMWA will urge
Congress to quickly reauthorize the program to build on and sustain this initial momentum.
Tax-Exempt Municipal Bonds
The most critical federal water infrastructure financing assistance mechanism is perhaps also the most overlooked during infrastructure policy discussions.
And though decisions on the fate of this mechanism will ultimately be made outside of this committee,
it is important for all members of Congress to be aware of its essential role in financing water infrastructure.
Since the federal tax code was established in 1913 interest earned on municipal bonds has been
exempt from federal income taxes. According to the Congressional Research Service, tax-exempt municipal bonds are the most prevalent water infrastructure financing mechanism, with at least 70 percent of U.S. water utilities relying on them to pay for infrastructure improvements. And a study completed last month by AMWA and the National Association of Clean Water Agencies found that in 2016 alone
9 communities across the United States issued nearly $38
billion in tax-exempt municipal bonds to finance water,
sewer, and sanitation projects.
Municipal bonds make infrastructure investments more affordable for communities because the lack of a federal tax
on their interest payments leads investors to charge lower interest rates than they otherwise would. These lower interest rates directly translate to lower financing costs, and thus more affordability for local water and wastewater ratepayers.
Without this tax benefit, water and wastewater utilities across the county would pay about 25 percent more in financing costs over their bond payback periods–essentially an additional tax on water infrastructure investment that would be borne by water utility ratepayers of all income levels.
In Maryland alone, cities and towns across the state issued roughly $46.5 million worth of tax-exempt municipal bonds to support water and wastewater infrastructure
projects in 2016. AMWA’s data indicates that fully taxing municipal bond interest would increase local financing costs on this debt by nearly $20 million over the expected
payback periods. Put another way, these increased financing costs represent about 42 percent of the value of Drinking Water and Clean Water State Revolving Fund assistance
delivered to Maryland in 2016.
As Congress plans to consider a comprehensive tax reform proposal later this year, AMWA encourages members of this committee who prioritize affordable water infrastructure investments to stand up in support of tax-exempt municipal bond interest.
Failing to maintain this effective and equitable subsidy
would drastically increase the cost of water infrastructure financing and permanently reduce the affordability of
water service to ratepayers in communities nationwide.
_______________________________________
American Metropolitan Water Association AMWA is GLOBAL VEOLA ENVIRONMENTAL tied to global IVY LEAGUE hedge funds----it has no attachment to our city public agencies and it is HAWKING FOR THESE SAME GLOBAL WALL STREET FRAUDULENT municipal bond deals. We don't have EXCELLENT CIVIL ENGINEERS in these US city public works agencies---we have 5% players.
US city citizens have paid water bill taxes for several decades ---enough to rebuild the entire Baltimore City water system THREE TIMES. Those taxes were MISAPPROPRIATED to grow global Johns Hopkins overseas. If we had REAL CIVIL ENGINEERS working for 99% of citizens they would not be loading more debt AND they would not be tying our public water to global corporations.
NO-TALENT CIVIL ENGINEERS MUST GO-----WE GET RID OF THEM BY GETTING RID OF US CITY MAYORS APPOINTING THEM ---CHOW IS SIMPLY TRANSFORMATIVE.
As we have shouted------US cities having LEAD WATER PIPES is no accident-----we have known for thousands of years how dangerous lead in AQUADUCTS is to public health and we had back in EISENHOWER era these same PUBLIC WORKS decisions being made by the same power structure then as today.
Here we are getting ready to rebuild our US city public water system allowing the same global 1% only more powerful and more disconnected to public health than ever before create CIVIL ENGINEERING AROUND WATER SUPPLIES tied to global corporations not caring at all for public interest.
Who are we leaving CIVIL ENGINEERING control of a vital rebuilding of our US city water and sewage? The same CLINTON/BUSH/OBAMA failed engineering ethos caring not at all for the ability of 99% of citizens having SAFE AND PLENTIFUL FRESH WATER.
Maryland Schools Find High Lead Levels in Water
April 10, 2016 8:43 AM
(Photo credit Raul Arboleda/AFP/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON -- Harford County Public Schools officials weren’t surprised when tap water sampled last year at a classroom building for third-to-fifth graders at Youth’s Benefit Elementary showed lead at 130 parts per billion, nearly nine times the federal standard.
The well-water system serving the 43-year-old building in Bel Air has tested above 15 ppb eight times since 1993, making it among Maryland’s most consistent transgressors of the Environmental Protection Agency’s action level. Lead poisoning in children can cause brain and kidney damage, and while no amount of lead exposure is deemed safe, the EPA rule calls for water systems to keep levels below 15 ppb.
Harford County schools spokeswoman Jillian Lader said the school system has supplied Youth’s Benefit with bottled water since 2009, secured the water fountains, posted warnings at taps and sent all the required notices to parents and guardians. She said a more permanent solution is coming in August 2017, when the nearly 550 students and staff are scheduled to move into a new, $37 million school with an EPA-compliant water system.
That kind of spending is beyond the reach of most of the 28 small water systems statewide that have reported lead levels above the federal standard at least once between Jan. 1, 2013 and Sept. 30, 2015. Seven of the water systems serve primary or secondary schools, and most rely on bottled water or chemical treatment to reduce corrosion of lead-bearing pipes. The Baltimore city school system has supplied bottled water to all its schools since 2007 due to high lead levels from the plumbing.
Laura Runyeon fought for a new Youth’s Benefit school as president of the school’s PTA in 2012, citing lead levels as one reason. She said the elementary school complex was first targeted for replacement in 1996.
“We had been on the project list for many years,” said Runyeon, now a school board member in the county northeast of Baltimore. “Because of funding restrictions and other shifts in priorities, the capital projects list in the county had been delayed a number of times.”
Laytonsville Elementary in Montgomery County, just outside Washington, D.C., was on bottled water for years, starting in the 1990s, to keep students from drinking well water that has exceeded the lead rule in nine of 10 sampling periods since 1993. County public schools spokesman Derek Turner said the school system continues to provide bottled water, at a cost of $1,500 a year, despite completion last year of a $300,000 connection to the Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission’s EPA-compliant water system.
“We haven’t done a review of the pipes that were in the school already. We don’t want to take a chance, so we’re just keeping them on bottled water,” he said.
The Somerset County public school system has dealt repeatedly with high lead levels at Deal Island Elementary School, serving about 150 students, teachers and staff on the Eastern Shore. A pipe replacement project, completed in 1997, was followed by installation of a chemical treatment system after sampling in September 2014 detected excessive lead in tap water from one classroom sink, said Sean Kenny, a Maryland Department of the Environment regulatory and compliance engineer. The school system provided bottled water for the rest of that school year at a cost of about $1,000, said Daniele Haley, supervisor of facilities and capital planning.
Sampling at the school last year showed lead at an EPA-compliant 9 ppb, down from 16 in 2014.
The testing procedure requires samples from at least five taps, and one bad tap can skew the results for the entire system. That’s what happened in 2014 at The Jefferson School, a special-education facility near Frederick owned by the Baltimore-based Sheppard Pratt Health System. Four samples tested below 15 ppb but one from a sink in the school finance office tested at 186, said Sheppard Pratt spokeswoman Jessica Kapustin. Maryland Department of the Environment spokesman Jay Apperson confirmed the story and said the problem was corrected by replacing the faucet and supply lines.
The three other schools reporting elevated lead readings in recent years are all private institutions, and one of them has closed.
Indian Creek Lower-Middle School in Crownsville reported 25 ppb from sampling in 2014 but 0 ppb from follow-up sampling last year after filtration systems were installed and all water fountains and some faucets were replaced.
Most Blessed Sacrament School in Berlin reported 19 ppb in 2014, but no excessive lead in 2015. The school has installed new corrosion control equipment, Apperson said.
Free State Montessori School in Fork, reported 18 ppb in samples collected in 2014. The school closed last June, Apperson said.
________________________________________
'The Right Of Minnesota Engineers To Decide Pipe Material ...'
Below we see what is ALREADY QUESTIONABLE decisions yet again on what kind of material these water pipeline will use-------this time we see a push for PLASTIC PIPELINE-----know what we learned from plastic containers for our drinks? The plastic chemicals leach into our drinks creating the same kinds of brain damage as that lead in pipes.
If WE THE PEOPLE THE 99% had problems back in the 1950s with CIVIL ENGINEERS tied to US city public works----we have SUPER-SIZED problems today ----MOVING FORWARD civil engineering over what pipeline material to use----will operate just as it does overseas in Foreign Economic Zones----third world civil engineering ON THE CHEAP.
The Right Of Minnesota Engineers To Decide Pipe Material ...www.concretepipe.org/wp-content/uploads/May-2016...The Right Of Minnesota Engineers To Decide Pipe Material Could Be At Risk ... When civil engineers contemplate pipe suitability for culverts ... Water Resources ...
ENGINEERING MINNESOTA
MY PERSPECTIVE
The Right Of Minnesota Engineers To
Decide Pipe Material Could Be At Risk
By Jason Kruger, B. S. C. E.
A legislator should not determine which type of knee implant device an orthopedic surgeon must use . . . The same should
hold true for civil engineers specifying storm sewer and
culvert pipe materials.
Minnesota’s city, county, state and consulting civil engineers
are currently free to determine which type of culvert and storm
sewer material is suitable for their projects. It’s a civil engineer’s professional right and duty to select concrete, plastic or metal pipe – possibly at the exclusion of the others -- based on sound engineering principles, judgement, their own experiences as civil engineers, and economics.
This right was further emphasized on July 6, 2012 when the
FHWA’s new MAP-21 highway reauthorization included the
following:
“Section 1525 - STATE AUTONOMY FOR CULVERT PIPE
SELECTION.” Not later than 180 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary shall modify section 635.411 of title 23, Code of Feral Regulations (as in effect on the date of enactment of this Act), to ensure that States shall have the autonomy to determine culvert and storm sewer material types to be included in the construction of a project on a Federal-aid highway.”
Additionally, on city and county state-aid projects, the Minnesota Department of Transportation allows city, county and consulting engineers to determine the most appropriate pipe material for their projects.
However, this right to engineering autonomy is being threatened around the U.S. at the state and local level, and the threat could reach Minnesota. Since early 2015, bills in over 10 states - and even a few counties - have been introduced at the behest of the plastic pipe industry. On the surface, these bills appear benign, oftentimes requiring that state and local governments must simply allow the use of “acceptable piping material” on storm sewer and culvert projects. But how does one define “acceptable piping material?”
Pipe materials are simply not equal. Concrete, plastic and metal pipe each have their own unique structural characteristics and installation requirements, and these differences are considerable.
When civil engineers contemplate pipe suitability for culverts and storm sewers, they consider several engineering factors, including (but not necessarily limited to): soil loads, vehicle live loads, bedding factor, availability of engineered granular embedment material, extent of field inspection, local experience, and utility contractor reputation.
Civil engineers also consider economics:
pipe material cost,
granular backfill cost (varies with each pipe material type),
expected pipe service life, local experience, and differences in
contractor installation costs for concrete, plastic and metal pipe.
Although the Minnesota legislature has yet to deliberate the
aforementioned, civil engineering professional organizations are
clearly against the idea. For example, the American Council of
Engineering Companies (ACEC), representing civil engineering
consulting firms across Minnesota and the U.S., takes the position that consulting civil engineers should be allowed to determine which type of pipe material is the most appropriate for a given project, whether it be plastic, metal or concrete. To use an analogy, most folks can agree that a legislator should not determine which type of knee implant device an orthopedic surgeon must use – it should be the orthopedic surgeon’s years of training and experience that ultimately determines the knee implant material. The same should hold true for civil engineers specifying storm sewer and
culvert pipe materials.
The American Water Works Association (AWWA) also steadfastly opposes this type of legislation. In a national memo to municipalities, the AWWA states:
“...The AWWA is neutral as to which
materials utilities select for infrastructure
projects. While AWWA believes that there
is an application for all types of material,
we also know that not all materials are
equally suitable for all applications. We
have members who feel very strongly
(both positively and negatively) about the
different pipe materials that are available.
The AWWA Water Utility Council’s
opposition to the legislation, however, is
based on the negative effect that this effort
would have on the ability of utilities and
design professionals to continue to best
serve their communities by maintaining
control over material selection...”
Civil engineers should be free to select the
right pipe for the job. Public safety isn’t
a political issue, it’s a social issue. The
decisions necessary to preserve that safety
should be left to licensed professional
engineers already using sound engineering
principles and personal knowledge gained
through years of experience.
(Jason Kruger is Technical Resource
Director for the Minnesota Concrete
Pipe Association.
____________________________________________
Please be engaged citizens and KNOW what today's civil engineers in your neck of the woods is using as they rebuild our US city water and sewage----a state having used LEAD WATER PIPES in the 1950s is likely to make that same BAD CIVIL ENGINEERING decision yet again........as in Baltimore.
WE WILL BE TOLD GLOBAL VEOLA ENVIRONMENT'S DECISIONS ARE PROPRIETARY---
'The purpose of this new partnership between Veolia and WatchFrog is the production and commercialization of this measurement tool that will help to measure the elimination of these pollutants in wastewater treatment processes.
Veolia's existing proprietary tertiary wastewater treatment technologies, including ActifloCarb, remove emerging micro pollutants such as endocrine disruptors. Combined with the oxidizing action of ozone, the process can eliminate more than 95 % of endocrine disruptors and their byproducts'
PROPRIETARY WASTEWATER TREATMENT TECHNOLOGIES.
Please take a look at these pipe materials and the conditions for which they are fit and REMEMBER------the manufacturing of these products are often CORRUPT------we need a functioning city public health department but US cities do not have this today so be that engaged citizens to KNOW what is being placed under our roads.
There’s A Perfect Pipe For Every Water And Wastewater Project
- By Jennifer West
- Tech Talk
- August 2014
- Appeared in print as "A Pipe For Every Project"
Aging infrastructure is a prime concern in the water and wastewater world. And with good reason. According to a 2007 EPA survey, the nationwide infrastructure need is estimated at $334.8 billion from January 2007 through December 2027. The largest portion of that figure – $200.8 billion – represents needs in water transmission and distribution projects.
Municipalities indeed face a gigantic task: Many pipes are nearing the end of their life spans, and the time to choose a replacement has arrived. In a long-term project like pipe replacement, where life span can exceed 100 years, proper material choice is critical. Here, we examine the most common types of municipal pipe material along with a general guide of the strengths, weaknesses and uses for each.
Ductile iron pipe
Cast-iron pipe, which is the predecessor of ductile iron, is part of the infrastructural backbone of this country. Currently, more than 600 municipalities boast 100-year-old working cast-iron pipe systems, and more than 20 have pipe that’s reached the 150-year mark.
“It’s held up very well,” says Gregg Horn of the Ductile Iron Pipe Research Association. “Our argument would be if the infrastructure needs to be rehabilitated that ductile iron would offer a similar or better service than cast iron.”
Primarily used on the water side, ductile iron is a cast product manufactured almost entirely from ferric scrap. The pipe’s materials are 95 percent recycled, a feature that has helped it earn a SMaRT sustainable product certification. Ductile and clay pipe are the only products in the buried infrastructure industry to claim this bragging right.
Despite its strength, ductile pipe is subject to corrosion from aggressive environments caused by acids, either in the interior of the pipe from acidic sewage materials or on the exterior from acidic soil conditions. To combat the problem in water service, the inside of the pipe is lined with a cement mortar lining, which protects the pipe and forms a barrier. Sewers can be a little more challenging for ductile iron, so a special internal pipe lining is sometimes needed.
“It also improves the hydraulics and helps water through the pipe,” Horn says. “Its good flow characteristics are maintained. We’re not that worried about internal corrosion from water.”
The Ductile Iron Pipe Research Association has been researching external corrosion for decades, and its most recent recommendation is an enhanced polyethylene encasement. Horn references a recent case study in which workers dug up and examined ductile iron pipe that was installed in 1958 in Lafourche Parish, La.
“When you peel the polyethylene off, the pipe looks beautiful. It looks brand-new,” he says. “If you protect against external corrosion, there’s really nothing that can go wrong.”
Steel pipe
Steel pipe, which was first introduced in the early 1800s, has a long history of use in the United States, and has been recognized for its excellent resistance to high internal pressures and pressure surges. Large-diameter steel piping is most often used in pressure pipes for water and wastewater applications. It can be made using three methods: seamless, welded and casting mold.
Like other metal pipes, steel is prone to corrosion, so it is lined with an asphalt coating when used in water mains to protect against acidic water. This also retains its good flow characteristics. The drawback to the various coatings and linings is that they can be damaged during installation.
Steel’s primary benefit is brute strength. Cracking typically doesn’t occur, and under abnormal loads, the material bends rather than breaking.
Vitrified clay pipe
Clay pipe has been used for millennia, with the earliest examples dating to 4000 B.C. The material was used in Mesopotamia, the Minoan civilization and the Roman Empire, and has a long pedigree of city sewer system applications. But today’s clay pipe is nothing like those early examples. Nor is it anything like what was prominently used in the United States in the 1950s and ’60s.
“Most people who aren’t familiar with modern clay pipe associate it with something that’s been in their system for more than 100 years, and they’re different,” says Jeff Boschert of the National Clay Pipe Institute. “Their opinion of the product is based off of something that isn’t made anymore.”
Primarily used in gravity-flow sanitary sewer systems, vitrified clay pipe has improved greatly in this age of technology. Computer-controlled kiln firing means the final product is uniform and meets quality standards. Gone are the laminations in the pipe body thanks to a high densification extruding process.
“Years ago, there were probably 100 different factories manufacturing a porous product that needed glazing on the interior and exterior,” Boschert says. “But the modern-day pipe is tight, dense and nonporous. The body of the material itself is totally different and stronger.’
The joints have also evolved. Decades ago, clay pipe did not have a factory-applied joint, which meant infiltration and exfiltration along with root intrusion and loss of pipe support. Now, joints are factory-applied using polyester with an O-ring or a polyurethane material that creates a leak-free joint. Although the pipe is rigid, the flexible compression joints provide forgiveness if the ground moves.
Clay, which has an average compressive strength of 18,000 psi, can also be used as a direct jacked pipe in trenchless applications. Vitrified clay jacking pipe was introduced to the trenchless market in 1992, and since then, it has been used in pilot-tube microtunneling, slurry microtunneling, static pipe bursting and sliplining applications.
Vitrified clay pipe really shines in highly corrosive environments, even in the presence of sewer gases and solvent-based chemicals. The only chemical known to affect clay pipe is hydrofluoric acid, which is not likely to be found in sanitary sewers.
“No pipe material can hold a candle to the corrosion-resistant properties of clay pipe,” Boschert says. “Many breweries have used it because of its corrosion resistance and temperature parameters.”
Clay pipe is valued for its longevity, corrosion-resistant properties and sustainability. However, it does have some limitations: It is typically limited to gravity-flow applications, and the maximum pipe length is 10 feet due to the kiln firing process.
Concrete pipe
Concrete, which is one of the world’s most common building materials, is used in both gravity flow and pressure pipe. Precast gravity-flow pipe is manufactured in several shapes, including round, elliptical, arched and box, and is used in sanitary sewers, storm drains and culverts. Concrete pressure pipe, which is a separate classification, is primarily used for potable water.
“Concrete pipe is pretty simple,” says Matt Childs, president of the American Concrete Pipe Association. “You’ve got a big, strong, heavy pipe, and as long as you don’t mess it up, it’s going to be there for a really long time. We’ve got pipe that’s been in the ground for 150 years.”
This rigid pipe system is 85 percent dependent on pipe strength and only 15 percent dependent on the soil envelope for underlying support, which makes it a good candidate for low-lying or marshy environments.
“Our biggest advantage is durability, strength and longevity,” Childs says. “We also have very good flow characteristics because we have a smooth surface.”
Despite its durability, concrete is susceptible to H2S attacks, and in extremely acidic soil, it can corrode. To combat these problems, concrete pipe can be coated with a plastic liner, and special measures can be used to prevent corrosion in acidic soils.
“We do like to be honest and say that you have to plan for it,” Childs says.
Just like with any other pipe material, concrete pipe can fail due to improper installation. Childs reinforces a common theme in the industry: installation is key.
“If there’s a failure, typically it’s the installation,” he says. “We can have problems with a contractor driving over a pipe before it’s installed … maybe driving heavy equipment over the top to cause heavy compacting. We have problems with installation, too. If it’s not put in straight, we can run into cracks.”
HDPE pipe
Borrowing technology first used by the gas and oil industry, high-density polyethylene pipe has also become a popular choice for water and wastewater applications because of its noncorrosive, highly flexible characteristics. Also, its heat-fused joints mean zero water loss, which is an important quality as worldwide water value increases.
“In other countries, water is gold. Not in the United States,” says Camille Rubeiz, director of engineering at the Plastics Pipe Institute. “[Water loss] is unacceptable. Today we have new technologies, and they should be embraced.”
This fusion process creates an unbreakable bond and a joint as strong as the rest of the pipe. HDPE is also highly resistant to corrosion and has a low failure rate, which further decreases life span costs. But Rubeiz states that proper planning, design, installation and inspection are essential when using HDPE.
“It’s very forgiving, but that is really a weakness because it can get abused,” he says, referring to installation shortcuts. “We’re not buying a T-shirt that we can throw away after Christmas. This is a 100-year project. Utilities, consultants and contractors have to be given enough time and resources to do a project well.”
Municipalities in earthquake-prone areas should consider HDPE because of its flexibility and ductility. According to a report by the Water Research Foundation, which studied recent earthquakes and their implications on U.S. water utilities, HDPE capably withstood tremendous seismic activity. The study states that in the 2010 Chile earthquake, for instance, “while the rest of the water system suffered thousands of damaged pipes, no HDPE pipe was damaged.” The report recommends HDPE for common distribution pipes and service laterals in high seismic zones.
HDPE is available in sizes from 1/2 to 65 inches, covering everything from service lines to distribution and transmission mains. Its use has expanded across Europe, and according to Rubeiz, nearly 90 percent of new pipe installations in Europe are HDPE.
“When installers and designers follow the book, there should be no issues,” he says. “All conditions need to be considered at design. There shouldn’t be shortcuts on something you want to last more than 100 years.”
PVC pipe
Polyvinyl chloride, which scientists first stumbled upon in the 19th century, is one of the oldest synthetic materials. It wasn’t until World War II, however, that demand for the material accelerated when it was used to insulate wiring on military ships. In the decades following, PVC use skyrocketed, and now it’s commonly used for sanitary sewers and potable water distribution lines. PVC is a thermoplastic, meaning it can be softened and reformed, and a fusible version is now available, which competes with HDPE in trenchless construction.
This pipe is very corrosion resistant and is often used to coat other materials that are affected by acidic conditions. In a 2008 study by the Water Research Foundation titled “Impact of Hydrocarbons on PE/PVC Pipes and Pipe Gaskets,” researchers concluded that PVC is also impervious to gasoline, the most common hydrocarbon contaminant.
This corrosion resistance translates to a low failure rate. A 2012 survey by Utah State University indicated that when compared to cast iron, ductile iron, concrete, steel and asbestos cement, PVC had the lowest failure rate, with only 2.6 failures per 100 miles of pipe per year.
“This is space-age stuff,” says Bruce Hollands, executive director of the PVC Pipe Association of North America. “It’s a high-technology material that removes corrosion completely from the equation.”
Cost is a large reason why municipalities are drawn to PVC. Even when including backfill and labor expenses, PVC is typically a less expensive replacement option than other materials. Hollands states that in some situations, a 70 percent savings can be realized when using the material.
That said, PVC is not without some limitations.
“There are two reasons you wouldn’t use PVC,” Hollands says. “You wouldn’t specify it for situations with operating pressures higher than 305 psi, and you wouldn’t use it in an application that requires temps above 140 degrees. These conditions, however, are extremely rare in water and sewer systems.”
An American Water Works Association Research Foundation study estimates the life expectancy of PVC to be in excess of 110 years. Pipe sizes range from 4 to 60 inches for both sewer and water applications. The 54- and 60-inch-diameter water pipes are a relatively new addition to PVC and are currently not as widely available.
Making decisions
Pipe material selection can be a complex process, filled with politics, preconceived ideas and budget parameters. And to complicate the matter, municipal leaders must now navigate through marketing hype as manufacturers fight for a piece of the infrastructure pie.
What it boils down to is considering uses, soil conditions and reasons for previous failures, and then making a well-informed materials decision. After all, if all goes well, a pipe replacement decision should only come around once every hundred years.
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