Preserving the potholes

No, not the holes in the highways--those can be filled and good riddance to them, though I know they will come again every spring. The potholes we need to preserve are the prairie potholes, those sloughs and swampy mini-lakes that dot the countryside, growing cattails and providing homes for ducks and egrets and herons.

Photo by Pete Baer, licensed by Creative Commons.

Tom Meersman has a good article in the Strib about prairie potholes. He describes the way that millions of these humble wetland areas across Minnesota and the Dakotas absorb rainwater and run-off, thereby slowing sedimentation of rivers, preventing soil erosion and purifying water. For years, farmers have been paid to keep these potholes alive. No more.

Farmers in the area signed 10- to 15-year conservation agreements in the 1990s to set aside grasslands and prairie potholes for wildlife habitat, he said, but many are converting the land back to crops as soon as those contracts expire.

Between the expiration of the conservation easements and the rising prices of land, farmers are finding it tough to justify keeping any land out of production. While corn prices were high this past winter, that's not enough to make up for decades of uncertain pricing. Moreover, high corn prices drive land prices higher. Higher land prices mean higher property taxes, since the taxes are based on the land's market value. Farmers have to produce saleable crops in order to keep the land.

Habitat for wildlife, clean water, saving the land for future generations -- priceless. But property taxes, mortgage payments, fuel for tractors and, yes, feeding the family -- these all come with hefty price tags. And some farmers will be draining and plowing the potholes to pay the price.

Burning what?

I've read, researched and written extensively on Rock-Tenn, the paper recycling plant, and plans for its energy future. I spent more hours this weekend editing articles about Rock-Tenn, and more hours continuing to read the e-mails that flow back and forth along the Rock-Tenn Community Advisory Panel listserv.

Last year, the questions and answers about Rock-Tenn seemed a lot simpler. The plant was losing its steam line because Xcel was closing the coal-powered High Bridge plant. Rock-Tenn's alternatives were to burn fuel oil and natural gas in its existing but long-unused boilers or to build a new power plant that would use a less expensive fuel. With the support of the City of St. Paul, Ramsey County and the St. Paul Port Authority, Rock-Tenn planned to build a plant to burn refuse derived fuel (RDF).

Most people living near the plant found it easy to oppose burning RDF. RDF is processed garbage (municipal solid waste.) There are many good reasons to oppose RDF. Concerns include potential health effects from emissions and tax subsidies required for processing RDF. Opponents point to the inefficiency of RDF as a fuel. Critics also say that focusing on incineration means de-emphasizing strategies for reducing and recycling waste.

As public consensus against RDF grew, the questions about power for Rock-Tenn multiplied and got more complex:

1. What kinds of fuels are available and economical?

2. What kinds of fuels are unhealthy and what kinds are safer?

3. What is the impact of various fuels on global warming?

4. What is the right size for a Rock-Tenn power plant? Should it just produce enough heat for Rock-Tenn's manufacturing process or should it also produce enough energy for a district heating and cooling system in the immediate area?

5. Would a district heating and cooling system significantly reduce overall emissions by eliminating individual, inefficient HVAC systems?

Ramsey and Washington County governments like RDF. They should -- they keep agreeing to pay millions of tax dollars to the Newport processing plant to convert municipal solid waste into RDF. Subsidies have to flow to garbage haulers to pay higher tipping fees at the Newport plant. More subsidies go to Xcel Energy to induce them to take the processed RDF from the Newport plant and burn it (in Red Wing), because RDF is an inefficient fuel.

Early in the debate, it looked like the environmentally-friendly answer was that the plant should burn "real" biomass. (The legislature classified RDF as biomass, but most people don't buy that designation.) "Real" biomass might be corn cobs and stalks or oat hulls or wood and wood waste or prairie grass. Today, many involved in the debate are denouncing any kind of burning and insisting that no kind of biomass is good fuel.

RDF clearly has enormous problems -- economic, environmental and political. The quickest way to move the process forward is by unequivocally taking RDF off the table. The Port Authority, District Energy and Rock-Tenn need to renounce the use of RDF. So far, they have refused to do so.

Even if RDF were taken off the table, the next question is right-sizing the energy operation. The debate started with Rock-Tenn's need for steam. A plant large enough to provide steam for peak operations needs also would produce surplus heat and energy. That opens the door to a new level of energy politics.

Xcel Energy (privately owned, for-profit company) wants exclusive rights to purchase any excess energy generated at Rock-Tenn. They almost got the legislature to sign on to this deal last year. Any time a seller (in this case, Rock-Tenn) has just one buyer, that buyer can set the price. Being the sole eligible buyer of Rock-Tenn's surplus energy would put Xcel in a good position to bolster its bottom line and increase its profits.

The St. Paul Port Authority (quasi-governmental, non-profit municipal corporation) wants a district heating and cooling system, like the one that District Energy operates in downtown St. Paul. The Port Authority distributed a propaganda piece called "The Energy Independent" in several neighborhood newspapers in early November, saying that a district heating system will be built in the area.

That raises a political problem. The Rock-Tenn Community Advisory Panel has not made any recommendation on a district heating and cooling operation. Now it seems that the Port Authority has made a decision to proceed regardless of what the panel recommends. What does that say about the whole process of citizen input and, when you come right down to it, about participatory democracy?

A district heating and cooling system would mean building -- at Rock-Tenn -- a plant that is significantly larger than needed just to supply Rock-Tenn with steam. Within the panel, and within the community, there is significant opposition to building such a plant.

Facts and figures are missing. What area would the Port Authority plan cover? What are the current and projected heating and cooling needs of that area? Who lives there? What businesses operate there? How are they now heated, and what kind of air emissions do they now generate?

Until that information is on the table, no one can know whether a district heating and cooling plant, located at Rock-Tenn, would increase or decrease air polution.

A whole set of related questions come back to the fuel issue. What kind of fuel would be used? Where would the fuel come from? How would it be transported to the plant? What is fuel availability for the smallest-size plant-- one that would be adequate to generate steam for Rock-Tenn and nothing more? What is fuel availability for the district energy option? What are the comparative costs for various fuels? What kinds of environmental impact (both on air quality and on global warming) does each fuel have?

These questions are complex and require a fair degree of research by people with technical backgrounds. One step, however, is simple: taking RDF off the table would help everyone to focus.

A tip about journalistic practice

On November 8, NPR aired the story of a waitress who talked to Hilary Clinton on the campaign trail.

"Anita Esterday, a waitress at the Maid-Rite in Toledo, Iowa, told NPR's David Greene in a report that aired on Morning Edition Thursday that "nobody got left a tip" on Oct. 8, when Clinton sat at the lunch counter and ordered up the restaurant's famous loose-meat sandwich."

The tip, or non-tip, was part of an eight-minute story on the campaign, but it quickly became the focus of bloggers across the country. The Clinton campaign responded quickly, insisting that a $100 tip had been left at the diner. The controversy continued, with another report on November 9 analyzing who had or had not been tipped and who had said what about tips. Perhaps the most interesting part for reporters and editors was a small piece of the November 9 report that dealt with the way the story was reported. [Transcribed from NPR media player. Full clip is 4:19. This interchange runs 3:23-3:52. Emphasis added.]

Renee Montagne: David, would some of this have been avoided if you had taken it to the campaign beforehand, especially about the tip, I mean, wouldn't that be a pretty basic thing to do?

David Greene: Yeah, I .. I .. since Anita Esterday had said on our air that nobody got tipped that day, which is different from saying that just she did not get tipped, she said that no one was tipped. I should have asked the campaign before the story aired if they could say if anyone was tipped and how exactly that happened. That would have made the tip, I think, a lot more of the focus of our story than I had intended, but it's clear I should have gotten their reaction up front. That's the way it's done.

Renee Montagne: David, thanks.

David Greene: Thanks, Renee.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16143435
Clinton Campaign Says It Tipped Maid-Rite Waitress

by Renee Montagne and David Greene

Morning Edition, November 9, 2007 · A waitress causes a stir on the political blogs. The waitress at a Maid-Rite restaurant in Iowa says she did not get a tip after serving presidential hopeful Sen. Hillary Clinton, a Democrat from New York. But the Clinton campaign says a $100 tip was left at the diner.
Election 2008

Editor's Note: The Tale of the Tip

NPR.org, November 8, 2007 · It started as an aside in a longer interview, but it became an Internet sensation within hours. [for full story, click here.]

Citizen journalism in action

Did you read about the Finnish musicians who were harassed, detained, intimidated and generally mistreated by U.S. immigration/homeland security agents at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport? Rich Broderick broke the story in the Twin Cities Daily Planet.

This is a prime example of citizen journalism. Broderick spoke directly to the people who were involved. He wrote the story and, since it included a heavy dose of his opinion about the way that immigration and homeland security function, the story ran as a blog, not in the news columns.

Some people questioned the accuracy of the report. They seemed to feel that the story was suspect, because they had not seen it in the mainstream media. In fact, the story finally was published in the Star Tribune more than two weeks later.

Broderick's report shows how citizen journalism works and why it is important.

Citizen journalism works because individual people have information to share, and believe their information is important. In this case, Broderick heard about a newsworthy event. He spoke directly to the people who were involved and investigated the story. His account linked the individual incident to broader concerns about civil liberties in the post-9/11 "security" regime.

Without Broderick's reporting (and without a Daily Planet to publish the story), this incident may never have been known outside the small circle of those immediately involved and their friends and families. The mainstream media has relatively few reporters. All of us walking around in our communities, talking to our neighbors, listening to musicians at Tillie's Bean, talking to workers at the Hard Rock Café, snapping photos of the new Midtown Greenway bridge – all of us together have more information about our communities than a few reporters can gather. To put it another way, all of us together are better-informed than any one of us.

One reason that citizen journalism is important is that citizens use it to report important news. That's part of the reason the Daily Planet exists.

A second reason is that the mainstream media listens, at least some of the time. Journalists look for news. Many of them read the Twin Cities Daily Planet and other citizen journalism sites.

I am glad they do. I want them to pick up our stories and, with their far greater resources and audience, take those stories to the world.