Water, water, everywhere
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bill emory
Workers from TriState Utilities reline 8-inch diameter wastewater pipe from an access point at 10th and Market Streets. To prevent infiltration and exfiltration related to sewer pipes in the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority service area would supposedly require an expenditure of 2000 million dollars, i.e. $2 billion.
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Commentator Bill Emory puts up a new photo nearly every day at billemory.com/blog.
Read more on: Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority
12 comments
2 billion dollars ---does Tom Frederick, RWSA director, expect anyone to believe this ?
Citizen, beware the solitary data point floating in space. Absolutely no context has been provided for this blurb's assertion, other than the website of The Hook, which is hardly a reliable, unbiased source.
Looks like Brian Wheeler, reporting on a recent RSWA meeting is another source, meanwhile do hold them to be reliable ?
cvilletomorrow said...
@Joanna Salidas - The issue of the cost of fixing the leaking pipes was discussed at this meeting. It was reported that it would cost $2 billion over 50 years to fix ALL of the city and county's sewer lines to prevent infill and infiltration of storm water. Frederick said the RWSA, city, and ACSA jointly decided, after completing the comprehensive sewer study, to pursue a $400 million option in an effort to balance both "aggressive" repairs and added pumping/treatment capacity. He added this approach achieves the environmental goals for the project more quickly as well.
Brian Wheeler
Charlottesville Tomorrow
http://cvilletomorrow.typepad.com/charlottesville_tomorrow_/2011/03/rwsa...
There should always be independent accounting on all public transactions. Always, as this is a very sticky area.
Citizen, thank you for introducing another piece of data, that this price tag is over 50 years. This is not a minor piece of information and provides QUITE A BIT of context for the first piece of information.
For instance, if I told you that I would pay you $1 million to be a secretary, you'd probably say I was overpaying you. If I then told you that it would be over 50 years, you might not.
We then further read that the RWSA is actually pursuing a $400 million option, presumably over the same time frame.
So we go from $2 billion to $8 Million (with an 'M') per year.
So, while not speaking to the reliability of Brian Wheeler, I think that it is patently clear that he provides far more information and a greater context for understanding that information, just from what you copied and pasted.
The text in your comment helps me with the point I was making. When you read a "fact" in the hook, it is often out of context and incomplete. When all the facts are known and the context is shown, one is able to see that the "fact" presented in the hook is actually quite misleading.
Hope that helps and thanks for sharing.
Well if you could tap into the infrastructure and jobs bill that the president is attempting to put together, maybe some jobs could be created and the feds would pick up some of the cost.
Affordable only if we take some of Ron Pauls advice and hack the hell out of wasteful government spending.
Stop all the wars, stop aid to Israel, etc etc etc etc etc etc etc.
Or we could implement the republican party plan, ignore the will of the people, do nothing, try to make Obama look impotent, grab power in washington.
After all the misleading speeches Mr Frederick has put before local officials, after all the cozy contracts he has signed with engineering and consulting firms I really don't understand why we even entertain the thought of even listening to this guy. After he pursued Van Der Linde with the RICO act how can any right thinking person even entertain anything this guy says. There ought to be laws to protect the public from people like him.
"skinny"- don't have to try to make Obama look impotent, he has "people" who do that for him, as he has no clue as to even make that happen.
"Ignore the will of the people and grab power"? I do believe that they were elected by the electorate- and that can change if those elected republicans do not perform. We are a party (and what a party it is, but I digress) who holds those elected accountable for their actions after elected. We also hold dems accounatable too- (Perriello being a recent, local example- Robert Hurt (REPUBLICAN) may be next- and he even appears to be one of us- (but we shall see).
One thing we don't do is keep putting the same AH's in office after they have proven to not be effective- yes, there are long time repubs in office, but the count is much higher on the dem side- and they have tried for years to push through programs that have never improved anything regardless of how much they cried or how much money was printed to cover the cost of that improvement- just ask, and I will name them all.
HarryD, much of what you say is true but one thing needs to be understood. There are no more democrats and republicans. We are a one party system now. DC knows that the best way to protect the special interests is to keep the unwashed masses divided. Playing this game of left or right plays right into they're hands. We have no ability to reform anything as long as we are kept divided, they know it and depend on it. So as long as you or should I say we play this game of pointing fingers. and its your parties fault not mine, things will stay the same which is exactly what they want.
Sez Me, You should be a spokesperson for the "Occupy Wall Street" movement. The media tries to paint them with a broad brush as having no demands. Well you just nailed one of the main problems that should be vocalized into a demand.
You are right on the money. I think this is why so many in this country are angry, even though some know what the game is, we feel powerless to change it. Worse yet, the power brokers know we know and they still dont give a damn.
Just like the muslim fundamentalist movement, "Occupy" will never go away it will just get stronger.
Huja has a scheme to pay for some of this. He wants to effectively raise our already high property taxes by charging property owners a "stormwater utility fee" based on the amount of impervious surface they have. I can't have two urls in a single post, so I'll link to the youtube video where he states that in another comment.
The scheme is to sell the tax to the public as a means of reducing runoff, but there is no incentive or tax reduction for capturing water in rain barrels, rain gardens, or other retention facilities. The city requires driveways and sidewalks for new residential construction with again no incentive for designing them to reduce runoff and the city even requires administrative approval, which it doesn't grant easily for choices other than hard paved surfaces for new parking or driveway construction. They more or less force the construction of impervious surfaces and have been doing that for a long time. Now that they have you where they want you, they're going to make you pay.
The details are too much to post here, but following the link will take you to the proposed plan. Huja is the only candidate that I've heard endorse this. That's one reason why I won't be voting for him.
http://www.charlottesville.org/Index.aspx?page=2308
WRPP Advisory Committee Final Report (October 2008)
Satyendra S. Huja: Candidate for City Council
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Re6T_tHlZOc
If you try hard enough, you can sort of understand what he's saying. His position on the tax for impervious surfaces is stated at about 3:16.