Matt Steele: Use Cost:Benefit Analysis to Select Transit Routes→

streets.mn

“As the Twin Cities proceeds with plans to build over three billion dollars worth of rail extensions for the Blue and Green Lines, many transit advocates question if we’re missing an opportunity for transformative projects that lift up urban neighborhoods on their routes between suburban park & rides and the downtown core...

It comes down to this: Let’s discuss costs and benefits in parallel until shovels hit the ground, rather than committing to a “value” alignment and then being all ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ when the cost goes up 50% or more. For things like tunnels under parks and bridges over the Grimes Pond which are being planned precisely because these low-development corridors were supposedly going to make the chosen alignment more cost effective. If we’re going to build viaducts and tunnels, let’s at least do it in a way that brings stations to the doorsteps of tens of thousands more transit riders.”

How to Simulate the Future of a Watershed→

University of Wisconsin: Water Sustainability and Climate

“Using a tool similar to a computer game, Melissa Motew is peering into the future. Motew is a modeler. She uses computers and mathematics to simulate ecosystems and make sense of nature.

Her task is to shed light on what the Madison area’s environment could be like by the year 2070 and what this might mean for human well-being—how much food could we grow, how well could the land withstand floods and will we have clean lakes yet?

“We want to track what’s happening through time, so we can understand all of the changes,” says Motew.”

The steps the article outlines are helpful: (1)start with stories, (2)simulate the system, and (3)ask what-if questions.

T.R. Goldman: A Subdivision that Reduced Car-Dependency→

POLITICO:

“Evanston was failing as a suburb, so it reinvented itself as a mini city. Now the city of Chicago wants to follow its lead.

At first glance, downtown Evanston, Illinois, doesn’t look revolutionary—just another gentrifying urban core with the obligatory Whole Foods, the local organic sustainable restaurants serving $14 cocktails, the towering new, high-end luxury apartments filled with stainless steel appliances and granite countertops. The booming downtown feels increasingly hip; this summer it was featured as a “Surfacing” destination in the New York Times Travel Section. “I have everything here,” says Joanne McCall, pausing one evening on her way inside Sherman Plaza, a soaring, 26-story condominium building. “The post office, the dry cleaner, the movies, I work out upstairs, the Whole Foods is over there, the hair dresser over here. And the Uber thing is getting big here.”

It takes, in fact, a few extra minutes in the neighborhood to realize what’s different—and what’s missing. Downtown Evanston—a sturdy, tree-lined Victorian city wedged neatly between Lake Michigan and Chicago’s northern border—is missing cars. Or, more accurately, it’s missing a lot of cars. Thanks to concerted planning, these new developments are rising within a 10-minute walk of two rail lines and half-a-dozen bus routes. The local automobile ownership rate is nearly half that of the surrounding area.”

A thorough article on how a city was redesigned for the benefit of citizens rather than for box stores. The article speaks of transit-oriented development, and it should be noted that the term meant mass transit, less car parking spaces, allowance of beneficial high density, and a major zoning ordinance change allowing mixed use and a focus on public benefits,

Sarah Booth: Zoning for Sustainability→

Sustainable City Network:

“In a study of 32 cities of various sizes, University of Wisconsin Professor Anna Haines found that most city zoning ordinances had little support for sustainable development. Large or small, coastal or central, most of the communities studied by Haines and her colleague Edward Jepson didn’t have much in their regulations that was useful for supporting sustainability principles. This isn’t surprising, since most of the ordinances were written long before sustainability became a household word.

“The city that I live in wrote their code in 1979,” Haines said, so it’s not very surprising that it doesn’t address sprawl, peak oil, floodwater control or other contemporary concerns.
“Almost 100 years ago is when the first zoning codes were put in place — New York City was the first,” she said. “And at that time the purpose was to strictly separate uses, to separate industry from housing, which made a lot of sense at the time, but doesn’t so much anymore.”

Haines’ study began by identifying nine principles of sustainability:
1. Encourage higher-density development.
2. Encourage mixed use.
3. Encourage local food production.
4. Protect ecosystems and natural functions.
5. Encourage transportation alternatives.
6. Preserve/create a sense of place.
7. Increase housing diversity and affordability.
8. Reduce the use of fossil fuels/encourage the use of fossil fuel alternatives.
9. Encourage the use of industrial by-products.”

There has been a big lag in revising zoning ordinances for sustainability and walkability.

Adam Frank: Disruptive Infrastructure→

NPR:

“The nation’s vast transportation network is a modern-day wonder built from highways and streets, off-ramps and interchanges, cars, trucks and buses. And the fossil fuel that powers it all represents another modern wonder — a complex network of linked drilling platforms, refineries, pipelines, rail lines and trucking operations.

The scale of it all is staggering. Try, for a moment, to think of all those thousands and thousands of miles of concrete, asphalt, steel piping and iron rebar. Now think about something even more staggering: In 1890 there were no gas stations — the very root of our modern transportation infrastructure. But by 1920, there were gas stations everywhere.

What does that tell you? It means all those highways, refineries and pipelines emerged out of nothing on a scale of decades. When you look at the history, it’s remarkable just how fast we built the fossil fuel-based transportation and energy infrastructure our civilization depends upon.

But what’s even more remarkable is that we have to do it again.”

First, we'll add new elements to our existing infrastructure. Next, we'll settle on one or two sustainable transportation options that scale (e.g., electric streetcars, ultra-lite rail). Then we'll slowly replace the old, less used transportation infrastructure (e.g., less roads, parking lots, gas stations).

Reduce Variability At Your Peril→

UW-Madison Center for Limnology:

“We want robust harvests of crops, fish and fuel year after year. As a result, we try to manage the use of our resources in a way that minimizes their variability. We seek a predictable “status quo.”

But a new study says that managing our environment for predictable outcomes is risky. In fact, more often than not, it backfires...

[Dr.] Carpenter and his colleagues ran a series of simple computer models looking at three human endeavors – controlling nutrient pollution in lakes, maintaining cattle production on rangelands invaded by shrubs, and sustaining harvest in a fishery.

In all cases, when they tried to control variance – by tightly controlling fish harvest or shrubs in grasslands, for example – unexpected outcomes occurred. Fish stocks collapsed at lower harvest levels. Grasslands were replaced by shrubs with even light pressure from cattle grazing.

The results are counter-intuitive. How can reduced pressure on a resource end up being bad for business? Part of the explanation, Carpenter says, is that, “the minute humans try to manage the system, they become part of the system.” And our involvement may help explain some of these unintended outcomes.

“Living systems need a certain amount of stress,” Carpenter says, noting that, as they evolved “they continually got calibrated against variability.” Just as our immune systems rely on exposure to bacteria and viruses to sharpen their skills at responding to disease, natural systems also need that kind of stimulation.”

Are there examples in your area? The building of levees for flood control in the article resonates. How about the Mille Lacs walleye population? 

Selena Hoy: Japanese Kids Walk and They Walk Alone→

Atlantic:

“Even in big cities like Tokyo, small children take the subway and run errands by themselves. The reason has a lot to do with group dynamics.

It’s a common sight on Japanese mass transit: Children troop through train cars, singly or in small groups, looking for seats. They wear knee socks, polished patent-leather shoes, and plaid jumpers, with wide-brimmed hats fastened under the chin and train passes pinned to their backpacks. The kids are as young as 6 or 7, on their way to and from school, and there is nary a guardian in sight.

A popular television show called Hajimete no Otsukai, or My First Errand, features children as young as two or three being sent out to do a task for their family. As they tentatively make their way to the greengrocer or bakery, their progress is secretly filmed by a camera crew. The show has been running for more than 25 years...

Japan has a very low crime rate, which is surely a key reason parents feel confident about sending their kids out alone. But small-scaled urban spaces and a culture of walking and transit use also foster safety and, perhaps just as important, the perception of safety.

“Public space is scaled so much better—old, human-sized spaces that also control flow and speed,” Dixon notes. In Japanese cities, people are accustomed to walking everywhere, and public transportation trumps car culture; in Tokyo, half of all trips are made on rail or bus, and a quarter on foot. Drivers are used to sharing the road and yielding to pedestrians and cyclists.”

I find this fascinating, As a kid growing up in a rural area, Japanese children today have the freedom that as a kid I had. Today, most American kids appear to be motored around by parents. How can we change our cities and our culture to foster more independence for our young? 

Julie M. Johnson: What are the Unintended Consequences of Pesticide Use for Non-Natives?→

ENSIA:

“The U.S. Forest Service provides pesticide use summaries for national forests and grasslands on a region-by-region basis, but notes that the information “should not be interpreted as inclusive of all pesticide applications conducted by the agency, its partners, or collaborators on National Forest System lands and waters.” An unpublished study of herbicide use on public wildlands in the U.S. by University of Montana ecologist Viktoria Wagner and colleagues estimates that more than 1 million hectares (2.4 million acres) of such lands were sprayed with herbicides in the U.S. between 2007 and 2011, and more than 200 metric tons (220 tons) of herbicide active ingredients were used on these lands in 2010 alone.

Various conservation organizations contacted were reluctant to discuss the issue: When asked about chemical use, The Nature Conservancy wouldn’t interview on the record. Wiley Buck, a restoration ecologist with Great River Greening, an urban conservation nonprofit, also declined. The USFWS agreed to public affairs–supervised interviews with staff, but only after vetting questions to be asked.”

With the current fad to control non-native species that are well-adapted to places that they are indiscriminately dropped into, natural management agencies and organizations have forgot about the principle of 'First Do No Harm'. They are managing for their values of what is natural, and it could be counter to the public's interest or in the case of aquatic plants it may be consistent with the public's predisposition to favor ecologically destructive efforts to remove any and all plants from lakes (well-adapted native or non-native, they may not particularly care).

AAAS: Getting Rid of Humans Benefits Wildlife Even if a Radiation Tragedy is Involved→

“In 1986, after a fire and explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant released radioactive particles into the air, thousands of people left the area, never to return. Now, researchers reporting in the Cell Press journal Current Biology on October 5 have found that the Chernobyl site looks less like a disaster zone and more like a nature preserve, teeming with elk, roe deer, red deer, wild boar, and wolves.

The findings are a reminder of the resilience of wildlife. They may also hold important lessons for understanding the potential long-term impact of the more recent Fukushima disaster in Japan.

”It’s very likely that wildlife numbers at Chernobyl are much higher than they were before the accident,” says Jim Smith of the University of Portsmouth in the UK. “This doesn’t mean radiation is good for wildlife, just that the effects of human habitation, including hunting, farming, and forestry, are a lot worse.””

Abstract: Following the 1986 Chernobyl accident, 116,000 people were permanently evacuated from the 4,200 km2 Chernobyl exclusion zone [1] . There is continuing scientific and public debate surrounding the fate of wildlife that remained in the abandoned area. Several previous studies of the Chernobyl exclusion zone (e.g. [2,3] ) indicated major radiation effects and pronounced reductions in wildlife populations at dose rates well below those thought [4,5] to cause significant impacts. In contrast, our long-term empirical data showed no evidence of a negative influence of radiation on mammal abundance. Relative abundances of elk, roe deer, red deer and wild boar within the Chernobyl exclusion zone are similar to those in four (uncontaminated) nature reserves in the region and wolf abundance is more than 7 times higher. Additionally, our earlier helicopter survey data show rising trends in elk, roe deer and wild boar abundances from one to ten years post-accident. These results demonstrate for the first time that, regardless of potential radiation effects on individual animals, the Chernobyl exclusion zone supports an abundant mammal community after nearly three decades of chronic radiation exposures.

Issues Remain for MN Shoreline Buffers→

AP:

“State officials are moving to implement new requirements for setbacks between cropland and waterways passed by the Legislature this year, but concern and confusion among farmers and lawmakers surrounding the new law makes it clear — the buffer battle in Minnesota isn’t over.

Agricultural groups spent months negotiating with Gov. Mark Dayton on his controversial call to boost water quality by installing buffer strips along Minnesota waterways. They eventually passed a scaled-down compromise. The first of those buffers, on public waterways, are required by November of 2017, with smaller strips along public drainage systems coming the following year.

State officials say they’re still working to provide farmers and property owners clear guidance about where they’ll be required to install the grassland zones to filter harmful runoff. That information vacuum — and what little guidance they’ve received — has some lawmakers and farmers worried the state may grab up more land than they bargained for to get the buffer treatment. “I really want this to be successful, but the only way to be successful is if we get good cooperation,” said Republican Rep. Paul Torkelson, a farmer who played a key role in the bill’s negotiations. “We’re not going to get that cooperation if we break our word.”

The state’s Department of Natural Resources and other regulatory bodies are starting to work their way through the law and the state’s massive network of lakes, rivers, streams and drainage systems. The law generally requires 50-foot buffers along public waterways and 16 1/2-foot strips along public ditches.”

See other 'shoreline buffers' articles by selecting the same tag (bottom of list on the right) or by searching (top right).

Ryan J. Foley: The Midwest Water Crisis Has Begun→

Associated Press:

“Unlike pothole-scarred roads or crumbling bridges, decaying water systems often go unnoticed until they fail. “Buried infrastructure is out of sight, out of mind. We take it for granted. We turn on the faucet and we get good, clean, quality water,” said Will Williams, head of asset management for the engineering firm Black & Veatch and an expert on water infrastructure.

When failures happen, help can be hard to come by. Without big changes in national policy, local governments and their ratepayers will be largely on their own in paying for the upgrades. The amount of federal money available for drinking-water improvements is just a drop in the bucket...

More than a million miles of underground pipes distribute water to American homes, and maintaining that network remains the largest and costliest long-term concern.

Some pipes date back to the 1800s. As they get older, they fail in different ways. Some split and rupture, with an estimated 700 main breaks occurring around the U.S. every day. The most devastating failures damage roadways, close businesses and shut off service for hours or days. If pipes are particularly bad, they can contaminate water.

Utilities have long struggled to predict when to replace pipes, which have vastly different life cycles depending on the materials they are made from and where they are buried. Some might last 30 years, others more than 100. Sophisticated computer programs are helping some water systems prioritize the order in which pipes should be replaced, but tight budgets often mean the fixes don’t come until it’s too late.

Replacing a single mile of water main can cost from $500,000 to more than $1 million, but doing so is far more disruptive to customers if it fails first. Experts say a peak of up to 20,000 miles of pipe will need to be replaced annually beginning around 2035, up from roughly 5,000 miles currently. Des Moines Water Works alone has 1,600 miles of distribution pipes.”

Also see this  AP article on the federal aid program for improving the nation's drinking water systems, and another Foley article on the water crisis.

Lee Bergquist: WI DNR to Sell Lake Frontage to Scott Walker Donor→

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

“Elizabeth Uihlein, a major donor to Gov. Scott Walker, has reached an agreement with the Department of Natural Resources to buy 1.75 acres of prime lakefront property in Vilas County — a deal that gives her direct lake access to another property she now owns.

The agreement calls for the DNR to sell Uihlein 765 feet of frontage on Rest Lake in the Town of Manitowish Waters for $275,000. She currently owns an adjacent 11-unit condominium complex without lake access.

Uihlein and her husband, Richard, have donated nearly $3 million to Walker in recent years.

The businesswoman is a significant property owner in Manitowish Waters, is active in local affairs and is noted for her philanthropy, including paying for much of the cost of a pavilion in the community’s Rest Lake Park. A town official said that project will cost more than $1 million.

But also she has faced criticism for some of her activities and currently is under orders from Vilas County to replant trees at her condo complex after a worker she hired clear-cut foliage this summer on a portion of the property closest to the DNR land.”

Mary Anna Evans: The Sewage Crisis in America

The Atlantic:

“The EPA has called overflows from combined sewer systems “the largest category of our Nation’s wastewater infrastructure that still need to be addressed,” affecting Americans in 32 states, including the District of Columbia. The agency has been working with municipal water systems to address the problem for decades and much progress has been made, but to understand why it’s taking so long, you have to consider history. You also have to consider the massive costs that come with making changes to public works that have served millions of people for more than a century.

Combined sewers collect human waste, industrial waste, and stormwater runoff into a single pipe for treatment and disposal. (In other municipalities, these waste streams are handled separately.) In dry weather, a combined sewer ordinarily carries a relatively low volume of waste, delivering it to publicly owned treatment works, or POTWs for short, that are designed to handle that flow. In plain terms, when a combined sewer system is functioning properly, you can generally trust that when you flush, the contents of the toilet bowl end up where they’re supposed to go.”

Forget building more roads -- we should fix our human waste water infrastructure. Go down to the Mississippi River in downtown Minneapolis after a big storm and smell the human waste running into the river and then tell me that is acceptable. 

Sarah Goodyear: Be a Chairbomber!→

CityLab:

“Making a decent place for people to sit shouldn’t be very hard. As the great observer of urban street life, William H. Whyte, once said: “It is difficult to design a space that will not attract people. What is remarkable is how often this has been accomplished.”

Why do cities get it wrong so much? Why are so many otherwise lovely public places barren of a decent bench? And why are so many benches plopped down in places where no actual human would want to linger?

Gracen Johnson, a young urban strategist and communications professional, has been thinking about these things a lot. Not only thinking, also doing.”

StrongTowns Blog: to Sit (Part 1) (Part 2)

John Edwards: Hennepin-Lyndale Bottleneck Through the Years→

streets.mn:

Some very thoughtful comments at the end of the piece!

Joan Rose: Sewer Tanks Aren't Keeping Poo Out of Lakes→

MSU:

“The notion that septic tanks prevent fecal bacteria from seeping into rivers and lakes simply doesn’t hold water, says a new Michigan State University study.

Water expert Joan Rose and her team of water detectives have discovered freshwater contamination stemming from septic systems. Appearing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the study is the largest watershed study of its kind to date, and provides a basis for evaluating water quality and health implications and the impact of septic systems on watersheds.

“All along, we have presumed that on-site wastewater disposal systems, such as septic tanks, were working,” said Rose, Homer Nowlin Endowed Chair in Water Research. “But in this study, sample after sample, bacterial concentrations were highest where there were higher numbers of septic systems in the watershed area.””

Time to rethink the use of individual sewer system around our lakes. These systems are big polluters.

The PNAS paper.

Solomon David: Bowfin, North America’s Underdog Fish→

Cool Green Science:

“Mudfish, dogfish, grinnel, swamp-muskie: the names alone suggest why bowfin (Amia calva) are generally not the most highly-revered among fishes.

With their prehistoric appearance and tenacious attitude, one may say they deserve their poor reputation. But the bowfin is in reality a fascinating, resilient, and even beneficial species.

What we see today in the backwaters and wetlands of eastern North America is a modern representative of a very ancient line of “primitive” fishes or “living fossils,” organisms that appear to have changed little over time. The sole remainder of a once diverse group; bowfins (order Amiiformes), have been around for over 150 million years.”

One of my favorite fish to observe!

Terrence McCoy: Corporations Swindle Lead-Poisoned Poor People→

The Washington Post:

“Access Funding is part of an industry that profits off the poor and disabled. And Baltimore has become a prime target. It’s here that one teen — diagnosed with “mild mental retardation,” court records show — sold her payments through 2030 in four deals and is now homeless. It’s here that companies blanket certain neighborhoods in advertisements, searching for a potentially lucrative type of inhabitant, whose stories recall the legacy of Freddie Gray.”

Petty criminals get locked up and white-collar criminals get rich.

Megan Garber: A Wish for the End of Lawns→

The Atlantic:

“As that country developed, its landscape architects would sharpen lawns’ symbolism: of collectivity, of interlocking destinies, of democracy itself. “It is unchristian,” the landscaper Frank J. Scott wrote in The Art of Beautifying Suburban Home Grounds, “to hedge from the sight of others the beauties of nature which it has been our good fortune to create or secure.” He added, magnanimously, that “the beauty obtained by throwing front grounds open together, is of that excellent quality which enriches all who take part in the exchange, and makes no man poorer.” Lawns became aesthetic extensions of Manifest Destiny, symbols of American entitlement and triumph, of the soft and verdant rewards that result when man’s ongoing battles against nature are finally won. A well-maintained lawn—luxurious in its lushness, implying leisure even as its upkeep had a stubborn way of preventing it—came, too, to represent a triumph of another kind: the order of suburbia over the squalor of the city. A neat expanse of green, blades clipped to uniform length and flowing from home to home, became, as Roman Mars notes, the “anti-broken window.””

Change is hard... but when will we redefine wise landscaping in America? Some places are beginning to make progress.

Rich Cohen: Tour Lake Michigan→

New York Times:

“To really know the lake, though, you’ve got to get in it over your head. You enter across a bed of sharp rocks — an imperfection that illuminates the perfection of the whole. The water is very clear and very cold. As you go under, the air leaves your body. Unless it’s August or September, when the water temperature climbs into the low 80s, your skin takes on a bluish tint. You swim out, not as buoyant as in a salt sea, but energized.

In America, we call it fresh water. Elsewhere, it’s sweet-water, which seems more accurate. Fifty yards out, you turn and look back. The city looms like a thunderhead. The Hancock building stands above the rest, a massive obelisk crossed by huge supports. It was the world’s sixth tallest when I was a child, but now, mostly because of Abu Dhabi’s busy hands, is out of the top 20.

The Hancock’s observation deck is where you go for the wide angle. The western windows show why Chicago was the birth place of the skyscraper. The grassland prairie is so punishingly flat, with roads going on forever, it makes sense that the people in town would build their own heights, mountains, overlooks. From the northern windows, you see the shore and the village where I grew up, as well as Wrigley Field and the Baha’i Temple in Wilmette. In the south, you see factories, smoke stacks, haze. But the big picture is east. It’s water. And water and water and water. You strain to see the other side but never will. It’s 75 miles across from Chicago to Michigan, and close to a thousand miles around.”

Wildness at the edge of city -- beautiful!