Category: Environment

A year in the life of Johnson’s Shut-Ins

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date December 14, 2006

One year ago, a billion gallons of water poured down a mountain, scraped away the dirt, the trees, the rocks, and any living thing in a flood of mud and debris. It landed at the entrance to Johnson’s Shut-Ins, slammed into the hill on one end of the park, swirled around taking away every last bit of the Ranger’s house, including the ranger, his wife, and their three small children.

A pickup and a large truck on the road suddenly found themselves adrift in the early morning darkness, as water shoved them into the field across from the Shut-Ins. A dump truck managed to stay grounded.

The water poured past and through the Shut-Ins–ripping away the campgrounds, pouring over the endangered fens, splashing against the hills on either side; dumping five feet of mud and boulders the size of cars in its path.

The residents of Lesterville waited, anxiously, to see if the lower reservoir held. It did.

If this had happened in the summer…

If the reservoir had not held…

From Black River News, many new stories:

The 2006 “Wish I could drop them off a cliff” award winner

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date December 13, 2006

Whatever the feeling nationally, locally there’s one clear winner of the “Wish I could drop ’em off a cliff” award here in Missouri, and that’s Ameren. I imagine that most of us would probably vote 2, 3, or more times for Ameren in this category, if we could.

Black River News points to a terrific editorial in St. Louis Today by Eric Mink, Stormy Past Catches up with Ameren. He finds that paying the board members a $1000.00 a meeting doesn’t necessarily jibe with the company’s skimping on tree maintenance, leading to record breaking outages the last three years. Not to mention the lack of maintenance which caused the Taum Sauk dam to fail.

Did I happen to mention that Ameren also runs a nuclear power plant?

Leaving aside the cost in lost revenue for business, spoiled food, and having to pay hotel bills, there’s also the cost in lives: of people exposed to the conditions of extreme heat and cold, as well as utility workers dying while working long hours in difficult conditions. Luckily, no one died with the Taum Sauk dam failure.

On top of this, Ameren wants to raise rates. Not so it can change its maintenance schedules, or do a better job. No, the company has to pay for those $1000.00 a board member meetings, not to mention all the ‘job performance bonuses’ paid the top management.

Black River News also had a succinct comment to make on the DNR ‘announcement’ yesterday:

This press release was sent out to coincide with the one year anniversary and not much else. My question is does this mean that DNR “blinked” first, stay tuned.

I’d like to see other Missouri webloggers take up these issues, perhaps pass along their own nomination of Ameren in the “Drop ’em off a cliff” award. Perhaps we should make DNR runnerup.

The CEO responds with an extremely unsatisfactory answer.

His response is that they would have to start cutting down trees in order to do better, and that trimming trees once every four years is enough.

I found a study conducted by the State of Massachusetts, which also has a four year cycle, that does incorporate cutting down trees that are at risk. These are trees that have indications of failure, and this type of effort is usually conducted in association with the local communities because it’s in everyone’s interest to do so.

There’s another study by the IEEE, which I unfortunately can’t access, that mentions in its abstract how reducing the tree trimming cycle one year could prevent 0.9 outages.

In other words, why is Ameren going with a consultant when extensive studies and research have already been made? As for cutting down the trees, I can’t imaging that Ameren and the community don’t already have this authority.

As these things go, the power company is here today, replacing poles that are coming close to falling over, trimming trees.

Environment

Speaking of Taum Sauk

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date December 12, 2006

DNR came out with its proposed settlement package for the Taum Sauk dam collapse. Black River News has more links on the story.

One of the settlement items was DNR’s proposal for Ameren to donate Church Mountain or the Rock Island Railroad corridor, the latter specifically to be converted into a bike/hike trail to potentially meet with the Katy Trail. I find this a little odd, considering the ongoing dispute between the state Attorney General and the DNR as regards the Boonville Bridge. In this incident, the outgoing DNR chief before Childers moved to preserve the Boonville Bridge as part of a historical landmark, as well as part of the Katy Trail. Childers and Blunt, instead, decided to give the bridge to the Union Pacific railroad, so it could use it as scrap steel.

This puts the Katy Trail in a vulnerable state, because the only way that the Rails-to-Trails program works in this country, is that the trails must intersect working railroad lines, so that they can be converted back to railroads, if necessary in the national interest. Removing the Boonville Bridge removes one of only two rail connections to the Katy Trail–the other of which, at St. Charles, is vulnerable to natural disaster.

However, if the Rock Island Railroad corridor is used as the final connection between Katy and Kansas City, extending the trail completely across the state, this might lessen the vulnerability of the trail overall, potentially removing one concern about giving the Boonville Bridge back to the Union Pacific.

As for the deal, Nixon, our State Attorney General, responded with:

While these projects put forth by DNR that are as far as 200 miles from Taum Sauk may be interesting and worthy, this wish list from bureaucrats at this time complicates matters and does not address adequate compensation for those who live and work closest to where the disaster occurred.

Nixon is not in these particular negotiations, as he was ‘fired’ as representative for the DNR because Childers felt Nixon was compromised since Ameren indirectly donated 19,000 dollars to his campaign fund; regardless of the fact that the money was returned to Ameren, and regardless of the fact that Ameren donated at least 17,000 dollars to the re-election campaign for Governor Blunt’s House of Representatives father, none other than the minority whip, Roy Blunt.

However, Nixon’s office hasn’t been all that forthcoming for what’s happening between it and DNR, though it has responded to Lee Farber at Black River News that it would post proposals for how to spend the five million (well, four million plus change) in fines levied by the federal government (which managed to wrangle for itself ten million dollars in fines, regardless of the fact that the agency who levied the fine, FERC, is the same agency whose inspectors had approved the safety of the dam just days before the dam broke).

In the meantime, no, work is not progressing in the cleanup, contrary to what the St. Louis Today article states.

Have I lost you yet? There’s wheels turning within wheels with this situation, and I’m concerned that the state is going to be paying a heavy price when it comes to our natural and civic resources because of the campaign for governor between Blunt and Nixon. We in Missouri are not being served.

Environment Political

Johnson Shut-Ins and the political gaming

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date November 15, 2006

There was a story in St. Louis Today about the Johnson’s Shut-Ins and possible criminal charges that State Attorney General Nixon might be filing because of the dam break. Ameren is dragging its feet on restoration because, the company says, while this is hanging over the corporate head, it’s not sure what is or is not covered by insurance, and therefore the company doesn’t know what it will or will not do.

Black River News has more on a local meeting between area residents and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources director, Childers. He basically parroted what was said in the St. Louis today: if Nixon pursues this course, the company (hint hint) may not re-build the dam or do other work it originally committed to do.

Now let’s look beneath the headlines. State Attorney General Nixon is the Democratic challenger to now Republican Governor Blunt. DNR director Childers is a Blunt appointee–brought in as part of the sweep made of the DNR when Blunt took office. And who ordered Nixon to pursue criminal charges in the first place? Matt Blunt.

Not to let Nixon off, when his office is contacted about the Shut-Ins, they basically redirect people back to the DNR. No one wants to take responsibility for anything, except for the money–everyone wants the money. In the meantime, the conditions at Johnson’s will only worsen: impacting on both the environment, as well as a primary source of income for that area.

Photography Plants

Japanese Maple

Post author By Shelley Powers
Post date November 3, 2006