Category Archives: Commentary

Rocky Flats Lawsuit Settlement

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A friend loaned me a pamphlet he received about the settlement, which had been sent from the United States District Court for the District of Colorado. The proposed $375 million dollar settlement involves people who owned property near the Rocky Flats Plant on June 7, 1989 or are heirs to someone who did. A rough area of the settlement area begins from the plant and extends to slightly below 120th on the north, a bit beyond Wadsworth but not to Highway 36 on the east, and more or less to 72nd on the south in a sort of circular outline. There is a website that allows you to enter an address to see whether it is included in the area.

Simple-Rocky-Flats-Class-Map_sm

The class action lawsuit was originally filed January 30, 1990 under the Price-Anderson Act and under the Colorado state nuisance and trespass law. The jury found for the plaintiffs, but the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the judgment in 2010. “The Tenth Circuit held that the Price-Anderson Act required Plaintiffs to prove additional and more severe harm than would be required under Colorado state nuisance law.” My interpretation of the ruling was that Price-Anderson required actual damages to have occurred and that perceived damages were inadequate to justify an award. It was also ruled that jury instructions were correct for some aspects but incorrect in others.

The complicated legal tussles continued with the plaintiffs asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the Tenth Circuit’s action. I thought the Court had decided not to hear the case, but the pamphlet states that the settlement was reached “…before the Supreme Court issued a ruling on the petitions… The plaintiffs asked the Tenth Circuit to consider an award under the Colorado nuisance law, and the Court agreed, ruling “…that Plaintiff’s nuisance claims were not preempted by the Price-Anderson Act.” Continue reading →

EPA Dodges Responsibility on Ethanol

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The EPA is mandated by law to analyze the impacts of biofuels and report to Congress every three years, but its inspector general acknowledged that the agency has failed to complete such a report since 2011. A Denver Post editorial lists several negative impacts of using ethanol made from corn in fuel, which is the likely reason the required reports haven’t been filed. Mandating ethanol in fuel hasn’t reduced oil imports or improved air quality; two reasons given for imposing its use.

The list of negatives about ethanol is extensive. Farmers jumped on the corn for ethanol bandwagon by plowing up 6.5 million acres of conservation land in the process of planting an additional 19 million acres of corn. Massive amounts of water have been used to irrigate the larger fields of corn and more water is required to process the corn into ethanol. Fuel efficiency is less for gasoline mixed with ethanol. The higher prices for corn naturally resulted in higher prices for food. Top that off with the “…growing evidence that the mandate reduces greenhouse gas emissions much less than originally forecast, if indeed at all.”

Just guessing, but maybe the EPA doesn’t want to submit the required report because they can’t think of anything positive to say. Is it possible they’re working to protect a political agenda and not to protect the environment?

Nuclear Waste Disposal

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Activists have successfully fought nuclear power generation by preventing a national solution to disposing of the waste. A Denver Post article describes how federal officials worked to open a central disposal facility at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Nevada politicians opposed after the money was spent to prepare the site, and Obama declared Yucca Mountain as an “unworkable solution” early in his Presidency. The result was that about 70,000 tons of waste (increasing by about 2,000 tons per year) is now stored at 99 power plants and 14 closed plants around the country. Guarding the spent fuel is expensive and the waste will eventually have to be repackaged if a permanent solution can’t be developed. I’ve never heard that anyone claim that what we are doing now is safer than what could have been accomplished by opening Yucca Mountain.

There is a long list of positives about nuclear energy. Advocates of reducing carbon dioxide emission to combat climate change should be thrilled that nuclear plants don’t emit carbon dioxide. Nuclear power generates about a fifth of the electricity in America despite the fierce opposition that has successfully impeded its development. Wind power might catch up with that amount by 2020. I was surprised to read that John Kotek, acting assistant secretary for nuclear energy, also added, “We benefited from the nuclear deterrence.”

The federal government convened a meeting in Denver to discuss the problem of nuclear waste. Kotek said, “We’re not at all at the stage of looking at locations. We’re developing a process.” He also added, “…having a waste disposal path would make nuclear more acceptable.” In my opinion, he doesn’t get it. Opponents fully understand that solving the problem of waste disposal would make nuclear energy more acceptable. That’s exactly why they will never agree to any solution. Plans to drill an exploratory bore hole thee miles deep under North Dakota for nuclear weapon waste were scrapped in the face of objections from residents. The problem won’t be solved until we find some politicians with the courage to do the right thing. Considering our latest crop of politicians, I’d say we shouldn’t hold our breath.

Flood Insurance Needs Tough Love

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I’m going to say something that may sound heartless – it’s time to stop insuring properties that repeatedly flood.

This morning I listened to a report on NPR from Marketplace. The Federal flood insurance program is $20 billion in debt and Congress must take up reauthorization next year. It’s time for a change.

A mere 0.6% of properties have received 10% of payouts. These are properties that flood repeatedly – one property had flooded – and received payment – 40 times. It’s insane to keep paying owners to build in high risk flood plains. And taxpayers must also cover the costs of emergency responders and infrastructure repair.

Now I’ll sound a little less callous. There is a proposal for the Federal government to simply buy an insured flooded property at its pre-flood value. Demolish structures, remove expensive utilities, and return it to whatever sort of landscape nature intended – this last bit is from me. This would save money in the long term and keep faith with owners whom we – the government speaks for us – lured into building in flood plains with below-market-priced insurance.

I propose the buy-out and get-out approach be extended to all Federal flood insurance, and I’d include wildfires – allow private insurance companies to charge whatever they want to re-insure properties that burn. I say this as a person and volunteer firefighter living on the edge of the Gila National Forest, in the wildland-urban interface (the WUI or woo-e as it’s called.) I could be one of those people forced out if a wildfire sweeps through my area – though I do practice Defensible Space.

I can hear my liberal friends saying what I propose would destroy neighborhoods – it would be cruel to allow circumstances to force people away from the homes they love. I can hear my right-wing friends, too – the government wants your land – they want to force everyone into high density cities. I hear these concerns and an honest debate can address them. Just keep in mind that at some point nature will win, and it will be better for everyone if we plan ahead of disaster.

As sea levels rise and droughts intensify, marginal locations become more dangerous. Here’s where I’ll claim some moral high ground. Artificially low insurance premiums lure people into harm’s way. Recovering from a flood is painful and stressful as well as expensive. And people die in floods and fires.

We need to find a decent way to back out of the problem we’ve created.

BTW – There’s a second meaning of Defensible Space that has more to do with urban neighborhoods. It’s interesting enough that I have to mention it, even though it’s off topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defensible_space_theory.

ACT Scores Are Even Worse

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The posting last week mentioned that about two thirds of high school graduates are ready to succeed in college. An article in the Denver Post indicates that the most recent results show many fewer are ready for college. “In its annual score report…the testing company said only 38 percent of graduating seniors who took the exam hit the college-prepared benchmark in at least four core subjects tested—reading, English, math, and science. That compares with 40 percent last year.” The composite score also declined from 21 to 20.8 (on a scale of 1 to 36). Only 64% of the 2016 graduates took the test, and one would have to guess that the many if not most of the students who weren’t interested in taking the test wouldn’t have improved the results.

For some of the individual test results, 61 percent met the English benchmark, 44 percent reading, 41 percent math, and 36 percent science. The composite result is that 34 percent did not meet any of the four benchmarks. The comparisons by race have not shifted that much from previous years, but they are still depressing.  Only 11 percent of African-Americans were able to hit the college-ready benchmarks in three or more of the subjects. There were 23 percent of Hispanic test-takers who achieved college-level in three or more compared to 49 percent of whites.

Should we consider the Chinese model where achievement is the basis for admission and promotion in education? Perhaps only students “graduating” from the eighth grade who test at a certain level should be promoted to high school while the others are given the opportunity to attend trade schools. (An educator friend says this is a really bad idea.) What we are doing now, which costs an enormous amount of money, doesn’t seem to be preparing children for a productive role in society. We are instead encouraging youngsters who aren’t prepared for college to incur enormous amounts of debt to enjoy the college experience.

Back to School

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All of the grandkids are back in school, and, from everything I know, they are getting good educations. That’s good news, but the same can’t be said for all students. Let’s first talk about the costs.Total expenditures for public and secondary schools in the U.S. were $620 billion in 2012-2013, or $12,296 per public school student. About 90% of that cost was for school operations, 8% was on expenditures for property and maintenance, and the remainder was on school debt interest. The staggering fact is that the average school operation cost per student for twelve years of primary through secondary education is over $130,000. I’m guessing the only reason we don’t often hear about this is that the students don’t have to incur student debt to pay for it. The money is wrung out of taxpayers and the costs become invisible.

Are students becoming educated? I suppose the answer could be, “sometimes.” Almost two thirds of high school graduates in Colorado in 2014-2015 were judged to be academically ready to succeed in college level curriculum. Of course that’s one way of glossing over the fact that 35.4% would require remedial education before they could attend actual college classes. In case you’re counting, that’s an increase of a bit more than one percent compared to the previous year. I don’t recall any measure of education that indicates improvement. I do recall year after year of campaigns asking for more money to be spent. The campaigns often result in approval of increases in spending, but seldom show improvements in student performance. I wonder when we’re going to stop putting up with this?