Roberta Brandes Gratz / Feb 04 2012
For Release Saturday, February 4, 2012
Citiwire.net
Hydrofracking’s vast grid of pipelines is having an enormous impact on the rural Northeastern landscape — the topic of my prior two columns in this Citiwire series. But what’s the impact on local economies, jobs and real estate?
The experience of slow, bumper-to-bumper traffic entering the historic Bradford County (Pa.) seat of Towanda, could discourage any resident or visitor. One local businessman reported that his daily commute escalated from 20 to 45 minutes. From a window table at a Main Street café in Towanda, one observes the non-stop freight train quantity of huge, rumbling trucks. One wonders what the vibrations must be doing to structures along all routes, from 100-year-old Main Street buildings to older roadside churches.
One shopkeeper reported the loss of most local customers unwilling to face downtown traffic. She gained onetime customers from the families visiting gas workers.
Experienced engineers, technicians, geologists, surveyors and drill rig operators come from elsewhere. Training programs exist in upstate New York but it will be years before locals in either Pennsylvania or New York will be qualified. Passing the drug test for applicants is often a problem. The high local employment — Bradford has only a 6 percent unemployment rate — is mostly the ancillary businesses created by the gas companies, such as restaurants, hotels, supply companies and some truckers.
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Roberta Brandes Gratz / Jan 28 2012
For Release Saturday, January 28, 2012
Citiwire.net
There’s much more to be said about hydrofracking, the topic of my Citiwire column last week which generated quite a bit of comment.
Consider, for example, the pipelines.
Hydrofracking involves injecting clean water, sand and an undisclosed combination of chemicals into the shale to free the gas from vast lateral reserves that are then brought to the surface. Each well site — known as as a pad — contains multiple wells on three to four acres of compacted gravel. The sites are spaced maybe 40 acres apart and connected by pipelines crisscrossing the land.
In recent years, local fights occurred in many farm areas when windmills started to fill the landscape, kill birds and emit noise heard at great distances. People worried about the impact on the land of the pipeline grid required to distribute the generated energy. In the case of gas, the grid connection is a more complex piping system, indeed one so vast that it is difficult at this point to fully comprehend how many pipelines and multiple compressors will be required as wells proliferate, or how many farms, wetlands, woodlands and mountain tops they will cross. Gas makes windmills look benign in the impact on the land.
“To connect to the larger, interstate pipelines” companies are moving forward “on what is expected to be thousands of miles of smaller pipelines,” Marc Levy of the Associated Press wrote in August. And that doesn’t include a possible network of water pipelines called for to avoid the current endless truck trips required to deliver water.
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Roberta Brandes Gratz / Jan 28 2012
For Release Saturday, January 28, 2012
Citiwire.net
In 1969, Walter Cronkite, in one of his nightly newscasts, called Chattanooga “the dirtiest city in America.” The pollution was so thick that drivers needed headlights to see through the fog, men took two white shirts to work for morning and afternoon, and respiratory deaths were 20 percent higher than national average. Today, Chattanooga is one of the cleanest cities; its success on a number of fronts has raised concern of being too successful.
The city is indeed blessed with the spectacular Tennessee River snaking through it, a setting surrounded by small mountains and woodlands filled with recreational attractions. The 1970 Clean Air Act forced the issue of pollution and by 1972 clean air standards were met. In the meantime, the city was working on big plans for change.
“We were the smart ones,” Mayor Ron Littlefield, a professional planner, told a meeting with the Citistates Group last week. “The city produced a detailed plan, colorful documents and maps, gathered lots of figures and then delivered them to the people. We figured they would recognize our genius and run with it.”
Well, it didn’t happen that way. The plans fell flat, met unanticipated resistance and went nowhere. With a complete reversal of strategy, Littlefield explains, “We discovered that if we brought all the factions to the table first and engaged them in drawing up the plans, they were more likely to support the implementation. It doesn’t stop criticism but it does build the support you need to get things done.”
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Roberta Brandes Gratz / Jan 21 2012
For Release Saturday, January 21, 2012
Citiwire.net
Is natural gas the clean energy source it has been successfully marketed to be? My judgment? No. It may burn more cleanly than other fossil fuels. But the process to create the wells and then to transport the gas — even before and after the actual hydrofracking process — is so destructive of the natural and built environment that it is a wonder anyone can call it clean.
Just visit Pennsylvania, relatively new to the gas exploration industry that really started ramping up operations two years ago. In this one state, 3,000 wells have been drilled. Thousands more are planned. And already, enormous change has occurred.
Pennsylvania is not the only state to experience intense gas exploration. But it is a popular target because of its location on top of the Marcellus Shale rock formation that also fans out under New York, West Virginia and Ohio. A map of existing and proposed drill sites makes Pennsylvania look like the victim of chicken pox. Add to that the requisite pipelines either in construction or yet to be and it is difficult to imagine any community large or small escaping the impact.
A recent visit to Bradford and Susquehanna Counties in northeastern Pennsylvania, currently a prime drilling target, revealed very troubling impacts that have received little attention so far. On scenic farm roads that never before bordered anything but farms — not even a gas station — industrial sites are sprouting left and right, representing the different segments of the gas production process — compressors, storage tanks, staging sites, maintenance operations and more.
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Mark Pisano / Jan 14 2012
For Release Saturday, January 14, 2012
Citiwire.net
Americans are now beginning to realize that their world is not the same, that fundamental change is underway. Incomes have dropped for ten years; the unemployment rate, while slightly lower right now, is persistently high. Looking to the future, Americans know there will no quick return to normalcy. Support for bipartisan leadership is actually a cry for a new direction that will provide long term real changes and not more incremental quick fixes and policy spins that do not work.
Why this change in fortunes and what can we do about it? We are caught in the wave of a fundamental transition greater than any period in recent memory, a transition that will redefine how we think and act going forward. The promise of a “flat world” of cheaper products so we can consume more and find interesting places that we can visit has resulted in a migration of jobs from the US to abroad and, according to the World Bank, the largest movement of peoples (country to city) in recorded history.
The world is not as flat as we envisioned. Instead the gateways to this global world, the places where international airports, ports, finance, marketing and distribution centers converge, are the attractors of growth. New logistic supply megaregions, involving multiple states and portions of large states such as Texas and California, have been identified by the public policy group, America 2050. Read More »
Curtis Johnson / Jan 07 2012
For Release Saturday, January 7, 2012
Citiwire.net
2011 saw Oregon once again daring to be the first bird off the wire on an audacious policy agenda. Governor John Kitzhaber, having been governor from 1995 to 2003, won the office again in 2010. What he told seasoned politicos was that he wasn’t running just to be governor again — “been there, done that.” But if elected again, he would put all his chips down on doing something bold, with the power to endure.
Kitzhaber’s bold maneuver: a proposal to overhaul the entire system of education — from toddlers to twenty-somethings, now called Oregon Learns.
In the 2011 session of the legislature he won a down payment on the promise — a liberalization of the chartered school law, a better welcome for on-line schools, and an official board. It’s called the Oregon Education Investment Board, intended from its enactment forward control how money is appropriated to get better education results.
Sounds tame enough. But the governor’s agenda is actually aimed at radical change in the system. For the first time (anywhere, not just in Oregon), the system of education would find its financial pivot point on results. The entire budgeting process would be re-engineered around outcomes rather than inputs.
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Bill Dodge / Dec 30 2011
For Release Friday, December 30, 2011
Citiwire.net
The Kingdom of Thailand practices governance with some unusual twists, some of which offer intriguing models for regional governance in America.
During my recent visit, Thailand was struggling with massive flooding. I monitored the interactions among national, provincial and local governments during the disaster. And I spent time with flood refugees in Pattaya, a city renown for sun and sex south of Bangkok.
Thailand is unique among its neighbors as having never been a European colony. It was ruled by an absolute monarchy until the 1930s and still has a strong royal presence in a constitutional monarchy. The national government structure has a prime minister, National Assembly with a House and Senate, and a complex judiciary — in all a blend of western laws and cultural practices that go back to the Khmer roots of the kingdom.
The Thai people have suffered through 16 constitutions, usually triggered by governance crises or military coups. Most of the constitutions make only small changes in the basic government structure. But each redistributes political and economic clout among the traditional powers — old families, the military, and the royal family — often with little consideration of citizen desires. Read More »
Edward J. Blakely / Dec 22 2011
For Release Thursday, December 22, 2011
Citiwire.net
MOSCOW – American movies usually depict this city as a dark, drab and dangerous place. In most of the plots there are big burley neckless mafia as central characters in these thrillers.
But the real Moscow isn’t any more like the old gangster movie depictions than New York or Chicago. In fact, Moscow is an easy city to fall in love with. The Czars may have been brutal but they had pretty good architectural taste. On this old framework Moscow is actively and very smartly trying to become one of the world’s mega-global cities.
Early in December, on the edge of Russian winter, Moscow put on a spectacular Global City Forum featuring a stunning panel of international experts from all over the world, especially from China. Whatever differences Russia and China have nationally, there are no barriers among the big cities of China and Russia. Both nations are embracing the notion that city-regions are the drivers of the new economy.
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Ian Scott / Dec 17 2011
For Release Saturday, December 17, 2011
Citiwire.net
What can you learn in two days and two nights at a palatial estate in the Hudson Valley with a room full of smart, experienced regionalists? I’m sure glad I’m in a position to answer.
In late October I participated in a symposium on states and regions organized by the Citistates Group. The event was generously hosted by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and supported by the Carnegie Corporation and the William Penn Foundation. Citistates founders Neal Peirce, Curtis Johnson and Farley Peters pulled together this “meeting of the regional minds” to address one central challenge: metropolitan regions are the geography of the economy but not the geography of government.
Along with a couple of chamber leaders, I was joined by representatives from MPOs, COGs, universities, foundations, think tanks, and several former big city mayors. To articulate the professional accomplishments and accolades of this distinguished group of veteran practitioners and thinkers would easily run two hours or more. And it did. Thirty minutes into the introductions my suspicions were confirmed; I was the low man on the totem pole in both credentials and class. I just hoped a few of the collected IQ points might rub off on me.
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William H. Hudnut III / Dec 10 2011
For Release Saturday, December 10, 2011
Citiwire.net
As I listened to the dialogue at the Citistates Group’s Pocantico retreat in late October, I was impressed by the way the conversation about regional thinking and acting had shifted from structure to form, that is to say, from governmental fiat to organic growth. Here was a new paradigm!
Given the discouraging state of affairs at the federal and state levels of government, the creation of by the state legislatures of creative interjurisdictional mechanisms, or revised federal mandates, beyond what is already in place (MPOs and COGs, for example) is a pipe dream.
What then can stimulate real progress in affirming the reality, and recognizing the necessity, of regional cooperation? It’s the a focus on creating clusters of economic development opportunity. Clusters can grow organically, and do not need official action by government to happen. Harvard’s Michael Porter has famously described clusters as “geographically proximate groups of interconnected companies and associated institutions in a particular field, linked by commonalities and complementarities.”
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