Rumor

This is really more about the built environment. However, since we have been discussing drainage, here goes:

Apparently some of the apartments at the Roderick Artspace Lofts have two bathroom drains - one in the shower and one on the bathroom floor. Reportedly there has been overflow on the bathroom floor drains. Supposedly, this is because those drains were never hooked up to the sewer. The overflow is hurting Fab Lab.

Artspace Lofts is the home of local artists.

Not in the plans? Oversight during construction? 

Where were the City of El Paso engineers and inspectors?

Scenic Drive Closures

Click image to enlarge.

Scenic Sunday will continue this week and for the weeks to come in spite of construction that will shut down the Richmond and Louisville entrances from Alabama. Here's what the press release from El Paso Water says:

"Starting Monday, August 14, El Paso Water will close Scenic Drive from Wheeling Avenue to Alabama to all traffic for several weeks to complete the next phase of the Kentucky Dam stormwater improvement project.

"Additionally, small portions of neighboring streets will be restricted to local traffic during construction:

• Streets between Scenic Drive and Alabama
• Streets between Wheeling Avenue and Altura Avenue

"Drivers will still be able to enter and exit Scenic Drive by detouring around the closure on Alabama Street and turning west onto Wheeling Avenue."

Spread the word.

"The $3.9 million project will help reduce flooding in Central El Paso. The project will increase the capacity of nearby ponds and add piping that keeps water off the streets by directing stormwater into the dam. Additionally, the project will improve service in the area by replacing water and wastewater lines."

Economies of Scale

Kauai Solar Farm. Photo from Tesla.

What would be cheaper in El Paso: to go off the electric grid or to have some solar and also depend upon the grid or to be a part of a community solar grid? I still haven't seen any hard and fast figures for each of these options. 

Check out this case study: Welcome to Paradise: Batteries Now Included. It begins by telling the story of Luke Evslin of Kauai, Hawaii, who, because of his desire to be as carbon-free as possible, went off the grid. What did he discover:

"Relying on personal power. . .is no way to power a community, let alone an island.

This became obvious to Evslin midway through his yurt experiment: Inefficiency is the ultimate downfall of any individual effort to address climate change."

“'Either you’re wasting electricity in a closed system, because it’s sunny and your batteries are full, or you don’t have enough power and you gotta run your generator,'” Evslin says. “'That’s not a bug in my system. That’s a feature of any off-grid system.'”

Kauai is quite a story. Mayor Bernard Cervalho led the charge for clean energy in keeping with the Paris Accords. The success on Kauai is notable and Evslin is a benefactor.

Bottom line:

"The economies of scale are such that Kauai’s utility cooperative can install a solar-and-storage unit for about half what it would cost a family to install the same amount on a house. Even when it comes to the island’s fossil fuel–generated power, the utility can produce more from a gallon of gasoline than someone with a $100 generator in their basement."

Read Welcome to Paradise. 

What a Disaster!

For a number of years now, many of us have been oohing and ahhing about Montecillo, El Paso's stellar example of smart growth. Although it may have some restaurants and stores integrated into its layout, it is turning out to be one huge environmental disaster. In this case "new urbanism", if it can be called that, has sadly neglected green infrastructure/low impact development. It is just the same sad old destruction of the desert by plowing up hills and dumping dirt into arroyos. It. along with the Top Golf development threatens surrounding eco-systems. For example, someone got a close-up look of Cement Lake the other day. From the description, it should probably be renamed "silt lake". 

EPT is responsible for both the Montecillo development and the Top Golf development. The City is responsible for permitting them to do what they are doing and these permits go back a number of years now.

Behind the Draft House

Return to the Alamo Draft House. Note how the drainage plans are not working. Keep this in mind. There is another huge problem with the development of the land that now contains the movie theater and soon will see other businesses. Was the destruction of a hillside and arroyo the result of a need to do flood control for Montecillo all along? Rather than having "smart" growth, we have a cancer that is eating up the environment.

Detention Pond behind Alamo Draft House

Arroyo adjacent to Fire Station #31. Note infrastruture debris

Once again, look at the "drainage" control at the Draft House. The gunnite and other strategies have not held back the erosion and the spilling of silt onto the parking lot. This same strategy using gunnite was apparently used at an arroyo adjacent to Fire Station #31 on Mesa Park Drive. With just a bit of rainfall recently (not a horrendous storm such as the one in 2006) the entire infrastructure was washed out. 

Montecillo

Now take a look at the stepped development of Montecillo. Note the same use of fabric and gunnite and note the silt already seeping through the "barrier". 

Click image to enlarge.

More especially, look how the hills are plowed up and see the arroyos being filled in. Forget having any really natural features. This smart growth is concrete and asphalt and apartment-looking buildings.

What happens when you cover-up arroyos? Does the water in a storm obey the new path of tiny culverts? No, the water follows the historic flood plain. Like Superman it does leaps and bounds and hydraulic jumps over the insufficient culverts, taking out backyards, washing boulders, rocks and debris down hill.

Is there a drainage or development plan that the City of El Paso doesn't approve?

Ever heard of swales?

What a disaster!

Study: Production of Enough Plastic to Cover Aregentina Causes Havoc

[If you can't see the video, 
please go to www.elpasonaturally.blogspot.com.]


Thank you Marshall Carter-Tripp for a Voice of America story, Study: Production of Enough Plastic to Cover Aregentina Causes Havoc. It says:

July 19, 2017

TORONTO — More than nine billion tons of plastic has been produced since 1950 with most of it discarded in landfills or the environment, hurting ecosystems and human health, according to the first major global analysis of mass-produced plastics.

Nearly 80 percent of this plastic ended up in landfills or the environment and production in increasing quickly, researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara, said in the study published on Wednesday.

Less than 10 percent was recycled and about 12 percent was incinerated.

"If you spread all of this plastic equally, ankle-deep, it would cover an area the size of Argentina," Roland Geyer, a professor of industrial ecology and the study's lead author, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "It is an enormous amount of material that does not biodegrade ... I am very worried."

Burning plastics contributes to climate change and adversely impacts human health, while build-ups of the material can hurt the broader environment, Geyer said.

Packaging is the largest market for plastic and the petroleum-based product accelerated a global shift from reusable to single-use containers, researchers said.

As a result, the share of plastics in city dumps in high and middle income countries rose to more than 10 percent by 2005 from less than 1 percent in 1960.

Unlike other materials, plastic can stay in the environment for thousands of years, Geyer said.

There are more than 5 trillion pieces of plastic floating in the world's oceans, according to a 2014 study published in a Public Library of Science journal.

This build-up harms marine life and ecosystems on sea and land, Geyer said.

If current trends continue more than 13 billion tons of plastic waste will end up in the environment or landfills by 2050, researchers said.


Some resources:

10 Tips for Living with Less Plastic

100 Steps to a Plastic-Free Life

Two Years of Living Plastic Free: How I Did It and What I've Learned

Rainwater Harvesting Workshop at TecH2O Saturday, August 12, 11 AM to 12 PM

Click image to enlarge.

Monday Odds and Ends

Big thanks to El Paso Inc. reporter, Dave Crowder, for doing a story after reading an Elpasonaturally post. His Inc. story is: Is Topgolf construction threatening an I-10 embankment?

On Facebook find and join: Share El Paso - Plants and Animals. Great posts by William Hoover and images by Liz DeMoultrie and others. This tells us what we are trying to save here in the El Paso Southwest.

Download this free booklet online: CASTNER RANGE BOOKLET: SUMMARY AND UP TO DATE STATUS ON EFFORTS. Janaé Reneaud Field, Frontera Land Alliance Director, says:

"[It] tells you the story of El Paso’s Castner Range, the 7,081-acre closed firing range that still belongs to Fort Bliss. All of you have played a part on Castner Range in recent years, so you know the campaign we have waged to keep it conserved for all time. The booklet tells the history of the Range from pre-historic days through its years as an active artillery site (1926-1966), then into the early 1970s when parts of the Range were transferred to the City of El Paso for development, and onward to our recent, vigorous and increasingly-successful campaign on behalf of Castner’s conservation. The booklet makes it clear that El Pasoans stand united in their desire to conserve Castner Range, whether as a separate National Monument or as a part of the Franklin Mountains State Park."

Mahatma Gandhi said: “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” We can do all that we can to oppose Trump's environmental policies. What we immediately and most certainly have control over is our lifestyles. Read two stories posted in Grist: Just trading beef for beans could get the United States near its CO2 goal and Now you can plant a tree to offset Trump’s climate policies. Be sure to check out Grow the Forest.

Definitely of interest: How Green Energy Will Help Slow Nuclear Proliferation.
It's from Defense One.

Have a great week.