As happened in 1888, most of West Virginia was covered by flood waters in 1985. And as before, the deluge was more like a flash flood than slow rising waters. The damage done in 1985 was, of course, much worse.
After any natural disaster, it is almost impossible to describe the devastation to man-made structures in relevant terms. The reason we lack the words is that Nature exerts forces that humankind cannot begin to fathom. When Nature goes on a rampage, we have but one option and that option is evacuation.
In November 1985, nobody thought that the Tygarts, Cheat, Potomac, and Greenbrier rivers would rise as fast and as high as they did. Nearly fifty people drowned as a result. Were it not for the fact that "higher ground" is always one step away in our state, the death toll could have been in the hundreds, if not thousands.
When I surveyed the flood area, the damage that concerned me the most was the wholesale loss of important bridges. Highways are nothing without bridges. With some two dozen main highway bridges completely washed away, it was obvious that recovery efforts would be much more difficult.
Although many towns and rural hamlets were initially isolated from outside help, that isolation did not stop the people who lived there from immediately beginning the clean-up. And that is not so surprising because people who live in the mountains or on farms are much more self-sufficient than their urban cousins. How many urbanites own a chain saw or a shovel?
If I had to characterize the West Virginians that I met during the flood recovery, I would call them "resilient." I remember a Pendleton County family who lost their house and possessions but had not left their land. They had covered an outbuilding with tarpaper and moved in rather than leave for a faraway motel. How many urbanites have outbuildings?
There are big differences between urban and rural areas when it comes to natural disasters. The first is that showboating reporters like Geraldo Rivera ignore rural disasters. The second is that urban disaster areas are almost totally dependent on government agencies for recovery efforts.
As we recently saw in New Orleans, the local, state, and federal governments were routinely criticized for mounting such a slow response. But if one were to be objective in his critique, it takes time (sometimes days) to get to the disaster area. Just because the rain stops doesn’t mean the surrounding floodwaters have started to recede.
In West Virginia, state agencies and National Guard units have earned pretty good marks for flood response over the years. There does tend to be criticism of the federal response but that is primarily due to the fact that people expect FEMA and the SBA to open their checkbooks wider than Congress has authorized.
In the end, government cannot make victims whole again. Government executives as well as grandstanding politicians should paint a realistic picture when it comes to disaster response. False hopes in a time of disaster are usually more devastating than the sense of hopelessness that victims experience on the day of the disaster.
In any natural disaster, a community’s self-sufficiency is its best hope for a speedy recovery. West Virginians were the model of resiliency in the aftermath of the 1985 flood. Not only did they help their neighbors by donating food, clothing and money, but they banded together to rebuild their communities.
I was very proud to be involved with relief and rebuilding efforts in 1985. Those of us at the Department of Highways did our best to get the roads and bridges rebuilt before winter set in. But in my heart, I know that our best would not have been good enough had the people in the flood area been as helpless as the city folk in New Orleans.
There’s something to be admired about people who can hold their own until the cavalry arrives. In recognizing the 20th anniversary of the great West Virginia flood, we should remember the resiliency of the survivors.
David G. Allen served as Assistant Commissioner of the WV Department of Highways, 1985-1986.
Friday, November 4, 2005
Friday, September 30, 2005
We Live in an Age of Hope, Unlike the 1970s
Words define an age and former NBC News anchorman Edwin Newman accurately captured the 1970s Americana in two of his books-Strictly Speaking and A Civil Tongue.
The 1970s were a strange time, indeed. President Richard Nixon and his Vice President, Spiro Agnew, resigned their respective offices. Congressman Gerald Ford had been all but shoved into the White House. Viet Nam ended in debacle. The gold standard was scrapped. Inflation not only soared but seemed impossible to control. And all of this happened before a "born again" president, Jimmy Carter, ran for reelection on a platform of "malaise", "stagflation", "misery index", "hostage crisis", and oil companies "rippin’ us off."
"Hopefully" is one of the 1970s words that Mr. Newman writes about. He points out that people had given up saying (correctly), "I hope that something will happen." Instead, Americans of all educational levels began saying, "Hopefully, something will happen."
Technically speaking, the adverb "hopefully" does not modify the verb in any sentence that begins, "Hopefully, …" That is why it’s usage is incorrect. But from a psychological viewpoint, "hopefully" came into accepted use because it captured the funk and angst of the 1970s. The American people, after all, had been conditioned to expect bad outcomes ever since President John F. Kennedy was gunned down. And we have not elected a U. S. senator to the presidency ever since Lyndon Baines Johnson so adequately demonstrated why we shouldn’t.
Given the failed missions of all the presidents from Kennedy to Carter, it is not surprising that people fell into the routine of saying, "Hopefully, something good will happen."
Times change, and eventually, good things happen. I am very reluctant to say that good times came about solely because of Presidents Reagan, Bush (41), and Clinton. Each of these administrations had their brush with failure. The Democrats wanted to hang Reagan and Bush over Iran-Contra and the Republicans returned the favor by trying to hang Clinton over Monica. All was not pretty during the 1980s and 1990s.
Rather than a president, it was the sacking of our embassy in Iran that dramatically changed people’s expectations. They changed from hoping something would happen to making something happen; from the passive to the active, so to speak.
As we all know, our embassy staff in Tehran was freed just as Ronald Reagan took the oath of office. But it was not Reagan, the man, who brought about the hostage release. This was not a case where Gary Cooper, armed with a badge and six gun, was standing alone in the street. On the contrary. The Iranians correctly read that the America people were ready for change and that they had hired a man who would, if need be, use our full military power to make that change happen.
Contemporaneously, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher rallied Great Britain by defeating Argentina in the Falkland Islands war. It was Margaret Thatcher who best described the turnabout in 1980s attitudes when she said, "We have ceased to be a nation in retreat."
We are now a quarter century into the future. Yes, there still are negative thinkers among us who begin their sentences, "Hopefully, …" But the word that best describes our age is the frequently-used, one-word answer to even the most challenging of questions: "Absolutely!" And "Absolutely!" is spoken in a winner’s dialect whenever uttered.
As in the 1970s, we are paying record-high oil prices. The television networks report on the war in Iraq with the same anti-military bias that they did in Viet Nam. There are millions of hard-core Democrats who think the presidential election of 2000 was another Watergate. In essence, you do not have to look very hard to find enough negative sentiments to make one believe that we are reliving the 1970s.
But there is a difference in our age. People have positive expectations of all outcomes, no matter how dire the situation.
Witness the outpouring of aid after the Christmas tsunami in Asia or Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast. In the face of overwhelming destruction, Americans have opened their wallets and their hearts to the victims of these disasters. And between disasters, Americans volunteered their time to patrol the Arizona-Mexico border and search for a missing girl in Aruba.
We live in an enviable age. We believe in ourselves, our motives, and the American way of life. And that is a refreshing change from the 1970s.
The 1970s were a strange time, indeed. President Richard Nixon and his Vice President, Spiro Agnew, resigned their respective offices. Congressman Gerald Ford had been all but shoved into the White House. Viet Nam ended in debacle. The gold standard was scrapped. Inflation not only soared but seemed impossible to control. And all of this happened before a "born again" president, Jimmy Carter, ran for reelection on a platform of "malaise", "stagflation", "misery index", "hostage crisis", and oil companies "rippin’ us off."
"Hopefully" is one of the 1970s words that Mr. Newman writes about. He points out that people had given up saying (correctly), "I hope that something will happen." Instead, Americans of all educational levels began saying, "Hopefully, something will happen."
Technically speaking, the adverb "hopefully" does not modify the verb in any sentence that begins, "Hopefully, …" That is why it’s usage is incorrect. But from a psychological viewpoint, "hopefully" came into accepted use because it captured the funk and angst of the 1970s. The American people, after all, had been conditioned to expect bad outcomes ever since President John F. Kennedy was gunned down. And we have not elected a U. S. senator to the presidency ever since Lyndon Baines Johnson so adequately demonstrated why we shouldn’t.
Given the failed missions of all the presidents from Kennedy to Carter, it is not surprising that people fell into the routine of saying, "Hopefully, something good will happen."
Times change, and eventually, good things happen. I am very reluctant to say that good times came about solely because of Presidents Reagan, Bush (41), and Clinton. Each of these administrations had their brush with failure. The Democrats wanted to hang Reagan and Bush over Iran-Contra and the Republicans returned the favor by trying to hang Clinton over Monica. All was not pretty during the 1980s and 1990s.
Rather than a president, it was the sacking of our embassy in Iran that dramatically changed people’s expectations. They changed from hoping something would happen to making something happen; from the passive to the active, so to speak.
As we all know, our embassy staff in Tehran was freed just as Ronald Reagan took the oath of office. But it was not Reagan, the man, who brought about the hostage release. This was not a case where Gary Cooper, armed with a badge and six gun, was standing alone in the street. On the contrary. The Iranians correctly read that the America people were ready for change and that they had hired a man who would, if need be, use our full military power to make that change happen.
Contemporaneously, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher rallied Great Britain by defeating Argentina in the Falkland Islands war. It was Margaret Thatcher who best described the turnabout in 1980s attitudes when she said, "We have ceased to be a nation in retreat."
We are now a quarter century into the future. Yes, there still are negative thinkers among us who begin their sentences, "Hopefully, …" But the word that best describes our age is the frequently-used, one-word answer to even the most challenging of questions: "Absolutely!" And "Absolutely!" is spoken in a winner’s dialect whenever uttered.
As in the 1970s, we are paying record-high oil prices. The television networks report on the war in Iraq with the same anti-military bias that they did in Viet Nam. There are millions of hard-core Democrats who think the presidential election of 2000 was another Watergate. In essence, you do not have to look very hard to find enough negative sentiments to make one believe that we are reliving the 1970s.
But there is a difference in our age. People have positive expectations of all outcomes, no matter how dire the situation.
Witness the outpouring of aid after the Christmas tsunami in Asia or Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast. In the face of overwhelming destruction, Americans have opened their wallets and their hearts to the victims of these disasters. And between disasters, Americans volunteered their time to patrol the Arizona-Mexico border and search for a missing girl in Aruba.
We live in an enviable age. We believe in ourselves, our motives, and the American way of life. And that is a refreshing change from the 1970s.
Friday, September 2, 2005
Will West Virginia Lose the Potomac River? (part 2)
Part Two of Two
As many as a dozen federal regulatory agencies have some responsibility for the health of the Chesapeake Bay. Six states and the District of Columbia are responsible for the health of the Bay’s 64,000 sq. mi. watershed. I assume that none of the responsible bureaucracies are doing their job very well or one-third of the Bay would not have been declared "dead" in July of this year.
The usual suspects-light rainfall and agricultural runoff-were indicted in press releases. The EPA trumpeted that "new limits" agreed to by the states would further reduce nitrogen and phosphorous discharges in an effort to reduce dead zones. Then it was back to business as usual.
When you rub a dog’s nose in his own mess, he gets the message. When it comes to government, however, the lesson fails. In fact, the opposite happens. Regulators always respond with puppy dog faces; that they have neither the funds nor the manpower to fulfill their mandate. Whimpering gets them off the leash for another budget year.
Eventually, this do-nothing attitude will change because the people who draw their drinking water from the Potomac will begin to get jittery about intersex fish. As it is now, a dead crow in the Maryland suburbs creates hysteria about West Nile virus. Imagine the panic if a human health connection is made to endocrine-disrupting compounds in drinking water.
In a worst-case scenario, the Potomac watershed in eastern West Virginia is at risk of either being condemned in the public interest or declared a federal territory. Or perhaps, the federal courts would impose some form of environmental easement to accomplish the same. My belief that this could happen sounds far-fetched-hyperbole if you will. But in light of the recent Supreme Court decision on eminent domain, the rules of logic have changed.
The March 2002 issue of California Law Review contains the 100-page article "Is West Virginia Unconstitutional?" The last two sentences in the article read: "West Virginians may rest secure in the knowledge that their State is not unconstitutional. Probably."
If your lawyer wrote you a 100-page memo regarding your own legitimacy, how would you feel if he ended it by saying, "Probably."?
The authors also asked themselves, "Why would anyone care?…Given that…West Virginia is not…going to be absorbed back into old Virginia…" In other words, without a plaintiff with standing, nobody is going to force the issue of West Virginia’s statehood in court. I would like to see this article updated in light of Kelo vs. City of New London. For it appears to this non-lawyer that either the federal government or the municipal water districts of metropolitan Washington, DC have a unique opportunity to do exactly what New York City did to the Catskills--condemn a faraway watershed to provide drinking water.
Okay, that’s enough shock and awe.
West Virginia does have a window of opportunity to get out in front on the issue of intersex fish. But our attitude and response must be positive and inquisitive rather than the predictable role of regulators satisfied with assessing penalties and tinkering with discharge limits.
West Virginia is developing a promising biometrics industry through research and development. Thus, why can’t we use the R&D model to move to the forefront on stream and river research? The Potomac, more than any other river, ought to be a powerful magnet for federal research grants for our universities.
Thomas Jefferson was so inspired when he visited Harper’s Ferry that he wrote, "The passage of the Patowmac through the Blue Ridge is perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in Nature." This is the same inspiration that we must embrace if we intend to clean up the river. But instead, we find ourselves living in an age when vandals have painted the very rock upon which Jefferson dipped his quill pen.
The Potomac River is under attack.
Dr. Robert E. Putz, Founder of the Freshwater Institute at Shepherdstown, WV contributed to this article.
As many as a dozen federal regulatory agencies have some responsibility for the health of the Chesapeake Bay. Six states and the District of Columbia are responsible for the health of the Bay’s 64,000 sq. mi. watershed. I assume that none of the responsible bureaucracies are doing their job very well or one-third of the Bay would not have been declared "dead" in July of this year.
The usual suspects-light rainfall and agricultural runoff-were indicted in press releases. The EPA trumpeted that "new limits" agreed to by the states would further reduce nitrogen and phosphorous discharges in an effort to reduce dead zones. Then it was back to business as usual.
When you rub a dog’s nose in his own mess, he gets the message. When it comes to government, however, the lesson fails. In fact, the opposite happens. Regulators always respond with puppy dog faces; that they have neither the funds nor the manpower to fulfill their mandate. Whimpering gets them off the leash for another budget year.
Eventually, this do-nothing attitude will change because the people who draw their drinking water from the Potomac will begin to get jittery about intersex fish. As it is now, a dead crow in the Maryland suburbs creates hysteria about West Nile virus. Imagine the panic if a human health connection is made to endocrine-disrupting compounds in drinking water.
In a worst-case scenario, the Potomac watershed in eastern West Virginia is at risk of either being condemned in the public interest or declared a federal territory. Or perhaps, the federal courts would impose some form of environmental easement to accomplish the same. My belief that this could happen sounds far-fetched-hyperbole if you will. But in light of the recent Supreme Court decision on eminent domain, the rules of logic have changed.
The March 2002 issue of California Law Review contains the 100-page article "Is West Virginia Unconstitutional?" The last two sentences in the article read: "West Virginians may rest secure in the knowledge that their State is not unconstitutional. Probably."
If your lawyer wrote you a 100-page memo regarding your own legitimacy, how would you feel if he ended it by saying, "Probably."?
The authors also asked themselves, "Why would anyone care?…Given that…West Virginia is not…going to be absorbed back into old Virginia…" In other words, without a plaintiff with standing, nobody is going to force the issue of West Virginia’s statehood in court. I would like to see this article updated in light of Kelo vs. City of New London. For it appears to this non-lawyer that either the federal government or the municipal water districts of metropolitan Washington, DC have a unique opportunity to do exactly what New York City did to the Catskills--condemn a faraway watershed to provide drinking water.
Okay, that’s enough shock and awe.
West Virginia does have a window of opportunity to get out in front on the issue of intersex fish. But our attitude and response must be positive and inquisitive rather than the predictable role of regulators satisfied with assessing penalties and tinkering with discharge limits.
West Virginia is developing a promising biometrics industry through research and development. Thus, why can’t we use the R&D model to move to the forefront on stream and river research? The Potomac, more than any other river, ought to be a powerful magnet for federal research grants for our universities.
Thomas Jefferson was so inspired when he visited Harper’s Ferry that he wrote, "The passage of the Patowmac through the Blue Ridge is perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in Nature." This is the same inspiration that we must embrace if we intend to clean up the river. But instead, we find ourselves living in an age when vandals have painted the very rock upon which Jefferson dipped his quill pen.
The Potomac River is under attack.
Dr. Robert E. Putz, Founder of the Freshwater Institute at Shepherdstown, WV contributed to this article.
Friday, August 26, 2005
Will West Virginia Lose the Potomac River? (part 1)
Part One of Two
The Potomac River is under attack! What else would you call it when people use the Potomac, one of America’s great rivers, as a sewer to dump Chinese snakehead fish and Florida alligators? Although the recent discovery of these exotic castaways demonstrates the casual disregard that people have for the Potomac, there is a more sinister assault taking shape. Environmental contaminants from unknown sources are causing male bass to produce eggs--a condition known as intersex.
The discovery of intersex fish began with an investigation of a Potomac River fish kill in 2002. The dead fish had skin lesions and specimens were examined by different laboratories to determine the cause of the lesions as well as cause of death. In 2003, biologists at the U. S. Geological Survey’s Leetown Science Center in Jefferson County discovered the intersex anomaly. As to what causes intersexing has been a focus of their research since then.
Biologists suspect that endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs) are the culprit. That suspicion, however, does little to narrow the search for the actual compound or compounds that are responsible. For example, certain pesticides and herbicides are EDCs. And you cannot rule out pharmaceutical hormones. When excreted, the hormones in birth control pills find their way untouched through a wastewater treatment plant and end up in the river.
The same is true for other hormones; including those mixed in livestock feed. And it’s just not the man-made stuff that causes problems. Soy beans, red clover, and a whole host of other plants naturally produce phytoestrogens.
According to the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, several sampling points on the South Branch of the Potomac exhibit above-acceptable levels of antibiotics. And there’s Roxarsone, an organo-arsenic compound fed to poultry. The arsenic (according to my reading) does not contaminate the chicken but passes through in the manure. In time, the arsenic in the manure drops out and is detectable as arsenate in water samples, especially those samples taken during a runoff event.
Get the picture? The sources for EDC contamination are many-from poultry barns to suburban lawns to households. The local grocery, pharmacy, and hardware store provide us with chemicals that we use routinely and without second thought in our daily lives.
To better understand the complexity of intersex fish and what it means for humans, my one big question has been, "If wastewater treatment plants do not remove the suspect EDCs, then does the downstream water treatment plant remove them before they can enter a municipal drinking water system?" The answer should be obvious to the non-scientist.
With so many variables in play, and no simple, sure-fire way to remove EDCs from the river, perhaps we should consider an alternative method to clean up the Potomac.
The basic principle of water treatment has not changed much since the Chinese developed it some 5,000 years ago. The operative word in water treatment is "dilution." Whereas Chinese farmers used a series of settling ponds to dilute toxins, we supplant the ancient process with concrete settling basins, sand or activated carbon filters, and a shot of ozone or chlorine to kill bacteria. But the end goal is the same-reduce toxins from parts per million to parts per billion, and so forth.
Our mountains are tall enough to shortchange the Potomac watershed on rainfall, but they aren’t tall enough to provide a snow melt into the dry months of summer. If the Potomac had a stronger summertime flow, we wouldn’t be researching intersex fish or discussing the impact of EDCs.
I, for one, would hate to see the Potomac’s tributaries dammed at every pinch point just to dilute EDCs. But that may be the best solution available if intersex bass turn out to be the canaries in the coal mine. Regardless, the recipe for success calls for more water or less chemistry-dilution.
At present, we cannot draw definitive conclusions from the water and fish studies that have been done. Some bass exhibit intersex, others do not, and other fish species seem perfectly fine. We have no sure cause for the intersex phenomenon. And we do not have a chemical profile of the Potomac.
What we have at this point is a hunch. Playing a hunch often leads to conjecture. Conjecture invariably leads to hyperbole. And hyperbole occupies a special place in America-Washington, DC.
In Part Two, I will discuss the federal solution.
Dr. Robert E. Putz, Founder of the Freshwater Institute at Shepherdstown, WV contributed to this article.
The Potomac River is under attack! What else would you call it when people use the Potomac, one of America’s great rivers, as a sewer to dump Chinese snakehead fish and Florida alligators? Although the recent discovery of these exotic castaways demonstrates the casual disregard that people have for the Potomac, there is a more sinister assault taking shape. Environmental contaminants from unknown sources are causing male bass to produce eggs--a condition known as intersex.
The discovery of intersex fish began with an investigation of a Potomac River fish kill in 2002. The dead fish had skin lesions and specimens were examined by different laboratories to determine the cause of the lesions as well as cause of death. In 2003, biologists at the U. S. Geological Survey’s Leetown Science Center in Jefferson County discovered the intersex anomaly. As to what causes intersexing has been a focus of their research since then.
Biologists suspect that endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs) are the culprit. That suspicion, however, does little to narrow the search for the actual compound or compounds that are responsible. For example, certain pesticides and herbicides are EDCs. And you cannot rule out pharmaceutical hormones. When excreted, the hormones in birth control pills find their way untouched through a wastewater treatment plant and end up in the river.
The same is true for other hormones; including those mixed in livestock feed. And it’s just not the man-made stuff that causes problems. Soy beans, red clover, and a whole host of other plants naturally produce phytoestrogens.
According to the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection, several sampling points on the South Branch of the Potomac exhibit above-acceptable levels of antibiotics. And there’s Roxarsone, an organo-arsenic compound fed to poultry. The arsenic (according to my reading) does not contaminate the chicken but passes through in the manure. In time, the arsenic in the manure drops out and is detectable as arsenate in water samples, especially those samples taken during a runoff event.
Get the picture? The sources for EDC contamination are many-from poultry barns to suburban lawns to households. The local grocery, pharmacy, and hardware store provide us with chemicals that we use routinely and without second thought in our daily lives.
To better understand the complexity of intersex fish and what it means for humans, my one big question has been, "If wastewater treatment plants do not remove the suspect EDCs, then does the downstream water treatment plant remove them before they can enter a municipal drinking water system?" The answer should be obvious to the non-scientist.
With so many variables in play, and no simple, sure-fire way to remove EDCs from the river, perhaps we should consider an alternative method to clean up the Potomac.
The basic principle of water treatment has not changed much since the Chinese developed it some 5,000 years ago. The operative word in water treatment is "dilution." Whereas Chinese farmers used a series of settling ponds to dilute toxins, we supplant the ancient process with concrete settling basins, sand or activated carbon filters, and a shot of ozone or chlorine to kill bacteria. But the end goal is the same-reduce toxins from parts per million to parts per billion, and so forth.
Our mountains are tall enough to shortchange the Potomac watershed on rainfall, but they aren’t tall enough to provide a snow melt into the dry months of summer. If the Potomac had a stronger summertime flow, we wouldn’t be researching intersex fish or discussing the impact of EDCs.
I, for one, would hate to see the Potomac’s tributaries dammed at every pinch point just to dilute EDCs. But that may be the best solution available if intersex bass turn out to be the canaries in the coal mine. Regardless, the recipe for success calls for more water or less chemistry-dilution.
At present, we cannot draw definitive conclusions from the water and fish studies that have been done. Some bass exhibit intersex, others do not, and other fish species seem perfectly fine. We have no sure cause for the intersex phenomenon. And we do not have a chemical profile of the Potomac.
What we have at this point is a hunch. Playing a hunch often leads to conjecture. Conjecture invariably leads to hyperbole. And hyperbole occupies a special place in America-Washington, DC.
In Part Two, I will discuss the federal solution.
Dr. Robert E. Putz, Founder of the Freshwater Institute at Shepherdstown, WV contributed to this article.
Friday, July 22, 2005
Eminent Domain Has Become Imminent Domain
The theory of the Communists may be summed up in this simple sentence: Abolition of private property.
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the annals of property condemnation by the government’s exercise of eminent domain, there are winners and losers. And in rare cases, the status quo held.
The winners, of course, are easy to spot. You see their land every time you exit the interstate. While ten houses on one street might have been cleared away for a new highway, the untouched adjoinder properties soared in value when the exit ramps opened to traffic.
As for the status quo being unchanged, I invite you to travel US 50 in Harrison County. Just east of Salem stands the Bristol United Methodist Church, a rather substantial brick structure that originally sat alongside old US 50 until it was condemned for construction of Appalachian Corridor D, the present four-lane superhighway.
The Bristol congregation was not ready to see their church demolished, so they used their condemnation check to hire Goff Brothers Co. of Pullman, WV to move the church up on the hillside. If you had witnessed the church being lugged uphill to its present site, you would believe in miracles. Not a brick was lost nor a window cracked in the ascent.
The big losers in eminent domain condemnations tend to be the landowners whose property is partially taken. The William Kester farm in Harrison County is the best example of the ruinous effects of a partial taking that I know of.
Nearly every acre of Mr. Kester’s bottomland was condemned to build the Saltwell interchange of Interstate 79. That left him owning only hillside land on each side of the interchange. And as if done in a fit of spite, the new highway snipped five feet off of one corner of the Kester’s house, leaving it uninhabitable. But rather than tear his house down, Mr. Kester sawed off the small wedge that the state could not do without, and then he nailed siding boards across the diagonal to close the opening.
The Kester house overlooks Exit 125 from the southwest and remains as a monument to the cruelty that the government’s power of eminent domain can inflict on a proud farmer.
The well-connected and certain politicians have enjoyed their own version of eminent domain. These scurrilous cheats either had the new highway built to their land or knew years in advance where the highway was headed and bought the right land before the public was allowed to see the plans.
In the 1960’s, LOOK magazine featured an expose about a South Carolina Congressman who owned a large tract of rural land. By coincidence, if we are to believe the congressman’s story, the new interstate just happened to access his land with an interchange.
Do the well-connected still take advantage of inside information? Perhaps. The mayor of Erie, PA faces trial for a land deal related to a race track and redevelopment project in that city.
In 1954, the Supreme Court expanded the power of eminent domain when it ruled that blighted urban land could be seized for redevelopment. It was just a matter of time before the court reached its 5-4 decision in Kelo vs. City of New London which allows the taking of private property for "public benefit." We will have to wait for a future decision (or decisions) for the court to set the limits of "public benefit."
At present, the federal court system consistently restricts land use by humans whenever the Endangered Species Act comes into play. Even our national borders cannot be walled off because that would interfere with the migration of some of the animals and birds on the endangered list. Along with the Kelo decision, it is now fair to say that you, as a property owner, have almost no standing in the courts. The pygmy cactus owl or the colossus shopping mall can take your land on a whim.
Central planners decide which animals are classified as endangered species. Central planners decide the curricula that your children study in the public schools. Central planners decide the size of your local airport. Central planners even decide which military bases are to be closed. And with the high court’s blessing, central planners are defining the words "public benefit" as they have already done for New London, CT.
Central planners also decide where the highway exits are built. But as Nobel economist F. A. Hayek pointed out in The Road to Serfdom, it is the route that central planners invariably choose, and not the actual pavement, that gives the book its name.
Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto, 1848
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the annals of property condemnation by the government’s exercise of eminent domain, there are winners and losers. And in rare cases, the status quo held.
The winners, of course, are easy to spot. You see their land every time you exit the interstate. While ten houses on one street might have been cleared away for a new highway, the untouched adjoinder properties soared in value when the exit ramps opened to traffic.
As for the status quo being unchanged, I invite you to travel US 50 in Harrison County. Just east of Salem stands the Bristol United Methodist Church, a rather substantial brick structure that originally sat alongside old US 50 until it was condemned for construction of Appalachian Corridor D, the present four-lane superhighway.
The Bristol congregation was not ready to see their church demolished, so they used their condemnation check to hire Goff Brothers Co. of Pullman, WV to move the church up on the hillside. If you had witnessed the church being lugged uphill to its present site, you would believe in miracles. Not a brick was lost nor a window cracked in the ascent.
The big losers in eminent domain condemnations tend to be the landowners whose property is partially taken. The William Kester farm in Harrison County is the best example of the ruinous effects of a partial taking that I know of.
Nearly every acre of Mr. Kester’s bottomland was condemned to build the Saltwell interchange of Interstate 79. That left him owning only hillside land on each side of the interchange. And as if done in a fit of spite, the new highway snipped five feet off of one corner of the Kester’s house, leaving it uninhabitable. But rather than tear his house down, Mr. Kester sawed off the small wedge that the state could not do without, and then he nailed siding boards across the diagonal to close the opening.
The Kester house overlooks Exit 125 from the southwest and remains as a monument to the cruelty that the government’s power of eminent domain can inflict on a proud farmer.
The well-connected and certain politicians have enjoyed their own version of eminent domain. These scurrilous cheats either had the new highway built to their land or knew years in advance where the highway was headed and bought the right land before the public was allowed to see the plans.
In the 1960’s, LOOK magazine featured an expose about a South Carolina Congressman who owned a large tract of rural land. By coincidence, if we are to believe the congressman’s story, the new interstate just happened to access his land with an interchange.
Do the well-connected still take advantage of inside information? Perhaps. The mayor of Erie, PA faces trial for a land deal related to a race track and redevelopment project in that city.
In 1954, the Supreme Court expanded the power of eminent domain when it ruled that blighted urban land could be seized for redevelopment. It was just a matter of time before the court reached its 5-4 decision in Kelo vs. City of New London which allows the taking of private property for "public benefit." We will have to wait for a future decision (or decisions) for the court to set the limits of "public benefit."
At present, the federal court system consistently restricts land use by humans whenever the Endangered Species Act comes into play. Even our national borders cannot be walled off because that would interfere with the migration of some of the animals and birds on the endangered list. Along with the Kelo decision, it is now fair to say that you, as a property owner, have almost no standing in the courts. The pygmy cactus owl or the colossus shopping mall can take your land on a whim.
Central planners decide which animals are classified as endangered species. Central planners decide the curricula that your children study in the public schools. Central planners decide the size of your local airport. Central planners even decide which military bases are to be closed. And with the high court’s blessing, central planners are defining the words "public benefit" as they have already done for New London, CT.
Central planners also decide where the highway exits are built. But as Nobel economist F. A. Hayek pointed out in The Road to Serfdom, it is the route that central planners invariably choose, and not the actual pavement, that gives the book its name.
Friday, July 1, 2005
A Left Turn On The King Coal Highway
In early June, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke at the United Nations World Environment Day conference in San Francisco and announced he had issued an Executive Order requiring the virtual elimination of greenhouse gases (GHG) in California by 2050. As California is the world’s 7th largest economy, the most populous American state, and the national trendsetter in all behaviors social, coal-producing states like West Virginia need to take his decree seriously. If California follows through on his GHG reduction plan, then we will have, on a de facto basis, ratified the Kyoto Treaty.
Oh Arnold! Must we all pay an imaginary piper because your in-laws have made you feel guilty for burning tons of napalm on your way to becoming a Hollywood millionaire?
Also flying across the radar screen is the resurgence of nuclear power. The Green religion considers GHG the equivalent of 666 in Revelations. And to exorcise GHG, the Greens have become blind, deaf, and dumb monks whenever the topic of nuclear power is debated. Talk about an unholy alliance against coal!
The facts of burning coal are simple but no scientist is prescient enough to draw conclusions about atmospheric warming from them. When you burn coal, you get lots of carbon dioxide. The trees can reprocess part of the CO2, but only seasonally. The oceans can absorb CO2, but at a fixed rate. Coal gasification strips CO2 ahead of the smokestack, but the CO2 gas must be liquefied and pumped underground at great pressure. CO2 that cannot be reprocessed or stored goes into the atmosphere and, so the theory goes, causes the greenhouse effect.
Regardless of your position or thoughts on GHG and global warming, we are not far from the era when pollution credits are auctioned to competing industries. The government will determine hypothetical annual limits for GHG’s, and fossil-fuel-burning industries will have to pay large sums for the rights to discharge GHG’s.
Pollution credits are not scientific. Instead, they represent the political solution for a problem that has far too many variables for humankind to solve. Count the votes in Congress of the coal-producing states and compare that total to the votes of the non-coal states. West Virginia loses any contest in which "Congress felt it had to take action on global warming!"
In one respect, pollution credits will, for the first time, place an economic cost on air pollution. Prior to this approach, only the cost of abatement equipment has factored into the equation. It’s one thing to determine the price of a car’s catalytic converter but quite another to anticipate the auction bids of American Electric Power and Allegheny Power for credits to generate one million megawatt-hours of electricity. We won’t know the cost of GHG credits until we see it priced at the meter. On the bright side, the air pollution taxes that we’ll eventually pay should restore solvency to Social Security.
A few days after Gov. Schwarzenegger made his mid-century predictions, officials at the National Coal Show in Pittsburgh gave their assessment of 2050. The coal industry predicts an increase in coal usage overall as well as a small increase in market share for coal-fired electric generation. Either each party is mostly wrong in its forecast or one of them is totally wrong. These two predicted outcomes, zero emissions and business as usual, cannot mesh as stated.
Next to electric power generation, coal’s other big market is steelmaking. The industry has far too much capacity in basic steelmaking because there is so much scrap steel being recycled. There is so much scrap steel lying around now that some experts predict that an equilibrium point is near and only a small amount of new steel will be needed annually in the future. Recycling uses far less energy and produces less GHG than does making steel from scratch.
Coal demand has its boom and bust cycles. If the nation takes a hard left turn off the King Coal Highway, as recently evidenced by California’s pace car, then we must ask ourselves: Is the current coal boom the last one ever? Is it the next to last?
We would do well to consider California’s actions when predicting coal’s future and its impact on West Virginia’s economy. It is more likely that the Left Coast of America decides our energy future than will our optimistic friends who attended this year’s National Coal Show.
Oh Arnold! Must we all pay an imaginary piper because your in-laws have made you feel guilty for burning tons of napalm on your way to becoming a Hollywood millionaire?
Also flying across the radar screen is the resurgence of nuclear power. The Green religion considers GHG the equivalent of 666 in Revelations. And to exorcise GHG, the Greens have become blind, deaf, and dumb monks whenever the topic of nuclear power is debated. Talk about an unholy alliance against coal!
The facts of burning coal are simple but no scientist is prescient enough to draw conclusions about atmospheric warming from them. When you burn coal, you get lots of carbon dioxide. The trees can reprocess part of the CO2, but only seasonally. The oceans can absorb CO2, but at a fixed rate. Coal gasification strips CO2 ahead of the smokestack, but the CO2 gas must be liquefied and pumped underground at great pressure. CO2 that cannot be reprocessed or stored goes into the atmosphere and, so the theory goes, causes the greenhouse effect.
Regardless of your position or thoughts on GHG and global warming, we are not far from the era when pollution credits are auctioned to competing industries. The government will determine hypothetical annual limits for GHG’s, and fossil-fuel-burning industries will have to pay large sums for the rights to discharge GHG’s.
Pollution credits are not scientific. Instead, they represent the political solution for a problem that has far too many variables for humankind to solve. Count the votes in Congress of the coal-producing states and compare that total to the votes of the non-coal states. West Virginia loses any contest in which "Congress felt it had to take action on global warming!"
In one respect, pollution credits will, for the first time, place an economic cost on air pollution. Prior to this approach, only the cost of abatement equipment has factored into the equation. It’s one thing to determine the price of a car’s catalytic converter but quite another to anticipate the auction bids of American Electric Power and Allegheny Power for credits to generate one million megawatt-hours of electricity. We won’t know the cost of GHG credits until we see it priced at the meter. On the bright side, the air pollution taxes that we’ll eventually pay should restore solvency to Social Security.
A few days after Gov. Schwarzenegger made his mid-century predictions, officials at the National Coal Show in Pittsburgh gave their assessment of 2050. The coal industry predicts an increase in coal usage overall as well as a small increase in market share for coal-fired electric generation. Either each party is mostly wrong in its forecast or one of them is totally wrong. These two predicted outcomes, zero emissions and business as usual, cannot mesh as stated.
Next to electric power generation, coal’s other big market is steelmaking. The industry has far too much capacity in basic steelmaking because there is so much scrap steel being recycled. There is so much scrap steel lying around now that some experts predict that an equilibrium point is near and only a small amount of new steel will be needed annually in the future. Recycling uses far less energy and produces less GHG than does making steel from scratch.
Coal demand has its boom and bust cycles. If the nation takes a hard left turn off the King Coal Highway, as recently evidenced by California’s pace car, then we must ask ourselves: Is the current coal boom the last one ever? Is it the next to last?
We would do well to consider California’s actions when predicting coal’s future and its impact on West Virginia’s economy. It is more likely that the Left Coast of America decides our energy future than will our optimistic friends who attended this year’s National Coal Show.
Friday, June 17, 2005
Let's Take Stock of Our Various Addictions
One of the best things happening in West Virginia is the reporting by West Virginia Media’s I-Team. I can say that because a.) I am a news junkie and analyze the news, and b.) The State Journal pays me not a cent for my opinion. This is not a paid endorsement for West Virginia Media.
In the past months, the I-Team has presented in-depth investigations about drug and gambling addiction. I was most surprised to learn of the extent of Methadone use across the state. Even by charging addicts about $11 per day, state-sanctioned Methadone clinics are very profitable.
The number of Methadone addicts is particularly telling as they are not part of the underground market. They have chosen Methadone primarily to try to escape their addiction to prescription painkillers. With this level of what can be called "legitimate addiction", what can we deduce about the underground market for narcotics?
That question is best answered by another I-Team report that revealed "meth" labs are busted daily. Crystal methamphetamine is an entrepreneur’s dream-the cost of capital and raw materials are remarkably cheap. The moonshiners of old didn’t have it this good-they needed corn which meant an investment in land. If a Methadone clinic, with its investment in a facility, its taxable status, and burdensome paperwork requirements, is very profitable, then meth lab chemists must be raking it in.
Gambling has always thrived in our state. But the nature of gambling has changed dramatically since the voters approved the lottery in 1984. All one needs to do is review the growth in personal bankruptcies resultant from gambling to understand this change. Though not reported in this light, the ever-increasing arrests for embezzlement around the state often are the result of the bookkeeper’s drug or gambling habits.
There are moral issues with addiction. There is also the undeniable charge that state government is culpable in many ways for these addictions. Workers Comp was the leading purveyor of Oxycontin until it changed rules last year. And as for gambling, politicians are the true addicts. But as Professor G. H. Dorr once noted during an endless dialogue, "And what, to flog a horse that if not at this point dead is in mortal danger of expiring," is the point of this column? Economic impact is.
It has always been difficult for economists to value the underground economy. However, since a state-owned computer now tracks nearly every gambling transaction taking place in West Virginia, we have a good data source to calculate the total dollars that West Virginians bet. Using a myriad of other clues, such as drug bust results and Methadone sales, we can also better estimate the amount of cash leaving people’s wallets to pay for illegal drugs.
I would suggest that $1 billion per year is a good starting point in estimating drug and gambling addiction spending.
In our current situation, the multiplier effect of this spending is minimal at best. Though gambling money balances the state budget, let’s examine what it buys. Our brand new jails and prisons are overfilled. The courts are clogged with drug cases. A certain portion of Medicaid and welfare benefits is spent helping addicts to either pursue or recover from their addictions. In all, the state’s legally-derived gambling revenue doesn’t offset the direct economic cost of drug and gambling addiction let alone provide for economic growth.
On the other hand, look at the effect that spending $1 billion per year on new housing would have. Or spend it on new cars. Or spend that rich sum at WalMart, Target, and Best Buy. Then you would have job creation and a multiplier effect as high as 6:1. The taxes levied on this new business growth alone might exceed the state’s current gambling take. Plus, the economy would continue to grow year by year and we would not have to be 49th again (and again.)
If West Virginia hopes to have any kind of economic turnaround at all, drug and gambling addiction have to be all but eliminated. Moving Sudafed to different shelves and voting down table games won’t solve the dilemma. It will take political outrage, the kind currently directed at the Pentagon over 8 aircraft, to make even a dent in the situation.
In a year or two, or perhaps even three, offshore Internet gambling will likely obliterate state gambling franchises. In its greed to raise taxes, the state has conditioned its citizenry to gamble via the video terminal. Someday soon, our gamblers will realize that Cyberspace pays better odds and the state will learn the true cost of its gambling addiction.
Stay tuned to the I-Team for that report.
Professor G. H. Dorr is the character played by Tom Hanks in "Ladykillers".
In the past months, the I-Team has presented in-depth investigations about drug and gambling addiction. I was most surprised to learn of the extent of Methadone use across the state. Even by charging addicts about $11 per day, state-sanctioned Methadone clinics are very profitable.
The number of Methadone addicts is particularly telling as they are not part of the underground market. They have chosen Methadone primarily to try to escape their addiction to prescription painkillers. With this level of what can be called "legitimate addiction", what can we deduce about the underground market for narcotics?
That question is best answered by another I-Team report that revealed "meth" labs are busted daily. Crystal methamphetamine is an entrepreneur’s dream-the cost of capital and raw materials are remarkably cheap. The moonshiners of old didn’t have it this good-they needed corn which meant an investment in land. If a Methadone clinic, with its investment in a facility, its taxable status, and burdensome paperwork requirements, is very profitable, then meth lab chemists must be raking it in.
Gambling has always thrived in our state. But the nature of gambling has changed dramatically since the voters approved the lottery in 1984. All one needs to do is review the growth in personal bankruptcies resultant from gambling to understand this change. Though not reported in this light, the ever-increasing arrests for embezzlement around the state often are the result of the bookkeeper’s drug or gambling habits.
There are moral issues with addiction. There is also the undeniable charge that state government is culpable in many ways for these addictions. Workers Comp was the leading purveyor of Oxycontin until it changed rules last year. And as for gambling, politicians are the true addicts. But as Professor G. H. Dorr once noted during an endless dialogue, "And what, to flog a horse that if not at this point dead is in mortal danger of expiring," is the point of this column? Economic impact is.
It has always been difficult for economists to value the underground economy. However, since a state-owned computer now tracks nearly every gambling transaction taking place in West Virginia, we have a good data source to calculate the total dollars that West Virginians bet. Using a myriad of other clues, such as drug bust results and Methadone sales, we can also better estimate the amount of cash leaving people’s wallets to pay for illegal drugs.
I would suggest that $1 billion per year is a good starting point in estimating drug and gambling addiction spending.
In our current situation, the multiplier effect of this spending is minimal at best. Though gambling money balances the state budget, let’s examine what it buys. Our brand new jails and prisons are overfilled. The courts are clogged with drug cases. A certain portion of Medicaid and welfare benefits is spent helping addicts to either pursue or recover from their addictions. In all, the state’s legally-derived gambling revenue doesn’t offset the direct economic cost of drug and gambling addiction let alone provide for economic growth.
On the other hand, look at the effect that spending $1 billion per year on new housing would have. Or spend it on new cars. Or spend that rich sum at WalMart, Target, and Best Buy. Then you would have job creation and a multiplier effect as high as 6:1. The taxes levied on this new business growth alone might exceed the state’s current gambling take. Plus, the economy would continue to grow year by year and we would not have to be 49th again (and again.)
If West Virginia hopes to have any kind of economic turnaround at all, drug and gambling addiction have to be all but eliminated. Moving Sudafed to different shelves and voting down table games won’t solve the dilemma. It will take political outrage, the kind currently directed at the Pentagon over 8 aircraft, to make even a dent in the situation.
In a year or two, or perhaps even three, offshore Internet gambling will likely obliterate state gambling franchises. In its greed to raise taxes, the state has conditioned its citizenry to gamble via the video terminal. Someday soon, our gamblers will realize that Cyberspace pays better odds and the state will learn the true cost of its gambling addiction.
Stay tuned to the I-Team for that report.
Professor G. H. Dorr is the character played by Tom Hanks in "Ladykillers".
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