Posts Tagged ‘infrastructure’

7 billion and counting…

Monday, January 3rd, 2011

I have to give a shout out to Joe.My.God for sharing this video.  It really got me thinking…

There are a lot of statistics in this video, and some made me ponder more heavily than others.  The one that startled me the most was the increase of population in the last decade and the projections for mid century.  We added a billion people in the last decade or so, and can expect to add another 2 billion by 2045.  That is a pretty heavy duty prediction.

We already know that we are using the planets resources at a rate that is not sustainable.  If we continue at the current rate, we will see our supplies of minerals, water and oil depleted far faster than most people realize.  If we are seeing the current electrical grid and use of power as tight as it is now, imagine the stress on the system when you add a 25-30% increase in the use of those resources.  If we cannot manage our oil and fossil fuel consumption now, what will we do with an extra 87 million people to worry about?

We are also moving from an agrarian society to an urban one.  For the first time, we now have more people living in cities than in rural areas.  We have seen an increase in megacities, that is cities with over 10 million people.  In 1975, there were only 3 of these enormous urban environments, but now we have 21.  In this video, they estimate that in 40 years, 70% of us will live in these mega cities.  Reflecting on these numbers brings up the importance of dense urban growth, and the importance of building smartly to accommodate these huge population increases in our cities.  Cities that do not embrace new technologies and new planning ideas could suffer greatly in the coming decades.  In America specifically, we do not have a power grid that can support a huge increase in populated areas.  Not only are we going to have to find a way to produce more power, but also to manage it more efficiently.  If cities like Los Angeles experience problems with pollution now, how will they remain livable while they add another 2 million or so people?  While issues like these will affect everyone, these mega cities are going to feel the pinch more than most.  Then there is the issue of food production.  Much like the growth of the urban environment during the industrial revolution, efficient food production and transportation is going to be a huge concern.  As we have to go farther and farther from the urban core to produce food, the cost to produce and transport it will go up.  Furthermore, the quality of produce will continue to diminish as we prepare for more of our food to come from mega corporate farms.

In the US, there is the concern of our crumbling infrastructure.  Currently, our electrical grid is in danger.  Bridges, water delivery systems, sewers, dams and more are in trouble.  We can currently only afford to repair and replace our infrastructure as it falls apart.  Look no farther than Cleveland’s own I-90 bridge and our postponing of its replacement for years to see the proof.  We are patching it to make it safe, but it is long overdue for replacement.  Minneapolis and Seattle have seen major bridge failures in the last couple of decades.  Sludge dams from coal mining are failing in some areas.  Levies in need of replacement may have been the biggest cause of Damage in New Orleans.  If we are seeing this stress on the infrastructure now, imagine when we add a 20% increase in population.  If California is searching for places as far away as the Great Lakes today, what will they do in 40 years?

5% of us use 23% of the energy produced in the world.  13% of the population does not have access to reliable clean drinking water.  38% lack adequate sanitation.  If we have failed to solve these issues for a population of 7 billion, how can we expect to solve it for 9 billion?  Then there are the issues of food shortages, natural disasters, climate change, they only get bigger and worse if do nothing to solve them now.

And just to make you aware, China has a one child policy for urban areas.  A large portion of the country is limited to having only one child per couple.  Over the years, they have become more lax on this policy.  Some imagine this policy will go away in the next decade.  If it does, what will that do to the overall planet overpopulation?

Amplify

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Power to the People! America’s Infrastructure Part 5

Wednesday, October 21st, 2009

Do you remember the night the power went out? I do-August 14, 2003. I also remember the near panic as people started getting the word that the power was out in Pennsylvania, New York, and even part of Canada. Without power there was little information to go on, and after 9/11, fear was very high. Hard to believe that the entire incident could be pinned onto a single power line in Ohio. Overworked and transmitting power at maximum capacity, it sagged and touched a tree branch. At that point, it short circuited and sent a wave of power surges that cascaded across the power grid so fast it was impossible to stop. Within about 12 seconds, 6 states and Ontario, Canada were affected. It is at times like that in which we begin to realize how fully we depend on electricity to survive.

Modern life required power. Cities which drive the economic engine of the country, like New York with its Stock Exchange or Chicago with its Board of Trade, are useless without power. Without the interconnectedness created by our power grid, there is no trade. Transportation grinds to a halt. Not only are street lights and signals out, train stations and airports dependent on power for safe operations, but many public transportation systems are powered by electricity. Trapped in the dark for hours commuters along the Eastern Seaboard waited for hours for help getting out of tunnels, only to be stuck wherever they were. Then there are the issues of water. When the power grid goes down, water treatment stops and the water supply risks contamination from untreated water. Cleveland was on a boil alert for days.

A fluke? Perhaps. Yet America’s power grid is in the same shape across the entire country. America’s power grid is an achievement of incredible proportions. To create it, we built some 10,000 power plants. We hung 160,000 miles of high voltage power lines. We installed countless transformers and millions of local power lines and poles. However, now we face the problem that much of the grid is under maintained and due for a severe overhaul. To get an idea of how severe the problem is, take a look at the power poles as you drive around. Made from southern yellow pine and treated to stand up to the weather and to resist insect destruction, our electric poles have a life of about 30 years. When you look at the rotting and leaning poles around the country, you can see that many are way past their usable life.

In addition to the aging power grid, we face the dilemma of increased usage. The grid as we know it was never meant to handle the loads that we are forcing on it now, or will in the near future. We have seen a 15% spike in usage in recent years, and can expect another 20 % increase in the next decade. I don’t see this as helping to alleveiate the already overtaxed system. Outages are expected to increase-already the average household experiences 214 minutes of blackout every year. Just conisder yourself luck that you do not live in the Chicago suburb of Deerfield, Illinois. They have some 200 blackout a year.

When the great power outage of the NE occurred, we had no way to know what was happening and thus no way of stopping it. In fact, the grid we are now using has little or no monitoring capabilities in place. Many power companies do not even know they have a blackout until they get the calls from their customers. Until they do, they continue to send power down those lines not knowing it is being lost. Overhauling the grid is expected to take 1.5 trillion dollars by 2030. That’s if we start now. Fortunately, the new smart grid will help to eliminate many of the issues that we face today. But what exactly is the smart grid, and how will it work?

The smart grid, is essentially a new grid with better lines, more hubs, and better controls. That means that we can draw more power from areas with excess when we need it, and send our excess to areas that have a need when we have extra. It will let us know when there are issues in transmission, and can reroute power better to allow for less consumers to be affected by small localized problems in the grid. Furthermore, it will eventually utilize smart appliances that will talk to the grid itself. Imagine power usage at its very peak capacity and we are nearing a blackout. If the grid sends out a signal to every refrigerator to shut down its condenser for a few minutes, we can avoid the blackout. This will allow the surge in usage to pass, or for the grid to reroute power to provide the necessary backup. Then the all clear signal comes out and fridges can again turn themselves back up. With the right technology in place, brown outs and blackouts could be virtually eliminated, and as this often happens in milliseconds, your ice cream won’t get mushy. As we increase our usage of plug in electric vehicles, they can act as back-up batteries, allowing the grid to pull a little power when it needs a little boost. More on site renewable electricity like solar and wind will also help, by reducing usage of the grid, and by providing a little back up for when it is needed.

We have the technology, now we just need the investment. With the answers in reach, I hope we start to make the leap before we see repeats of the 2003 outage on a more regular basis.

Amplify

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Can you smell that smell? America’s Infrastructure Part 4

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

Sewers. We all need them, but are we taking care of them? And what are they doing to our natural water systems? I have talked about some of the issues that are facing us with Cleveland’s sewer systems. This problem, however, is not limited to Cleveland or NE Ohio. It is a fundamental problem with the infrastructure in America that need to be addressed. The damage to our ecological system could be devastating.

America has over one million sewer systems. They handle 900 billion gallons of waste every year. Unfortunately, many of the most important are inadequate to handle the population and development that have been added to them. Unlike water pipes, sewer systems are not pressurized, so tree roots and other outside destructive forces can damage sewer pipelines easier. Add to that the fact that sewage has a high acid content that erodes and breaks down concrete, and you have a recipe for disaster. While we continue to add development we rarely add the infrastructure needed to keep up. What elected official wants to be the one to spend a few million dollars to fix pipes underground that no one sees, especially if it means tearing up streets and snarling traffic that everyone sees? I wanted to add a little video, to illustrate the problems we are facing with our sewer systems. This one seems to be the least disgusting, but there are plenty on You Tube that illuminate the problem quite clearly.

Many older cities, like Cleveland, have combined sewer and stormwater systems. That means that our taxed sewers also handle the rainwater as it runs off the streets. Whenever we have a huge downpour, and we have plenty in Cleveland, this rain can overflow the entire system. Overflows mean raw sewage flows into the river and lake, where people swim and even fish. We have a delicate ecosystem. It was created to handle human and animal waste and break it down. Unfortunately, it cannot handle the huge amounts of waste created by our large cities and huge amounts of waste from our growing populations. And stormwater runoff is dirty enough on its own. Loaded with the oil, litter, chemicals, weed killer, and other toxins that we dump onto our concrete every single minute, stormwater is becoming more increasingly a toxic soup that threatens the environment. Cleveland is by no means alone in having this problem. Some 700 cities across the country experience overflow problems every year.

In addition to addressing the problems by renovating and throwing money at them, we need to also think about changing how we look at these issues moving forward. We need to increase green spaces, bio swales, porous concrete and other innovations to handle rainwater. Any reduction in stormwater runoff will decrease our need for infrastructure. We need to stop paving America and start greening it. We need to do start implementing plans to revamp and renew our aging sewer systems, and remove storm drains from the sewage lines. In our own homes, we can reduce our use of water and disconnect our downspouts by adding rain barrels to ease demand on the system. Lastly, we need to address future challenges as we build developments, rather than waiting for them to become problems of their own. I wonder how much the sewer system was revamped in Tremont to handle all the new development going on there. Was there a strategy developed, or was it simply piled on top of the problems the city already faced?

Amplify

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Dam It! America’s Infrastructure Part 3

Monday, October 19th, 2009

I wrote about roads and bridges. I started this thread by talking about drinking water and the issues that surround our pipelines. When it comes to water, the pipelines are only part of the problem. Before the water ever gets to the pipes, it meets quite a lot of America’s failing infrastructure, like dams and levees. These dams and levees also keep out raging river waters, stormwater run-off, and even scarier environmental concerns like fly ash.

America’s dams are an average of 51 years old. Built without the benefit of the technology that we have today. We have approximately 85,000 dams in the United States, and some 4000 of these are deemed potentially unsafe. Of these 1800 are considered high hazard, which means that should they fail, there could be great loss of life and huge property damage. We needn’t look too far back to see the potential for devastation should any of these dams or levees breach. New Orleans is grim reminder of how our aging infrastructure has failed to keep us safe from harm, and it continues to struggle in its recovery. What city will be next?

Consider the very real threat to Nashville, and large parts of Tennessee. The Wolf Creek Dam is situated some 250 river miles upstream from Nashville. Construction began on the dam in 1941, and was completed in 1950, long before the computer age. Behind it lies Lake Cumberland, with 66,000 surface acres and an average depth of 90 feet. That is a lot of water to hold back. What wasn’t known in the 40′s was how precarious it is to construct a dam on porous limestone. Over the years, water has been eroding away at channels in the rock and wearing away at the foundations of the dam. Were it not for the sink holes that developed in the early 2000′s, engineers may not have even discovered the problems before it was too late. Since that time, they have poured tons of rock, concrete and grout into the foundations to make them hold up, and in the end found that this was not enough. They had to start construction on a whole new wall to make the dam really safe once again. Were it to burst, the water in the lake would race down the Cumberland River flooding hundreds of towns along the way, including Nashville, Tennessee-which would be as much as 20 feet underwater. Additionally, we cannot estimate the economic damage, as the Cumberland River is part of the vast connected network of waterways that we use to ship goods inside the US.

Dams hold back more than just water. Much of our electricity in the US is supplied by coal burning power plants. Beyond the CO2 issues with coal generated electricity, there are toxic water issues that are rarely mentioned. That came to the forefront last year when a dam burst holding back fly ash sludge, a by product of local coal plants. This released a river of waste that destroyed homes, land, and lives. I think that we have only begun to see the health issues that are likely to arise from this catastrophe, as fly ash is loaded with heavy metals like arsenic that leech into groundwater. Most sad of all, is that fly ash can be substituted for Portland Cement in large quantities when making concrete, so this waste stream could have been put to use.

Dams in America are valuable assets, as long as they hold. They require maintenance and inspection to keep them in top shape. Yet, with the thousands of dams across our country, there are few inspectors to oversee them. Some states have only one or two full time inspectors, and some have none whatsoever. Add to that the loss of manufacturing. There are hundreds of smaller dams that were originally built by corporations that have been abandoned. Inherited by the states where they reside, little may be known about their safety or even their construction.

But dams are not our only issue. Built to hold back water in times of high flow are thousands of levees. These are woefully inadequate in America. Many fail during peak rises in the Mississippi, and we all know what can happen to a city highly dependent on them, like New Orleans, during natural disaster. The issue in some areas is huge, and relatively unknown by the majority of Americans. While California deals with budget shortfalls and wildfires, there is a brewing problem that no one talks about. Much of the southern part of the state is supplied by drinking water from the Clifton Fore bay, which is fed by the San Francisco Delta. The delta is region of some 1000 square miles that was created from marshes by building hundreds of dirt levees. Built in the 1800′s by farmers om soft peat soil, these hold back excess river water that goes into the San Francisco Bay. Since their creation, this land has sunk some 25 feet, meaning that it is below the water line and must be constantly pumped to keep it dry. If there were a large earthquake near the levees, like the one that hit California in the 80′s, these levees are likely to fail. That would flood the entire delta, and as a reslut it would suck slat water from the bay into the basin and its water system. The Clifton Forebay would have to close, to keep the salt water out. With rationing, Southern California could last 6-12 months, but it would take 2 years or more for the watershed to return to normal and salt levels to normalize. A stretch? There are estimates that there is a 66% chance of this kind of earthquake happening in the next 30 years, but with a cost of $25-$40 million per square mile to fix the problem, it is an issue that is not likely to be dealt with soon.

As long as we continue with business as usual, the problem will only continue to get worse. We have to start building more sustainably as we go forward. By using some of these materials, like fly ash, in our construction, we can alleviate some of the burden. By investing in renewables, we can decrease the output of fly ash to begin with. By restricting our development to areas that can support themselves, we can reduce the need for more infrastructure like the kind we created to make LA an oasis rather than a desert. And by building less in flood plains we sill diminish our need for levees and the maintenance they require.

Amplify

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Water: America’s Infrastructure Part 1

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009


One of the world’s truly most precious resource is water. While we are busy flushing most of our drinkable water down the toilet, or using thousands of gallons on our lawns, some people do not even have access to this most basic necessity. What is really scary is the amount that is being lost every single day in our cities that few people even know about. Today there are leaks in the water delivery systems in most major cities. While there is no clean drinking water in some cities in third world countries, we lose nearly 6 billion gallons each and every day due to leaks in our water systems. New York City loses 10% of its water every day to leaks. In Atlanta it is 14%. In rust belt cities, the problem is even worse; Buffalo, NY loses a whopping 40% of its water supply to leaks. There are an average of 240,000 water main breaks every year in the United States. We have had more than a few right here in Cleveland. The amount of water lost every time this happens can be devastating. In cities like ours whose infrastructure is failing across the board, this influx of water overloads the sewer systems, sending untreated sewage into water ways like Lake Erie.

And that is only the beginning.

The loss of water in a water needy world is terrible to be sure. However, the problem is bigger than that. In some cities, the loss of water pressure due to breaks and leaks means that fire hydrants are not properly pressurized. Should there be a major fire in some area, there is a possibility that there will be no nearby hydrants to apply water to the fire. This makes water pressure more than a luxury issue.

Couple that with the health issues associated with leaks. Micro fractures may allow water to leak out, but it also allows contaminates to get in. Remember the cryptosporidium outbreak a few years ago? In 2008, there were 2 boil alerts issued around Washington, DC. That means that twice in one year, the drinking water was unsafe to consume in the water district. We are not talking about India or some developing country, we are talking about the suburbs surrounding our nation’s capital. In some regions of the US, homes are built with septic systems. Some homes in this same region may be supplied by wells. Normally not an issue, but if there is any water main collapse or major line leakage, water supplies can cause sepetic systems to discharge water that is contaminated by e. coli and other bacteria into the same watershed that is being used to supply water.

Consider NYC. Residents of the Big Apple consume 1.2 billion gallons of water every day. Most of this water comes from underground pipelines and aqueducts from up to 100 miles away. The main aqueduct for the city is over 80 miles long and about 70 years old. It hasn’t even undergone a thorough inspection since 1957. Engineers fear that if it is shut off for inspection, the loss of pressure may cause the entire line to collapse. Estimates are that somewhere between 10 and 36 million gallons of water are lost every day to leaks in this line. The worst are centered around a small town in NY called Warwarsing. The cracks in the pipeline are so bad here that the water is rising to the surface. If you have every seen a sinkhole develop, then you can imagine the problems that this town is experiencing. If there is ever a collapse, it is estimated by some that the entire town will be destroyed.

So while there are Californians thinking we need to help supply them with fresh water from the Great Lakes, I say think again. If we could only stop the leakage of 6 billion gallons of water every day from the drinking water supply chain, then we could supply most of that state with its drinking water from the savings alone!

update…
I got this email from one of my readers, so I thought that I would add it on. There is work being done after all to alleviate NYC, but what about the rest of the country?

In response to your water post, please view the attached link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_Water_Tunnel_No._3

If you are not aware, New York City has been working on a tunnel since the 1970′s to help alleviate some of these issues.

This would be the 3rd tunnel for NYC water use.

You make some very good points here. I look forward to your next post.

Amplify

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