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Saturday Links, the environment edition - Pollution, Historic Preservation, and Wind Power
In Maryland, Focus on Poultry Industry Pollution
By IAN URBINA, The New York Times, November 29, 2008
WILLARDS, Md. — Standing before a two-story-tall pile of chicken manure, Lee Richardson pondered how times had changed.
“When I left school and started working the land, this stuff was seen as farmer’s gold,” said Mr. Richardson, 38, a fifth-generation chicken grower, explaining that the waste was an ideal fertilizer for the region’s sandy soil. “Now, it’s too much of a good thing.”
How to handle the 650 million pounds of chicken manure produced in the state each year has sparked a fierce debate between environmentalists and the state’s powerful poultry industry. State officials hope to bring Maryland in line with most other states next month by enacting new rules for where, how and how long chicken farmers can spread the manure on their fields or store it in outdoor piles.
( Read More )
Preserving the City: Preservationists See Bulldozers Charging Through a Loophole
By ROBIN POGREBIN, The New York Times, November 29, 2008
Hours before the sun came up on a cool October morning in 2006, people living near the Dakota Stables on the Upper West Side were suddenly awakened by the sound of a jackhammer.
Soon word spread that a demolition crew was hacking away at the brick cornices of the stables, an 1894 Romanesque Revival building, on Amsterdam Avenue at 77th Street, that once housed horses and carriages but had long served as a parking garage.
In just four days the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission was to hold a public hearing on pleas dating back 20 years to designate the low-rise building, with its round-arched windows and serpentine ornamentation, as a historic landmark.
But once the building’s distinctive features had been erased, the battle was lost. The commission went ahead with its hearing, but ultimately decided not to designate the structure because it had been irreparably changed. Today a 16-story luxury condominium designed by Robert A. M. Stern is rising on the site: the Related Companies is asking from $765,000 for a studio to $7 million or more for a five-bedroom unit in the building.
( Read More )
A Land Rush in Wyoming Spurred by Wind Power
By FELICITY BARRINGER, The New York Times, November 28, 2008
WHEATLAND, Wyo. — The man who came to Elsie Bacon’s ranch house door in July asked the 71-year-old widow to grant access to a right of way across the dry hills and short grasses of her land here. Ms. Bacon remembered his insistence on a quick, secret deal.
The man, a representative of the Little Rose Wind Farm of Boulder, Colo., sought an easement for a transmission line to carry his company’s wind-generated electricity to market. His offer: a fraction of the value of similar deals in the area. As Ms. Bacon, 71, recalled it: “He said, ‘You sure I can’t write you out a check?’ He was really pushy.”
A quiet land rush is under way among the buttes of southeastern Wyoming, and it is changing the local rancher culture. The whipping winds cursed by descendants of the original homesteaders now have real value for out-of-state developers who dream of wind farms or of selling the rights to bigger companies.
( Read More )
By IAN URBINA, The New York Times, November 29, 2008
WILLARDS, Md. — Standing before a two-story-tall pile of chicken manure, Lee Richardson pondered how times had changed.
“When I left school and started working the land, this stuff was seen as farmer’s gold,” said Mr. Richardson, 38, a fifth-generation chicken grower, explaining that the waste was an ideal fertilizer for the region’s sandy soil. “Now, it’s too much of a good thing.”
How to handle the 650 million pounds of chicken manure produced in the state each year has sparked a fierce debate between environmentalists and the state’s powerful poultry industry. State officials hope to bring Maryland in line with most other states next month by enacting new rules for where, how and how long chicken farmers can spread the manure on their fields or store it in outdoor piles.
( Read More )
Preserving the City: Preservationists See Bulldozers Charging Through a Loophole
By ROBIN POGREBIN, The New York Times, November 29, 2008
Hours before the sun came up on a cool October morning in 2006, people living near the Dakota Stables on the Upper West Side were suddenly awakened by the sound of a jackhammer.
Soon word spread that a demolition crew was hacking away at the brick cornices of the stables, an 1894 Romanesque Revival building, on Amsterdam Avenue at 77th Street, that once housed horses and carriages but had long served as a parking garage.
In just four days the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission was to hold a public hearing on pleas dating back 20 years to designate the low-rise building, with its round-arched windows and serpentine ornamentation, as a historic landmark.
But once the building’s distinctive features had been erased, the battle was lost. The commission went ahead with its hearing, but ultimately decided not to designate the structure because it had been irreparably changed. Today a 16-story luxury condominium designed by Robert A. M. Stern is rising on the site: the Related Companies is asking from $765,000 for a studio to $7 million or more for a five-bedroom unit in the building.
( Read More )
A Land Rush in Wyoming Spurred by Wind Power
By FELICITY BARRINGER, The New York Times, November 28, 2008
WHEATLAND, Wyo. — The man who came to Elsie Bacon’s ranch house door in July asked the 71-year-old widow to grant access to a right of way across the dry hills and short grasses of her land here. Ms. Bacon remembered his insistence on a quick, secret deal.
The man, a representative of the Little Rose Wind Farm of Boulder, Colo., sought an easement for a transmission line to carry his company’s wind-generated electricity to market. His offer: a fraction of the value of similar deals in the area. As Ms. Bacon, 71, recalled it: “He said, ‘You sure I can’t write you out a check?’ He was really pushy.”
A quiet land rush is under way among the buttes of southeastern Wyoming, and it is changing the local rancher culture. The whipping winds cursed by descendants of the original homesteaders now have real value for out-of-state developers who dream of wind farms or of selling the rights to bigger companies.
( Read More )