Category: Infrastructure
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Virginia’s Energy Fantasies
By Peter Galuszka Plans to mine uranium in Southside Virginia did not get the boost some had been hoping for now that a 22-month-long review by the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering has been released. Far from rubber-stamping the plan, the independent analysis reported that there are “significant” health and environmental…
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What’s McDonnell Up To With Transportation?
By Peter Galuszka The McDonnell Administration is taking a chain saw to policies that promote smarter, more efficient growth by axing reforms to make neighborhoods connected and pushing design contracts that fast-track road construction and discourage public input. Such are the conclusions drawn from two blog postings by David Alpert of Greater Greater Washington and…
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Can Japan Keep Pitching?
By Peter Galuszka (Last of a series) TOKYO, Japan — “Technology is like water, it runs down hill.” My old Japanese friend and I are chowing down on delicious fried oysters and sashimi in a downtown Tokyo restaurant. We had just had drinks at the Foreign Correspondents Club Of Japan which offers a spectacular, 20th…
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Yet Another Mongolian Crossroads
By Peter Galuszka (Third in a series) ULAN BAATOUR, Mongolia — Flying into this capital city nestled among treeless, light brown mountains brought back memories of a grimy, industrial Soviet city from 30 years ago. Along the tarmac are rows of cannibalized Antonov 2 biplanes used as crop dusters after World War II along with…
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The Wonk Salon, October 8, 2011
Open Source IT Architecture in Houston James A. Baker Institute It’s time for Houston to move from expensive, proprietary IT platforms an open source architecture. Among other initiatives, the city should develop a wiki platform to capture institutional knowledge. Uh, Oh, Our Water Infrastructure Is Decaying, Too Economic Policy Institute Rebuilding America’s decaying water/waste water…
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Making the light rail boondoggle even bigger
By Norm Leahy The Virginian-Pilot is on board with an expansion of Norfolk’s short, costly and scandal-plagued light rail line. But in a fine display of Babbittry, we’re not supposed to pay attention to the scandals, cost overruns, delays and such. Those petty concerns only get in the way of progress. And how to pay…
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Back to the Future
By Peter Galuszka Virginia’s “no tax” governor is on his way to sticking the state’s motorists with a tax by another name. Robert F. McDonnell has won preliminary federal approval to stick drivers with a toll of from $2 to $4 on parts of Interstate 95 supposedly to help the cash-starved state fund “safety” improvements.…
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Thanks, Monsieur Warbucks!
By Peter Galuszka Sometimes there are enlightened people out there. This is point to shake up the Baconauts and Boomergeddons, but the New York Times has an editorial this morning about the enlightened rich. Following the lead of Warren Buffett, the investment Sage of Oamaha who says he should pay more taxes: “Sixteen of France’s…
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The Ghost of June Allen
By Peter Galuszka The ghost of a classical piano player with a knack for penetrating huge engineering reports is watching over the latest problems at Dominion Virginia Power’s North Anna nuclear power station. Throughout the 1970s, June Allen, who headed the North Anna Environmental Coalition and died of breast cancer in 2010, fought Virginia Electric…
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Grumpy Old Men
By Peter Galuszka Here I was, sitting in a strip mall Panera, waiting for the next electric socket to open up. It was the aftermath of Hurricane Irene and I had been without electricity since 4:35 p.m. Saturday. I have a home office, so having no power can be deadly. Plenty of other people had…
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Bacon’s Buzzword of the Day: Life Cycle Budgeting
by James A. Bacon One of the big problems Virginia and other states have in reining in the cost of government is nonsensical accounting. Here in our great commonwealth, the General Assembly draws up spending plans in two-year increments called biennial budgets. Because the investment time horizon does not extend beyond two years, decision makers…
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All Shook Up
By Peter Galuszka Today’s earthquake near Mineral should shake up a lot of thinking. All sorts of things happened about 10 minutes to 2 p.m. The Pentagon was evacuated. Airplanes up and down the East Coast were put on ground hold. A stairwell in Richmond is said to have collapsed. As for me, I was…
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The EMP Embroglio
by James A. Bacon One of the most frightening end-of-the-world scenarios that bedevils my apocalyptic mind — scarier even than Boomergeddon — is the threat of an electromagnetic pulse over the United States. Whether caused by the detonation of a rogue nuclear weapon above the atmosphere or a blast of solar radiation, an EMP could…