My Neighbor

Typical Sunday At Lincoln's Bike Kitchen

1720 South 15th Street  Lincoln, NE 68502

City Limits

There is a muscular energy in sunlight corresponding to the spiritual energy of wind. 

-Annie Dillard

Nutshell

World Water Day

The United Nations (UN) established World Water Day in 1993 as an event to highlight the critical nature of our relationship and the challenges associated with managing the world’s water resources. Each year World Water Day focuses on a specific issue and this year the UN draws our attention to “Water and Food Security”.

The average person living in the United States has a ready supply of clean and affordable tap water so it slips below our perception that almost 3 billion people on the planet live without that luxury. In fact the UN estimates that more than one in six people worldwide lack access to 5-13 gallons of safe freshwater a day to ensure their basic needs for drinking, cooking, and cleaning.

As the global temperatures continue to rise, as the severity and duration of drought conditions continue to magnify I think we're bound to see the tensions between a climate-water-food security nexus.

It takes, roughly, 1500 tons of water to grow 1 ton of grain so the math clearly paints food production as an incredibly water intensive process.  But cities and urban areas have water substantial economic development and drinking water needs of their own. 

The world’s population continues to concentrate in urban areas so I wasn't too surprised to realize that cities are diverting surface water toward reservoirs and away from agriculture. But because everybody has to eat, and the water demands of agriculture have to come from somewhere, ground water pumping has stepped up.

Over the past forty to fifty years we’ve seen a doubling of the amount of groundwater pumped in order to irrigate cropland. As a person living on one of the  largest aquifers in the world (the Ogallala) I've been around groundwater conversations my whole life. You cannot convince me that the rate at which we are depleting groundwater resources is sustainable. 

Essentially we live in a world with increasing water demands at the same time as our  supplies are depleted.  And that creates a global undercurrent ripe for conflict.

According to the United States Pentagon water stress can act as a “threat multiplier” by (1.) causing migrations of people away from ag-lands due to the salinization of soils, (2.) and exacerbating the sort of tensions that lend well to social unrest and armed conflicts. Today, drought, thirst, and hunger are exacerbating the conflicts and humanitarian disasters in Darfur and Somalia. 

I would agree with Sandra Postel, the Global Water Policy Project Director, when she says “[i]t’s through water that we’ll feel the strains of climate change  - when we can no longer count on familiar patterns of rain, snow and river flow to irrigate our farms, power our dams, or fill our city reservoirs.” She goes on to say that our decisions about water – how we  use, allocate, and manage it – are ethical by their very nature; these decisions ultimately determine the survival of most of the planet’s species including our own. 

Next time you turn on the faucet I’d encourage you to wonder how much water you consume every day? Join the World Water Day 2012 campaign and find out how can you can reduce your water footprint.

The Big 1-0

Happy Birthday, N!

Like a Hot Rock

The percentage of total electrical generation produced by coal fired units over the last two months of 2011 dropped by nearly 40% according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That’s the  lowest percentage of coal fired generation in the energy mix since 1978.

Evidently 93% of the coal produced in the U.S. last year was used for generating electricity. The remaining, roughly 7%, of the coal production was exported for both steel-making processes, and energy production in foreign countries.

The EIA suggests the mild temperatures this winter and natural gas' low market price dropped coal-fired generation from the energy sector like a hot rock. The drop was further greased by expanded renewable energy offerings, a proliferation of energy efficiency programs, and the recession economy. 

I can't predict the whether next winter will offer the same mild temperatures, nor do I posses a crystal ball when it comes to the market price of natural gas. But I can predict that operation of coal fired power plants will continue to drop. The Institute for Energy Research reported in February that the energy landscape is speckled with coal power plant closings.

The energy markets and the regulatory environment are essentially pushing in the same direction at this point. A direction away from coal and toward natural gas. Natural gas units, particularly those in combined-cycle configurations, tend offer cleaner emissions, more operational flexibility, and they operate at higher efficiency rates than older, coal-fired units. 


The push toward natural gas or other alternatives is so strong that one-hundred coal plants have closed or announced closure plans, since January of 2010. The average age of the 300+ individual coal-fired units being retired is upwards of fifty-years old. And in terms of emissions, choking off those stacks will represent shedding 162 million tons of carbon-dioxide a year. But, you know, 162 million tons-here, 162 million tons – there, and pretty soon it starts to add up and look like real carbon reductions.

Drama Camp

N attended Drama Camp over Spring Break. The kids wrote a play, constructed a set, and put up a show in a week's time. She came home jazzed up every day with creative energy.

This was an original script which involved a time machine, a dance rendering of Michael Jackson's Thriller video, a strobe light - slow motion sword fight, and N wearing black and playing the part of a ninja. She had to write up a blurb with her character's back-story. I'll quote the ninja blurb directly, because it tickled me, along with the attached costume sketch as her self-portrait. 

Name: Ninja Kami (I am Janna's Big Sister)

Character: Kami's mom and dad were famous ninjas. They had their daughter Kami, the leader ninja,  trained. But when Kami was 9 she, her sister, and their pet raccoon had to flee to America and continue their ninja training there. 

Crocus Solitaire

First Garden Bloom

Drop Shot

I recently started swinging a tennis racket. The whole thing started as a Saturday morning habit of taking coaching pointers from my daughter. A couple of months ago I attended my first adult beginner tennis class.

I laced up my shoes that first morning and got a little queasy with feeling self-conscious. I'm a person who likes to hang toward the back of the room at the beginnings of things just to size things up or find someone to mimic until I catch on. But on a tennis court I couldn't be a wall-flower, really. Standing in the center of the court all of my embarrassing beginner habits were on full display: my sloppy serve, the iffy sense I had of the lingo (let alone the rules), my habit of swinging hard and missing the ball entirely...yep, it was all out there.

Still is all out there, actually. My tennis game is improving but it's gummed together with slop and misses. I can safely say that I'm not a natural on the tennis court. I didn't miss my calling in life. There was never a professional circuit or an endorsement deal just waiting for me. 

But there is a lot to like about tennis. Like the muffled poff sound the ball makes when it hits the court. There are the skips and swings of your whole body. The way the warm sun on my face is like a pleasant spectator to outdoor games. I'll occasionally insert comic book captions ("POW!" and "Swoosh!") in spiked bubbles around a tough match.

Mainly, I like that tennis keeps me from over thinking things. It's got a pace that doesn't allow the game to rattle around in my head too long. I can't stand on my heels, in the back of the room like a wallflower, and ponder a whole lot of the time. For better or worse I have to respond.

I started swinging a tennis racket this year. I'm little surprised at how much I've enjoyed it.    

Storytelling by Ira Glass

Ira Glass on Storytelling from David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.

Late Winter - Early Evening

Thanks, K.

Tap Water

The American Water Works Association (AWWA) issued the Buried No Longer: Confronting America's Water Infrastructure Challenge report recently. The text of the report details the massive level of investment needed expand, replace and repair buried drinking water infrastructure in the United States. 

I'll cut to the chase and tell you we're talking about $1 trillion of investment between now and 2035.

 “Because pipe assets last a long time, water systems that were built in the latter part of the 19th century and throughout much of the 20th century have, for the most part, never experienced the need for pipe replacement on a large scale,” the report says. Replacement needs account for about 54 percent of the national total, with the balance attributable to population changes over that period.

 Like most of us, I'm a drinking water fan. I'll buy bottled water on a road trip occasionally but safe drinking water standards only apply to the stuff coming out of my city tap. Plus my dentist thanks me for drinking tap water because of the fluoride boost it gives my teeth.

I'll also admit that I'm an infrastructure junkie. I support most public works projects so long as they're necessary, well designed, and installed by qualified contractors.

And finally, since I'm admitting everything here, I'll say I'm an environmental professional, and a member of the AWWA since 2004. So I'm sold on the problem. I've seen the effects of a crumbling infrastructure, and the lack of appropriate funding. The problem of underfunded drinking water infrastructure is absolutely, undeniably true in my opinion.

My issue with this report isn't the problem it addresses but with the problem statement. Why focus on money, when a conversation about jobs could be so much more convincing? The time for capital improvements couldn't be better in the sense that borrowing rates are low, and municipal bond sales remain strong even in this down economy. 

Convert the findings from dollars to labor hours and employment rates and the text would read entirely differently. A problem statement that offers a solution in terms of jobs open up the discussion. The  issue resonates with politicians and taxpayers rather than the small set of environmental-infrastructure junkies like myself.