Cappelli may get away without paying water bill

It's true. The rich are different from you and me. But I do have something in common with Lou Cappelli, a quintessential rich guy. Cappelli is shocked by his $2.47 million water bill from New Rochelle and doesn't want to pay it. And I'm shocked by my $1,600 Yonkers water bill, and I don't want to cough up the dough, either.

My moaning and groaning means nothing. In the end, I'll hold my nose and pay the bill, even though it amounts to a holdup. This is where Lou and I part company. See, he's serious. Lou's really refusing to pay. And from the look of all those sweet deals he's been squeezing out of elected officials to carpet Westchester County with strikingly bland skyscrapers, it's a better than even bet that somehow he'll get his way. That's because he's a rich guy. Rich guys don't get rich by spending their own money. It's other people's money that pays the freight in this world.
Before I get to Lou's situation, let me first explain my water bill because you're probably wondering how it is that I owe so much money. Sixteen hundred bucks - how's that possible?
Write this down: In Yonkers, anything is possible. It's Reisman's Law.

And nothing ever just "happens." To understand why stupid things occur in Yonkers, you have to climb into the Wayback Machine and find the root cause. Flip the dial to 1995. That's when the cash-strapped city fathers had the bright idea of doing away with water meter readers as a budget-cutting measure. They decided to rely instead on estimated water usage, which turned out to be a mistake because it resulted in lost revenue. Duh, no kidding! What to do? Somebody got another bright idea. The city made a deal with Con Edison, the fine people who put the grr in "grid" whenever a mighty wind blows and the lights go out. The deal was this: Con Ed agreed to have its electric-meter readers also read the municipal water meters for a fee of $1 per meter. But for some reason, Con Ed didn't do the job. Duh, no kidding! What to do?

Ding! That's correct, still another bright idea was hatched. The city reverted to the estimated usage plan. At the same time, it relied on water consumers to read their own meters, record the data on blue cards and send them into the Bureau of Water. The bureau would, in turn, analyze the numbers and then mail back accurate bills. This worked, sort of. The problem was that the city failed to send out the blue cards to everybody on a consistent basis. Duh, no kidding! What to do?

Well, around 2003, the city resumed meter reading and that meant a slow, laborious process of catching up to some 35,000 meters citywide, many of which had not been checked in nearly a decade. People who had been paying relatively low water bills semiannually (and were unaware of the botched efforts to collect the proper amounts) found themselves slapped overnight with crushing demands for overdue payments running into the hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars.
They're still catching up. They caught up to me only a month ago. For a long time, I had been paying about $70 a year. Now the real bill is due for all that lost time - $1,600. To make sure it wasn't a mistake, I had the city come to my house yesterday and recheck the meter. It wasn't a mistake.

Here's a side note: Also yesterday, three water department employees were arraigned on charges of bilking the city out of tens of thousands of dollars in an overtime padding scheme. That's Yonkers-style irony for you. (Again, I refer you to Reisman's Law.)

Yonkers Deputy Mayor Bill Regan told me the other day that people getting these mortgage-sized water bills can choose to pay in monthly installments over the course of a year, at no interest. One way or another, the bills will be collected. There's no statute of limitations on municipal incompetence. "It's very aggravating to people. I know it is," Regan said.
He added that the city might install a remote meter-reading system in which meters can be quickly scanned from the street. Requests for proposals have been issued. Now back to Lou Cappelli. His $2.47 million bill from United Water New Rochelle isn't about water usage per se. It's the bill he owes for the cleaning and relining of a 16-inch main and the installation of a new 12-inch main - all for the purpose of helping to pump water into his 450-foot tall condominium tower called Trump Plaza, which was named after his bosom buddy, You-know-who.

Cappelli thinks this is an outrage. His senior vice president, Joe Apicella, told The Journal News last week that there's no way they'll pay that amount. He said $87,000 was enough. According to my calculator, that's about 3.5 percent of the total bill. Putting it another way, if I got off the hook for 3.5 percent in Yonkers, my bill would only be $56. The outcome of this dispute between Cappelli and United Water is yet to be determined. But you have to believe that someone's going to pay for those new pipes in New Rochelle and if it's not Lou, then it'll be everybody else.

Oh, yes. By the way. Cappelli is coming to Yonkers, where he wants to transform the city's downtown into more towers of power. So hold onto your wallets and take a second look at your water meter.

By Phil Reismann, The Journal News

Shutting down part of the Alaskan pipeline is no small matter

Talking about oil spills, pipeline problems, gas shortages, and price hikes are great for sensationalism, but what's the real truth behind the stories in the news? The oil companies have made huge profits in the last couple of years, while America has watched a barrel of oil spiral upwards. It soared even higher on the news that part of BP's Prudhoe Bay, Alaska pipeline would be shut down because of corrosion. How much money does BP need to record as profit before they spend some it ensuring the foundation, the pipelines the oil flows through, are safe and sound?

In early August BP announced that it would be shutting down part of its Prudhoe Bay, Alaska pipeline. BP has three crude oil transmission pipelines in that area: the Western Operating Area (WOA), Eastern Operating Area (EOA), and the Lisburn crude oil pipelines. How much trouble is the United States in with this shutdown? Where does most of the gas pumped from the Alaska line go? What states are most affected? What percentage of this production is used in America's motor gasoline consumption? And what does a smart pig have to do with anything?

Why was the pipeline shutdown?

Think of an artery that runs to your heart. If everything is flowing fine, you don't need any help. But what happens when your blood gets a little thicker? The doctor will give you a blood thinner to help your blood thin and move through your artery. The same goes for pipelines, but the blood thinner is known as corrosion inhibitors. Daren Beaudo, spokesperson for BP, speaking from the North Slope of Alaska said, "the GC-2 pipeline in Alaska that was corroded had separation that may have prevented the inhibitors from working." BP injected the inhibitors in the wellhead. The potential barrier was in the gathering center which is a processing center. BP started injecting the inhibitors in the pipeline directly, after the GC-2 spill.

How big of a deal is Alaska oil in our production?

Back in the late '70s and early '80s, the United States was producing between 8.5-9 million barrels per day of crude oil. As of the end of 2005, total crude oil produced in the United States has dropped to just over 5 million barrels per day. The United States is broken down into five different regions, called PADDs: Petroleum Administration for Defense District. PADD III is the largest producer of oil, almost 3 million barrels per day, and you can easily guess that Texas and the Gulf are included in that PADD. The West coast is PADD V which consists of Alaska, California and Federal offshore drilling. PADD V produces about 1.5 million barrels per day with 864 thousand of those barrels per day from Alaska. The total Alaskan crude production of oil represents 16 percent of all the oil produced in the United States, so losing 400,000 barrels per day represents 7.8 (or rounded to 8) percent of the U.S. production of crude oil.

What's a Barrel?

Crude oil needs to be refined to make motor gasoline so that we can drive our gasoline powered vehicles. According to the California Energy Commission, "One barrel contains 42 gallons of crude oil. The total volume of products made from crude oil based origins is 48.43 gallons on average - 6.43 gallons greater than the original 42 gallons of crude oil. This represents a "processing gain" due to the additional other petroleum products such as alkylates are added to the refining process to create the final products." "Additionally, California gasoline contains approximately 5.7 percent by volume of ethanol, a non-petroleum-based additive that brings the total processing gain to 7.59 gallons (or 49.59 total gallons)."

What does this mean for motor gasoline?

It is typically thought that half the barrel of oil, 21 gallons, is motor gasoline, but in California 25 gallons of gasoline is produced out of one barrel of oil. All of Prudhoe Bay's production is 400,000 barrels/per day. As of August 12, 2006, after extensive consultations with state and federal regulators, BP will be allowed to continue drilling for oil and natural gas. The current production is 150,000, therefore, losing 250,000 barrels of crude oil. This amount equals 6,250,000 gallons of gasoline the west coast is losing every day.According to Michael Burdette, Senior Analyst at Energy Information Administration (EIA), the United States uses 378 million gallons of gas per day, equaling a loss of 1.6 percent of our motor gasoline consumption per day."

Who are the players -- who is liable?

According to Beaudo, BP owns 26 percent of the Prudhoe Bay, including the oil and natural gas. Conoco-Phillips owns 36 percent, Exxon Mobil owns 36 percent and Chevron Texaco and Forrest Oil own 2 percent. BP is the field operator of the pipelines since 2000 when it was operated by ARCO. BP owns ARCO.According to Burdette, "even though the west coast receives most the gasoline, no one is liable to the state for the extra gasoline. This is a free market and the oil companies deliver at will. Profit dictates that BP et al will find the extra gasoline to sell, because no gasoline means no profit and they can't run their business that way."Burdette says that, "we won't be short that much gas. Already oil companies are scrambling to find tankers to move more gasoline from the Pacific Rim and/or the Middle East.

What is the Federal government doing?

According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Transportation's (DOT) office of Pipeline Safety (OPS), "We are looking into what happened, why it happened and how it occurred. There is a civil and criminal investigation going on and therefore we cannot make any comments at all." The OPS has already ordered two corrective action orders (CAO) directing the operator to take specific actions.When a DOT employee was poised with the question of safety concerns over the construction of the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) for oil production they said, "I understand your safety concerns and you make a good point. OPS will use this hindsight for safety of pipelines in this region."

What options do we have to cure a shortage besides buying foreign oil?

There is always conservation of gasoline. The last time the price of gasoline went sky-high, 3-4 years ago, Californians decreased their oil consumption by 10 percent.According to Neil Chapman, spokesperson for BP, "we are not looking at taking oil out of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). You are seeing the market adjust to meet demand."

What about Ethanol instead of foreign oil?

The one energy that BP has not purchased is ethanol. Ethanol, a corn derivative, is a domestic energy that can be mixed with gasoline. When poised with the fact that BP was replacing domestic made energy with foreign oil, causing the United States to be more dependent on foreign oil when they could be using ethanol Chapman responded, "it takes longer to arrange and adjust. We are looking at the short-term (2-3 months).

"In response to the question that energy (oil) companies started calling ethanol producers to supplement their gasoline shortage right after Hurricane Katrina, Chapman responded, "That was different. We could see there was a long-term effect."Currently, California uses 10 percent ethanol (approximately 5.7 percent by volume) in their gasoline mix. This allows the energy companies to receive the maximum 51 cent per gallon tax break that they will receive using ethanol. If they use more than 10 percent ethanol the energy companies will not receive more of a tax break.

Who suffers financially?

BP, as of August 11, 2006, has purchased more than 4.5 million barrels of crude on the global market to help cover the shortfall in Prudhoe Bay output. Additional crude oil and refined products will be acquired as necessary. According to John Manly, Alaskan Governor Frank Murkowski's spokesperson, "We are looking at a loss of about $3 million a day. The Governor has put a hiring freeze on some jobs. We have about a 120-day surplus, but we are not sure when Prudhoe Bay will be back up. BP will be replacing the entire pipeline: the Eastside will be replaced first and brought up to production then the Westside will be replaced.

"The Federal government will be losing money as well. 200,000 barrels per day at $70 a barrel is $14 million dollars BP will be spending on the foreign market, mainly Middle East. The federal money the government would have received from extra jobs (taxes), royalties, etc from that money would have gone towards the budget deficit.

What is a smart pig?

Smart pigs are inspection vehicles that have been in use since 1965, according to new-tchnologies.com, that checks for corrosion caused by water and carbon dioxide (CO2). There are a couple of types of pigs: I will call them the scourer and the tester. The scourer pig goes through the pipe with the force of the oil behind it, scouring the walls of the pipeline for little bubbles of water and CO2. The smart pig is the tester, the pig that detects corrosion, cracks, dents and gouges. Some smart pigs use using ultrasonic sensors, such as the ones BP uses on their pipelines in Prudhoe Bay. Some smart pigs have started using Global Positioning Systems (GPS) technology to exactly pinpoint the problem in the pipeline and some smart pigs can collapse, allowing them into multidiameter pipes.

According to an article by Deborah Zabarenko, Environment Correspondent for Reuters, BP didn't use the smart pigs in the Prudhoe Bay for 14 years. When BP finally pigged its pipes, under government orders after a massive March oil spill, the results were shocking.In an interview Zabarenko had with Dan Lawn, a retired regulator at Alaska's Department of Environmental Conservation, which monitors oil pipelines, Lawn said, "The 800-mile Trans Alaska Pipeline, which receives oil drilled by BP and other North Slope producers, sends a scraper through its lines every week to 10 days and runs a smart pig every year to 18 months."

According to the California Energy Commission, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Systems (TAPS) connects the North Slope oil fields with the Port of Valdez in southern Alaska. From Valdez, crude oil is primarily shipped to refineries located on the U.S. West Coast.According to BP's Beaudo, "Smart pigging varies from line to line. In our Northstar line we smartpig every two weeks because of paraffin buildup. Our normal cycle for the GC-2 was ultrasounding every 8 years. The lines up here are above ground and we would strip the 3 inch insulation jacket and ultrasound the low areas where there was the greatest possibility that water would settle. We will continue to direct inject inhibitors into the wellhead and also inject into the pipeline itself."

Will anything change?

According to DOT, OPS and Alaska's Manly, yes. Even though there isn't a set time that pipelines have to be scoured and tested by smart pigs, Manly says, "BP was making assumptions about the pipelines they shouldn't have. Going forward they will be under greater scrutiny."


Lou Ann Hammond, CEO of carlist.com, has previously worked for Chevron and brings with her extensive oil industry and automotive experience. She is a guest every Friday night on WABC's John Batchelor show, providing poignant insight on automobiles, energy and the oil business

Source: AOL

Iran Plans To Provide Transrapid Rail Facility For Piligrims

Iran Plans To Provide Transrapid Rail Facility For Piligrims

May 29, 2007 10:11 p.m. EST


Susheela Hegde - AHN Staff Writer
Munich, Germany (AHN) - Pilgrims from the Iranian capital Tehran may reach the shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad in just two hours instead of two days if a plan to build a magnetic levitation between the two cities is implemented.

Iran wants to provide the Transrapid rail facility to tens of millions of pilgrims who travel the 850-kilometer distance by bus and has asked German company Regierungsbaumeister Schlegel to take up a feasibility study, reports Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily Tuesday.

If built, it would be the longest maglev track in the world, and Iran would be the second country to have the service of Transrapid. So far only China has been running the high-speed rail between Shanghai and Hangzhou international airport.

The Transrapid can run at a speed of 450 kilometers or 270 miles per hour on magnetic cushion powered by frictionless electromagnetic system.

Regierungsbaumeister Schlegel's managing director, Harald Spaeth told the daily that Iran is providing the initial fund of $1.5 billion.

Transrapid is developed by Siemens and ThyssenKrupp.



source: http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7007487689

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Not only birds fall victim to power lines

It is not only the poor racing pigeon that is endangered by overhead power lines.
Farmers, construction workers, children flying kites, wild birds such as swans, and many more have fallen victim to these deadly monstrosities. The danger of electrocution is obvious, but there are also obscure dangers associated with overhead power lines.

A recent report drawn up for the Department of Health by 'stakeholders' including scientists and electricity company bosses, urges ministers to consider banning the building of homes and schools close to overhead high voltage power cables to reduce significantly exposure to electromagnetic fields from the electricity grid. Some stakeholders support a California Department of Health paper which suggested electromagnetic fields are 'possibly carcinogenic' in terms of childhood leukaemia. It also cited other health effects - adult leukaemia, brain tumours, miscarriages and motor neurone disease. Gas, water and telephone lines are now installed in all new-build housing developments underground. Technological advances over the last 20 years have seen the introduction of trenchless techniques. This has resulted in mains and services being connected without the cost and inconvenience of open track excavation. I would urge our newly installed Environment Minister to set up a working group to look at the negative impact power lines have on communities.

Pigeon racers and other interested parties should lobby their MLAs and the Environment Minister to ensure that NIE, or whoever runs the electricity network here in the future, does so in a way that does not have a negative impact on our health, safety or even our hobbies.

Source: Belfast Telegraph

Integrated Wind Turbines In Bahrain Skyscraper

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The Bahrain World Trade Center (BWTC) - a pair of linked skyscrapers - has been built with three integrated 29-metre diameter wind turbine generators. Each turbine has been installed on its own specially strengthened bridge between the two 50-storey 240 metre tall office towers situated on the Manama Waterfront, Bahrain.
Reduced Carbon EmissionsOnce operational the three turbines will generate well over 1000 MWh of electricity per year - enough to supply 11-15% of the energy requirements of the buildings. The wind turbines will also eliminate 55,000 tonnes of carbon emissions annually.

Aerodynamic Wind Turbine DesignThe towers have been aerodynamically designed and located such that the sea breeze from the Gulf is funneled onto the turbines. Each tower acts as an aerofoil directing and accelerating the winds that hit them. The clever design - inspired by the Arabian wind towers historically used to cool buildings in The Gulf - means that wind hitting the towers at an angle of up to 45 degrees from perpendicular will be redirected straight onto the wind turbines for maximum power generation.
Norwin and RambollThe project developers turned to Danish expertise to implement their wind turbine plans - Norwin and Ramboll. Many risk factors had to be considered such as noise, load, vibrations, construction materials and so on for this ground-breaking project. The EU has previously funded studies on the integration of wind turbines into buildings however the immense technical difficulty of such an endeavour has prevented work starting on any real projects in Europe.As the first installation of its type in the world, designers and architects will be watching closely to check the levels of vibration through the buildings and if the structure can cope with the stresses caused by the fast rotation of the rotors in strong winds.
BWTC LaunchThe official launch of the Bahrain World Trade Center will be during the second quarter of 2007 with project completion due at the end of first quarter 2007. The wind turbines were installed in mid-March 2007.
More InformationTo find out more about the Bahrain World Trade Center please click here.
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source: http://www.reuk.co.uk/Integrated-Wind-Turbines-in-Bahrain-Skyscraper.htm

Physics promises wireless power

Physics promises wireless power
By Jonathan Fildes Science and technology reporter, BBC News

Plugs and wires could soon become a thing of the pastThe tangle of cables and plugs needed to recharge today's electronic gadgets could soon be a thing of the past.
US researchers have outlined a relatively simple system that could deliver power to devices such as laptop computers or MP3 players without wires.
The concept exploits century-old physics and could work over distances of many metres, the researchers said.
Although the team has not built and tested a system, computer models and mathematics suggest it will work.
"There are so many autonomous devices such as cell phones and laptops that have emerged in the last few years," said Assistant Professor Marin Soljacic from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and one of the researchers behind the work.
"We started thinking, 'it would be really convenient if you didn't have to recharge these things'.
"And because we're physicists we asked, 'what kind of physical phenomenon can we use to do this wireless energy transfer?'."
How wireless energy could work
The answer the team came up with was "resonance", a phenomenon that causes an object to vibrate when energy of a certain frequency is applied.

This would work in a room let's say but you could adapt it to work in a factory
Marin Soljacic
"When you have two resonant objects of the same frequency they tend to couple very strongly," Professor Soljacic told the BBC News website.
Resonance can be seen in musical instruments for example.
"When you play a tune on one, then another instrument with the same acoustic resonance will pick up that tune, it will visibly vibrate," he said.
Instead of using acoustic vibrations, the team's system exploits the resonance of electromagnetic waves. Electromagnetic radiation includes radio waves, infrared and X-rays.
Typically, systems that use electromagnetic radiation, such as radio antennas, are not suitable for the efficient transfer of energy because they scatter energy in all directions, wasting large amounts of it into free space.
To overcome this problem, the team investigated a special class of "non-radiative" objects with so-called "long-lived resonances".
When energy is applied to these objects it remains bound to them, rather than escaping to space. "Tails" of energy, which can be many metres long, flicker over the surface.
"If you bring another resonant object with the same frequency close enough to these tails then it turns out that the energy can tunnel from one object to another," said Professor Soljacic.

Wireless energy transfer has been thought about for centuries
Hence, a simple copper antenna designed to have long-lived resonance could transfer energy to a laptop with its own antenna resonating at the same frequency. The computer would be truly wireless.
Any energy not diverted into a gadget or appliance is simply reabsorbed.
The systems that the team have described would be able to transfer energy over three to five metres.
"This would work in a room let's say but you could adapt it to work in a factory," he said.
"You could also scale it down to the microscopic or nanoscopic world."
Old technology
The team from MIT is not the first group to suggest wireless energy transfer.
Nineteenth-century physicist and engineer Nikola Tesla experimented with long-range wireless energy transfer, but his most ambitious attempt - the 29m high aerial known as Wardenclyffe Tower, in New York - failed when he ran out of money.

Wireless power for gadgets
Others have worked on highly directional mechanisms of energy transfer such as lasers.
However, these require an uninterrupted line of sight, and are therefore not good for powering objects around the home.
A UK company called Splashpower has also designed wireless recharging pads onto which gadget lovers can directly place their phones and MP3 players to recharge them.
The pads use electromagnetic induction to charge devices, the same process used to charge electric toothbrushes.
One of the co-founders of Splashpower, James Hay, said the MIT work was "clearly at an early stage" but "interesting for the future".
"Consumers desire a simple universal solution that frees them from the hassles of plug-in chargers and adaptors," he said.
"Wireless power technology has the potential to deliver on all of these needs."
However, Mr Hay said that transferring the power was only part of the solution.
"There are a number of other aspects that need to be addressed to ensure efficient conversion of power to a form useful to input to devices."
Professor Soljacic will present the work at the American Institute of Physics Industrial Physics Forum in San Francisco on 14 November.
The work was done in collaboration with his colleagues Aristeidis Karalis and John Joannopoulos.

HOW WIRELESS POWER COULD WORK

1) Power from mains to antenna, which is made of copper
2) Antenna resonates at a frequency of 6.4MHz, emitting electromagnetic waves
3) 'Tails' of energy from antenna 'tunnel' up to 5m (16.4ft)
4) Electricity picked up by laptop's antenna, which must also be resonating at 6.4MHz. Energy used to re-charge device
5) Energy not transferred to laptop re-absorbed by source antenna. People/other objects not affected as not resonating at 6.4MHz

Source: www.news.bbc.co.uk

Longest U.S. suspension span in 40 years heads toward completion

Construction of the new Tacoma Narrows Bridge just south of Seattle, Washington, reached its final major milestone in January 2007, when the last remaining section of deck was hoisted into place.

The bridge, which will cross over the narrows to connect Tacoma and Gig Harbor, is the longest suspension span built in the United States in four decades. Designed and built by a joint venture of Bechtel and Kiewit Pacific, it is scheduled to open later this year.

The new bridge is adjacent to bridge built in the 1950s, which replaced a bridge that was destroyed in a 1940 windstorm. The collapse of the earlier bridge, nicknamed “Galloping Gertie,” was captured on film, and the event changed the way suspension bridges were designed.

The project to build the new Tacoma Narrows Bridge began late in 2002, by which time 90,000 cars a day were crossing the existing bridge, which was designed to handle 60,000.
Major construction work on the new bridge included installing caissons for a pair of 165-meter-tall towers, building the towers, spinning cables, and assembling the deck. During the final phase, 46 deck sections—each weighing some 450 tons—were lifted and attached to suspension cables.

Manuel Rondon, project manager for the joint venture, called the completion of the deck lifts a welcome landmark in what has been a successful project.

Remaining work includes bolting and welding the sections together, preparing and paving the deck surface, and installing pedestrian railings. When complete, the deck will stretch 1,646 meters from end to end, and the main span will be 854 meters from tower to tower.
The new Tacoma Narrows Bridge will carry eastbound traffic, while the existing parallel bridge goes westbound.

Source: Bechtel.com