• June 18, 2015 -  The nation's system of power plants, utility poles and electrical wires is aging. And compared with other developed countries, it's less and less reliable. Among the worst hit states: Connecticut. , Market Place
• June 18, 2015 - Pope urges revolution to save Earth, fix 'perverse' economy, The Day
• June 18, 2015 - Pope Makes Moral Case For Climate Action, Hartford Courant
• June 15, 2015 - Stormy weather knocks out power to thousands in Greater New Haven, New Haven Register News

Announcements

WASHINGTON -

In Phase 2, each finalist is invited to propose specific projects that advance their community's comprehensive resilience plans, as envisioned in Phase 1. Selected projects will be funded from a total pool of nearly $1 billion. $181 million is set aside for projects in New York and New Jersey. The maximum grant award available at the end of Phase 2 will be $500 million and the minimum will be $1 million.

The National Disaster Resilience Competition finalists are:

States: Alaska California Colorado Connecticut Illinois Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana New Jersey

New Mexico New York Oklahoma Oregon Tennessee Texas Utah Virginia Washington West Virginia

Counties/Parishes: Cook County, Illinois DuPage County, Illinois Jefferson Parish, Louisiana St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana Dauphin County, Pennsylvania Shelby County, Tennessee

Cities: Tuscaloosa, Alabama Chicago, Illinois New Orleans, Louisiana Springfield, Massachusetts New York City, New York Minot, North Dakota Moore, Oklahoma Territories: Puerto Rico

"HUD is committed to helping communities meet the realities of climate change and extreme weather,"said HUD Secretary Castro. "We're proud to partner with the Rockefeller Foundation in supporting American families as they recover from natural disasters and prepare for the challenges of tomorrow. Together, we can build a nation that's stronger and more resilient than ever."

"Catastrophic events are becoming more common place, and crisis is the new normal. This is why it is critical for communities, large and small, to place a premium on building resilience. They can be prepared for whatever comes their way, and disruptions won't become disasters," said Dr. Judith Rodin, President of The Rockefeller Foundation. "Resilience is a journey, not a destination, and the time to build resilience is now, through a focus on strengthening social cohesion and making smart plans for communities through collaboration across sectors, so that investments - particularly in infrastructure - will yield multiple benefits, or what I call a resilience dividend. The NDRC finalists share this vision, and I am eager to learn more in the coming months about their innovative ideas inspired through the competition."... Read full press release

 

June 18, 2015 - The nation's system of power plants, utility poles and electrical wires is aging. And compared with other developed countries, it???s less and less reliable. Among the worst hit states: Connecticut., Market Place

Three historic storms hit the state in 2011 and 2012. Each time, more than 600,000 residents lost power for days. More than lights went out: household water comes from wells in the town of Marlborough.

"The well runs off electricity," resident Cliff Denniss says. "And when you lose power you don't have the pump working to push the water into the house. And you only get about two flushes out of the toilet. ..and when you're out for a week it can get pretty tough."

Marlborough went dark for a week in all three storms. Cliff Denniss's wife, Dorothy, now fills the tub with water when a big one's coming. Which she admits is not enough for a week-long outage.

"You don't flush every time," she says. "Trust me."

Gas stations in town lost power to pump their gas. Cellphone batteries died. And perishable food ... perished. Unless you ate it.

"I had filet mignon all week," Dorothy Denniss says. "I just bought a brand new one, had it chopped up into steaks. It was in the freezer, we lost the power. I said 'we have to eat this!'" 

In the average year, New England loses power for a total of three and a half hours, compared with four minutes in Japan. The U.S. fares worse than any other rich country. The cost - in lost work and production - is estimated at $80 billion, more than Google makes in a year. 

The big culprit is weather - say, winds knocking tree limbs into power lines strung along streets. So in Marlborough, backup generators sell rather well.

"We're still consuming electricity in ways we have done over 100 years in this country," remodeling contractor Scott Welchsays. "I think what we're doing is antiquated."

In fact, one joke told frequently in the business: if Thomas Edison came back today, he would recognize the power grid he helped create.

In 1882, Edison built the first electric "utility" system.

"He invented a light bulb," Virginia Tech energy historian Richard Hirsh says. "He also invented specialized generators to produce electricity. He developed the wiring system."

Edison's very first utility went up in Manhattan. Like a local drugstore, it was a local electric company, with generators and customers in the same place. But this local model lost out. Two of Edison's rivals, Nikola Tesla and George Westinghouse, developed long-distance transmission, to send power from big sources far away.

"Westinghouse transmitted power from a Niagara Falls hydropower plant to the city of Buffalo about 20 miles distant," Hirsh says.

Long-distance electricity was more efficient and cheaper. So America ended up with a hub-and-spoke system of poles and wires.

And electricity changed everything.

"It allows you to heat, to cool, to illuminate," Hirsch says. "In factories, it boosted productivity hugely. In homes, it enables people to do things at day and night in ways that people in the 19th century could only imagine."

We became addicted to electricity.

But then, the grid aged, and investment didn't keep up. Power failures have tripled since the 1980s.

"An experienced electrical engineer, a field operator, once said to me, 'the whole system is going to fall down some day, it's just not going to happen on the same day,'"  says Larry Reilly, a former utility executive now with Rosewood Consulting. "That was really the philosophy of operating companies for a long time, to wait 'til failure."

The electricity infrastructure, Reilly says, went up in a big hurry early on. "People were looking for the fastest, cheapest places to put facilities," he said. "If we went back and had the ability to do it again, the system would have been designed a little bit differently, but of course, we don't have that opportunity."

A case in point: a 1920s substation in the Connecticut town of Branford, on Long Island Sound. It was built right at sea level. So it floods and fails with storm surges.

"I don't know what was in the minds of folks as to why it went here," local resident and journalist Marcia Chambers says. "The flooding of the street has long been an issue." In two of the big storms -Irene and Sandy - one of Branford's main Internet providers, Comcast, lost its power. Gone was the whole Comcast bundle: internet, TV, phone.

"The idea that companies are bundling everything and giving you a discount sounds really terrific," Chambers says. "Except when it goes down." 

Local cell towers also lost power. The town hospice saw its backup generator fail, so it had to move dying people. Electric wheelchairs could not recharge.

Why did so much of the grid go down?

"We found in Connecticut that half the utility poles were more than 50 years old, did not meet modern standards, and when faced with heavy wind began to snap," Yale law professor Dan Esty says. He was state energy commissioner for all three storms. "A significant percent of the wires were not insulated, meaning that not only if they were knocked down there was a problem, but if a tree branch touched them they would arc and short out."

Esty blames state rules aimed at keeping customer rates low, which may have discouraged utilities from investing in reliability.

"We have an antiquated regulatory model that provided limited capital," Esty says, "and resulted, I think, in systematic underinvestment in grid modernization."

By the third storm, state lawmakers said enough. They started to consider big changes to the power grid. Esty's wife had enough, too, by Superstorm Sandy.

"I came home after the first night in the bunker with the governor," Esty says. "And on the second night, did grill on my outside grill and served my wife dinner by candlelight, and I think it was quite charming. On the third day she was grumbling a bit. And on the fourth day she asked me, 'Who the hell is the commissioner of energy in the state of Connecticut?'"

At that point, Connecticut passed a law to finance more decentralized, or distributed energy. What's that like? Take a look at Denmark's system:

 

 June 18, 2015 - Pope urges revolution to save Earth, fix 'perverse' economy, The Day 

Vatican City - Pope Francis called Thursday for a bold cultural revolution to correct what he calls the "structurally perverse" economic system of the rich exploiting the poor that is turning Earth into an "immense pile of filth."

In a sweeping manifesto aimed at spurring action in U.N. climate negotiations, domestic politics and everyday life, Francis explains the science of global warming, which he blames on an unfair, fossil fuel-based industrial model that he says harms the poor most. Citing Scripture and past popes' and bishops' appeals, he urges people of all faiths and no faith to undergo an awakening to save God's creation for future generations.

It's an indictment of big business and climate doubters alike.

"It is not enough to balance, in the medium term, the protection of nature with financial gain, or the preservation of the environment with progress," he writes. "Halfway measures simply delay the inevitable disaster. Put simply, it is a matter of redefining our notion of progress."

Environmental scientists said the first ever encyclical, or teaching document, on the environment could have a dramatic effect on the climate debate, lending the moral authority of the immensely popular Francis to an issue that has long been cast in purely political, economic and scientific terms.

Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a Scripps Institution of Oceanography scientist, said the encyclical would be a "game-changer in making people think about this."

"It's not politics anymore," he said, adding that science is usually difficult for people to understand but that people respond to arguments framed by morality and ethics.

The energy lobby was quick to criticize the encyclical and its anti-fossil fuel message.

"The simple reality is that energy is the essential building block of the modern world," said Thomas Pyle of the Institute of Energy Research, a conservative free-market group. "The application of affordable energy makes everything we do - food production, manufacturing, health care, transportation, heating and air conditioning - better."

Francis said he hoped his effort would lead ordinary people in their daily lives and decision-makers at critical U.N. climate meetings later this year to a wholesale change of mind and heart, saying "both the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor" must now be heard.

"This vision of 'might is right' has engendered immense inequality, injustice and acts of violence against the majority of humanity, since resources end up in the hands of the first comer or the most powerful: the winner takes all," he writes. "Completely at odds with this model are the ideals of harmony, justice, fraternity and peace as proposed by Jesus."

The encyclical "Laudato Si," (Praise Be) is 191 pages of pure Francis. It's a blunt, readable booklet full of zingers that will make many conservatives and climate doubters squirm, including in the U.S. Congress, where Francis will deliver the first-ever papal address in September. It will likely put several U.S. presidential candidates on the hot seat since some Republicans, Catholics among them, doubt the science behind global warming and have said the pope should stay away from the debate.

"I don't think we should politicize our faith," U.S. Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush, a Catholic convert, said on the eve of the encyclical's release. "I think religion ought to be about making us better as people and less about things that end up getting into the political realm."

Yet one of Francis' core points is that there really is no distinction between human beings, their faith and the environment.

"Everything is related, and we human beings are united as brothers and sisters on a wonderful pilgrimage, woven together by the love God has for each of his creatures and which also unites us in fond affection with brother sun, sister moon, brother river and mother earth," he writes.

The chemist-turned-pope takes as fact that the world is getting warmer and that human activity is mostly to blame.

"The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth," he writes.

Citing the deforestation of the Amazon, the melting of Arctic glaciers and the death of coral reefs, he rebukes "obstructionist" climate doubters who "seem mostly to be concerned with masking the problems or concealing their symptoms." And he blames politicians for listening more to oil industry interests than Scripture or common sense.

He praises a "less is more" lifestyle that he is known for, one that shuns air conditioners and gated communities in favor of car pool s, recycling and being in close touch with the poor and marginalized. He calls for courageous, radical and farsighted policies to transition the world's energy supply from fossil fuels to renewable sources, saying mitigation schemes like the buying and selling of carbon credits won't solve the problem and are just a "ploy which permits maintaining the excessive consumption of some countries and sectors."

"Nobody is suggesting a return to the Stone Age, but we do need to slow down and look at reality in a different way, to appropriate the positive and sustainable progress which has been made, but also to recover the values and the great goals swept away by our unrestrained delusions of grandeur," Francis writes.

Some have dismissed the Argentine pope as pushing what they call Latin American-style socialism. Just this week, he again answered those critics, saying it was not a sign of communism to care for the poor.

Within the church, many conservative Catholics have questioned the pope's heavy emphasis on the environment and climate change over other issues such as abortion and marriage.

Francis does address abortion and population issues in the encyclical, criticizing those in the environmental movement who show concern for preserving nature but not human lives.

 

June 18, 2015 - Pope Makes Moral Case For Climate Action, Hartford Courant

As an environmental economist, I operate in the space between two related but separate worlds - the physical and natural science of environmental impacts and the social science of how humans can respond. At the same time, as a Christian and a scientist, I inhabit both the worlds of evidence and of faith. The official release Thursday of Pope Francis' encyclical on climate change brings the issues of faith, economics, physical and natural science, as well as social science, together in a beautiful and accessible way.

The encyclical, which was leaked by an Italian magazine Monday, is a very valuable and much needed injection of morality into the scientific and economic discussions on climate change - it is quite likely a game-changer.

Science speaks to what we know and what is likely to be the consequences of inaction, but the pope's views play an enormous role in extending the discussion to "So what?" and "What can we do about it?" Indeed, he speaks to the question, "What must we do about it?"

We are now increasingly experiencing the effects of a warming world in every corner of the globe, the country and Connecticut. This was one of the major points of the latest National Climate Assessment; but another major point is equally important - there are things that we can do in response, if only we were motivated.

Economists have suggested that the most efficient way to reduce emissions is simply to put a price on carbon - through a tax, cap-and-trade or direct regulation. This would mean manufacturers would respond to estimates of the true social cost of the carbon content of the products by changing technology, employing more people and efficiently adjusting their pricing to a more dynamic marketplace.

The pope's encyclical adds a moral dimension to this case with nearly 200 pages of inspiring text about man's pollution and the immorality of emissions. He notes that the Bible tells humans, as early as the first chapter of Genesis, that they have a stewardship obligation to the planet. The Bible also commands us to protect the least among us - the poorest who lack the means to provide for themselves. These are the people, the world over, who will be most heavily impacted by climate change - the poor, the very young, the elderly and infirm - especially if they live near a coastline. Working from there, as the leader of a billion Catholics, the pope provides theological justification that we are behaving immorally by continuing to avoid reducing emissions.

It is up to those of us in the developed world to begin the process of reducing emissions and to invest in adaptations designed to ameliorate the most extreme consequences. This means, perhaps unfortunately, that it is up to politicians ultimately to decide how to cut our carbon emissions and adapt. More directly, then, it is up to us to make strong and clear demands of our leaders. Tell them that the science is clear - humans are causing climate change. The economics are straightforward - carbon is currently artificially cheap because we do not pay its full price.

And now the moral dimension is becoming undeniable - in the eyes of the pope, pollution is a sin.

I must admit, at this point, that declaring something a sin is way above my pay grade. What I can say from my scientific and faith perspective is this: Putting human beings, their societies and communities, and aspects of nature unnecessarily at risk by ignoring science on the basis of ideology, business interest, or ill-informed and unyielding denial is morally irresponsible - especially for elected officials.

I believe that the pope's encyclical confirms this perspective not only for more than 1 billion Catholics around the world and across this country, but also for the billions of others from multiple faiths who take seriously their stewardship obligations to the planet and its inhabitants.

 

June 15, 2015 - Stormy weather knocks out power to thousands in Greater New Haven, New Haven Register News

NEW HAVEN >> More than 2,200 United Illuminating customers were without power for a short time Monday morning as rain and wind pounded the region.

By 10:20 a.m. Monday, the utility was reporting that the number had fallen to 1,439 outages.

The largest UI outage was reported in North Haven, where more than 1,700 customers were without electricity shortly after 10 a.m.

According to the utility company's online map, the outage originated on Route 17, where wires reportedly fell into trees around 8:30 a.m.

But around 10:20 a.m., the company reported that the number of outages in that town had been reduced to 896.

The utility was reporting that most customers affected by the outage were expected to have their service back by about 11:30 a.m.

A school district official said the Route 17 outage did not affect Montowese Elementary School.

The utility was also reporting 256 customers without power in New Haven and 80 customers in the dark in East Haven.

An additional 104 customers were reported to be without power in Hamden, where a transformer reportedly blew in front of Cedarhurst School on Prospect Street.

This story will be updated when more details are available.

 

June 22, 2015 - Climate Change Impacts Western Wildfires, CBS Local Denver

  A key component in understanding climate change is understanding ocean temperatures. The impact was apparent for months starting with record blizzards during the winter of 2014 and stretching into the spring of 2015 as record rainfall swamped many states. Blame it on El Nino.

June 18, 2015 - Restore America's Estuaries. First National Report on Living Shoreline Institutional Barriers Released.

Restore America's Estuaries has released the First National Report on Living Shoreline Institutional Barriers; "Living Shoreline from barriers to opportunities" . This report

"provides a national assessment of institutional barriers that are preventing broader use of living shorelines and provides clear recommendations and strategies to move forward".

The report identifies three major obstacles to broader use of living shorelines: 1) institutional inertia; 2) lack of a broader planning context; and 3) lack of an advocate. To address these obstacles, the report identifies four broad strategies, including: 1) education and outreach; 2) regulatory reform; 3) improve institutional capacity; and 4) public agencies as role models. Each strategy identifies a number of specific and actionable recommendations for decision and policy makers.