Grande Pioggia New York

Well, there was plenty of water involved in last Sunday's Gran Fondo New york, but it wasn't the Hudson.  It was the rain.  It seemed to have come, more or less, out of nowhere.  Last Thursday, when I packed, the weather report said sunny with temperatures in the mid- to high-60s.  And that was still pretty much the prediction on Friday and Saturday after we'd arrived in New York.  But Sunday morning, when I looked out the apartment window at about 5 a.m., the streets were wet.  The weather report now showed a chance of rain, but only 30 percent through the morning, with the probability going up to 50 percent about 2 p.m.  I figured that would be an incentive pushing me to get done.  So I set off, worried more about keeping warm, wearing DC Velo kit -- arm warmers, a vest and a long-sleeved windbreaker -- over the regulation chartreuse GFNY jersey.  On the George Washington Bridge I think we were mostly worried about getting underway.

But, as soon as we left the bridge's protection, we met light, chilly rain.  So much for the 70 percent change of no rain.  It was 100 percent the entire day.   Early on, I sort of wished for some mechanical failure to take me out without my having to think about it.  But that didn't happen and, in fact, I felt pretty good.  Then I thought, okay, I'll make it to Bear Mountain, the half-way point, and knowing after that that I was heading home should keep me going.  

It didn't.  At about mile 70, the Rockland County Boulders baseball stadium, I was wet to the skin and couldn't stop shivering.  I climbed off.  But at least I had lots of company.

 Maybe there was more excitement around the finishing area when the earlier riders had come in.  But by the time the bus delivered us dropouts, it looked pretty sad.  The few people left were huddled under the tents trying to stay dry and moderately warm.  Riders straggled across the finish line.
Eventually, a truck ferrying back and forth to transport bikes down to those of us who'd dropped out, delivered mine.  By then it was 7:30 p.m.  I think we were just about the last group of riders taking the Weehawken Ferry over to Manhattan and a warm shower.  But despite all of that, I'll probably try again
next year.

River rides

I've had a lot of posts here about rivers.  This is another one, but a little different.  Sunday, I'll be riding my bicycle along the west side of the Hudson River from the George Washington Bridge up to Bear Mountain, then back down to Weehawken, New Jersey.  I'll be riding in the 4th annual "Grand Fondo New York."  The route is on the map below.  This is a semi-competitive race/ride modelled on similar events in Italy, France, and several other European countries.  Unfortunately, even though we're following a route whose challenging ups and downs were more or less created by the river, the event organizers have said virtually nothing about that body of water on our shoulders.  I suspect most of the time I'll be riding, as the wonderful French phrase has it, le nez dans le guidon (literally, "my nose in the handlebars"; figuratively, my nose to the grindstone).  But I'll try to report back later on whatever scenes along the way I'll be able to recall.

 

"When the levee breaks, mama, you got to move" (Led Zeppelin)

How many marvelous pictures are there of the Loire River, often as a calm backdrop to towns and chateaux along the banks.  I've taken some myself, although I'd say their quality has mostly to do with the memories they bring back.

However calm the river may appear, recent floods in northeastern France along the Seine and Aube rivers must have reminded people living nearby that the Loire can do the same.  And a recent report from a regional public agency would have reinforced that reminder.  The report, from the Center Region's Direction régionale de l'environnement, de l'aménagement et du logement (DREAL) dealt with the condition of levees (example below) along the Loire and the risks in the event of 100-year flood conditions.  La Nouvelle République (Tours) reports that it's unlikely such a flood would overflow the tops of levees up stream from Tours.  But, it reported, various forces, natural and man-made, may have weakened the earthen barriers in certain places, creating risk of a breach.  

The probability of such a failure may be relatively low, but the consequences would be catastrophic; reportedly more than 100,000 people would need to be evacuated from areas around Tours (about 300,000 in the metropolitan area).  The point of the report was, in part, to remind local officials of the need for emergency evacuation plans, but also to reassure them that levee repair work was on-going.  

In contrast, nothing was said, at least in this forum, about what might be done to reduce the need for evacuations by limiting development in flood-prone areas.  Perhaps that's for another day.

Flood insurance premiums and coastal rebuilding

The consequences of Hurricane Sandy continue to play out along coastal areas where people are deciding what to do about damaged homes.  The New York Times had an article the other day about households thinking about rebuilding, but faced with suddenly much more expensive flood insurance.

© Rosanne Salvatore and Kathryn Kattalia/New York Daily News

Properties in areas classified as at risk for "severe and repeated" flooding will pay new, higher insurance premiums starting October 1 of this year, with 25 percent increases each year until rates reflect the actual cost of providing the insurance.  Owners can reduce these rates by raising their homes by several feet, or by moving out of the riskiest areas.  In either case these measures are likely to be expensive and many are reluctant to take them.  Some property owners have started to organize to oppose the higher rates.

Focused as it is on the financial strains of individual homeowners, the NYT article tends to be sympathetic.  But how much sympathy do they deserve?  The Times article does mention that many people with properties in at-risk areas have been paying subsidized rates.  And a 2011 report from the Center for Public Integrity notes that, nation-wide, property owners in flood-prone areas are paying only about 45 percent of the full-risk price.  One effect of this has been that the National Flood Insurance Program is badly under-funded and several times has had to borrow from the U.S. Treasury to meet insurance obligations.
 
I recognize that people along the New york and New Jersey shores face difficult decisions.  But even so it has to be asked whether there is any public policy reason to use federal resources to subsidize people so that they can continue to live in these high-risk areas?

Curbing urban sprawl

It's estimated that each year France loses over 300 square miles of farmland and open space.  That's about equal to the surface area of new York City; or about 4.5 times more than the size of the District of Columbia.  The same thing is happening in the U.S.  One report from a couple of years ago looked at land consumption in 274 U.S. metropolitan areas.  Researchers found that over the ten-year period 1990 to 2000 urban ooze had spread over something like 5,800 square miles.  And we have some idea of what this means for the environment -- lost farm lands and open spaces, more roads, more cars, etc.

© Sara Leen at environment.nationalgeographic.com

All of this creates interest (for me at least) in work going on in France's Ministry of Territorial Equality and Housing (Ministère de l'Égalité des Territoires et du Logement).  Cécile Duflot, the head of the ministry, has just made the first presentation of her agency's legislative project, a central part of which would be a series of measures meant to increase density in urban areas and limit this kind of land consumption.

The proposals, which are still being discussed within the government, could include the following:

• Make it easier to convert empty office buildings into residences.  It's estimated that France's stock of empty office space is about 54 million square feet (5 million square meters);
• Reduce parking requirements per unit;
• Allow residential buildings to increase height above connected, neighboring buildings;
• Reduce the minimum lot size in townhouse areas;
• Reclassify as natural lands after 10 years those lands eligible for development, but still undeveloped; and
• Transfer urban planning responsibilities from mayors to inter-communal bodies. 

Some of these could be enacted by governmental order; some, like the last, would require new legislation.

France's economy is having trouble generating much, if any, growth.  And François Hollande's government doesn't seem willing or able to do much to help.  With some justification, it's being criticized from all sides.  But here and there, with measures like the highly-visible same-sex marriage law, and this much less visible set of environmental proposals, the government is doing some good things and deserves credit.

Climate change negotiations

I want to call attention to a paper just published by Marco Grasso and J. Timmons Roberts in which the authors propose a possible way forward for climate change negotiations.  The paper is published in Brookings' policy paper series and is available here.  I would guess that the authors hope the paper will be discussed at this week's meeting of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate (MEF) in Washington, D.C.

Grasso, who's on the faculty of the University of Milan-Bicocca, and Roberts, who's at Brown University, are not optimistic about the current U.N. process, by which 195 countries are supposed to produce a new agreement on reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 2015.  Generally, they see an impasse between the U.S. and developed economies on one side and developing economies, especially China and Brazil, on the other.  Each side is unwilling to commit to reducing emissions unless the other side also does so. 

From what I read, this seems entirely accurate.  So Grasso and Roberts are looking for "a fair and feasible way to break the impasse."  The way past, they say, depends on "determining a country's fair share of the required emissions reductions in a way that is politically feasible."  No small matter, obviously.

But they propose an interesting, and for me, new way of assessing a country's emissions.  They argue for a "consumption-based," as opposed to a "production-based," method of measuring emissions.  A consumption-based approach "measures the amount of emissions associated with the final consumption of goods and services, and it is calculated by adding to territorial emissions those generated for producing imported goods and services and subtracting those associated with exported goods and services."  Apparently, recent technical improvements now make it possible to calculate a country's emissions in this way.  A purely production-based accounting method, they maintain, penalizes work-shop countries like China and India that produce goods massively consumed in Europe and the United States.

They favor discussion of this approach within the MEF, as opposed to the U.N., because it's a smaller group (12 countries plus 27 from the E.U.) and yet their green house gas emissions still account for 81 percent of the total emissions during the 1990 - 2010 period.

Red River flooding, again

The New York Times reported this week that Fargo and other towns along the Red River in North Dakota are again facing the likelihood of flooding.  This will be the fourth time in five years.  At the moment, it seems every available person has been mobilized to fill sandbags.  Understandably, people may be getting tired of this kind of emergency response and may be looking for less last-minute ways to avoid flood damage.

© Donald P. Schwert. Dept. of Geology, NDSU

Equally understandably, it seems they're giving most attention to familiar measures -- levees and spillways and diversionary channels.  The Times reports that 14 miles of levees have been built in Fargo in the last four years.  Plans are also well under way for a much bigger project.  This is a design for 35 miles of channels to divert flood waters away from the city.  Total cost, $1.8 billion.  A little over $300 million is supposed to come from North Dakota state and local sources; the rest -- about $1.2 billion -- would come from the federal government.

Fargo has purchased and cleared out a few houses located in the floodplain.  But the Times article doesn't mention any plans to make broader use of this tactic.  It doesn't appear, for example, that there's been any consideration given to applying the funds for levees and diversionary channels to buying up homes and businesses in floodplain areas.  Levees and channel systems will inevitably require maintenance.  An open floodplain, left as a park or nature preserve, doesn't. 

Admittedly, I suspect this approach of "sustainable floodplain management" may be more complicated in the Red River Valley.  Apparently this part of North Dakota and northern Minnesota in the U.S., and Manitoba and Saskatchewan in Canada, was an immense inland glacial lake as recently as about 10,000 years ago.  Today, the Red River descends very gradually across this old lake bed on its way north to Lake Winnipeg.  Because of this geology and history, the river has etched very little in the way of a valley.  This means that when waters rise they spread out across a wide area, across a very wide floodplain.  It is also why an approach to floodplain management that would apply in other areas may be harder to apply here. 

Even so, when close to $2 billion is likely to be spent on engineered solutions to flooding -- solutions that will require additional money every year for maintenance -- it would seem reasonable to ask if there aren't less costly, more environmentally rational, alternatives.