Interior Alaska governments fill wish lists for proposed national stimulus plan
Published Sunday, December 28, 2008
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Stumble It!FAIRBANKS — Local governments in Fairbanks have responded quickly to Senator-elect Mark Begich’s request for ideas on how to direct a yet-to-be-drafted national economic recovery plan, suggesting they could use help with energy and street projects.
Begich talked this week with mayors across the state about how local and state governments might best spend Alaska’s share of a multibillion-dollar economic recovery proposal drawing whispers in Congress.
The Fairbanks North Star Borough suggested such help, if it came, could help launch a complex energy project that would help year-round food production and storage as well as produce heat and electricity.
The proposed power plant, which would be fueled by willow trees and household trash, also is eyed as a pilot project for smaller-scale plants in villages. A blend of private firms and public agencies, including businessman Bernie Karl and the University of Alaska Fairbanks, would operate the plant under a plan submitted to Begich’s office this week.
The plan suggests the $10 million project could create 100 permanent jobs at a proposed location on 600 acres of borough-owned land at 9 Mile Richardson Highway. Borough Mayor Jim Whitaker said the borough would lease the land to the university under the plan, and he said the plant could be built in the coming year.
Whitaker said the project also calls for sequestering the carbon dioxide emitted from the plant by using algae to consume the carbon.
“We know we can (build the plant),” he said, adding that the carbon sequestration effort could benefit the project if Congress winds up creating a system of carbon credits to lower national emissions.
Whitaker has asked the state’s Congressional delegation for $6 million for the proposed $10 million project, enough to increase its proposed power output to two megawatts. He said the borough, which operates the South Fairbanks public landfill, could commit a set volume of solid waste per year to the project.
The borough recently rejected a handful of separate proposals for standalone waste-to-energy plants as uneconomical, but Whitaker said the proposed plant near the Richardson Highway, while it would run partly on waste, did not go through the same review process.
Fairbanks City officials are expected to tinker through the weekend with a list of projects that could use federal help, said Pat Cole, the city’s chief of staff. He said the tentative list will vary from one recently sent to the Legislature, in which city officials made a point of calling for the demolition of the Polaris Building on First Avenue.
“Some of those will not be … ready this year, so they won’t fit” in a request to Congress for immediate help, Cole said.
Cole said the city’s tentative list includes a number of items: money to pave streets in the Leisure, Aurora or Southwest Gate subdivisions; help converting street lights to LED bulbs; and money for a second warm-storage building near the city Public Works Department’s headquarters in South Fairbanks.
Contact staff writer Christopher Eshleman at 459-7582.
Community Discussion
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Let the begging begin. Then we can all complain when the new congress and president raise our taxes to pay for it all.
Something needs to be done and soon! As a retired vet with low income, I qualified for the heating oil assistance program now for 3 winters. In addition, I qualified for the weatherization program. However, I am still waiting at -33 degrees for the contractors to show up. The inspector shows up in early September; now almost 4 months later my home still has walls without insulation. What is the sense in having a program, if the state fails to provide sufficient contractors to do the job before winter hits?! This is totally unacceptable for my family and many others that I am sure are awaiting some kind of action. This proposal may be the last opportunity to survive another winter in Fairbanks. Money being used to assist interior families should be routed towards an energy proposal that makes economical sense for current and future generations.
What? No Coal in Alaska? How about tons of toxic, coal sludge like TN to be added to the tons of toxic oil drilling pollution. This plant sounds a little better. As the warming progresses there will be no need to provide heat. Oranges and other citrus fruits can be grown in Alaska. Just wait.
America can't spend it's way out of the mess it's in..
this is like watching Michael Phelps swimming in quicksand.
Alaska has had 40years of time to develop some bad habits because of getting spoiled with a couple of different sources of EZ-money...
the money pipeline from N-slope and the money pipeline from WARshington.
After 40years of AK-bigshots being BigSpenders with BigBudgets this popular bumpersticker still howls like a hungry wolf:
"Dear Lord, please give us another pipeline.. We promise we won't piss this one away too".
Holiday Season Mentality...
I suggest to people they read PESwiki and they think it's a holiday season Sears-Catalog -- http://www.peswiki.com/index.php/Main_Pa...
Hopelessly Lost in the Bu$h...
Monetism and monetary-policy are struggling with failure in the news this year -- and chasing after a recklessly debased currency is like stumbling towards a mirage while hopelessly lost in the Bu$h.
40years ago I left several ounces of gold nuggets on a stump 60miles east of Fairbanks because I only had one ounce of fuel for my pocket-warmer left.. I couldn't carry my poke any further, but I'm typing this message to you with all 8fingers&2thumbs now.
I left my gold in The River Bank of Alaska for the rest of you to enjoy...
These days gold is much less problematic than money..
and I'm beginning to think propane is much less volatile than the dying-dollar too.
http://s281.photobucket.com/albums/kk209...
Alaska has 10trillion cubic feet of RoyaltyPropane that is readily available to barter amongst Alaskans.
Give a gallon of propane to an Alaskan and he can cook and bathe for a week..
Give a gallon of propane to a BigShot Texan and he'll spit on your shoe pushing his way to his corporate jet.
Not rhetorical - can't Usibelli add dirty coal electric production in Healy, and are our local coal fired plants working at full capacity? The inept attempts by GVEA & State of Alaska to produce electricity should have taught us something. Jim Whitaker gets credit for trying, but his socialism is showing & pie in the sky isn't the answer. During my time in Fairbanks I've seen two coal fired plants dismantled & shipped down south to be used by people with common sense.
Every contraction serves to eliminate failed businesses, failed business models, and failed business people. By supporting these failures the Government just postpones an inevitable failure.
But this sort of WELFARE needs to be clearly described and accounted for as commonwealth.
There ought to be three caveates to go with each project-
Every project should be "Davis-Bacon" to assure the wages get to the local economy.
No manager or owner should be paid a cent more than the highest paid worker. And they must actually work, not getting paid while at resort conferences.
A Government Accountant/Auditor from the Justice Department needs to be proportionally assigned 1-2% of each of our public dollars of welfare handed out. That way there isn't a convenient conversion of public dollars converted to corporate assets as is so often found in Earmarks. You know, the Government's Dozer shows up the next year on the Corporate balance sheet as a private asset.
And call it all what it is, commonwealth.
We are hand-out oriented. We should do a feasibility study to see if the alternative energy concepts work. Whitiker is a champion at chasing pie in the sky, government projects to solve problems that don't have good solutions.
WE DON'T WANT ANY OF YOUR COMMIE SOCIALIST RE-DISTRIBUTED WEALTH, OBAMA! YOU CAN KEEP IT! ALASKANS ARE TOO PROUD!
Forty years of spending way more than we have. Idiots at the Federal Reserve keeping interest rates way lower than they should have been. Lending money to people who couldn't possibly pay it back. These things and others have caused our problem. The fix is to spend even more money we don't have????
The real fix is to balance the budgets. Pay off our debts and have a monetary system with gold backing anything else is merely delaying the ultimate collapse.
we dont need to fix any roads.
What the hell was wrong with pork barrel spending and ear marks? The names................................names made evil by the government that is going to give us stimulus packages now. What a crock. Keep this in mind Obama.
Has everyone missed the fact that Whitaker is pushing for the building of this plant even though they decided that all the other private firms proposals were rejected as uneconomical? This current plan has not even gone through the same review process as the ones that failed it.
Thats right our great leader Whitaker is ready to jump on another big project that will not pay for itself. This will end up needing grants, loans and public money to keep it running. Like the coal to gas plant he keeps pushing that needs at least $120 a barrel oil to break even and that is using their figures. Does anyone believe that their cost projections are correct? Whitaker and other government officials always put forth the best side of their pet projects knowing that once they get it started and millions dumped into it that we have no choice except to keep dumping more money into the "unforseen" cost overruns.
What is this going to cost us in the end? Remember the Healy clean air plant that does not work?
There are much better and proven ways to produce energy that will work in a cold climate. What we need to do is start saving energy. Cutting back on government would be a start.
If you hear a loud noise do not worry it will just be me standing out in the cold screaming while holding my head tightly so it does not explode.
And people want the government to run our healthcare...
Hmmm...huh?
scrub willow trees
household trash
growing algae
year-round food production
CO2 resylvesterization
2 megawatts
600acres
It sounds like my grandpa's garbage dump..
the potlatch would begin at 6pm everynight..
the tribes would come and reclaim all the goodstuff the rich white folks dumped.
...are ya gonna have BBQ, live music, bear-wrestling and free barleywine there too?
Free Parking for my motorhome too???
Keep the algae off the menu, feed it to the fish in the river.
http://cc.pubco.net/www.valcent.net/i/mi...
http://www.originoil.com/technology/heli...
you need a backup plan for the extra garbage overflow..
...I'll send you some pellet-mills from China, a couple of slurry-mills, and a bargain 120' landing-craft.
Park it at Nenana, mix coal-slurry, trash-slurry, biomass-slurry all together then make boiler-fuel pellets out of the pasteurized-paste. then run bargeloads of pelletfuel to Galena to fuel a powerplant.
http://images.google.com/images?um=1&...
Wow, you'll be on the cover of all the Waste Management Magazines.
http://wasteage.com/
http://www.wastenews.com/headlines.html
http://www.mswmanagement.com/
http://www.waste-management-world.com/
http://www.solidwastemag.com/
....just think of all the money we can waste,wow!
it's just more trash paper anyway
grandma sez willowbark tea is good for a headache, I think I'll go brew some
"One bridge to nowhere is an embarrassment, a thousand bridges to nowhere are a 'fiscal stimulus'."
I saw the other day that the mayor of Las Vegas wants to use stimulus money for a Mobster Museum. The more I think about it, the more appropriate it seems to spend money from the biggest heist of all time on a museum honoring Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, Lucky Luciano, and Sam Giancana.
2009 will be interesting, to say the least.
Wasn't there a article the other day that burning trash was not cost effective for the private sector. I guess the public sector figures they can do it by charging tax payers. Also, wasn't it burning wood that the EPA was all over. Yet Whitaker can burn willow, last I heard that is wood. The big States have the billions spent already. After all where will votes come from to re elect Obama. This economic stimulus will prove to be the biggest earmark ever for vote buying.
You know, it's getting old listening to all the put downs about everything. I logged on here to say 'yes' to some of the projects listed in the article...while I'd rather not get embroiled in any silly News-Miner comment wars, it makes sense to say that some of these projects oughta go forward, like tearing down the Polaris Bldg. (removing the useless and dangerous eyesore and freeing up the property to put it back on the rolls - with hopefully not another high rise that blocks the riverfront, tho it's a ways back from the riverbank) and road improvements where needed (keyword: needed) and LED lighting. They make sense. And obviously there should be a cost review of the trash/energy project. I have a little more faith in the idea after hearing Bernie Karl might be involved. It would be nice to not just see jobs programs for people who already have a hammerlock on lucrative gov't jobs and it would be nice to see some real economic benefit to the community. Just saying - - -
But I also think we need to pay some real attention to the fact that it was unregulated securities lenders who really got us into the economic mess we're in (especially on top of the immense war spending). Unregulated and even undefined credit swap futures - what the heck is that? Predatory lenders unregulated. Large financial companies packaging securities that are founded on absolutely nothing, and then those phony securities being allowed to be traded. As many recently have said, "Once you have large amounts of money flowing through the firm and everyone's bonuses are based on those cash flows, it's hard to stop the ball from rolling." Or really we should say, "Nobody tried, because so many have made so much money off the entire fraud." Too strong? Nope. At least we can now repair our infrastructure - in the states, it's crumbling. Keep your brains open, folks, or you'll really get the govt that complete lack of oversight brings.
And it seems the incoming securities officials still haven't gotten the message, which is truly mind-boggling to me:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/176830
brianbb98: lol
FreeDarfur: No. Willow is willow. Wood is wood.
only thing i want to see begich presented with is a recall petition.
Begich calls Obama supporter Whitaker to ask him where to send all the Obama economic bailout money. Word to the wise, this country is broke, any money sent by the federal govt will be hot off the printing press. We will not spend our way out of this mess, but look at the bright side. After Obama has had a few years to "stimulate" us Carter may lose his worst Pres ever distinction.
i think bush is about to pick it up, actually.
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