March 2012

Neighborhood Watch

I’ve always been wary of Neighborhood Watch groups, crime prevention councils, and the like.

This helps me understand why.

Homeowners in George Zimmerman’s subdivision could be liable for damages from the wrongful death of Trayvon Martin.

The potential levy reflects the moral hazard in getting involved in this kind of activity&#8212including just attending a meeting.

I like and trust my neighbors. I think it’s a good idea to keep an eye out for each other, and for trouble.

However, the popular misperceptions of crime, and criminals, and the fears that go with those perceptions, are volatile and toxic. I think neighborhood anti-crime groups can stir up those fears and misperceptions.

The resulting danger outweighs any benefit those groups might have.

A nice potluck or planting party serves the same purpose of building community cohesion, without the hazard of stirring up the George Zimmerman in any of us&#8212or in all of us.

March 30, 2012 by The Nature of Belief 0

Shaking my head

The current statewide stormwater Phase II NPDES permit was issued in 2003 and expired in 2008. It’s been extended administratively while State Water Resources Control Board staff drafts an update.

This permit tells smaller California cities and towns what they must do to reduce the amount of pollutants discharged from their streets, gutters, and drainage pipes.

Tomorrow I’m headed to Sacramento for an all-day meeting to discuss one permit provision&#8212the provision governing how land development projects must be built so that runoff impacts are minimized.

This is my living, and I’m glad to donate a day, serving no client, to assist the State with this project.

But the meeting participants didn’t get the latest draft of the provision until this morning. And it is a very rough draft, with placeholders and sentences that trail off. There are proposed requirements that clearly haven’t been thought through. And this is four years after this permit should have been written, reviewed, debated, settled, and adopted.

I’m embarrassed for Water Board staff, who I know are capable and have good intent.

I can’t help but try to imagine what level of political and bureaucratic dysfunction, what kind of organizational and management clusterf*ck, could be going on behind the scenes at the Water Board.

Tomorrow I’ll put that imagining aside and, once again, focus on the issues: why the proposed criteria don’t make technical sense and can’t be implemented consistently, why the objective of the required studies is unclear and unattainable, how developers’ engineers will game the weak language, why this is an invitation to lawsuits against the Water Boards and the cities. And on. And on.

March 29, 2012 by Stormwater Pollution Prevention Work Status 0

Neighborhood Stroll

A few blocks of walking late last night has left my left calf and MCL singing. Most surprisingly, it also made me tired, the way an hour’s run or a 3-hour bike ride used to, before the February 9 crash.

I don’t know how hard to push myself. Each time, I’ll have to guess whether a little more effort will help strengthen or just re-injure the damaged tissue.

Mostly, it just felt good to move again.

March 17, 2012 by Personal Status 0

Hobble and Dither

A month after the February 9 crash, I’m still hobbled by two sprained ankles, two sprained knees, and a torn calf muscle. And I can’t seem to focus for very long, or for very much of the day, on work or on anything else.

I’m stuck between two conflicting desires: One, to relax into the pain and loss, and take more time to heal; the other, to move on, not “back to normal,” but ahead, with purpose.

My usual mode to resolve this kind of dilemma would be to take a long walk, or to drain off my energies on the bike.

Instead, I hobble. And dither.

 

March 9, 2012 by Personal Status 0

Recent Work

The Contra Costa Clean Water Program’s Management Committee approved the 6th Edition of the Stormwater C.3 Guidebook, which has been published on the Program’s C.3 pages. My presentation slides are here. Every time I update the Guidebook, I appreciate anew the municipal stormwater staff in Contra Costa municipalities. These are the people who provide the information and front-line perspectives that make each new edition better than the last. And with each update, I rededicate myself to the process of continuous improvement begun back in 2004.

At the request of the Napa County Flood Control and Water Conservation District and Napa County Resource Conservation District, I provided an update on the New Development (“E.12”) provisions in the draft statewide Phase II Stormwater NPDES Permit (presentation slides here) and training on Low Impact Development planning and design (presentation slides here–warning 42 MB download).

I gave a presentation (slides here) at the American Society of Civil Engineers Annual California Infrastructure Symposium in Sacramento.  In their provisions governing how land development projects get built, California stormwater NPDES permits include common technical errors and mistaken assumptions. It’s a challenge to communicate what those errors are, how they came to be, why they are screwing up local efforts to improve water quality, and what the Water Boards’ staff could do to fix them. I’m pursuing my own continuous improvement effort here–presenting the explanations and arguments when and where I can, and trying to hone my delivery with each iteration. It’s a long haul.

March 3, 2012 by Work Status 0