So after my last post, which I admit was a little depressing – sometimes these things need to be stated though – I thought I’d cheer things up a bit with a photo.

Our species has come a long way from the times of hunting and gathering for survival, we have almost all of the luxuries we could ever dream of. But there is still something primal about gathering berries off a bush – no chemicals, no mechanical harvesting, just you and the berries. We’re almost done on the strawberries, (I think I ate about 40 of them last week), and now it is the blueberry.

This humble berry has heralded the long hot days of summer for millennium, and in recent times has topped the nutritionist charts as a “super-food” for antioxidants. People used to eat them just because they tasted so darn good, now they are harvested and frozen so we can enjoy them all year round on our pancakes. Still, as far as fruit goes, the blueberry is one of the best, and eating them in season is a real treat.

These beauties were found ripe in our backyard, they are amazing, David Suzuki even suggests that the Blueberry should be Canada’s national plant – not a bad idea.

This post was written by Mike Thomas for UrbanWorkbench.com ©2010.

Originally posted as The Humble Blueberry

Technorati Tags: Antioxidant, Berries, Berry, Blueberries, Blueberry, Business, Canada, Cook, David Suzuki, fruit, Garden strawberry

This time of year makes for some magical photos around the Kootenays. This is the Brilliant Dam and Generating Stations on the Kootenay River taken from HWY 3A just outside of Castlegar on the road to Nelson, BC.

We often stop here with the kids to watch the memorizing flow of water over the spillway. When Mom and Dad are both Civil Engineers, it is highly likely that children will be subjected to an impromptu home-school lesson on hydro-electric power generation, gravity, potential energy, concrete construction techniques or any other dam related topic. Yes, I am an engineer.

This post was written by Mike Thomas for UrbanWorkbench.com ©2010.

Originally posted as Spring Freshet at Brilliant Dam

Technorati Tags: British Columbia, Castlegar British Columbia, Electricity generation, Hydroelectricity, Hydropower, Kootenay River, Kootenays, Nelson British Columbia

Stormwater design is one of the most critical components of urban engineering. Unfortunately in Canada there is no national standard of design principals used by municipalities or approval jurisdictions.

I come from Australia where there is a national standard called Australian Rainfall and Runoff that is published by Engineers Australia. Here in Canada, it seems that the majority of authorities require the rational method as the design method, which is strange, because it is regarded as one of the least accurate methods of design and one of the least sophisticated. So in these days of Civil3D and millimeter accurate design, we are using little more than a guesstimate for rainfall and runoff.

The Rational Method is very popular because it is easy to use and can be set up in a simple spreadsheet program; but the actual application of the method is very complex, something that baffles many designers, both technologists and engineers. There are designers who treat the method in the same way for every job, mainly because they don’t understand hydrology. They just don’t understand how an equation with only 3 terms in it can be used differently for different sites. A steep site behaves very differently compared to a flat site, and the frequency of the storm can impact how we treat the rational method coefficient of runoff or C-Value. In my experience, the best text for use in North America is “Municipal Stormwater Management” by Debo and Reese – and in my assessment of how others use the Rational Method, I defer to this text for guidance.

For reference, here is the most recent Castlegar IDF curve, updated in 2010.

In the past three jobs I’ve held, up until my current role, I have written up guidelines on how to incorporate engineering best practice into the design software being used at these firms. This has ensured consistency in practice and methodology across staff and has ensured that a risk based approach has been followed in drainage design.

In my experience, the rational method should only be used to calculate catchment, approximate in-pipe and open channel flows. It must not, in any circumstances, be used to size detention ponds, I’ll get to that in a future post. Ultimately any stormwater design involving pipes should be analyzing the hydraulic grade line for the design storm, with adequate losses for manholes and catchbasins.

This post was written by Mike Thomas for UrbanWorkbench.com ©2010.

Originally posted as Stormwater Design

Technorati Tags: Castlegar, Castlegar IDF curve, Civil Engineering, Design, drainage, drainage design, engineering, IDF curve, rainfall, rational method, runoff, Stormwater, stormwater design

When Castlegar gave a variance to Castlegar Toyota for their digital billboard, neither City staff or council considered that there might be good reason for having a bylaw spelling out the limits for commercial signs. Instead, they happily approved what would have to be one of the ugliest signs in the Kootenays, with the promise from Toyota that it would be used to promote “community events”. In fact, I’m not quite sure what is worse, the lights from Toyota fronting Columbia Avenue, the digital billboard, or the fact that the design of these two items was apparently too difficult to coordinate to ensure that there were no conflicts.

Several communities have banned digital billboards outright, the most recent being Denver earlier this month. Other places have put a moratorium on them pending a federal study on whether they distract drivers. At least two other cities and two states are studying moratoriums.

USA Today – More cities ban digital billboards

The main issue arising from decisions like Castlegar’s is that it puts advertising, marketing and profitability before streetscape, resident concerns and potentially even health and safety of drivers through distraction.

Apparently there are few limits to what we shall endue for the sake of capitalism.

This post was written by Mike Thomas for UrbanWorkbench.com ©2010.

Originally posted as Digital Billboards

I understand the sentiment, really, but the idea that whenever something impacts your community, you send a delegation off to Victoria to meet with Minister-such-and-such, doesn’t sit comfortably with me.

This time, it’s the forestry jobs, 15 of them that have been cut from the staff of 60 in the Castlegar office, and part of a provincial workforce adjustment of 204. I’m all for people working, I’m sad to hear of job cuts, but equally, if the industry is not performing as it was a couple of years ago, maybe these cuts are somewhat justified.

“We’re going to Victoria specifically to speak to this,” [the Mayor] said. “We’re disappointed and we really think we need to talk to the minister directly to try to find a resolution”.

Source: Castlegar Source – Forest Minister to hear Castlegar’s Concerns

The Mayor and two councillors are heading off to Victoria, it’s not just for one day either, as you can’t fly from Castlegar to Victoria return in one day on Air Canada – so there will be a cost for accommodation as well. Looking at the cost of flights at the moment, it is likely that this will cost the City in the order of $4000 – for what will likely amount to a one hour meeting. What’s wrong with a phone call?

How the province manages its workforce is its business and they are making decisions based on levels of service across the board. I guess everyone knows that the province is wrestling with a stupendous budget deficit, not all their decisions are likely to be popular.

If council wants to send a message to Victoria, does it need to be in person? As far as I can tell, these positions across the province have vanished, is it likely that there will be a reversal of a decision for Castlegar? As I said at the beginning – I understand the sentiment; job cuts always seem unjust, even more so in small communities. I don’t expect council to sit back and watch their community shrink, and I appreciate the solidarity they are displaying toward these families. I’d like to think there must be a good reason why a phone call would not suffice.

This post was written by Mike Thomas for UrbanWorkbench.com ©2010.

Originally posted as Castlegar Delegation to Minister on Forestry Employment

Technorati Tags: Castlegar, Castlegar Council, community, Forestry, Kootenay, Kootenays, Ministry of Forest

The City of Castlegar is preparing to pass a budget and five year financial plan that indicates spending on new infrastructure to the Airport lands of approximately $4.2 million for water and $1.6 million for sewer over the next two years. This is money that is coming out of the water and sewer funds respectively – funded by user fees, not by developers or the airport fund. Out of the whole budget being proposed, this is a huge project, representing a huge percentage of the total budget and there is no defined/definite revenue source for this expenditure. I don’t believe that development of the airport lands should be undertaken at the expense (literally) of existing residents. If the land never sells, we are holding millions of dollars of assets that will just depreciate. My questions to council are simply -

1. How is this project a priority given the recent revenue issues with Celgar, and the fact that this project was intended to be funded by grant money, that is evidently scarce across the province and country?
2. Is the cost of this project included in the land costs for any of the parcels recently sold or available for purchase in the future?
3. If the City has somewhere around $66 million of water upgrades to undertake in the next 20 years – how was it decided that this project was the highest priority, the extension of a line that services land that may one day be for sale, rather than shoring up the service we already have?

There are arguments for providing this service, particularly for the South East Fire Centre refilling of aerial water bombers – but this is a regional or even provincial service, why is the City bent over upgrading their water supply? What is the rate of return on investment? Where is the economic model that supports the City providing this service – (there may well be one, but it has never been presented to the public)?

The Public Process

Robyn and I (and the kids) were some of the only people who attended the public presentations on the budget. Comments from councillors represent a belief that the public didn’t show up because they “trust council”. When less than .5% of the population attends  a budget meeting, I can kind of understand council thinking that. I think it runs deeper. Most people, when presented with 30 pages of spreadsheet,find that the tendency for eyes to glaze over is pretty overwhelming – they’d rather someone else take responsibility. Equally, when a recent news article informs of budget cuts and tax rises, it really didn’t tell the whole story – when a cut to the planning budget of over 11% was announced, a look at the details tell a different story from what one would expect to see – the majority of the cuts were project based, not service or staffing – but honestly, who is going to look that deeply at the numbers?

The Role of the Media?

The level of media reporting on the budget has been generally conciliatory at best, accepting without question the budget as posed by staff and council. I wouldn’t be so harsh, except that the City just scraped through a tight spot with taxes and Celgar, (which was well reported by the media).

Considering the overall tax increase for municipal services to a residential property is likely to be around 15% for an average home, on top of a 15% increase in water and sewer rates for 2010, restraint in fees and taxes for residential properties appears to be far from a priority – yet there is talk of cuts. While major industrial taxes are going down (16.5%) and commercial taxes remain steady – the home owner is hit with the burden. Tough decisions have been made without adequate public input – I don’t see that council is to particularly to blame for this, but the level of community accountability is woeful and they should be concerned making this decision without the direct support of the public – not the inferred consent from silence.

Parting Thoughts

While many in this part of the world are wiping their brow saying things like, “Thank God superman saved the day and BC / Canada didn’t end up in the same place as America”; the truth is simply that despite the level of spending that has already been committed by governments and developers in cities around Canada, we are not out of the woods by any leap of the imagination. Castlegar is a great place to live but the focus for Council should be less on growth and more on consolidation and improvement. We don’t need to spend money on projects just to keep up with the Jones.

This post was written by Mike Thomas for UrbanWorkbench.com ©2010.

Originally posted as Castlegar Budget 2010

Technorati Tags: budget, Castlegar, Celgar, Governance, government, process, taxes

The City of Castlegar is in a tight position, perhaps that’s why they penned a pretty slick media release a week ago week encouraging residents to participate in a survey and inviting them to the two public input sessions being held on the budget and financial plan. The public has been eerily quite on the issue of taxes since the Celgar dispute over taxes erupted last year, while the Mayor and Council have been working on multiple fronts to solve the industrial tax dilemma. Things have finally come to a juncture, with Celgar presenting their position at an open council meeting tonight, and the City issuing this most recent media release:

Council will also announce a ‘Made-in-Castlegar’ Memorandum of Understanding between the City and its primary employer. The MOU outlines the following agreements:
- Celgar will withdraw its court challenge to the city’s tax bylaws.
- Celgar will pay all outstanding 2009 taxes, penalties and interest on the outstanding amount.
- The City will reduce Major Industry taxes by $350,000 in 2010; $55,000 in 2011 and $50,000 in 2012 and analyze potential for further reductions of $190,000 for 2013 to 2015.
- The City will bring forward a Tax Revitalization Bylaw to increase outlay in Castlegar by exempting new industrial investment for a limited period.

The MOU between the municipality and major industry is the first of its kind in British Columbia and highlights the city’s intentions in maintaining a positive relationship with its primary employer. In addition, council hopes the reduction in Major Industry taxes will encourage Interfor to consider reopening their mill and providing additional local employment.

Council and Celgar seem to have resolved some of their differences, at least for the moment. How this plays out in the public during the public meetings on the budget, we’ll find out next week. The proposed budget outlines spending cuts of over 4.5% with a tax increase to residential properties of about 7%. Considering that without Celgar’s taxes, the City would be searching for funding for over a third of their budget, these administrative cuts and tax increases are a fairly predictable and balanced response to the issue.

Some questions that remain unanswered:

• What was the value of special projects in 2009 – (such as the Sustainability Planning process, the City rebranding and any capital works)?
• What special projects are being considered for 2010?
• Does the perreduction in administrative costs include

Financial Sustainability

No one wants to see services cut, or funding reduced to community facilities, but the fundamental question must be raised – is it sustainable? Can the community, including Celgar (or not), continue to expect the high level of service that has been a way of life for the past 20 years? Is the funding model sustainable? Are the costs sustainable? What are the external drivers that will influence the future prosperity of this region, and what are we doing to embrace (or protect ourselves from) them?

The sigh of relief that Council is feeling right now over the Celgar agreement does not reach the systemic problems with the industrial tax situation across the province – that battle is still being fought. The efforts thus far are necessary to remedy the historical situation, but do not tackle the changes that are likely in our future –  changing demographics, climate change, peak oil and higher gas prices, and a changed economy.

Winners and Losers

I can’t see that there will be too many “winners” out of any changes to the budget in 2010 – but it is certainly too much to say that raising residential taxes makes us all “losers”. In the big scheme of things, the additional $118 a year in taxes on the average house may be exactly the small push that  residents need to take a greater interest in how their community is run and the challenges we all face.

This post was written by Mike Thomas for UrbanWorkbench.com ©2010.

Originally posted as Castlegar and Celgar Reach an Agreement

Technorati Tags: Castlegar, Castlegar City Council, Celgar, community, industrial taxes, Pulp Mill, taxes

Walking from the large brick building that used to house the airport terminal operations, but now was given new life as a fruit farming centre, Janie scanned the snow line on the mountains surrounding the valley.  The flat land around what was once known as the West Kootenay Regional Airport was once a living farm. In fact, it was only a generation before, that this land was used for pasture and orchards. The hardy pioneers who tamed this valley were known as the Doukhobors, and their heritage in the Castlegar valley held a mythical quality for the likes of Janie, a scrawny fourteen year old girl with strong tanned arms from working the land on her daddy’s community farm. The heritage of these Russian immigrants somehow survived the arrival of the automobile and the airplane, and was rekindled in less than a generation from when these vehicles stopped their noisy incessant travels, at least that’s how her daddy described it, she smiled.

But for Janie, she only remembers the time after that time, when the hopeful believers in technology insisted that the runways be maintained -she could imagine the arguments in the Council Chambers, where her daddy now sat as Mayor, there was violence at the meeting that decided it. She guessed that these people were hanging onto a hope of sameness. Unfortunately, they just didn’t understand or accept that the rest of the world could no longer keep sacrificing itself to maintain North America;s standard of living. But when troubles in far away lands began impacting the supply of technology, the inter-related parts of the economy and supply chain crumbled, particularly in the remote parts of British Columbia.

So, for many years the runway was preserved, cracks were filled, weeds were burnt down, even the tower was manned long after the last planes left or rotted on the edges of the tarmac. Hope.

Janie knew these actions, they were from the same place deep down inside every human who plants a seed and believes that the effort of cultivating, watering, weeding and finally harvesting will produce fruit. It is hope for a harvest, it is hope for good to overcome adversity. At fourteen, she had already seen this hope shrivel in some of the old timers. It was the young folks like her dad who stood together, shoulder to the wheel to re-building the critical infrastructure while many of the older folk sat around waiting for a handout, or as they put it, “a solution” from the government. Her daddy had a quotable quote for everything – “Some people give up, others put up, but the winners git back up”.

Janie put the wheelbarrow of tools down, drawing up to the orchard that now filled the defunct runway. Sandbags and shallow ditches had been strategically placed to divert rainwater to the well mulched fruit trees, each occupying a hole carved out of the runway in a grid laid out along the fading runway painted lines. Janie’s job during the months of March and April was to prune the community orchard in preparation for the growing season to come. Although only fourteen, the skills she had inherited from her mother through her Doukhobor bloodlines made her one of the most qualified orchard operators in the valley, being responsible for managing the tree nursery during the summer months. She smiled at the stories her daddy told her of how children used to go to school, sometimes until they were in their twenties or thirties to learn esoteric arts with little benefit to the communities they came from, often returning to live with their parents, not because that was how society was meant to function, but because society, despite encouraging this level of study found little use for the results of such an educational. These were the days when food was trucked from Mexico and California, when you could go to the supermarket and buy anything for a fraction of its true value. Just like most of the products that lined the shelves, communities treated their youth as disposable, the strength found in young bodies that could have been useful in building communities, wasted in telelmarketing factories selling even more disposable crapola to overfed North Americans.

As Janie studied the closest tree, analyzing the new growth and pruning lines from last Spring, she considered the importance of this project and these trees. Less than a generation old, planted in the middle of a monument to a previous generation, planted as an object of hope, of community, of permanence, planted to ensure the resilience of the community, planted in the spirit of the Doukhobor pioneers, planted against the will of many of the old timers stuck in a dreamland, these trees and the fruit they will produce this season were a symbol of hope and reality for the future.

Peak Oil Vignettes are fictional snapshots of a future life without cheap plentiful oil.

This post was written by Mike Thomas for UrbanWorkbench.com ©2010.

Originally posted as Peak Oil Vignette 5 – Hope and Reality

Technorati Tags: Castlegar, farming, fiction, fuit, Kootenays, orchard, peak oil, stories, Transitions, urban agriculture, urban farming

While Castlegar City Council makes an impassioned plea for residents to understand the tough times the City is facing, it seems that all the good work, energy and momentum that was generated during the Integrated Community Sustainability Planning (ICSP) sessions seems to have fallen to the wayside.

Council still has a focus on attracting new businesses to the City, with little idea of what a sustainable economy looks like. Do we want another car yard? More pubs? Costco? Walmart? It may not seem to be time to be picky as a municipality, but the truth is that positioning the City for long term resilience is far more important than doing whatever it takes to attract business – from the City’s recent press release (gag warning, excessively florid language ahead)…

The city’s diligent promotion and attraction of new business and commercial opportunities works to achieve a more diversified, versatile, and sustainable economy. At the same new economic growth will diminish the single-industry reliance that has ultimately crippled so many municipalities in this modern economy. Relentless and creative grant applications continue to forward city goals and projects without draining the city budget.

A few weeks ago, Castlegar council and some members of the community heard from a panel of CBT experts on the risks of climate change and opportunities to adapt to the potential changes we could face.  Of the various areas discussed, George Penfold’s discussion on food security was by far the most lively and inspirational, and probably the most serious for humanity as a whole, rather than just our community. Missing from this discussion was a recognition of the economic and fossil fuel spheres of influence – something that was addressed at a high level during the initial ICSP discussions. If we examine the vulnerabilities the community faces due to climate change through a lense that includes a less prosperous economy and less abundant fossil fuels, chances are that food would not just be the most engaging topic, it would become evident that it was by far the most important one to focus on.

Without cheap, abundant fossil fuels most of the food we consume would be impossible to grow or transport. Without a robust, prosperous economy, most of what we eat will become too expensive to produce  as supplies decrease or too expensive for the consumer to purchase as incomes decline relative to the cost of goods. The twin effects of abundant fossil fuels and a strong economic climate have made the cost of food in our society shrink to less than 10% of our average family income, in developing countries such as India, this figure is still closer to 50%.

As oil prices rose again this week, up 10% from a month ago, and a full 100% over this time last year we can expect to start seeing many of our food products increasing in cost as well. The food system that has developed under these “fertile” economic conditions in the western world is extremely complex and far removed from the end consumer. This complexity decreases resilience and removes the ability for the average person to have any meaningful control over their food production or how the food they eat is grown or raised. This complex system is heavily dependent on fossil fuels, forcing us all to consider what we can do to increase our individual and community resilience to even simple price fluctuations of fossil fuels, but more significantly a supply of a finite resource that one day will become less abundant, or constrained by greenhouse gas taxes or targets.

The issue of food is way bigger than just the impacts we may feel in Castlegar, but it is apparent that the development of genuine local solutions to foreboding issues such as food security and peak oil will build community and create a tighter more engaged citizenry that is more likely to stick together through tough times. We need to start considering where our food is grown, finding ways to grow more of it locally and removing barriers to building community resilience, which is not going to come from big box stores, the airport, car yards or a gaming centre.

This post was written by Mike Thomas for UrbanWorkbench.com ©2010.

Originally posted as A Focus on Food

Technorati Tags: Castlegar, economy, farming, food, future, Kootenays, peak oil, Resilience, Sustainability, urban farming

The Grade-A services we enjoy in Castlegar from the library, water, sewer, streets and sidewalks, right through to the snow clearing operation comes with a hefty price tag. There is an indication out there that we are about to find this out, either through reduced services or increased taxes, as council balances a shift of taxes away from the industrial tax base, predominantly funded by the Celgar pulp mill.

We are not in too different a situation from the city of Colorado Springs, in which they found that municipal revenues were down some 28.9 million dollars or 8% from the 2009 budget. (Admittedly the tax structure is very different, as are the state laws on how much say taxpayers get in raising taxes, but the lack of revenue is similar).

In Colorado Springs, every third streetlight is dark. Buses no longer run at night or on weekends. City pools will soon be dry, trash bins have disappeared and the verdant grass in the city’s famed parks will soon grow long, turn brown and die.

The city no longer offers basic services that people expect from their local government

Read more: National Post – Budget crisis sees Colorado Springs go dark

Culbreth-Graft’s proposed $209.9 million general-fund budget, down 8 percent from the revised 2009 operating budget, will be formally presented to the City Council next week.

“The City Council will have a task that I have never seen a council have to deal with in my 32 years of experience that will (involve) some of the most egregious and horrific cuts that this city has ever had to experience,” a somber-looking Culbreth-Graft said.

“While the council has grappled with extremely difficult issues for the last two fiscal years, this one will be unparalleled to the pain and the agony in which they had to experience in the previous years,” she said.

Read more: The Gazette – City Unveiling 2010 Budget

As you can imagine, not everyone is thrilled with the situation, and some members of the business community have taken to forming a group to audit the City’s plans, they are called, “The City Committee”:

The problem is not confined to Colorado Springs – cities all across the United States are struggling, said Chuck Fowler, a committee member.

“Atlas is shrugging,” Mr. Fowler said.

“We have to manage our limited resources better. We’re looking to run a good, clean, efficient government. Nobody has a political agenda here. We’re really just trying to operate our city government within its diminishing means.”

Read more: National Post – Budget crisis sees Colorado Springs go dark

In Castlegar, we don’t have helicopters to sell or a police force we can cut, but we can be more restrained in how we develop infrastructure such as the plans to service the airport lands and the proposed gaming centre.

Castlegar Council recently met with members of the Chamber of Commerce to discuss taxation strategies and identify potential issues with the situation they are facing. Unfortunately, the invitation to attend the meeting came too late for me to attend, and was not from the City in any case, rather it was through a member of the Chamber – as far as I can tell, it was not announced publicly. Kyra at the Castlegar Source has done a write up of the meeting, which is posted here.

The City still hasn’t announced it’s schedule for public meetings or bylaw considerations for the financial plan, my guess is that they are waiting to see what the supreme court says about the Celgar issue, from this article on the Castlegar Source, it sounds like the Mayor is optomistic…

Chernoff said he expects the city’s position to be similarly vindicated in court [as for the other municipalities in similar cases], but the basics of the situation remain the same, by his lights.

“We still need to work with Celgar to make sure our largest employer is viable and healthy,” he said. “But we also need to see that (tax) bill paid.”

This goes to court on the 22nd and 23rd of March 2010, so I guess we’ll wait and see which way the budget will go. In the meantime, the question of core services and levels of service needs to be addressed. The infrastructure bill is rising, (and that’s just for what the City already has), there are legislated upgrades required to the water system, and the other levels of government are not flush with cash. Municipalities across North America are realizing as their industry or business tax revenue declines, that they are having to do more with less. Whatever the outcome from the court case, it is likely that the City will offer a reduction in taxes to Celgar, this slack is either picked up by residents as taxes, or in reduced services. Which will it be?

This post was written by Mike Thomas for UrbanWorkbench.com ©2010.

Originally posted as Castlegar Springs

Technorati Tags: Castlegar, Castlegar British Columbia, Castlegar City, Castlegar City Council, Celgar, Kootenays, Mercer, municipalities, taxes