By admin | April 15, 2009
Submitted by Aguanomics Blog
- The water wonks say: “the US EPA estimates that $334.8 billion needs to be spent over the next 20 years on drinking water infrastructure… The American Society of Civil Engineers… cited investment needs totaling around $1 trillion for both water and wastewater over the same period.” NEED means “give it to us!” Anyone got $17 to $50 billion per year?
- “Significant determinants of the choice of public versus private water delivery include the cost of funds, especially the social cost of taxes, transaction costs, the difference of efficiency and the potential political cost of privatizing. Moreover, we tested other literature’s theories, which suggest employment as a motive of public provision and cost of public wages as a cause of privatization. These two arguments seem to be irrelevant. We additionally tested the influence of ownership on the number of drinking water environmental violations and found no significance. “
- TerraPass announces: “more than 175,000 customers of the three rental brands opted to pay $1.25 per rental [towards] offset projects… The overall impact: More than 42,000 metric tons of carbon have been offset. The opt-ins have funded several certified offset projects… The largest… is the Worcester County Landfill Gas to Energy Project on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, one of the nation’s first projects to be validated under the internationally recognized Voluntary Carbon Standard.” This is good news, but I have reservations: (1) Many rentals are paid for with company money (OPM), so it’s not like all participants paid, and (2) offsets should be per-mile, not per rental.
- People are going to starve [PDF]: “In the first part of the twenty-first century efforts with “triply green” agriculture in savannah regions may be successful but in the course of the next few decades, population growth will overtake this technology and considerable water deficits will develop in large areas of the developing world.” Even under optimistic assumptions, we will need an extra 1,270 CUBIC KILOMETERS of water per year to feed the 2050 population. Got that? Now go panic.
- “The midnight regulations phenomenon - an increase in the rate of regulation promulgation during the final months of an outgoing president’s term - is empirically tested using data on the number of economically significant regulations reviewed each month. Submissions of economically significant regulations to Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) are found to increase by seven percent during midnight periods… If OIRA review improves the quality of regulations, then any phenomenon such as midnight regulations that leads to spikes in regulatory activity and decreases review time could result in the proliferation of low quality regulations.”
- Congress has passed S. 574, The Plain Writing Act of 2009, which “would enhance citizen access to Government information and services by establishing that Government documents issued to the public must be written clearly.” So how were they written before? And can you imagine the Congress getting excited about bills that the public could understand? No? Me neither.
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