I think it has to be shopped
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my Township in SE PA is rural, and mostly wants to remain rural
They’ve zoned denser areas for the edges, where neighboring municipalities are denser, and where water and sewer lines exist and can easily handle new connections.
The central part of the Township has 2.3 acre minimum zoning because you need that much space for individual wells and septic systems for each dwelling.
And I think last I read about 30% of the Township is now covered by conservation easements, so it isn’t getting built on.
I used to work for the part of PA gov’t that also includes water and sewer regulators, so I did once know more than I wanted to about such stuff! (brain dump was 15 years ago!)
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Wooden water distribution pipes are more likely than wooden sewer pipes. They turn up from time to time. Usually unexpectedly in the middle of a construction site.
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I’m in the northwest Berkshires, and we want to remain largely rural but also want to increase affordable housing. Enough of us still remember fondly the small town intermingling of people from different occupations and backgrounds in schools and churches, on town committees, and so on. Remaining rural is also important because tourism is crucial to our economy, and the tourists come in large part for the rural beauty. At the same time, we have a lot of second home owners, which wreaks havoc with housing stock and prices for locals, including the services workers who contribute directly to the tourist economy. Affordable housing, even for people with middle class incomes, has been a major challenge for decades now.
Like other towns and cities in Berkshire County (I think there are only two cities), our population is concentrated in the town center; for the most part, the population decreases as you get further from the center, and most of the town’s borders abut other rural areas. Most of us would like to see zoning changes to allow for more housing in or near the town center, but that’s where we run up against (among other problems) the fact that sewer lines would be strained. Development of the rural lands is impeded not just by our desire to keep them that way (and by the economic advantages of rural beauty for tourism), but also by the cost of extending sewer lines AND the paucity of places where percolation rates allow for septic tanks. A completely different set of water and sewer challenges!
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My husband informed me over lunch that our town still had some wooden pipes when we moved here over 40 years ago. Distribution pipes, no doubt. He thinks he remembers hearing about them because they were about to be replaced. He recalled that they were made out of hollowed out tree trunks, preferably of ash. I promised him not to bring up sewers or water distribution over dinner tonight.
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Wasn’t Nicole Wallace GWB’s communications director? I don’t see anyone trying to purge her from MSNBC. In fact I think she was one of the on air folks leading the charge to get rid of McDaniel. No only the woman who was so servile and cowardly she changed her name to appease DJT and spent a lot of time in the middle of a real effort to end American democracy.
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We must be very very close to one another! 01247 represent!
The partisan talking head model is already in decline. It might even be dead. It is practiced only a few of the Sunday shows as well as some segments on CNN. Mostly cable news is populated by people who have the same point of view as the segment host. They really aren’t needed except to give the host some one to chat with.
01267 here.
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Not that different …
My home is near the highest place in our County, on top of a ridge of Quartzite rock (the Chickies formation for the geologists among us). For some obscure reason my septic system has been working for 60 years, while many of my neighbors have failed and been replaced/upgraded to sand mounds to provide that infiltration.
I once investigated what became a state superfund site where small cabins initially built for a summer church camp became full time/year round homes. There was a small community well, that the guy on top of the hill caused to be wildly contaminated with TCE because he dumped his trucks out on his own property, downhill from his own well. And each one of those tiny places had a septic system, all of them failing because the topsoil was about 6" deep. Also the lots were less than 1/4 acre … so the drinking water was not only full of TCE, but sewage. And it was miles to the nearest water or sewer lines.
My first instinct was ‘Pay those people 10x what they paid for those houses and raze them. Make it a park.’ They should have listened. It cost WAY more than that to ‘fix’ the problem.
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The situation you describe is appalling and makes me wonder how many years ago all this happened and/or in what state. I began to notice how varied different states’ regulations used to be before federal legislation required a degree of uniformity, and in many instance still are different, when some 20 years ago I learned that MA does not require that one property owner’s changes to their property have no negative impact on another person’s property when it comes to water issues (like causing flooding). Because of some issues in my parents’ NJ neighborhood, I knew that NJ did have such a requirement.
I left DEP in 2008. The contamination was ‘found’ by the County Health Dep’t in 1999. (here in PA they do most of the water system inspections … or did when I was there). So I was working on the investigation in the early '00s. It was probably caused in the 70s or earlier because TCE was ubiquitous as a cleaning agent.
It was a HSCA (state superfund program) site called Baghurst Alley. When DEP just can’t get something done any more (and this site was massively expensive and complicated to deal with), things can be referred for investigation and inclusion by EPA …
It is now a federal CERCLA (superfund) site EPA Baghurst Lane and it is STILL costing time and money.
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Then there was the one where we were walking around a self storage place behind a building that had once been an electroplater, and the drainage ditch had standing YELLOW water in it. That tested as Hexavalent Chromium, which is very nasty shit indeed.
It was in the middle of Doylestown Borough, the county seat of Bucks County PA.
and right next door was the local water treatment plant, with associated groundwater extraction wells …
it is also now a federal site … Chem Fab and apparently last year they were deciding what to do about the 3rd problem they’ve found there.
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Down in south county (Berkshires, MA) the old GE plants have left more than one superfund site. It’s distressing how long each step of the process of clean-up takes. GE and locals are currently engaged in a dispute about how to transport the contaminated soil to its resting place, by truck or by rail? (I think the dispute over where it would end up has finally been resolved, though many people are angry about the resolution.)
Another story: It took decades for our town to gain legal control of an abandoned old mill (where industrial photo-processing-like work was done), do all kinds of studies, and procure federal and state funds to help with cleanup. Then razing part of the site, repairing and remodeling other parts, and making additions. At last a few years ago: very nice affordable housing in a good location.
So many old mills along the many many rivers in our region (they drain into the Hudson – and we’re not even thought of as part of the Hudson River Valley). So many contaminates in the soil and water, often from a very long time ago. It’s a long haul but also very satisfying when cleanup finally gets underway, is completed, and restores land and/or buildings to productive and safe use. You have engaged in noble work!
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The flip side of that is that McDaniel has no backbone, so put her into a milieu where she has intelligent people around her saying truths and proving it about Republicans and their “leader” and she will switch sides immediately being desirous of being with the in crowd…and all of that for just $300k
Yep. I worked for a corporation once with all these MBA yahoos who could not run any business worth a damn. On my resigning interview with said bunch of morons, I told them that what they were doing would never succeed. Sure enough 6 months later the whole house of cards collapsed.
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Curiously, I first heard of Semana Santa a couple of days ago as well, having recently bought a house in Mexico. I like it!
You were a day early
480k per CNN
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I once worked with one of these dipshit MBAs (from one of the real bullshit factories, where you can miss 2/3 of your classes and still get the degree, anyway I digress) and he was going on about cutting overhead like salaries, how critical that is to a business. I asked him, so if the ideal state of every business is to essentially eliminate overhead like salaries, what happens if every business succeeds in that? If no one’s getting paid, where will any business find customers? Doesn’t that success wipe out an economy? He goggled at me for a while, I am certain convinced that “I didn’t get it.” Meanwhile, asshat is peddling a MLM scam that can never work and is too fucking stupid and arrogant to know it.
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It is like the “business model” of the airlines: Treat your paying customers like cattle, scrimp on aircraft maintinence, and expect people ( like me) to want your service. Same with my (once) local newspaper; Fire all the reporters so that there is no local news being reported anymore, and then wonder why we cancelled our subscription. I could really give a shit what USA today is on about. I need to know what my Town Council is doing.
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