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Costs: debt service, materials, labor, general contractor, subcontractors, overhead, including pensions, life, health, accident, unemployment insurance, insurance for course of construction, insurance for infrastructure after it is built, personnel to run the facility once it is built, expenditures for maintenance and operation.  

We have earthquake risk now.  Another facility would add to it, while conservation could improve the situation for individuals and for the city as a whole.  

Best-practice graywater recommendations are to be formulated soon, as a graywater law has passed at the state level, triggered by Portland's ReCode group.  Recent increases in rates hurt people on reduced or fixed income.  We need ways to help, not to clobber them more with even higher rates.  

Dr. Ole Ersson's Portland rainwater catchment design for a residence can be visited on the net, where there are pictures and descriptions of how it works and what it cost to build.  

U.S. legislators enact unfunded mandates that impoverish people. Portland would do the country a service by calling this out. We were promised work to get transparency. We are resourceful, and many of us are now under-employed or unemployed. 

A poster, banner, T-shirt contest, could get Portland on stage for a cross-pollinated science/art-a-thon.  May the winner grace late-night TV.  

Legislators from other states should not be allowed to force us into unnecessary debt to build a huge concrete edifice that could not serve the city equally well in all our many neighborhoods.  A central plant could be subject to interesting lawsuits, none of which we should have to pay for.  We should not have to be paying for an expensive variance process either.  Our earthquake vulnerability should make it clear we need to husband our resources carefully and non-centrally, in micro-grids where neighbors with water on can help neighbors without, if need be.

posted 3 years, 9 months ago
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