Tuesday, December 23, 2008
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When Greens Do Snow Removal
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Posted by:
Chris Field at
8:56 AM
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As Seattle residents begin their listing of grievances on this happy Festivus day, surely topping their lists must be the city's road conditions -- or, more appropriately (if the residents are paying attention), the people running the city's Department of Transportation.
Turns out that the Seattle roads that are treacherously packed with snow and far from clear are in that condition on purpose. From the Seattle Times:
To hear the city's spin, Seattle's road crews are making "great progress" in clearing the ice-caked streets.
But it turns out "plowed streets" in Seattle actually means "snow-packed," as in there's snow and ice left on major arterials by design.
"We're trying to create a hard-packed surface," said Alex Wiggins, chief of staff for the Seattle Department of Transportation. "It doesn't look like anything you'd find in Chicago or New York."
The city's approach means crews clear the roads enough for all-wheel and four-wheel-drive vehicles, or those with front-wheel drive cars as long as they are using chains, Wiggins said.
Guess who is behind this brilliant strategy.
The icy streets are the result of Seattle's refusal to use salt, an effective ice-buster used by the state Department of Transportation and cities accustomed to dealing with heavy winter snows.
"If we were using salt, you'd see patches of bare road because salt is very effective," Wiggins said. "We decided not to utilize salt because it's not a healthy addition to Puget Sound."
Of course, like many environmentalist policies (e.g. ban on DDT, forcing the use of mercury- and lead-laden fluorescent light bulbs, etc.), this decision is having a negative impact on human beings. Aside from increasingly dangerous roads that make pedestrian and driver injuries more likely, now the city's police are having difficulty responding to emergency calls.
Seattle also equips its plows with rubber blades. That minimizes the damage to roads and manhole covers, but it doesn't scrape off the ice, Wiggins said.
That leaves many drivers, including Seattle police, pretty much on their own until nature does to the snow what the sand can't: melt it.
The city's patrol cars are rear-wheel drive. And even with tire chains, officers are avoiding hills and responding on foot, according to a West Precinct officer.
Of course, these are the people and policies the citizens of Seattle decided they wanted to have in charge. Maybe they need to put themselves on their own grievance lists.
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a return to life reminiscent of the days of Mammut americanus and Clovis points. One supposes that the Community Activists for Hope and Change will offer Survival Classes at the Multi-Cultural Diversity Community Center where people can learn survival skills such as how to flake off pieces of flint to make points or how to identify edible grasses and forbes for Healty Foraging in a Green World. |
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Leave the west and ALL the enviromentalists to their foolishness.
I live in rural central PA, sometimes I think of it (in the winter) as the land of ice and snow, weve had winter for two months already, I don't care what the calendar says. Already had enough with school closings and delays and early dismissals and we have not hit January.
These green people and their policies are killers, literally. I cringe reading this. I pray that the remaining people whose minds haven't already been destroyed by the kool-aid the enviromentalists have been serving up these past few decades will rise up and rebel before we allow such utter nonsense to transpire here.
I respect the environment, but sometimes we have to weigh the consequences and do what's best for the people. They use (bottom) coal ash on a lot of the roads around here, as well as rock salt on others. "Just plowing" is not going to fly, and ice remains the graver danger on roads these days (neither is good).
Of course, most of this stuff gets dreamed up by people who live in states where ice and snow is not really a problem for them personally. |
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Welcome to the new extended land of the fruits and nuts!
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Gump nailed them, to a tree with that one! |
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Your post reminded me of those old Eule Gibbons commercials. It seemed like, according to him, EVERYTHING in nature was edible - even Grape Nuts cereal. So warm and fuzzy. We just need to get back to nature, folks.
Liberals may mean well, but taken to the extreme - which they always do - their ideas are dangerous.
Whatever happened to ol' Eule Gibbons anyway? Oh yea, he died trying to pass a pine cone he had eaten.
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Are going to ruin our country !!!! |
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Puget Sound is salt water. Am I missing something here? |
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Not going to. Already have begun to! |
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...oh, yes, the Greens are in charge. Hizzoner wants to ban campfires on the beaches and shuts off entire blocks of the city for "Car Free Days (not likely to shut his own street off, tho, as his fat bum gets a nice limo ride every day), the Poobahs on the City Council want to tax grocery bags (20 cents per), you can be fined if your garbage has too high an amount of recylcables in it and not in the recycle bin, and the very few times that we could use salt on the roads would likely put less salt into the Sound than what we put in via toilets and dishwashing anyhow.
But, mere facts and data and sense are sacrificed to the Seattle Consensus Method. I think I will go try to get some food without wrecking or slipping on the sidewalk. 5 days of this is a lot for Seattle. Thanks, Urhonor, for the consideration. |
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and gatherer who, we were to believe, poled himself about in the swamps on his bog shoes harvesting cattails. Grape Nuts reminded him of wild hickory nuts. Why, here is a restored Grape Nuts commercial featuring Euell: http://tinyurl.com/6wsp32
BTW, a Minneapolis environmentalist group of Community Activists (fascists) are agitating to outlaw fireplaces in homes and fire pits in back yards because the smoke wafts into nearby houses. And besides, the fat in the hotdogs and the sugar in the marshmallows and chocolate in the S'Mores is not a healthy life style choice.
There are some chilling consequences as a result of this Green Guy/Gal Syndrome.
I offer the following example.
"Pit Toilets By the 2000 Census, the number of Americans who lacked indoor plumbing was down to 0.6%. Even though that's still an awful lot of Americans using an outhouse or pit toilet -- 670,000 households or 1.3 million people -- it's a huge improvement from 1950 when 27% of households (and over half of rural households) didn't have complete indoor plumbing."
With the demise of newspapers, the yellow pages, and large mail order catalogs (Sears, Montgomery Ward, JC Penney, etc.) the bottom will have fallen out of the low cost bottom maintenance routine. The higher priced alternatives, such as Kleenex and TP will be next on the list of banned items lest we cause undue suffering and pain in the poplar forests of Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
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Just wait until the city of Seattle gets slapped with a dozen or more wrongful death lawsuits. The only green that will concern them then will be $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$!!!!!
That's what convinced the powers that be in my New England hometown. Their excuse for not removing the snow was to save money. They sing a different tune now, however. |
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I can see next years city council meeting ,First thing on the agenda ban all leaf blowers and mulchers . It is now a felony to step on a leaf . all leaves must be collected sorted and stored properly and distributed to the masses we will become Toilet paper free in one year we will lead the world . |
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writes, "Puget Sound is salt water. Am I missing something here?"
No doubt. If I were a liberal I would say that the salt used for ice melting on roads is not exactly the same as the salt in the oceans. I don't know the difference but, I am sure there is probably an electron or proton difference at the sub-atomic level. A $100 million, thirty year longitudinal study should have everything cleared up so they can start clearing roads in about 2039 or so. |
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Just finished reading this on Drudge.
Some of the comments are unintentionally hysterical.
The big concerns seem to be the already salty Puget Sound. The other is the fear that their Beemers will rust in front of their eyes.
Are car washes "enviromentally unfriendly"? |
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This is a win-win (whine-whine) for the greens. It'll take global warming to clear up the mess generated by their do no harm methods. |
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Uh, not sure I want to be attacked by anyone out there who may have a PHD in saline engineering, but isn't Puget Sound a salt water body? And, if the salt used on the street ends up in the sound, is there a problem? I mean, I know it probably isn't Morton's (when it rains, it pours)that is being spread, but isn't salt BASICALLY salt? Where does the street use salt come from? Isn't it a natural mineral? Please, don't tell me that some industrial giant treats road salt with...oh, I dunno, mercury?
Maybe a few crippling accidents caused by icy roads, a few lawsuits, millions of dollars from the city coffers....all good for....who?
BAH!! Seattle!! Have a decaf cappucino!! |
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We vote for these people. They sound so...compasionate. They sound like they care. They are just trying to raise our conscienceness. They are IN OUR GOVERNMENT making laws. If they can't make it work, that's ok. Because they have more ideas and because you are not IN OUR GOVERNMENT you can not understand how much more they feel for THE PLANET. It starts with the mayor, councilors, school board, election board, sheriff, community organizer. Get out the godless and get in the Constitutionalist. |
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If the reason listed was the high cost of salt and wanting to reduce spending, I wouldn't argue. However, salt in the ocean is a pretty poor excuse. |
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The whole of Washington State uses salt very sparingly for snow removal. I dont have a problem with the policy. Sanding roads has been the practice around western Washington for several decades, with the appropriate caution I have littel problem getting around in a two wheel drive pickup. When I was stationed in Connecticut during the mid eighties I was amazed at how much salt was used on the roads and what poor condition older vehicles (5-10 years) were. |
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Nice moniker! Uss Sargo SSN 583. You? |
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I remember in 7th grade Earth Science class, scientists & experts were warning of a coming ice age! Now we have the same experts and their sheep with their new religion worshiping at the "Church of the Immaculate Invisible Warm Spell". I had to remove 3' of snow from my driveway here in Upstate NY this weekend. Man-made global warming?, no such thing, period! Puget Sound is salt water and there is no danger from road salt. They salt the heck out of our roads, and we haven't turned Lakes Erie or Ontario brackish, so eat some granola and mellow out! |
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I assure you there are intelligent, conservative people up here. Unfortunately the majority seems to be brainwashed by the more vocal loons.
The roads are only one of the many issues up.
My hubby works for the government and he HAS to go to work but I can't tell you how scary it has been this past week trying to get around. We aren't rich so we don't have the fancy winter tires and super sport vehicles that the elected officials have, for us it is serious.
It really is a shame that such a beautiful region has to be taken over by crazies, I don't want to move back to the conservative Midwest because I love it here too much so I dream that maybe someday intelligent people can finally win the coast back.
Sadly enough though it appears that these people are rising up and taking over everywhere because even my family back in the midwest are seeing more and more of these leftist loons rising up in their neighborhoods. If we don't get this under control now, your neighborhood will be next!!! |
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It's ocean water, for crying out loud. Just fill a tanker truck with it and spray it on the streets after plowing the snow. It's warm enough that it won't freeze unless they start seeing sea ice in the Sound. DUH! |
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Welcome to the People's Republic of Seattle. Your quips about our great State do not do it justice. If you really want to know how whacky it can really get there is a television spot posted on YouTube under I-933, The Jeffrey Sneller Family version, which was a failed property rights initiative. There are testimonials that are all true, and all unbelievable.
By the way, what happened to El Nino? Did El Nino morph into Global Warming? |
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To a Liberal, the emotional is to the factual as three is to one. |
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