SandBoxBlogs: Aspen Daily News "Facts not coming out of City Hall"

Another special shout-out of thanks to Maurice Emmer.  For once again sticking to just the facts.

"Editor:

Mitzi Rapkin recently wrote a letter complaining about an article reporting on Matt Rice’s Congressional testimony. To be charitable, I assume Mitzi does not really know first-hand any of the facts, but that information is supplied to her by city managers and possibly City Council and she writes the information up in a pleasant, direct and professional way. So I do not blame Mitzi for distortions in her recent letter.

The main distortion of concern is the repeated claim that the penstock (pipeline) from Thomas Reservoir to the proposed Castle Creek hydro site was necessary because the city’s consulting engineer advised there was danger that required an emergency drain line. 

This is a pretty important matter because federal law prohibits the construction of any part of a power plant system without FERC approval. That approval could be avoided if there really was a pre-existing conduit (pipeline) that was going to be used for the power plant, but in this case there wasn’t one by any stretch of imagination.

So the city drew up plans for a penstock and related structures, including increased inflow to Thomas Reservoir from Maroon Creek (yes, they propose to take water from Maroon Creek, too), and then the engineer advised that those changes would create risk. The city thought it could call this proposed penstock a pre-existing conduit needed to reduce the risk and use the exemption, but of course that was silly.

How do I know this? I asked the city questions about the project. When I got their answers I asked for the documents supporting their answers. Guess what? The documents contradicted many of the city’s answers, rather than supporting them. You can read the documents too, if you want. If Mitzi wants to convince anyone the city is right, she easily can cite to specific documents that she thinks support the city’s assertions, rather than parroting claims that are fed to her by city management....." (Read more?  Click title)

"Unapologetic pursuit and tracking of patterns within the news others make since 2010."