General
Beaumont: Beautiful Mountain or Garbage Mountain?
Beaumont is not known for being the most progressive or green-minded city. Many would like that to change but then enters the problem of using city-wide resources for programs not supported by the larger community. In past the curb-sde recycling program in Beaumont has cost the city nearly 300K a year. A decade later recycling is still not a profitable venture. It requires an enormous commitment of resources including residents active participation. In 2008 Beaumont initiated a pilot program with great initial success. Waste Management found it self delivering recyclables 60 times from the single drop off location at 23rd and Phelan in just the first 45 days. The city was to use this info to determine where to expand to program if at all. Unfortunately it was short lived. In a more recent attempt in February of 2010 the City of Beaumont included a survey of a potential recycling program. As I suspected, people like the idea of curb-side service but were unwilling to pay the extra $10-15 a month. The average person was willing to pay an additional $5 a month but was unwilling to take their recyclables to drop off locations. Here in lies the problem. Is recycling and the environment just a novelty or an important part of our civic future?
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Put this in your pipeline
The pipeline to bring Canadian tar sands to Port Arthur is a bad idea in the long run...
- 1st and foremost it won't create many long term jobs.
- Will make it more difficult to stay compliant with increasing EPA air quality standards. ( 3x more toxic than crude from offshore)
- New energy bill increases regulations on carbon producers (that's us).
- Does not allow us to take advantage of incentives for creating jobs in the renewable energy sector.
- Still relies on foreign oil. (at least its not Venezuela or Saudi Arabia)
- Uses 2 barrels of the cleanest fossil fuel (natural gas) and one barrel of water to produce one barrel of crude even before refining.
- Only became economically viable when gas prices reached $3 (too expensive to process before)
Lets take Detroit, motor city, for example...
Oil the way home
Just when you thought it was getting worse, you were right. Not only has oil begun to creep north to the sands of gulf beaches, oil companies now want to build a pipeline that will send tar sands from the north as well. Canadian tar sands contain petroleum that must be extracted using almost 4 times as many greenhouse gases as the oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico. This is all before the crude can then be refined into gasoline.
Here is the snap shot. Multi-national oil and pipeline companies (including TransCanada) want to build a pipeline for foreign oil to be transported from Canada to Houston/Port Arthur so it can be refined and shipped all over the world.
As we have seen from the Deep Water Horizon disaster and other recent pipeline spills these companies are eager to exploit natural resources and equally eager to pass the buck on clean up. As recently as a few weeks ago one of these pipes leaked tar sand into a sensitive wetland area in Minnesota. The plans for its Texas route include over 30 sensitive areas as well as the Ogallala aquifer in the high plains...
Dog Days of Beaumont
This evening was the grand opening of the leash-less Dog Park in Old Town Beaumont. The great the thing about park's location (Ida Reed Park at 8th and I-10) is that the existing park was seldom used and now passers by from coast to coast can see that our city is pet friendly, which is an important aspect of improving our image. Not everyone in town has a fenced in backyard and even pampered house dogs need to get out and stretch those legs from time to time. I sincerely hope the park is frequently used and the best way to make sure that happens is to get the word out about its existence...
Beaumont Skatepark?
Most people in Southeast Texas probably don't realize Beaumont has a full concrete city-sponsored skatepark. That's mostly likely because its located in Beaumont, California. This small town of 32,633 has been that states 2nd fastest growing city in the 2000s. The park was built in 2004 back when the city could barely boast 20,000 residents. Those in charge knew inorder for the city to continue to grow they needed to invest in youth activities and green space. Check out how this little town in Southern California is laid out. As of late I have been encouraged by the City of Beaumont, Texas and their choice to ignore the naysayers and move forward on some very progressive projects that will do wonders to bring our city up to speed with other mid-sized growing communities. With the implementation of the new event center and dog park it looks as if we are following the lead of the little boomtown that shares our namesake.
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