Woodstock CT Café

from Dean

One part of my business is designing engineering controls to protect people from flooding (an easy example is floodwalls or dams) – speaking to Con. In the early part of a project we define a “design storm.” For example, a 100-year? A 500-year? Obviously, it will cost much more to design something protective of a 500-yr flood than a 100-year flood (btw, these happen much more frequently now than every 100-or 500-years, thanks to climate change).

So someone can only afford that I build something for a 100-year flood, the next week, the 110-year flood happens, guess what, the protected neighborhood floods. People make an investment decision on the level of protection that they want and their is risk regardless of the level of investment is made (e.g. build for 500-year, doesnt mean that the 510-year flood doesnt happen the next week, it is just reduced risk). Read the rest of this entry »

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Reposted in memory of Andy Rooney, friend and neighbor in Rowayton CT

Last week (January 2011) the NY Times had a nostalgic article about the Polo Grounds where the New York Giants played in the 1950s before they moved to San Francisco. The article jogged my memory about the good old days when I was a kid growing up in Rowayton CT on Long Island Sound. I’ve been doing this reminiscing a lot over the last year as my parents spent their final days in our house. One of the great things my parents gave to me was their friends of their generation and sketchy stories about their early lives. I recollect the 1950s as the decade of my youth when nothing in life was complicated and there was a lot of fun to be had. My lone connection with the Polo Grounds was through one of their friends.

An important part of my life at that time was major league baseball from the beginning to the end of the 50s when my interest waned because of college. And besides, all of my favorite players had moved on or were about to. I was a devout Yankees fan and my best friend, Paul, was equally devoted to the Brooklyn Dodgers. Read the rest of this entry »

from Con

It seems as though you either skimmed the comment or I just wasn’t clear. You seem to make a lot of assumptions that are not supported by the evidence, facts, etc. and you seem to tilt toward excusing CL&P merely because the Storm is BIG and they task is very difficult. But these Storms are 100% part of the job. They are ‘Ordinary Course’ business for a Utility, not a unique or out of the ordinary event. They are totally ordinary given the right perspective, and this is the perspective that a Utility is ASSUMED to have in order to perform at it’s best all the time, when it’s easy and when it’s extremely difficult.

The utility is an Institution, not a person. A person can be excused because the forces of nature are overwhelming. But even that example has exceptions that call in to question this tendency to excuse failure because of overwhelming forces – consider the US Coast Guard Rescue Swimmer. This is a great example of an institution that manifests their very function in the tasks of individual human beings facing awesome forces and succeeding by overcoming the obstacles put up by huge storms at sea and the like. Read the rest of this entry »