A Letter to the Mayor of Albuquerque - The Bosque Fires

Although many MeanMesa visitors are in the Albuquerque area, our friends from other places may require a little back ground to make sense from this post.

The "Bosque" is the area on either side of the Rio Grande River as it flows South through our city.  Unlike much of the beautiful, high desert surrounding Albuquerque, the river provides this area with rich soil and plenty of natural irrigation resulting in a very beautiful, tree covered "green zone."  

Naturally, the Bosque is a favorite place for local recreational opportunities and provides a very beneficial back drop for our city's extensive zoo and botanical exhibition.  The place is literally crawling with every sort of migrating birds and other indigenous creatures.

However, the Bosque is, unfortunately, also populated by careless homo sapiens who are frequently not as careful with fire as they should be.  The predictable result is a "Bosque Fire."  Because the area is filled with trees and brush, such fires can be quite difficult for the city's fire department.  This situation is further aggravated by the difficulty of getting residential fire equipment close enough for effective fire containment.

A Fire in the Bosque, Albuquerque, New Mexico

http://www.flickr.com/photos/1shtar/4494549351/in/photostream/

MeanMesa sent the following letter to the Mayor of Albuquerque this April, suggesting a new approach to fire control in the area.  The response from the Mayor's office is presented as the second letter.

Mayor Richard Berry

Office of the Mayor

PO Box 1293

Albuquerque, NM 87103

Mayor Berry:

The Bosque fire this last week reminded me of a suggestion I have offered previously.  Although I posted the idea to the last mayor, nothing developed from it.

Even -- or, especially -- when the city is facing serious fiscal problems, an opportunity exists to implement an effective and very cost efficient strategy for controlling Bosque fires.  Granted, the proposal would require spending scarce city budget funds to implement, but I suspect that it would eventually more than compensate by both reducing fire department resources directed at such fires and limiting some of the damage they routinely cause the Bosque.

The City of Albuquerque can design and build a shallow draft, self-propelled boat equipped with a high TDH (total dynamic head) pump which can deliver river water from the Rio Grands hundreds of yards inland to a fire area.  Although I can't propose specific equipment specifications, I have seen similar pumps in use for marine applications as harbor fire-boats.

For river duty, such a barge-like vessel could be quite modest compared to its sea-going marine equivalent.  Additionally, only a modest speed capability would be required to provide effective fire service.  The purchase of a marine style fire water pump would represent the largest part of the initial investment.  The rest of the boat could be designed around requirements imposed by considerations of the weight, power requirements, necessary additional equipment and craft integrity based on the pump which was selected.

Even if it were to take up to a half an hour to bring the river pump to the fire site, its fire suppression capacity would still be attractive.  By literally flooding a 200 to 300 yard swath adjacent to the river's bank, it would present an appealing advantage to the residential fire crews and equipment fighting the fire from the land side.  The boat's water delivery would be saturational, routinely extinguishing post-fire, residual "hot pots" from all the area within its reach.

Such a craft would require a two or three man crew of Albuquerque Firemen, and could be docked in a small facility placed in an optimal location, perhaps, one determined by the historical locations of past Bosque fires.  The training regime and policy requirements would need to be developed after considering conditions encountered in "trial runs."  There would be some necessary new coordination required between the land based fire responders and the river based crew.

The environmental impact of pumping Rio Grande water to an active fire would be minimal as would water rights considerations for the emergency use of small, intermittent amounts of Rio Grande flow.

A preliminary estimate for the cost of such a craft, including the pump and other required accessories, could easily reach the $200,000 range, of course subject to substantial refinement as the design progressed.  However, the public relations opportunities alone might mitigate some of this cost.  Possible suggestions here include a contest to design and build the craft or the establishment of a "Friends of the Bosque" style organization which might raise funds through contributions.  Even the naming of the craft might be presented as a sort of lottery prize where potential names could be entered by making a contribution.

The details originating from perfecting the original design might also be profitably  franchised to other fire districts facing the same problem, possibly "sharing" some of the initial program's costs.

Please direct my suggestion to the proper agency within the city government.  I have given the proposal some thought, and am quite prepared to assist in any way I can.  I remain convinced that it is a good idea -- one which would be a good choice for my city.

Sincerely,

 The response from the Mayor's office:

Although the city government considered the idea to have merit, the pressure the economic collapse has imposed on fiscal policy makes the proposal impossible to pursue.

Thanks Republicans.

You have managed to loot so much money from the nation's economy that almost nothing remains possible -- even in a place as far from Washington DC as Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Now, back to firing teachers to balance the city budget.

Wall Street Slams Main Street - Who Will Pay and Who Won't?

The charts and graphs of the Republican Recession of 2007 tell all sorts of stories, yet all those stories have a certain nauseating commonality.  They were comfortably detached, theoretical disasters.  You know, on Wall Street and in the stinky back rooms of investment banks and hedge fund offices.  In fact, during the early stages of the crime, the only real screaming was coming from Dubai, the Peoples' Republic and London as a few select billionaires experienced a bit of "road rash."

MeanMesa watched along with the rest of the United States -- and, after a couple of weeks in 2008 while the rest of the planetary economy "caught up" -- the rest of the world, as the crippling impact of the "missing money" slowly descended through the various "levels of Hell."  The Death Cloud gobbled up home mortgages, bond values, stock markets and pension funds as if they were no more than tantalizing snacks.

Meanwhile, those of us comfortably insulated by personal financial positions far below the poverty line looked on with furtive hope that we might remain "under the radar" of the approaching maelstrom.  Our fleeting hope was that the monster would somehow realize that we had nothing to steal.

That was then.  This is now.

Even a quiet, modest haven such as Albuquerque, New Mexico, for a month or two, breathed a little more freely.  It seemed that only the great and magnificent would suffer after all.  This little town had been fairly frugal with its income, a reflection of the essentially agrarian, common sense roots of its citizens.  However, that was not to be the case.

The poverty ridden State of New Mexico found itself trying to accommodate a budget shortfall of hundreds of millions.  The City of Albuquerque found itself facing a budget shortfall of tens of millions.  The State government, very shortly after that, found itself populated with, well, New Mexicans.  Likewise, the City government found itself populated with Commissioners who had no "fast and loose" brokerage experience which might provide any comforting "slight of hand" tricks to meet the problem.  Or even delay it.

Out came the hack saw.  The budget would be cut.  The calamity had officially arrived.  Of course, New Mexico was not alone on this dark hill of self-realization.  In fact, as states go, New Mexico was not as far down in the hole as many of our neighbors.  Still, there remained the, uh, "hack saw."

The State government in Santa Fe and the City government just down Lomas a few blocks from MeanMesa's Galactic Headquarters had become President Obama's Main Street.  We finally understood what he meant when he spoke of Wall Street and Main Street.

For a relaxing and "fun" interlude (courtesy of Huffington Post) visit Most memorable quotes from Goldman-Sachs CEO.

So, let's look at the blood.  Who will be paying and who will be "delivered" from the hack saw?

We can look at a few local developments, but they will also serve as examples.  The same kinds of difficult decisions are being faced routinely by most states in the country.  Further, at such moments of decision, it turns out that almost everyone's "ox will be gored."  However, there are exceptions, and those excepted from the thrumping turn out to be just as illuminating as those who aren't.

The main corporate health insurer -- spelled "m-o-n-o-p-o-l-y" -- doesn't intend to have their "ox gored."  Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Mexico just applied for the State Insurance Commission to allow them to raise rates by 25%.  Of course, these overly made up clowns danced into the Insurance Commission offices with the recently passed health reform bill clutched in their greedy little hands.

The mortgage bankers, when confronted with the prospect of reducing loan principals to reflect plummeting house values, adamantly insisted that, "No, the home owners must be skinned first.  As bankers, our profits are sacred!"  

Folks trying to live on Social Security checks were placed in the "pay" category.  There would be no cost of living increase for this year.  Of course, there was actually a cost of living increase, but that fact carried little weight in the bargain fest where everyone -- again, with a few exceptions -- would "suffer equally."

 The Republicans had carefully planned for such an encounter.  The "cost of living" included no concern for the cost of food, gasoline, natural gas or medicine.  All those prices went up.  The "cost of living," as modified by corrupt neo-cons in the Congress would be based on the price increases of V-8 pick up trucks and flat screened, plasma televisions from China.

One interesting exception was the "first responders" crowd.  Protected by a powerful union, no wage cuts or trimmed benefit packages would be extracted from the police and firemen.  Apparently, no matter how grave the city's deficit became, everyone else would suffer first.  Those suffering would include the public schools and the teachers.  They would pay.

MeanMesa watches the news reports from Greece.  The public employees there are the ones who, refusing to countenance even a modest pay cut to save the country, are presently rioting.  Could Albuquerque be another Athens?

So, MeanMesa visitors, keep an eye on just where your local and state governments are cutting costs as they try desperately to "make ends meet."  All of this is being settled now -- at least "hack saw-wise" -- but it will rise again just as certainly as tomorrow's New Mexico sun when the "gored oxen" show up for the mid-term elections this November.

All the "non-payers" will continue to insist that the jobs they do are so important that no pay cuts will be tolerated.  So far, they have done fairly well with that approach, but the "times, they are a'changin' "

Oh, lest we forget.  The "Masters of the Universe" on Wall Street will be included in the "non-payer" category.  Miscreants such as the pirate hooligans running Goldman-Sachs, having been frightened ever so slightly by the Security Exchange Commission's law suit for corporate fraud, are willing -- finally -- to say "What we did  was not illegal.  It might have been wrong, but it was not illegal.  However, we intend to keep the money, so screw you!"

We all know that the exact reason that Goldman's business practices are not illegal is because they purchased enough Republican Senators during the autocracy to make sure such a law was never passed.  Never discussed.  Never considered.  The only consideration regarded just what such an oversight might be worth.

When the "hill billies and the bigots" begin to bleed a little, they will become even more racist than before.  The attack on Arizona's Mexicans is only the warm-up.

A Post Posting Script: (PPS)

In the middle of this post, MeanMesa went downstairs to catch the local weather forecast.  New Mexico enjoyed a fairly normal day of spring-time wind -- the highest gusts were 99 mph.  Of interest, however, was not the weather forecast but an unusual commercial.

It was Blue Cross and Blue Shield of New Mexico!  Naturally, there was no time to mention the 25% rate increase.  Instead, the message was:  "We don't care about Wall Street.  We care about you."

Egads.