In Seattle, on the other hand, we are not allowed to dump water at that level of contamination into lake Washington or the Sound. It costs a LOT of money to do secondary treatment, and we are taking it even further by building a massive underground holding tank to make sure that we don't dump any overflow in the event of heavy rain.
This is more than what is federally required, but in this instance I actually think the extra cost is worth it.
[1] https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/1989/sep/21/end-pipe/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Loma_Wastewater_Treatmen... [3] https://www.surfrider.org/campaigns/san-diego-secondary-trea...
King County commissioned the new plant. Seattle officials suggested taking less expensive steps first or building smaller plants.[3] I remember reading the local geology makes underground construction especially expensive. And probably you don't want to copy Dubai's working conditions.
[1] https://www.electricitylocal.com/states/washington/seattle/
[2] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/data/rain-soaked-s...
[3] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/how-brightwater-so...
https://www.seattle.gov/city-light/residential-services/bill...
[1] https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.ph...
Washington state viewed from a whole-state colored map perspective is a wild patchwork quilt of different last mile telco operators (mostly centurylink or ziply now, but others exist, like how the ellensburg valley is neither), and mottled variety of different types of electrical grid operator. Or different types of combination aerial/underground cable operator (comcast or charter, mostly, but by no means all).
It will be somewhat more time consuming, costly and difficulty for a county that is not also a PUD to set up their own fiber construction enterprise.
In this case I think the PUD can actually undercut the existing providers as they already have support staff in place, linemen, etc. but aren’t allowed to take a profit.
I think the water and electricity utility inefficiency is more state issues than city. The money is being spent on fish rights, tribal obligations, getting the last 1% of sewage spill (when the counties across the sound have broken septic flowing constantly) etc. These are hitting the other dam owners too.
You can see some budget breakdown here: http://openbudget.seattle.gov/#!/year/2020/operating/0/servi...
[1] http://www.seattle.gov/tech/initiatives/broadband/studies-an...
And did it ever launch? It would be strange to call it uncompetitive when the real problem was it never existed because the company couldn't raise funding.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20130215072656/http://gigabitsea...
[2] http://www.seattle.gov/tech/initiatives/broadband/studies-an...
They will have multiple “studies” by politically connected firms that go straight in the trash as they have no value whatsoever (among many other scams).
A friend of mine was interested in opening a coffee shop with a wine license in Boston near the common, and the consultant she hired said that the best way to make this happen was to hire this specific law firm at $1000 per hour, and all the permits would sail through committees. If she hired any other firm it would be delayed, and delayed, put on extra reviews, cost her more and take years to complete. Corruption in a less overt way.
Big government types have their heart in the right place, but the reality of human nature and the dirty business of politics is why we can’t have nice things. Some people in government are good, but those that seek and gain power are not the type of people you want guarding our treasury. It’s a tale as old as civilization and it never changes.
How do you know the consultant wasn't lying in order to get business for the law firm?
That salary was paid to discover (and make discoverable in the event of a suit, useful for making sure no one sits on the data) the specifics around systemic racism in the utility in order to improve the diversity of both representation and opinions in order to strengthen financial performance (https://www.catalyst.org/research/why-diversity-and-inclusio...). It's an investment with commonly solid returns for businesses struggling with inclusion challenges, but more importantly, dismissing the money spent on raising the bar on equality in the workplace is something I think many minority participants on HN abhor but are afraid of speaking against because majority participants are quick to express opinions like this as if they're factually correct.
A six-figure salary to study whether the electric grid is racist is absolutely excessive, but it’s just a small detail of the overall fraud, waste, and abuse that drives the exorbitant utility prices in Seattle.
Yikes. If the market demand for the role is six figures (because the financial rewards more-than-justify the spend; see my previous citation), then the cost is absolutely a good value for the grid, for the employee, and for the customers who get better service out of the utility.
And to tshaddox's point, nostromo's comment picked this specific spend as an (implied) example of fraud and waste... over all the other inefficiencies in the system. Utilities are wasteful in so, so many more ways, largely around maintaining manual and error-prone processes that are both slow and costly as a result. These inefficiencies are leagues worse tha studying "how the utility grid was systemically racist" in wastefulness.
I'm not really sure this conversation makes any more sense to pursue.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S07495...
It's also why anecdotes are often used as a technique of persuasion, because so many people eat them up and it eliminates the need for a citation.
How so? Doesn't seem any more ridiculous than any other six-figure job.
Since you're also a Seattle-area local, you might remember that Seattle tried to do a public-private partnership with a company called Gigabit Squared to run fiber into Seattleites' homes. That initiative failed in 2014 [2], but the Seattle City Council has always been able to reconsider, with or without this bill.
* Public Utility Districts are special-purpose governments in Washington dedicated to being non-profit electric or water utilities, with limited tax powers (.045% property tax per year). Many counties have county-wide PUDs that are independent of the county government, such as Snohomish County PUD (Seattle's northern suburbs; no broadband offering) and Chelan County PUD (central Cascade mountains like Wenatchee and Leavenworth; does offer wholesale broadband).
[1] https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=54.16.420
[2] https://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/techflash/2014/01/s...
I think having having the government lay fiber while they are already doing work on the electric infrastructure is an obvious thing to do. But I would be extremely hesitant if the government is the one who owns and runs all the networking equipment (routers, switches, firewalls, etc).
Why is that a problem? I always wanted to get married at a romantic sewage plant.
Seattle itself is fairly well covered by a combination of centurylink, wave and comcast, depending on the exact location. Big chunks of single family detached housing in Seattle where the centurylink copper cables were >90% aerial have now been overbuilt with gigabit class GPON. In addition to the gigabit MDU/apartment services on offer from wave and competitors.
There are a lot of games played with utility rates (eg: have taxpayers on the hook for infrastructure rather than ratepayers), so it’s hard to compare across regions and correctly account for the true cost.
This is what I'm saying, people hate on this city but if you've ever lived in LA, Chicago, NYC...oh boy are you in for a shock if you're not a fan of "I honestly have no idea what they do with public money."
Please, move to Chicago then come back to this thread.
And why would I move from my city to Chicago? I was born here and lived here my whole life. Chicago is worse so I should be thankful it’s not as bad as Chicago? I mean, should I be happy it’s not as bad in Seattle as Mexico City, or the pollution isn’t as bad as New Delhi? I’m genuinely interested in where you’re going with this.
Quite frankly Seattle is quickly fading from being a livable city. My children go to a school that has homeless people shooting up heroine and throwing needles on the school grounds. But sure, Chicago is worse in your opinion, and so I should pay taxes to city of Seattle while law enforcement becomes a joke.
Median home sale price is 1.15MM though so a little more expensive.
Even the city’s vaccination efforts have been focused on “systemic racism” and “equity”. Apparently their vaccine list prioritizes zipcodes with higher representation of races they deem disadvantaged. Many people sat in the Seattle queue with no notifications coming their way before finally finding out about this insanity and seeking vaccinations through other means.
The sewage treatment plant you reference is also not even doing its job. Every year it leaks millions of gallons of raw untreated sewage into the Puget Sound (example https://www.king5.com/article/news/3-million-gallons-of-sewa...). For a city so focused on the environment they only seem to pay lip service to it, as both water bodies and parks (from drug addicted vagrants) are polluted.
The internet service here is fine and the costs are less enraging than city utility bills. Personally I don’t want a public run alternative to kill the acceptable service I get now. At worst I would be worried that Seattle would censor the content accessible via a public internet service given the city leadership’s politics.
CenturyLink has aerial fiber and underground copper in several areas. For example, in Aberdeen it happened because they got a grant from the FCC.
The whole situation is a mess, and CenturyLink likes the mess.
Seattle’s utility companies, owned by the city, are poorly managed and keep having budget shortfalls despite charging very high rates for services. Electricity costs, for example, are growing at several multiples of inflation. Despite having more access to fresh water than just about any US city not on the Great Lakes, our water and sewage rates are higher than desert cities like Vegas and LA.
Who knows where all the money goes? I know one individual personally that was paid a six-figure salary by the electric utility to study how the utility grid was systemically racist. Best I can tell he wrote some emails and made a few presentations and that’s about it. We also have one of the most expensive sewage treatment plants on Earth, which has a museum and wedding / event space for some reason. We spent more on that than Dubai spent on the Burj Khalifa. Maybe that’s why there’s a budget shortfall.