[Mpls] All Quiet On the Riverfront... ?

[Dyna Sluyter]

	It seems quiet on the riverfront, but the noise of passing cars, 
buses, and trucks alone would probably qualify the wealthy local 
residents for extra insulation and new windows if they had an airport 
in similar proximity. Then there's the frequent trains and occasional 
towboats, with plenty of high powered pleasure boats on the weekends.

	It has been this way for over a century and a half. Early industrial 
technology was neither clean nor quiet. Day and night crude machinery 
ground and moved grain and lumber and got knows what all else. 
Unbalanced machinery vibrated entire blocks and multimillion pound 
trains shook everything. The ears were assualted by a cacaphony of 
whistles, screeches, and bangs as railroad cars were switched and 
barges banged docks. The smells of rotting grain and rotten liquor 
filled the air. And from above came a constant rain of grain dust, coal 
soot, and spray from the falls.

	Those sensations are fortunately muffled by modern technology, but 
still there. And despite whatever fantasies the people who bought the 
expensive riverside hovels have this is still a working river. And the 
efforts of the Park Board no matter how dedicated are never going to 
make this a wild and scenic river.

	Sewers big enough to walk through lie but a few feet below. The 
largest building riverside is a million square foot Post Office where 
over a thousand workers toil through the night to move our mails. Less 
than a stones throw from the river that same Post Office runs a 
megawatt class diesel generator for backup and peaking power. Just 
above the falls 3 and 4 megawatt diesel generators come and go. With 12 
and even 16 cylinders big enough to pass a dinner plate through they 
rattle and vibrate night and day as only diesels can.

	In the midst of this noise and vibration and the other products of 
large scale internal combustion someone has proposed to add two small 
pollutionless and silent generators. They are fed by an eight inch 
water pipe, smaller than one of the neighboring diesel generators dozen 
or more noisy cylinders. These generators weight less than the taxpayer 
subsidized SUVs in the luxury river front homes parking garages. Fact 
is, you could probably clandestinely install one under the most 
expensive lofts on the river and they'd never be the wiser.

	But sadly it is wisdom that some of these these wealthy riverfront 
newcomers are lacking, and perhaps some of the Park Board too. Unable 
to tell the difference between a micro hydro generator and Hoover Dam 
they have declared war on the little generator that could. And after 
many a wise engineer and civil servant has already given there approval 
to this green energy, the ultimate decision will come down to... Our 
Park Board? Stranger yet, a supermajority is required so but four Park 
Commissioners can deprive the citizens of green zero pollution energy.

	Hopefully our Park Board has the wisdom to give us this clean energy.

		from upriver in Hawthorne,

			Dyna Sluyter