Utah Lake Bridge Controversy

A bridge over Utah Lake has been proposed and hotly debated in Utah Valley.  It is projected that the valley will double in population from the current nearly 600K to1.2M by 2040, and that the population west of Utah Lake will go from 40K to at least 250K.  From the standpoint of added time and fuel expended, not having a bridge over Utah Lake will become wasteful for a rapidly increasing number of commuters who will be traveling twice daily around the lake to get to the central business (Provo/Orem) area.  The bridge is opposed on the grounds of disrupting migratory waterfowl, being too expensive, and being built prematurely.  Here is a detailed document with pics of the proposed bridge from various vantage points, including those used in this blog entry.

Having lived in southern Louisiana for over ten years, it becomes hard to understand why there would be much controversy as to whether to build a bridge over Utah Lake.  Try going anywhere from New Orleans without going over a substantial amount of elevated highway not much different than is needed to go over Utah Lake which itself is only 12' deep at its deepest point.  The causeway over Lake Pontchartrain is 24 miles compared to the 6 miles proposed to go over Utah Lake.  The stretch of elevated freeway from Ponchatoula to the Mississippi River (I-55, I-10, I-310) with nothing but swamp and open water underneath, is nearly 50 miles.  Maybe the die hard opponents of building the bridge need to come live in New Orleans for a summer. Let them go on I-10 from Slidell to New Orleans to Baton Rouge to Lafayette.  Each leg will take them over far more open water than the 6-mile proposed bridge at the north end of Utah Lake.  And by the way, they will see plenty of bird life down here, for those who worry about how a bridge over the north end of Utah Lake is going to disrupt bird migration as it relates to the lake.  As to the prohibitive cost of building the bridge ($300M to $600M, depending on the estimate), perhaps Utah needs to get an estimate from those who built the elevated highways in Louisiana.  These estimates seem excessive, but then again, what do I know?

One final thought:  We have committed to living in Tennessee and look very much forward to what we believe will be a rich experience there.  If we had decided to return to Utah Valley, living on the west side of Utah Lake would have had enormous appeal for me.  The west side is a respite from the rat race on the east side. Yet it is close enough to have an amazing view of the "big city" across the lake and the Wasatch Mountain backdrop behind it.  One example of a future planned community is Mosida Orchards...worth checking out for those who live in the general area.

Tale of two weather contrasts: Truckee, CA versus New Orleans, LA

While eating breakfast this morning, I pulled up the Weather Channel and was surprised to learn that snow depth at Truckee, California (near Lake Tahoe) is about 9 feet.  Truckee has received ~6 feet of snow in the past week, and is expecting at least 2 feet more through the weekend.  Ski resorts around Lake Tahoe,  where the snow is much deeper, normally close in early May.  With snowfall records occurring this year, they may stay open well into June, and the locals are ecstatic.

By stark contrast, New Orleans is expected to reach 83 F today, which would be near the record high for this date (85 F).  The sugarcane crop in Louisiana appears to be nearly a month further along than usual in early spring growth.  Our spring garden is looking great as well.  We won't be benefiting from it this year, since it will belong to someone else after we close on our house early next month.  But we're enjoying lettuce, radishes, and onions from it already.

Sweeteners, caloric and non-caloric

We had a group of college students from the Dallas area visit several government research facilities in our area over their spring break.  They spent a day with us.  One of our scientists, Dr. Paul White, was asked questions about sugar (i.e., table sugar or granulated sucrose) in comparison to other sweeteners, including how their chemical structures differed from sucrose.  After the tour, Paul developed a graphic that the rest of the scientists could use whenever the subject might come up again in future visits by the public.  Paul graciously allowed me to use his graphic as the basis for a personal blog entry.  I rearranged the order of the sweeteners and embellished his original graphic with color.  The chemical structures of the various sweeteners were taken from Wikipedia.

Sucrose is the standard by which all other sweeteners are measured.  High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is the next most important caloric sweetener, but it has declined as of late for two reasons, 1) a negative image in comparison to table sugar, and 2) increased prices for corn which has made table sugar increasingly cost competitive.  The corn industry has worked hard to overcome the negative image that the public has of HFCS, and are now seeking permission from the FDA to use the name "corn sugar" on food labels.  Commercials from the corn industry state, "whether it's corn sugar or cane sugar, your body can't tell the difference. Sugar is sugar."  Natural caloric sweeteners of lesser importance include honey, maple syrup, etc.

Non-caloric sweeteners have had less impact on cane and beet sugar consumption than HFCS.  But their impact is still substantial.  We have essentially gone through four generations of non-caloric sweeteners, namely saccharin (Sweet'N Low), aspartame (Equal), sucralose (Sweeta), and now Stevia glycosides from the Stevia plant, sold in various formulations as Stevia, Truvia, etc.  The latter is a natural product.  The others are artificial sweeteners, though sucralose is a sucrose molecule modified (some OH groups replaced with Cl) in a way that makes it 600 times as sweet as sucrose.

Houma home sold

Unless something unforeseen occurs between now and final sale, which, at this moment, appears to be highly unlikely, we have sold our home in Houma.  The home will have a new owner on April 8.  We asked for a two-week extension on the time we need to vacate the home, which the new owner has agreed to.  This gives us a little extra breathing room on the other side.  Our new home in Tracy City, Tennessee has been "nearly finished" since Labor Day last year, and is still not quite ready to be occupied.  The home itself has been finished for some time, but the holdup has been the building of the carport and a small storage building inside the carport.  We are given to understand that the carport is essentially finished, and it's the storage building that awaits completion.  Once completed, we then have to wait an additional 10 days before we are allowed to occupy our new home, or put a single item inside of it.  Once we move our belongings to the new home, Judy will move.  I will need to stay a little longer, since I am obligated to give a minimum of three months notice to the USDA before retiring.  We are looking forward to turning the page to a new chapter in our lives.

The cost of driving a car...more than you may think

Everybody knows that gas prices have gone up sharply as of late...40 cents just in the last month.  My favorite website for tracking gas prices on a nationwide basis is at GasBuddy.  Click on 'Gas Price Maps' at the GasBuddy website and you can get a quick visual of gas prices by county across the nation.  Notwithstanding, fuel costs still represent a small fraction of the total cost of driving a car.  AAA recently published the 2010 Edition of their annual "Your Driving Costs," which considers typical operating costs (gas, maintenance, tires) and ownership costs (insurance, license, registration, vehicle depreciation, and finance charge) for three sizes of sedans (small, medium, large) driven for 10K, 15K, or 20K miles per year.

With rising gas prices, AAA's chart is quickly becoming dated.  Since the price of gas has gone up from the $2.60 per gallon that their chart (pdf file) was based on, to nearly $3.50 per gallon, I adjusted the cost of gas per mile in the AAA chart accordingly and posted the revised numbers in this blog entry (click on chart).  After going through this exercise, I was surprised by four realities: 1) cars are much more expensive to drive than I appreciated, 2) small cars are far cheaper to drive than large cars, and not just because they are more fuel efficient, 3) sharp increases in gas prices do not change the total cost of driving a car, even on a per-mile basis nearly as much as I imagined, and 4) the person driving a car 20K miles per year is paying considerably less per mile than the person driving a similar car only 10K per year.

Biomass meeting and tour in Tennessee

I was fortunate enough to be able to attend a biomass meeting in Tennessee last month (February 15-17).  On the third day (Thursday, Feb 17), after two days of meetings in Knoxville, the group had a chance to visit a switchgrass farm and a cellulosic ethanol demonstration plant, both in Vonore, TN, which is about 45 min south of Knoxville.  We were informed that there are just over 5,000 acres of agriculture land now planted to switchgrass in Tennessee.  The nearby ethanol plant is capable of producing 250,000 gallons per year of ethanol from switchgrass, corn cobs, and other cellulosic sources.  More details are available at this link.  There is still a gap (locals called it the "valley of death") between the State and Federal funding of switchgrass production and conversion to ethanol versus actually having a viable, self-sustaining cellulosic ethanol industry.  Further improvements in efficiency are being worked on in several key areas, both on the farms and at the plant.  As a side note, I got a kick out of asking one of the locals how to say the name of the town we were in.  I asked, "Is it Vonore, like 'manure'?"  He replied, "You have to emphasize the first syllable...VON-ore.  It's just like the word, McDonalds.  Here, we say MAC-donalds."