Happy New Year

After yesterdays downer posts here is a little silliness to perk everyone up. This is an email I received this morning.

We are pleased to get to konw that you are presently on the market for Ceramic Tile,and as a specialized manufacturer and exporter for these products in China,we sincerely hope to establish business relations with your esteemed corporation. Hereby our competitve offer....if the item we quoted which have different with you required, Pls kindly inform us in detail,we will be pleased to re-offer you asap. Pls kindly check and revert at yr earlist.

Not that I would do any better sending an email to China in chinese. Don't drink to much, but have fun.

I'm Depressed

I just read the requests from Southern Reynolds County schools in Ellington (30+miles from the Taum Sauk plant) and Centerville Schools (a K-8 school at the county seat). I don't doubt that the need for most of the requests are real, but if these schools (and Lesterville) are in this bad of shape its real depressing. I would suggest to Southern Reynolds that "smart teachers" are more important than "smart boards". And to Centerville, all those "dies" are not going to make your students creative. In fact Lesterville has one of those systems and it not used very often. Teachers and administrators often think that one more piece of equipment will make their school great. What we need are creative teachers. I do understand that it is hard to keep up with technology, but I don't see any evidence that the current staff is trying to use what technology is already available.

I moved to Lesterville in 1983 , when my son was just starting 6th grade. I felt that he got about as good an education (except math) as he would have if we had stayed in Des Moines. But my son was lucky in that out of a graduating class of 19 (in 1990) five students went to four year colleges and they all graduated. That is a very high % for Lesterville. Its not that country kids are dumb, its that they don't know how to dream. My son has two cousins, one has an MBA and one is finishing his residency in OB/GYN. They both graduated from schools that encouraged them to dream. They also had parents that encouraged those dreams.

If you take the original Ameren/FERC agreement, probably the thing that would make the most difference in the "quality of life" of those people living near the Taum Sauk plant are the proposal for a medical clinic in Lesterville and a Community Center in conjunction with the fire department and the EMTs. Broadband would be great, especially for telemedicine, but it probably does not have the impact that improved medical care would have. Its obvious from seeing all the requests that rural Missouri is in great trouble. I imagine that rural everywhere is pretty much the same. We sure need some leadership with some innovative ideas.

Just The Facts, Mam!

Shelley Powers has done a great thing, she has posted just the basic proposals. So if you want to see all the recommendations for funding and not wade through the supporting documents and the large files here is your chance. It still takes a while on dial up, but 600K sure beats 3MB. Thanks again Shelley.

Lesterville Wishlist

Here is a site where you can read just the basic request from the Lesterville School District for most of the Ameren/FERC fine money. First, I would like to thank Shelley Powers for making this available to all of us at the wrong end of a small copper wire.

Anyone who ever bought a Missouri Lottery ticket should realize that your chance of winning something from this process is pretty good, so I don't blame Lesterville R-4 for trying to win the jackpot. My wife worked for the Lesterville school for 15 years before retiring in 2003 , so I'm aware of the lack of money to operate a quality school.

Notice that on the prioritized list that the first 9 items don't have anything to do with teaching/learning. I know that you need a good environment to be able to teach/learn, but if any funding is available from this process I would sure hope it had a direct effect on some students learning. Notice that on the list a lawn mower is more important than science equipment.

The school has spent tens of thousands of dollars over the last 10 years on technology and yet still sends out a school news letter by mail, the schools web site is not only very basic but you can't find any email addresses on the web site, and as far as I know no current student or recent graduate (or faculty member) has a web site. It would be wonderful if some of this Ameren money really made a difference in the area of science education, but I'm from Missouri and you would have to "show me".

The only thing on this list that would effect my "quality of life" is the Community Center. Remember I told you this was going to be fun.

While I'm on this rant, there is still a month to submit a recommendation to Ameren for these funds. I sure hope someone out there has some better ideas than what has been requested.
Here's a chance to change the "quality of life" of a lot of folks and to help protect the Black River environment, but the main thing we need is some good ideas. Anybody out there thinking?

Smithsonian

Many of you know that one of the special things about the past year was the opening of the American Art Museum where a bronze vessel that Doug Hendrickson and I made 30 years ago went on display. The Washington Post has a nice article about the space where our work is displayed.

Holiday Weekend Reading

The Attorney General's web site has posted all the requests for funding from the Ameren/FERC fine. As some of my regular readers know I have requested that Ameren install broadband internet service in the Lesterville area. I bring this up because some of the files on the AG's page are huge. The Lesterville School Districts request is 13MB so it might take me all night at 2KB to download that one. It is an interesting list for me to read. Looks like I'm the only business in Lesterville to make a request. Every governmental or quasi-govermental agency in Reynolds County jumped on the gravy wagon. The few that I have opened include St. Genevieve County Court that is looking for $20,000 for a new sound system in their court rooms. A reasonable request, but St. Genevieve doesn't seem to be near Taum Sauk last time I checked. Anyway I'll try to drill through this list over the weekend and see what gems are buried here.

PS. I just spent over two hours downloading the Lesterville School request, only to be told that the file was corrupted. I called my son in Springfield and he said that the school had a number of requests that totaled $4.6 million, but part of that was for a Community Center to be built on school property. Guess I'll have to wait till my next trip to Springfield to see all the requests.

Strong Editorial

A friend just emailed me about this editorial in todays St Louis Post-Dispatch. I haven't posted it because my paper has been a day (sometimes 2) late for about a month. When you live in Lesteville and want the St Louis paper you depend on a truck heading south on 67 to Fredericktown meeting a mail truck heading west from Cape Girardeau at about 4am to drop off the papers. I guess its amazing that it gets here at all. And on top of that, Google News didn't let me know about the editorial.

Holiday Trip

We had family visitors over the holiday, so we took a short trip to see the Shut-Ins and the Lower Reservoir. At the Shut-Ins they are working on removing the dirt in the "Boulder Path" area and they have stacked up all the rocks that came down the scour. At the Lower Reservoir the water level is quite low, the water is still cloudy green, and there are a number of large rubber and metal pipes running along the west shoreline. There were also some large rubber hoses floating in the water. I have heard that they have a special boat that is dredging the clay off the bottom of the lake and this is probably what all this equipment is for. I'll try to get up again on a nice day and see if I can find any work being done.

Merry Christmas

I started this blog on Christmas morning of 2005 and since then over 13,000 visitors have logged in to see what is happening in Lesterville. I don't expect much breaking news between now and Christmas day so just wanted to wish all of my loyal readers a great holiday and hope that 2007 brings some resolution to the various problems and opportunities in the Black River area. The photo is of our old cat, Be Be, dreaming about a wonderful Christmas.

Be Prepaired

Received this information via a comment.

Heard tell of an attempt to get 1000 Boy Scouts from the St. Louis area to volunteer their time in helping to work on the restoration of the Shut-ins first weekend in May 2007.

I don't have many scount contacts these days, but I will try and see if this is going to happen.

Postcard From Mound City

For those of you that don't get the St Louis Post-Dispatch here is a link to the Saturday editorial cartoon. Because of the way they archive them you will have to click on December 16 "power" to view the cartoon at screen size.

Getting Ready For Next Summer

Thanks to the efforts of Glee Suntrup of Bearcat Campground the VisitMO page about the Black River has been updated and is more positive, instead of being a damage report.

Kansas City Wants Their Share

Here is an editorial from the Kansas City Star.

Wonder if anybody has thought ahead to the day when the State of Missouri owns the Union Electric part of Ameren. If you thought it was fun getting a car licensed in Missouri what would it be like if the state ran the power company?

Business Suit

Here is a brief news article.

Ten businesses filed a lawsuit Friday against the AmerenUE utility for what they called "devastating financial losses" after a reservoir collapse last year. The amount of damages being sought was not released.

The lawsuit, filed in Reynolds County Circuit Court, came a year and a day after the Taum Sauk reservoir collapsed at the hydroelectric plant, releasing more than a billion gallons of water, significantly damaging Johnson's Shut-Ins State Park and the water quality of the Black River, a popular tourist destinations in the Arcadia Valley.

The businesses said they relied on park and river-related tourism for their revenue.

It didn't take much searching to find the names of the businesses. Barney's Bait, Baldwin Bros. Hardware, Kozy Korner Cafe, Glory Days Emporium, Yankee Trading Post, Grant's Inn, The Parlor Bed & Breakfast and Plain & Fancy Bed & Breakfast, Nostalgic Place in Arcadia and a McDonald's owned by McMike, Inc. These are all businesses located in the Ironton area. I hope they have good books and tax records, because I think that it would be real hard to prove a loss based on this event. How many of you buy a Big Mac in Pilot Knob on your way to Lesterville?

The Dude

This weekend in New York is the Lebowski Fest. If I was going to be locked away and could only have 10 movies, The Big Lebowski would be one of them. So tonight I'm going to forget all about Taum Sauk and DNR and put The Big Lebowski in the DVD. I'll be drinking a White Russian and thinking about the rug on the floor.

Poor John Danforth

The Springfield News-Leader has a great editorial about the Taum Sauk mess and suggests that a third party step in and try to sort it all out. Good read!

DNR/AG

I just read the DNR press release about their (Childers) feelings about the Nixon law suit. I still can't find any information about the role of the AG's office in the "project enhancement" process, except at a collector of the recommendations. If anyone has any other information please email it to me. Anyway, what I was struck by was that last spring when there was great frustration in Lesterville with the lack of progress in cleaning up the river, the DNR spokesmen kept saying that they were representing the interest of Lesterville. That may be true, but DNR never designated a single person that local individuals could contact with a problem or idea and know that they would get some action or at least an answer. So the fact that the AG's office sent two assistant AG's to Reynolds County to hear from the local officials and tried to get a process started that didn't seem to have any direction is commendable. There are still a lot of local businesses that are iratated that they were not invited to the meeting in Centerville, but for that I blame the county officials. I think they did not want the compitition. Ameren has known about the "project enhancements" requirements since late August, and everyone else has known about this since October 2, so some one could have come forward earlier than early December to try and get this process started. But now it seems to be open, operating, and I hope eventually transparent.

Leaked Info

Someone leaked the proposed DNR settlement with Ameren and the Kansas City Star has a report.

Ameren Fact Sheet

Ameren has also posted a Fact Sheet for the one year anniversary. This contains a lot of good information that I have wondered about and I'm glad to see them put it out for all to read. The last part of the page has information about a possible rebuild of the Upper Reservoir.

Project Enhancements

Project Enhancements is a funny term, but $5 million for the Lesterville area is real important. Ameren has posted a page on its web site with information about making recommendations for this project. While they do not define "near the plant" it is good to see that they are going to stick to actual wording in the "agreement" with FERC, and not use the phrase "community improvments" or "local improvments" as some local businesses and county officials have interpreted the process. According to the KSDK story, DNR chief Childers says JayNixon will soon administer a $5 million fund provided by Ameren to help economic development in the flood area. I don't know that this is infact true, I'll have to keep digging on this topic.

Busy Day To Be Gone

While I was having lunch in Farmington the TV in the restaurant was tuned to NBC5 in St Louis, and while I could not hear the sound they were broadcasting live from the Shut-Ins. On our way home we passed the CBS4 truck. Also, this morning there were four explosives trucks heading south. I assume they were headed to the upper reservoir. Now the news, here are some stories that I found interesting.

Kansas City Infozine (make sure you read the end of this article)

St Louis Post

KSDK

Law Suit and $5 Million

Here is a link to Ameren's official press release about the AG's law suit. In the middle of this press release is the following statement.

In addition, in coming days, the company will announce a protocol for soliciting recommendations for use of $5 million for project enhancements at or near the Taum Sauk facility. AmerenUE agreed to set up this fund as part of its settlement with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) of all liabilities associated with the failure of the plant. The company is aware that several individuals and agencies have prepared applications and intend to submit those directly to FERC. In order to ensure that all recommendations are considered, the company will set up a single address for the collection of recommendations.

All recommendations will be considered for inclusion in a final plan that will be submitted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission staff on Feb. 28. The deadline for submitting recommendations is Feb. 1.

I told those attending the "Tourist Center" meeting on Sunday that the December 11 deadline mentioned in the local papers was not a real deadline and I'm glad to see that I was right. I'll post the "protocol" information once I receive it. So far my application is the only one that has been posted on the FERC web site, but it takes about two weeks between being received and being posted on the web. I sent a copy of my proposal to FERC because I was not sure who was finally going to define "near the project" and the final definition of that phrase is going to be very important in how the funds are spent.

More Stuff

In the past I recommended that your read Shelley Powers and today I'll do that again. She makes a lot of references back to this blog so it may feel like you are going in circles, but I admire her passion for the subject.

Nixon Sues Ameren

Busy day, just got a comment that Nixon has sued Ameren. Here is the article from the Kansas City paper.

December 14, 2005 As I Remember It

I'll be gone for most of tomorrow (doctor's appointment) so I thought I would post this now.

The day as I remember it. It was 7am; Pam was already up and in the kitchen. I was laying in bed thinking about what I needed to get done during the day. The phone rang and a neighbor told me the Upper Reservoir had broken and I needed to "think about what I needed to do." At seven in the morning it's hard to decide what is the most important thing to do in an emergency, so I called my son, Jason, and daughter-in-law, Addie in Springfield. I thought I should let them know what had happened in case they heard about it later in the day and would be worried about our safety. My son told me to pack the van, grab the cats and head to Springfield. I said that I had looked at my maps and I thought we would be just fine since we are a half mile from the river. He said, "You sound just like one of those old guys in New Orleans, get out of Lesterville." I said I wasn't leaving, so Jason said he would take the day off and was heading to Lesterville in case we needed help.

The thing I remember about the rest of the morning was how hard it was to get any reliable information. The radio and TV kept saying that a twenty foot wall of water was coming down the Black River. Some reports said that parts of Lesterville and Annapolis were flooded. It turned out that none of that was true. The local phone system quickly overloaded like the worst Mothers Day, so it was hard to call out and for others to call in. I did receive two calls from friends in St. Louis (both own cabins in the area) and around noon I got a call from an old friend in Venice, Italy. If someone in Venice is worried about you and high water there might be a problem. If you don’t have phone service you also can’t get online, so it was mid afternoon before I posted a note on my web site that everyone was OK and the lodges were fine.

Addie called to say that a news crew and satellite truck from KY3, the NBC station in Springfield,were on their way to Lesterville. Jason once worked for KY3 and was the weekend operator of the satellite truck, so when he got to our home he said, “let’s go up to Lenny’s and see what going on in the truck.” There were seven satellite trucks in Lesterville that day, three at Lenny’s and four at the school. After driving up to the lower reservoir we went to the school and it was an amazing site. Every government agency that you can imagine was there wondering what to do. For the locals it was like “old home week” with everyone trading stories about the morning. Jason decided that we really were going to be OK and he headed back to Springfield.

Addie called again to ask if the KY3 news crew could spend the night at out home. Since the lodges were closed and there aren’t many motel rooms in Lesterville, those spending the night in order to do more reporting on the 15^th were having a hard time finding a place to stay. So I drove up to town at 10pm where Jim Hankins, Cara Connelly, and Jim VanDillen were sending a live shot back to Springfield and after the news they followed me back to Peola Valley.

And so ended a long and interesting day. Those who were here will never forget the experience. We were lucky that thing turned out as they did, and yet, one year later we are still dealing with a dirty Lower Reservoir, a maybe rebuild of the Upper Reservoir, and all the work and political problems at the Shut-Ins. So it will be a long time until the last chapter is written about this event.

Perfectly centered, remarkably connected

Here is a wonderful editorial by Eric Mink.

Thinking about yesterdays "news" I realized it had to be a stunt by DNR. They have been negotiating with Ameren for months and all they have to show for it is a statement that they have made a proposal to settle, but we can't tell you what the proposal is. This press release was sent out to coincide with the one year anniversary and not much else. My question is does this mean that DNR "blinked" first, stay tuned.

News Yes, Resolution No

Here is a link to the St. Louis Business Journal with an article about the DNR/Ameren settlement proposal. This link will take you to an AP article about the same topic, but with some additional information. The timing is interesting with the first anniversary on Thursday. I do know that the Reynolds County elected officials are opposed to Ameren giving up Church Mountain, because of loss of tax revenue and possible loss of future expansion of the Taum Sauk plant. I'm sure those same officials would rather have some additional funds for projects around the county instead of seeing Kansas City biking enthusiasts have a new bike trail, but I understand the idea that everyone in Missouri lost a little something in this event.

Any News

Thursday will be the first anniversary of the Taum Sauk event. It will be interesting to see if there are any articles in the news on that day, and more importantly if there is any new information. Ameren has not posted any new information on is web site since October 2 and the park service has not posted any new information since the part closed in early October. If you search Google news for "Lesterville Black River" you get nothing, last winter that would have brought up over 100 aticles. The search "Ameren Taum Sauk" brings up 7 articles that are a month old. So as the politicians, bureaucrats, and corporate officers play with our future we would just like a little new information.

Lesterville is hoping for something beside coal in our stocking.

Tourist Center and Shut-Ins News

I attended the meeting on the Tourist Center this afternoon. I was surprised to find 32 people in attendance, I was expecting 6 to 8. The meeting was chaotic and unorganized, with a number of competing ideas as to how to proceed. The person that organized the meeting announced that she had already sent a proposal to the AG's office for $1,250,000.00 that would cover a tourist center, new street lights, a sewer system for Lesterville, and other projects. I pointed out that if you read the "agreement" that probably none of these types of projects would be funded. The one common thread out of all speakers was a feeling of frustration that Ameren has not come forward with some ground rules on how to proceed with this process. Remember I told you that this was going to be a fun winter.

Before going to the meeting, an employee of the State Park system called and ask if they could come by the pottery and buy some Christmas gifts. I learned that essentially no work is being done at the park. Ameren is sticking to its position that until they settle with the State that they don't want to expend any further money. So if you care about the park, and you have a republican senator in Jeff City you might call and ask if there is anything that can be done to get DNRs attorneys and Amerens attorneys to solve the problem and quit worrying who is going to blink first.

If I was still in school I sure would hate to try and diagram that last sentence.

Transparency II

I've received word from the AG's office that they will make the list of proposals public, probably on the AG website. I'll let you know when it is available.

Transparency

I've sent an email to the Attorney General's office asking that when they compile the list of all requests for Ameren funding that they make the list public. This might happen anyway when the requests go to FERC, but FERC might receive only the "approved" list. Right now the process is anything but transparent.

3 degrees this morning in Peola Valley, brrrr!

The Race is On

An article in the Reynolds County Courier details a meeting on Nov. 28 at the courthouse with two members of Jay Nixon's staff. The article states, "Noting the urgency of the time requirements, they asked all interested persons and groups to get their "want lists" in to the attorney general's office by December 11 so office personnel could then consolidate all requests and submit them to FERC in coordinaton with Ameren by Dec. 29 of this year. I don't care if all the requests add up to $10 or $15 million, one of the AG's staff said. We are not interested in determining who gets what, we just want to get all the requests in on time and let FERC decide how the money is handed out. Let's get everything on the table and let them make the final decisions."

The interesting thing is there is nothing in the "Agreement" that states if Ameren is going to prioritize the requests or if FERC is actually going to be the big final arbitrator in these matters. It only states that FERC must make a quick decision on the proposals. Still up in the air is how the three areas of the "projects enhancements" are going to be defined. One final thing, everyone keeps talking about $5 million, when in fact there is only $4 million plus interest. The FERC agreement requires $1 million be spent on a Emergency Management Plan, so the sheriff and fire department will spend the first million.

Stay tuned, lots of people are putting together their Santa list.

Tourist Center

I received an invitation in the mail yesterday to attend a meeting on Sunday afternoon to discuss the building and staffing of a "Tourist Center" in Lesterville. This would be a proposal to Ameren as part of the FERC fine. I should wait until I hear the proposal, but I'm sceptical. Not sure that the area needs a tourist center and I'm not sure how it would be funded once the fine $$$ ran out. It might provide minimum wage employment for a few local folks, but I don't see that it does much for economic development for the area.

If those of you that are regular summer visitors would take time to post a comment on the following I'll pass along your views - does Lesterville need a "Tourist Center", if so what services should it offer and when should it be staffed, where should it be located, should the tourist center have a web site and provide information by email, could a "virtual" tourist center work? Thanks

A Commercial

My brother has been working for a few months trying to get a web site up for his jewelry business. So check it out and see if you can find that perfect Christmas gift. Thanks, Lee

Ferber Jewelry

River Report + Ice Show

Finally made it out this morning (late post because we lost power again) and the river is up. No beach or rocks at BRL. Peola road had some damage from water down near Riversedge, but still OK for driving. Pam and I went to Ironton this afternoon and Tip Top was a icy wonderland. All the trees were coated with about a half inch of ice. Hope all out St. Louis friends are getting back to normal.

Old Man Winter

Our power just came back on after a 12 hour outage. From what I'm hearing on the radio I'm sure many of you will not read this for some time because of your own power problems. On top of everything else we are flooded in. Many of you that have visited the pottery have asked about the small creek you cross to get back here. Well, today its a large creek. Think we had about 4 inches of rain yesterday. We took our rain gauge in after 3 inches because we didn't want it to freeze, but it continued to rain hard for sometime after we took it in. Don't know what the river looks like, but I would say this is the biggest flood in about 4 years. Maybe this will help flush out the river, but I'm sure its going to give Ameren fits with its efforts to clean out the lower reservoir. Stay warm.