Examining the Redlands Dam

Last Sunday, hundreds of hikers and members of the Havasupai tribe had to be evacuated from a remote canyon connected to the Grand Canyon. Early press reports cited a statement from the National Park Service attributing the surge of water to the failure of the “Redlands Dam,” an earthen dam allegedly over 50 miles upstream. Scarce information about the dam was available on the web. It’s not one of the major dams in the state operated by the Bureau of Reclamation, and it doesn’t appear on this comprehensive state list.

The Arizona state geologist reports its now thought the dam breach was a minor contributor to the flood.

The dam, seen here, was created by a ranch to retain water.

Why might it have failed? According to this geologic study, the area of the dam contains deposits of coarse gravel, which makes a particularly bad foundation for a dam since the water can leak through air spaces in the material. Since the wash drains a huge area of desert, any unusual rain event can cause flooding so it seems reasonable the dam failure played a minor role.

However, there are larger dams in the state worrying officials. The Arizona Department of Water Resources maintains a list of unsafe dams in the state. Four dams are rated in the most serious category, “Unsafe Dams with Elevated Risk of Failure,” which the state thinks could fail during a “100-year or smaller flood event.” The dams are Fredonia, Powerline, Magma, and Cook Dams.

Although dam failures are generally rare, Wikipedia contributors have compiled this list of U.S. accidents. One of the most spectacular was the 1976 collapse of Teton Dam in Idaho, which luckily only killed 11.

Tolls More Equitable Than Sales Tax For Funding Freeways

You’ve heard the buzz about “Lexus Lanes,” a new trend where tolls are adjusted in order to keep some freeway lanes flowing smoothly. They’re related to the idea of charging higher prices for parking, or even a congestion charge such as the one considered for New York City. It’s widely thought the lanes are unfair, since they allow wealthy drivers to zip past congestion. There’s only one problem with that view: a new study disproved it, arguing instead toll lanes are more just than the usual method for funding highways, sales taxes.

Two California professors considered the issue in a new article titled, “Just Pricing: The Distributional Effects of Congestion Pricing and Sales Taxes.” The study found that the lanes were disproportionately used by middle and upper-middle income people, and that the tolls were regressive. So what’s the rub? It turns out the usual means for paying for transportation infrastructure, such as sales and gas taxes, are even more regressive than tolls. In fact, the study concludes that:

… if [sales tax] funds had been used to finance the express lanes, the study found, the poor and wealthy would have paid more. Middle- and upper-middle-income taxpayers would have paid $26 million less each year than they paid under the current cost-distribution system, and the very poorest residents would have paid over $3 million more than they actually did under the current toll system.

They conclude that “Using sales taxes to fund roadways creates substantial savings to drivers by shifting some of the costs of driving from drivers to consumers at large, and in the process disproportionately favors the more affluent at the expense of the impoverished.” The authors propose two policies to overcome the remaining regressive character of tolls: giving out free travel credits to low income commuters, or using the funds to invest in public transit. The comparison is between tolls and general sales taxes, not gas taxes, but I suspect gas taxes would have been only slightly less regressive than sales taxes. (Because the poor own fewer cars and drive less)

Previously I also suggested we should consider other benefits of congestion pricing in the equation - greater transportation choice for all (including low-income commuters), less pollution, and perhaps a shift in behavior towards transit, carpooling, or other more efficient modes. I also discussed before some of the implications for another form of congestion pricing — raising parking meter rates.

What most frustrates me with congestion pricing critics is not their concern — not enough research has been done on equity, and it is a valid point to discuss — but how misplaced it seems given our skewed policies. Our society is riddled with deeply regressive policies. Sales taxes, gas taxes, and lotteries are all known to be regressive. We spend more than twice as much money subsidizing housing for the rich than we do for the poor. The poor disproportionately live near sources of pollution, and consequently have higher rates of asthma, heart disease, and other diseases caused by environmental factors. Meanwhile, our public transit systems, critical lifelines to opportunity for the very poor, are crumbling. In that light, adopting less-regressive congestion pricing and spending some of the revenue on transit service seems like a good decision.

> UCLA: “Joint UCLA–USC study shows that toll roads are more fair than taxes”
> LATimes Blog: “Study finds congestion pricing doesn’t hurt the poor”

Smart Grid Pilot Program Launched

Over 1,000 D.C. homes are now equipped with smart electrical meters that record their hourly electricity usage, encourage conservation during peak times, and even automatically turn down the heat or A/C when electricity is most expensive. The meters are part of a pilot program starting this week to study how “price signals” can encourage consumers to save electricity by providing them with more information about the amount and price of power consumed.

Although the generation of electricity has been deregulated in Washington since 2001, about 99% of PEPCO customers subscribe to the Standard Offer Service, the rate charged to users who have not selected an alternate source. The cost of the electricity is calculated from the average rate of contracts from power plants, plus an administrative charge and taxes. The rate is changed yearly and only adjusted twice a year. This means that even though the generated supply and consumer demand for electricity can range widely, consumers have little incentive to modify their behavior. The idea is that by charging more to consumers during peak times (or, offering discounts for those who conserve at those times) will save consumers money and help PEPCO reduce the peak demand.

From the PEPCO announcement, here are the three pricing options the program is testing:

Under Hourly Pricing, electricity prices will vary hourly. The prices will be set a day ahead, based on prices in the “day ahead” wholesale market operated by PJM Interconnection, the regional power grid. Prices will be available on the project’s Web site or displayed real-time on “smart” thermostats. Based on recent wholesale market trends, hourly prices are expected to exceed conventional power supply prices only about a third of the time within a year, with lower prices the remainder of the time. Customers will be notified of high priced hours a day in advance through an automated phone call, an e-mail, text page or “smart” thermostat notification.

With Critical Peak Pricing, peak prices will be in effect for four hours on critical peak days, of which there are about 15 each year. These critical peak hours during which higher prices are charged will be limited to about 60 hours per year. Customers will be notified of these events the day before through an automated phone call, an e-mail, text page or “smart” thermostat notification. Prices during the critical peak hours will be substantially higher than conventional rates but will be offset by lower prices during the remaining 8,700 hours of the year.

Under Critical Peak Rebate, participants will continue to pay the same generation charges as the Standard Offer Service charged by Pepco. During critical peak events, however, customers can earn rebates by reducing their consumption below what they would normally have used during those times. Customers will be notified of these events the day before through an automated phone call, an e-mail, text page or “smart” thermostat notification.

Presumably the results from the program will help PEPCO decide which of the above policies to eventually extent to all residential customers. For now the program is closed since the program website reports they received a “tremendous” response from the 1,400 customers invited to participate one year ago. Although there’s not much there yet, one of the project’s sponsors, the D.C. Office of the People’s Council, has launched a blog to track the program.

In South Africa I experienced a related method for encouraging conservation: pre-paid electricity. We would purchase a fixed amount of electricity from an authorized seller such as a supermarket, and they would provide us a confirmation code we would enter into the meter in our rented home. The meter would recognize the code and display the total amount of electricity purchased, and slowly tick down the balance as you used it. In fact, the Wall Street Journal reported last year that “A half-dozen utilities are trying prepaid programs now, but that could accelerate quickly.” We found that a conspicuous meter in the kitchen ticking away our money made us highly aware of our power consumption. Participants in the Arizona program described by the Wall Street Journal cut their power usage 12%.

What about consumers generating their own power? Although PEPCO allows consumers to generate power for the grid from renewable technology through their Green Power Connection program, SproutDC pointed out in a previous comment that D.C. does not offer rebates or incentives for the installation of solar power systems like California or New Jersey.

More
> Power Cents DC
> DC Office of the People’s Council: D.C. Electric “SMART METER” Pilot Program Announcement, Blog
> PEPCO: Residential Pilot to Test “Smart Metering” for DC Electric Customers
> PR Newswire: Smart Metering and Demand Response Pilot Goes Live in Washington D.C.
> Wall Street Journal: “New Ways to Monitor Your Energy Use“