Craig Regan 14 said:
We might be getting a little too deep in the economic weeds so let me shorten this up a bit:
You called for leadership and communication from council. Attached in my prior post is what will get us to a better model. I have not found anyone that disagrees with the numbers as a whole. There will always be grey area but dont let perfect get in the way of better.
I don't recall doing that, as I got into this post by relaying my opinion (and we all know just how much these are worth) on the intentions of Goodland Farms and their water permitting, and the run on effects from it.
I think the closest was that if a council person wanted to get something done that would actually be effective in the necessary amount of time to stave off significant effects, they'd need to champion large action and be willing to tell the community some hard truths about where we're at, why we're there (partially budget issues from the past, part an incredibly and uniquely Texan approach to water rights), and be willing to take the arrows from the community which often seems to want to stick its head in the sand and pretend that if it wasn't a problem 30 years ago, it can't be a problem today.
I do appreciate your research and presenting of numbers and thoughts overall, even if I disagree with some of the premise of them.
Craig Regan 14 said:
Just because it is NOT a perfect outcome does not mean it is not better than what we currently have.
Oh, I agree, however I also don't want my council and leaders to fret about, rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic because they are either too afraid or to inept to properly convey to the public the gravity of the situation when it comes to infrastructure and to champion what needs to be done to shore up the bedrock of the community for years to come.
I have the same problem with community leaders in this particular town that I have with a number of larger businesses. They look only to next quarter's numbers for what they operate on. Do whatever you need to do to get those quarterlies looking good, and damn the long term consequences. Same with politicians; do whatever I need to do to acquire and retain power, and any problems can be someone else's once I'm out of office
Craig Regan 14 said:
And to repost to your point about manufacturing
They are already in TX. This is just PVC but that does not mean component inputs cannot be local
Oh, I fully agree that manufacturing can and should be in Texas. No arguments there.
I don't see it viable in College Station, or in any area to which the College Station City Council or its budgetary influence matter.
I'd love to be wrong about that. I just don't see where it could be here. Just outside of here, sure. And I'd celebrate that as local manufacturing even if outside of city limits is still a win overall.
Craig Regan 14 said:
I do not argue about Texas A&M but our infrastructure is a $1,000,000,000 business. So lets maximize it to its full potential and turn it to our advantage.
Rather than a burden of cost - look at as a chance to grow business. If there is an industry or "market cap" of a $1,000,000,000 in something, there are always companies and folks willing to jump in the pool.
If we were to be able to look at our infrastructure as a monolithic block and apportion money to it as such, that may be true, but it's over simplistic.
There's money in electric infrastructure, especially in the market environment in Texas. Overall, electricity is relatively easy to generate, somewhat cheap to deliver safely and reliably, and divisible to be able to sell very small quantities in bulk, such that an individual unit price can be low, and still have more than enough profit to sustain a business properly. The nature of the grid also means that reliability can be designed in and as long as a company dedicates enough money to maintenance, outages are typically low. In winter storm Uri, for example, most of the outages in our area weren't related to local infrastructure, but rather overall power production issues at the generators, of which there are many fewer than there are transmission and distribution companies, coops and municipals.
Contrast that to water infrastructure. Just as critical to society as electric (both of which are one of the 16 critical infrastructure industries, and both of which the other 14 depend on first), water is typically much more local in area. Water rarely travels more than a few dozen miles from the source, be it ground or surface, as the development and maintenance of pipeline to safely do so is very expensive and systems are very minimally interconnected. There's no statewide "grid" of water, so a loss of production in a given area means significant and long-term problems for that area. Beyond that, distribution of water, safely, is also expensive. An electric line down can be replaced relatively inexpensively; if overhead a new line is pulled and connected in, and if underground often times they're in conduit, so a new line can be run without having to bore or dig. A water line, not so much. Additionally, water metering is significantly less precise than electric metering; industry can meter electricity down to sub kWh precision with a high degree of accuracy through solid state devices which need little to no maintenance. Water metering relies typically on sensor with less accuracy, so your home water meter may be measuring in hundreds of gallons, so the resolution simply isn't there to subdivide the units as much.
Water has also historically been cheap. Right now, for residential accounts, BTU has a basic minimum charge of a certain amount for a flat up-to 30,000 gallons, so if you're at 1000 or 28000 gallons, the water charge to you is the same. I think water is somewhere around $25 of my utility bill. So, people are price sensitive to having this critical infrastructure as basically all-you-can-eat (unless you have a pool, I'd find it hard to use 30,000 gallons of water a day in house) for a very low price. Whereas with electricity, it's a fairly accurate pay as you go, and constitutes a much larger portion of my utility bill, but I can reduce it through conservation, so mentally it doesn't seem as bad (if that makes sense). Getting people to pay more for water is a loser from a voting standpoint every time, so no one in power wants to suggest it, even though it would be needed to shore up infrastructural problems and years of water being subsidized by the government leading to artificially lower prices for the citizen.
If BTU's power plants went down hard, the electric grid would notice, but only minimally and the citizens in the area wouldn't have much effect as power would flow in from other producers in the state grid, and electricity prices would potentially be slightly higher for the energy consumers in the region. If BTU's water wells were to stop producing, the problems would be much more pronounced and long lasting. And this is happening already in Texas; in fact not too far away from here. And with some of the same large cities importing water that are looking to take Robertson county water
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/central-texas-drinking-water-crisis/Craig Regan 14 said:
and btw - the PPF curve is not theoretical, it is actual. Given certain inputs does it contract or expand or remain constant. Change the inputs and you get your answer.
I'd contend that it is theoretical application to real world scenarios, but the actuality of the PPF is still economic theory. I agree that changing the inputs varies the outcome, but you are still limited by the constraints of reality if you want you PPF model to be worth anything. An area which cannot support and would not tolerate goods manufacturing can't realistically incorporate that capacity in the modelling as then you're simply garbage-in garbage-out. Using the modelling to help decide which areas should be concentrated on under the actual constraints of the area; by all means.
Craig Regan 14 said:
Enjoy the rain.
We did.
I do want to say again that while I disagree on certain points, I appreciate the conversation and like the enthusiasm that people actually care and would want to make improvements to the area, and it is the sign of a healthy society when we can debate the merits of solutions rather than if we should have them at all. I only wish I enjoyed your optimism!
