Kirsten Mortensen's blog

The map shows Senator Keating Blvd, a bit of road south of the Tops Plaza on Clinton Ave. in Brighton.

It tops the list that Chuck Simmons has posted of local pork projects. Price tag for this project: $3.6 million — although I’m not really sure what the money’s going for — this description, courtesy of the NYS DOT & published by Stimulus Watch, is laughably impossible to interpret:

From the NYS DOT Website: “According to the Town of Brighton’s Master Plan, a road is needed to connect South Clinton Avenue with Winton Road. This road, called Senator Keating Boulevard, would be constructed by others as the development in the area occurs. For all alternatives considered, it was assumed that Senator Keating Boulevard would be constructed by others and be complete by the year 2028. Regardless of which alternative is progressed, development in this area will continue and Senator Keating Boulevard will be constructed as a requirement of the Town of Brighton.”

I guess that means the road that we all “assumed would be constructed by others” (those Others! always backing out of their promises!) is now going to be funded by the Stimulus Bill — and as a result, we’re going to run Senator Keating Blvd through the back side of Buckland Park — creating a parallel to Westfall through currently undeveloped land? Now, instead of in 2028?

Oink oink oink.

Do go peruse Chuck’s list, there’s lots more of the same, if you have the stomach for it.

People once fled New York State for California. And bragged about it.

Now they’re moving away. (Granted, not to New York, where all our leaves are brown, still. Also covered with a couple feet of snow. And chilled down to a cozy 4 degrees this morning.)

The number of people leaving California for another state outstripped the number moving in from another state during the year ending on July 1, 2008. California lost a net total of 144,000 people during that period — more than any other state, according to census estimates. That is about equal to the population of Syracuse, N.Y.

The state with the next-highest net loss through migration between states was New York, which lost just over 126,000 residents.

California’s loss is extremely small in a state of 38 million. And, in fact, the state’s population continues to increase overall because of births and immigration, legal and illegal. But it is the fourth consecutive year that more residents decamped from California for other states than arrived here from within the U.S.

When the article moves on to answer the burning question of “why,” it falls back on the usual dreamy litany. Unemployment. High foreclosure rate. Personal income flat.

Well, yeah. Those are the immediate causes. But I also agree with Shannon Love that the real issue is the state’s fiscal policy:

California has followed the grim path of the Great Lakes states.

[T]hose states where [sic] once the industrial dynamo for the entire Earth, yet they destroyed that enormous economic dominance by political policies hostile to economic creativity . . .

It seems that in post-New Deal America, economic and civil success sow their own seeds of destruction. When things are going good, socialist experimentation seems harmless. A booming economy can pay for increased government spending and an ever-increasing scope of government power. Eventually, however, socialism strangles the economic engine and destroys civil society.

In 2006, California held the number 8 slot in the list of states with highest tax revenues per capita. (New York was #3.)

What have they done with all those riches?

Does running California really cost $1800 more per person than running New Hampshire?

Of course not. At least, it shouldn’t.

America is wasting its assets by funneling our money through political machines that add ZERO value.

California is our canary in the gold mine . . .

(P.S. California’s population is still growing, incidentally, thanks to the birthrate etc. It’s the people who can voluntarily move who are leaving. The babies are staying put for now.)

The economy is teetering. Our food & gas prices are climbing. And, lest we forget, we citizens of New York are the highest taxed in the country.

So how do we want our politicians to spend our tax money?

If you’re a construction worker, you’ll answer: Build Renaissance Square! Because yeah, if that happens, you’ll have a job for, ya know, a few months.

I can understand that. But what comes next?

Most likely, a big long morning after. For example, take this article by Mark Yost in the Wall Street Journal. He’s writing about sports stadiums, but what he says is enough to remind you of your worst public project hangover.

Sports economists have long argued that publicly financed stadiums are a waste of taxpayer money. And they have the data to prove it.

Yes, stadiums do create high-paying construction jobs for a year or two. But the vast majority of long-term employment is low-wage concession jobs. A Congressional Research Service study of the Baltimore Ravens stadium found that each job created cost the state $127,000. By comparison, Maryland’s Sunny Day Fund created jobs for about $6,000 each . . .

Then there’s the fact that only a sliver of the tax base really benefits from a sports stadium. And with ticket prices rising rapidly, that group is getting much smaller.

Consider the New York Yankees, who have the highest payroll in baseball and take in more than $300 million a year just from their television network. They’ll move into a new $1 billion stadium next year, about half of which was covered by the taxpayers. Seats behind home plate that cost $250 this year will be ten times that next year. The net result is that very few of the people who paid for the stadium will be able to afford a seat there.

But perhaps the best argument against publicly financed stadiums is straight out of Econ 101: Opportunity cost.

“What else could the city have invested its money in and what kind of a return would it have produced?” said King Banaian, chairman of the St. Cloud State (Minn.) Economics Dept. Despite reams of evidence to the contrary, the District proceeded with what Councilman Kwame Brown calls “the most controversial project in the history of the city.”

It was controversial, he said, because the city had more pressing needs. The city’s schools are in shambles; crime is out of control; and unemployment in distressed neighborhoods, like Southeast, is double the national average, if not higher.

Fortunately, people are raising their voices. In City Newspaper, Mary Anna Towler asks a whole slew of questions about Ren Square that need to be asked.

Was the big theater the best theater for Ren Square? If MCC or SUNY owns the theater, will taxpayers’ money be diverted from education to subsidize the theater?

If there’s not enough money for the theater, should we go ahead with the MCC campus and the bus station?

And: does downtown Rochester need Ren Square? A few years ago, it seemed to be about the only development hope we had. That’s no longer true. Is it a good idea to build Ren Square, taking prime development land out of the private market – and taking that land off the tax roles?

There’s also an excellent comment after the City piece:

It would be good if the transit portion of the project were as closely analysed as the PAC. Shouldn’t we also notice that over $100 million TRANSIT dollars are essentially being squandered in a way that will make the bus system slower, less efficient and much more costly to operate? Ther is no advantage to the city to leave the auditorium theater and sibleys building empty, as the current plan would do.To pursue such a plan in an environment of record gas prices, (not to mention global warming) falls on the spectrum between “sub optimal use of public funds” and “complete insanity”. The bus station is both the achilles heel and fatal flaw since it literally cannot be used by buses. This might explain why no traffic study has been done.

Hopefully the Ren Square cloud will clear in time to save the federal transit funds to use for badly needed transportation projects that actually move people TOWARDS their destination at lower energy and lower cost.

We have already spent $15.8 million on the Renaissance Square project.

Are we going to wake up and say “no more” before it’s too late?

You know we’re in trouble when our best hope is that Chuck “Godzilla” Schumer will find a way to jinx Ren Square like he did Indy Mac.

Jim Nugent, Water Quality Laboratory Manager at our Monroe County Water Authority, graciously answered the questions I emailed about our municipal fluoride policy.

So allow me to share :-)

First, the more factual bits.

The county spends $88,000 on fluoridation annually.

None of the fluoride we use here comes from China. Nugent writes that “We require that all source material used for all of our treatment chemicals originate from the USA or Canada. This requirement was approved by the Board of Directors in wake of 9-11.”

As far as purity, he says that the MCWA specifies, as part of its procurement process, that our fluoride be certified by the National Sanitation Foundation or Underwriter’s Laboratory. So if there’s, ya know, dog hair in our fluoride that’s who to blame.

When we get to the stickier questions — why do we do it, and is anyone rethinking it in light of recent science — Nugent toes the pro-fluoride line (not surprising) and suggests that if I’m looking for an agency to pester, it’s not the MCWA but the NYS Department of Health:

MCWA looks to the NYSDOH, the U.S. EPA, the Centers for Disease Control, and the medical and dental communities for their information and research on medical and dental health. The NYSDOH strongly recommends the use of fluoride as evidenced by their new series of fluoride information bulletins (attached). Fluoride addition is currently part of our NYDOH approved treatment process (since 1966) which can not be modified without NYDOH permission.

Under the Safe Drinking Water Act, the USEPA is required to set drinking water standards for the protection of human health. The EPA is required to review and re-evaluate theses standards on a six year cycle or at any time if warranted by new information. The NRC study you reference was part of this ongoing evaluation process. Your interpretation of the results of this study are not consistent with the USEPA’s.

Drinking water utilities are highly regulated entities in the US. These rules and regulations are established by NYDOH and USEPA and it is to them you should address your concerns. The USEPA has been very conservative, i.e., protective of human health, in it approach to fluoridation. It should also be noted that California, one of the most aggressive environmental states, just recently began requiring all water systems to fluoridate.

I appreciate your interest in this matter. I believe the USEPA has looked at fluoridation as hard as any compound it regulates and it, as well as NYDOH, CDC, and the dental community, still support the practice and its safety.

Am I persuaded by this?

No.

As just one point, I don’t agree that the USEPA has been “conservative” in its approach to fluoridation. A truly conservative approach would have been to leave the water alone with respect to fluoridation.

It’s that approach which is warranted, IMO. For starters, the assertion that fluoridated water leads to reduction in tooth decay doesn’t stand to scrutiny. It’s another correlation-but-not-necessarily-causation error that people so commonly make when they try to interpret health trends. See this round-up, for example, which includes bits like this:

“Graphs of tooth decay trends for 12 year olds in 24 countries, prepared using the most recent World Health Organization data, show that the decline in dental decay in recent decades has been comparable in 16 nonfluoridated countries and 8 fluoridated countries which met the inclusion criteria of having (i) a mean annual per capita income in the year 2000 of US$10,000 or more, (ii) a population in the year 2000 of greater than 3 million, and (iii) suitable WHO caries data available. The WHO data do not support fluoridation as being a reason for the decline in dental decay in 12 year olds that has been occurring in recent decades.”
SOURCE: Neurath C. (2005). Tooth decay trends for 12 year olds in nonfluoridated and fluoridated countries. Fluoride 38:324-325.

There’s more at the link.

To summarize my thinking at this point: on the one hand the value of fluoridation for its stated purpose (prevention of tooth decay) is questionable. On the other hand there are valid questions about whether consuming fluoridated water might cause health issues for some people (and maybe all of us, if fluoride concentrates in the pineal gland, like some researchers suspect — suppressed melatonin/serotonin production, anyone?).

I’ve read enough. I’m going to be conservative ;-)

I’m going to buy a distiller.

In case you haven’t checked lately, I’ve got the inside scoop, fellow Rochesterarians: Monroe County adds fluoride to our water.

Here’s what they say on their website. It’s not much.

Water provided by the MCWA contains about 1 ppm (part per million) fluoride, the level recommended by the EPA.

Also this, on their page about water treatment — next to a pic of a little girl brushing her teeth, presumably with fluoridated toothpaste:

Before the clean, pure water is pumped to your house, fluoride is added to it to help keep your teeth healthy and cavity-free.

Controversy about fluoridating water isn’t new, of course. But lately the debate has been heating up as more research suggests we really shouldn’t be drinking the stuff — even at the low levels set by our good friends at the EPA.

Consider for example this news piece, describing the National Research Council’s (NRC) “first-ever published review of the fluoride/thyroid literature:”

Fluoride, in the form of silicofluorides, injected into 2/3 of U.S. public water supplies, ostensibly to reduce tooth decay, was never safety-tested.

“Many Americans are exposed to fluoride in the ranges associated with thyroid effects, especially for people with iodine deficiency,” says Kathleen Thiessen, PhD, co-author of the government-sponsored NRC report. “The recent decline in iodine intake in the U.S could contribute to increased toxicity of fluoride for some individuals,” says Thiessen.

“A low level of thyroid hormone can increase the risk of cardiac disease, high cholesterol, depression and, in pregnant woman, decreased intelligence of offspring,” said Thiessen.

Common thyroid symptoms include fatigue, weight gain, constipation, fuzzy thinking, low blood pressure, fluid retention, depression, body pain, slow reflexes, and more. It’s estimated that 59 million
Americans have thyroid conditions.

Robert Carton, PhD, an environmental scientist who worked for over 30 years for the U.S. government including managing risk assessments on high priority toxic chemicals, says “fluoride has detrimental effects on the thyroid gland of healthy males at 3.5 mg a day. With iodine deficiency, the effect level drops to 0.7 milligrams/day for an average male.” (1.0 mg/L fluoride is in most water supplies)

Add that to the growing list. In 2006 the National Academy of Sciences called on the EPA to reevaluate its fluoridation recommendations, in part because we may be overexposing infants to fluoride:

(WASHINGTON, March 21) — A new report from the prestigious National Academy of Sciences (NAS) concludes that the current allowable level of fluoride in tap water is not protective of the public health and should be lowered, citing serious concerns about bone fractures and dental fluorosis, a discoloration and weakening of the enamel of the teeth that the committee noted is associated with other adverse health impacts.

The NAS report puts concerns about the safety of fluoride in tap water squarely in the mainstream of scientific thought. The committee called on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reevaluate and tighten current safety standards in light of these concerns.

In just one example of the potential health risks from water fluoridation, the committee cited concerns about the potential of fluoride to lower IQ, noting on page six of the report that the “consistency of study results appears significant enough to warrant additional research on the effects of fluoride on intelligence.” IQ deficits, the committee noted, have been strongly associated with dental fluorosis, a condition caused by fluoride in tap water (NAS pg 175).

The committee’s findings support Environmental Working Group’s (EWG’s) recommendation that fluoride exposure should be limited to toothpaste, where it provides the greatest dental benefit and presents the lowest overall health risk.

Being conservative on matters like this, it seems to me it’s a no-brainer. Stop fluoridating the water now.

Make that “yesterday.”

We don’t understand it enough. We don’t understand how it accumulates and the effects of long-term exposure. We don’t understand how individuals react to given doses.

It’s not worth risking our babies’ brains.

But that’s just me. I decided to email the Monroe County Water Authority to ask them some questions about their fluoridation program and give them a chance to present their well-thought-out justification for fluoridating:

1. What is the MCWA’s position on fluoridation today given the current science?

2. What cost-benefit analysis have you done, and has it been updated to compare the presumed positive impact of fluoridated water on dental health vs. the potential public health impact of over-exposing infants and adults with thyroid issues?

3. How much does the county spend on fluoridation annually?

4. Considering how ubiquitous fluoridated toothpaste and rinses are today, does spending money to fluoridate people en masse really make for good public policy any more?

I’ll post again when I get a response.

A question I didn’t ask, but probably should have, is where they get their fluoride and whether they test it for purity. See this, for instance:

The fluoride added to public drinking water is actually fluorosilic acid. It is described by critics as an industrial waste product. Supporters prefer to call it an industry byproduct. Most of it has come from Florida’s phosphate fertilizer industry.

Florida’s phosphate rock is about 3.5 percent fluorine. To make phosphoric acid for fertilizer, the rock is mixed with sulfuric acid. The mixture produces a gas called silicon tetrafluoride. The gas is sent through ductwork and a water scrubber to create fluorosilic acid, a clear liquid that in high concentrations is toxic. The acid is what fertilizer companies sell as a fluoride additive.

However, one of the little-known effects of Hurricane Katrina was to cripple the production of fluoride. Since then, more of America’s supply of the controversial chemical is coming from China – a country not always known for the highest safety standards on exports.

Yeah, now, there’s an understatement . . . and you thought a little lead paint on your kid’s Thomas the Tank Engine toy was worrisome . . .