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Electrical Problems

Read more articles on The Thoughts Of A Writer In New York City.

July 25, 2006

Posted by neillevine

About This Editor: I am a writer. Have been writing for other sites, but expect to do most of my future work HERE! My expertise extends from the esoteric such as burning hydrogen to the unpredictability of the stock market and my writing makes me a jack of all trades and exasperated master of none. I have had some influence over national wildfire and water policy and there are hints of a change in energy policy, BUT as Samuel Goldwyn once said, "A verbal promise is not worth the paper it is written on."

         

As I have stated previously, I am deeply into flood control. This is complicated because it goes beyond building dams in the mountains to lower water levels at appropriate times since some rivers flow all the way into either Canada, our neighbor to the north, and Mexico, our southern friend.

One example I believe I can mention is that there is some disagreement with Canada over efforts to reduce flooding on the Red River which deluged Fargo, North Dakota in 1997. When dealing with complicated issues like this, it is often not possible to get straight answers because elected officials believe in fuzzy math and vague answers in order to appeal to as wide a voter base as possible, at the expense of the truth or positive results. Alternatively, a dam can produce hydroelectric power and, as the current Commander-in-Chief made clear a couple of years ago, excess electric power can be used to create hydrogen gas, a valuable fuel if burned by itself or mixed (up to 20%) with natural gas, meaning more abundant fuel supplies, reducing pressure on rising prices.

With this information in mind, I want to mention two electrical problems that have arisen recently in my life. For some reason, it took an entire week for my co-op maintenance to fix a light bulb fixture in my bathroom. Usually, maintenance where I live is pretty good, the come right away, or at worst the next day, although it took some persistence to get the air conditioning turned up on hot days in the co-op laundry room, because there is no thermostat and management had not assigned the task of manually adjusting the central air conditioning water pressure cooling factor to any specific employee, as far as I know.

The other electrical problem involves Con Ed, the local utility. On a very hot day, extra demand for power caused the system to fail for 25,000 customers, a customer being a bill payer such as a business or building as opposed to such a number of people. The local politicians are getting involved with the local Democrats promising prosecutions for as yet not clearly stated reasons and the Mayor saying the company is doing a good job getting things back up. I may follow this dispute in the future as I consider it important. I might also say that there were reported problems in Missouri and California.