Thursday, July 26, 2012

Tomorrow, HamsterTalk is 5 Years Old!

There has been some doubt as to whether I'd continue blogging this long, but certainly not because of any lack of worthy material.
No, there always seems to be plenty of that, the issue is whether I feel up to regularly continuing it.
So far, I have posted 455 blogs, an average of 91 per year or just under 7.6 per month.
I'm aware that some of these work pretty well as alternatives to sedatives, but not all of them!

The record shows that earlier years contain the bulk of these blogs since they largely documented an accumulation of writings on various subjects I was involved with while serving on the City Council. Many of these were -and are- recurring themes, as the LABEL list indicates; but some, like GPT have become important issues more recently.

Since early 2011, I have tried to address multiple serious concerns over the ill-conceived GPT project in this blog, and cited multiple articles and other sources as well.
Lately, this very questionable Gateway Pacific Terminal [which seems more of a 'get-rich-quick' scheme for a few wealthy corporate folks and union bosses] has garnered more than its share of attention; but then maybe it needs a whole lot of attention!

Now that the time for work on the Environmental Impact Statement [EIS] is near, I plan to devote as many hours as possible to the task of developing a comprehensive list of specific concerns suitable for inclusion in that critical document.

Unfortunately, it will likely not be sufficient to simply express these concerns the way people actually talk to each other; instead, I will need to tailor these sometimes complex concerns to easily fit into whatever specific framework this EIS will use, which may be unfriendly to large, multi-faceted and inter-related concepts.

But, not only are clear statements of concern necessary, but also essential is the need for hundreds of individual submissions to be filed.
It would be great to first identify as many 'silos' to be filled as possible, then FILL them!

I can certainly use expert help in this endeavor, which I see as an effort that can provide multiple comment templates for specific concerns, each with a range of possible impacts.
If such a tool could be provided, it would not only enable me - but also many other people - to become an effective part of the EIS scoping and evaluation exercise that will begin next month.

Serious volunteers can contact me at the e-mail address shown in the 'about me' profile.
Time is of the essence since so much information must be reduced to silo-ready status within the next 120 days or so.
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Here's a few more recent links to articles of interest regarding GPT: