Volume is Swamping Our Highways

Posted on January 7, 2007
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A column on transportation needs in the Harrisburg Patriot-News today by R. Keith Hite, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of Township Supervisors, missed an opportunity to call attention to the most critical dimension of the problem.

It’s not only that local highways are wearing out and it costs a lot to repair or rebuild them. The bigger, ultimately more decisive reality, is the increasing volume being carried by all Pennsylvania’s highways, state and local alike. That’s what’s wearing them out.

The need is not to joust with mass transit officials for funds to renew township highways, but to work with them and farsighted transportation and land use planners to alter patterns of travel that are swamping the highways.

That’s not a simple task. But it’s a transportation strategy that’s keenly needed for the long haul. Consider the alternative to a balanced trasportation/development strategy the next time you find yourself crawling along I-8, I-83 or, increasingly, their feeder roads on a busy weekday.

Really, Now

Posted on January 7, 2007
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Why would we send more U.S. troops to kill more Iraqis?? That will be the effect of a “surge” and it doesn’t track.

Information as an Emergency System

Posted on January 5, 2007
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Another aspect of nuclear plant communication detracts from its potential effectiveness during an emergency – the information flow isn’t treated systematically from the first news releases on. Here’s what we mean:

Since the TMI-2 accident in 1979, formal attention is given to the “offsite” distribution of information through Joint Information Centers (JICs) that are now required elements of a nuclear plant’s setting. All the agencies involved in a nuclear emergency release information through the JIC. And the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) evaluates the offsite news centers as part of the biennial emergency drills required at each plant.

The trouble is, the first news releases are issued by the utility at its own facilities, not at the Joint Information Center, which might not become operational for hours. Those first first news releases might be issued hundreds of miles away at a utility’s regional headquarters and contain only sparse information. And they are are not subject to evaluation and appraisal during drills. That’s because the utilities’ press releases are considered part of the onsite, or plant, response which is the purview of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, not FEMA.

Unfortunately, the NRC doesn’t much concern itself with emergency news releases, which it considers part of a utility’s public relations. It seldom, if ever, evaluates them at the biennial drills. The releases may be bare bones only, and raise more questions for reporters then they answer. Yet nobody’s prompting the utilities to do better.

Thus, should a Joint Information Center be called into operation during an emergency, with local governments arriving to report on their actions on the public’s behalf, the communications response would already be well underway in interactions between the utility and the news media. (And however remote a nuclear plant might be, the first media calls can come very quickly, from Washington, or wherever.) By the time a JIC is functional, the media will already have formed impressions of how well the “authorities” (basically the utility) are communicating. The die may be cast for some rocky briefings at the JIC, with everyone’s credibility decidedly in question.

Emergency public information needs to be treated as a system from the start – not divided between the utility (with a presumed ax to grind) and governmental agencies (who arrive to set things right). Everybody involved needs to do well from the start. And FEMA needs to be responsible for evaluating the information flow on a systemic basis, from the first words issued to the news media.

Nuclear Emergency Information from Far Away

Posted on January 2, 2007
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Should an accident occur at a nuclear power plant, neighboring residents would be deciding whether or not to leave the area when the utility involved is alreadly releasing information from a long way off.

That’s the effect of an evident move in the nuclear power industry to regional media centers, which are being established in the name of “efficiency” far from the people and the news media who would be relying on them.

The latest such example comes from Three Mile Island Unit 1 in Middletown, Pa. The management there is proposing to move TMI’s media center from nearby Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s capitol, to Coatesville in Chester County, 67 miles away.

Officials of Exelon Nuclear, TMI’s operator, say information could readily be provided from Coatesville because all the plant’s operating data would be supplied to Exelon’s Emergency Operations Center there, 30 miles from its Limerick, Pa., nuclear plant.
Reporters who might not want to travel to Coatesville, TMI’s manager told the Harrisburg Patriot-News, could get their information from the TMI Training Center, across Highway 441 from the plant. Unless, of course, the accident reached the level of a General Emergency, like the one at TMI Unit 2 in 1979, when the area would be evacuated and there would be no choice for reporters but to head to Coatesville for information.

After the TMI-2 accident, improved communication with the public came into vogue among nuclear utilities. Then, a decade or so later, an era of deregulation began, with an emphasis on the bottom line. Communication has a lower priority now, including, apparently, the well-established public relations principle that, in a stressful time for the public, emphathy is more important that efficiency in explaining what’s happening.

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