The Associated Press
USA Today
October 9, 2008
More than 76,000 damage claims from Hurricane Ike have been filed with the Texas-backed windstorm insurance association, which expects to pay billions of dollars to policy holders for losses.
Texas Windstorm Insurance Association general manager Jim Oliver cautioned Wednesday that the final figure will depend on whether claims are determined to be wind or flood damage.
The association says it will pay for wind damage, but not storm surge damage, which it considers to be flooding. "We are going to look at every single claim individually," Oliver said. "That is going to make the process slow."
The number of claims filed with the association has been slowing to 700 to 1,000 each weekday. That's down from about 6,000 daily in the two weeks after the Sept. 13 storm that struck Galveston and southeast Texas.
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By Mary Williams Walsh and Randal Archibold
The New York Times
October 7, 2008
California and other states scrambled on Tuesday to cope with bills coming due as they pressed Washington for assistance because the municipal bond markets remain largely closed to them.
In Washington, White House officials said they were talking with state officials and reviewing the issue of aid. But despite the urgency of the problem, thorny legal issues have emerged.
Though the federal government has taken extraordinary steps to lend money to corporations in the short-term markets, and to provide more money to banks, officials have been stymied over how to assist local governments because of their status as issuers of tax-exempt bonds.
A longstanding provision of the Internal Revenue Code bars the federal government from guaranteeing tax-exempt bonds. Officials are concerned that if the federal government helps states and others without Congressional action it could put their tax exemption at risk.
While officials seek a way around this obstacle, many local governments are running into severe cash squeezes.
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By Susan Saulny
The New York Times
October 7, 2008
After the layoff of 160 full-time and part-time city workers, the slashing of recreation programs and a call for volunteers to shelve books at the branch libraries (open two days a week now instead of six), the people of Duluth, Minn., thought they had seen the worst of a bad year for the municipal budget.
To help close a gap of more than $6 million that yawned open over the summer, the artsy shipping city on Lake Superior had considered selling its prized Tiffany stained-glass window depicting Longfellow’s American Indian character Minnehaha, a one-of-a-kind work donated by a civic group more than 100 years ago. And some even pushed forward with plans to sell valuable beachfront property along the lake. The city had options, things were looking up.
But then Wall Street struck. With tax receipts from retail sales and property values plummeting as unemployment rises along with fuel costs, city officials in Duluth and across the country say they are feeling increasingly squeezed and helpless as the national economic crisis eats away at the core sources of municipal revenue.
Add to that the abrupt and unexpected loss over the last several weeks of usually sound investments and credit in the municipal bond markets — the place to which local governments turn for relatively cheap, fast money — and it becomes clear that cities are facing their own financial crisis, arguably the worst in decades.
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By Ken Belson
The New York Times
October 3, 2008
Regulators in New Jersey awarded the rights on Friday for construction of a $1 billion offshore wind farm in the southern part of the state to Garden State Offshore Energy. The rights, which include access to as much as $19 million in state grants, is part of New Jersey’s Energy Master Plan, which calls for 20 percent of the state’s energy to come from renewable sources by 2020. The decision comes on the heels of decisions by Delaware and Rhode Island to allow the installation of offshore wind farms.
Energy experts say that these approvals could prompt regulators in New York to support projects off the south shore of Long Island and New York City.
Garden State Offshore Energy is a joint venture that includes P.S.E.G. Renewable Generation, a subsidiary of P.S.E.G. Global, which is a sister company of the state’s largest utility, Public Service Electric and Gas Company.
The proposal by Garden State Offshore Energy includes the installation of 96 turbines to produce as much as 346 megawatts of electricity, enough to power tens of thousands of houses, starting in 2013. The turbines would be arranged in a rectangle about a half-mile long by one-third of a mile wide and would be placed 16 to 20 miles off the coast of New Jersey’s Atlantic and Ocean Counties, much farther out and in much deeper water than other proposed wind farms. Deepwater Wind, which will work with P.S.E.G. to build the wind farm, said it could affordably build turbines in 100 feet of water with the same technology used to build oil and gas rigs in the Gulf of Mexico and other places.
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By Dina Cappiello, Frank Bass And Cain Burdeau
The Associated Press
October 6, 2008
Hurricane Ike's winds and massive waves destroyed oil platforms, tossed storage tanks and punctured pipelines. The environmental damage only now is becoming apparent: At least a half million gallons of crude oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico and the marshes, bayous and bays of Louisiana and Texas, according to an analysis of federal data by The Associated Press.
In the days before and after the deadly storm, companies and residents reported at least 448 releases of oil, gasoline and dozens of other substances into the air and water and onto the ground in Louisiana and Texas. The hardest hit places were industrial centers near Houston and Port Arthur, Texas, as well as oil production facilities off Louisiana's coast, according to the AP's analysis.
"We are dealing with a multitude of different types of pollution here ... everything from diesel in the water to gasoline to things like household chemicals," said Larry Chambers, a petty officer with the U.S. Coast Guard Command Center in Pasadena, Texas.
The Coast Guard, with the Environmental Protection Agency and state agencies, has responded to more than 3,000 pollution reports associated with the storm and its surge along the upper Texas coast. Most callers complain about abandoned propane tanks, paint cans and other hazardous materials containers turning up in marshes, backyards and other places.
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