Another shovel ready job . . . isn’t shovel ready
Bookworm on Aug 21 2011 at 1:04 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized
Back in June, I wrote a post about a notice I received from the town in which our high school is located. It warned that we could expect major traffic jams because a federally funded project had to be done during peak commute season in order to protect a little bird. My post focused on the inconveniences of environmentalism (although it’s certainly nice for everyone to twist themselves into knots to protect an innocent, hapless and helpless bird).
What I didn’t touch upon in my earlier post was my suspicion (and it’s still only a suspicion) that the federal funds were part of the stimulus. If those funds are indeed part of the stimulus (and, as I said, I’m only guessing), I have to report that another shovel ready job . . . isn’t shovel ready. I just got another notice today, which I publish here in its entirety (click on thumbnail for full size document):
City of Larkspur notice about Doherty Drive Project
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6 Responses to “Another shovel ready job . . . isn’t shovel ready”
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Interesting.
They’ll start the project in June – unless the bird is nesting there again at that time, in which case it will move to August again.
Is there no one who has studied about this bird? Birds return to the same nesting area every year…so if it nested there this year, it will nest there next year. When does it begin nesting, and what is the duration of it’s nesting period? You’d think that in a situation like this, there’d be _some _ naturalist on tap who could give them that info. Birds _usually_ nest in fairly early spring, hatch out their young and raise them. When the young are able to fly, that’s pretty much the end of the “nesting” season. And it’s usually pretty predictable.
_Somebody_ must have studied these birds and have the relevant facts – or if not…what an opportunity for some eager beaver grad student!! Same student might even get _paid_ for just such a study!
I’ll bet even a Boy Scout could handle the job…just sneak around and observe.
Well, according to Wikipedia the bird is an almost flightless water fowl. According to the map on BW’s initial post, the road in question borders the water for about 2 blocks.
It would be interesting to know what population of these birds would be affected, and how many die on the roads anyway.
People infected with the environmentalism disease always assume that human activity is inimical to wildlife (unless it’s wind farms, of course). However, animals adapt pretty well to human activity.
Consider coyotes…they’ve learned that people lay out all kinds of delectable banquets for them in their neighborhoods (e.g., cats, chihuahuas), so they have integrated themselves very well into hospitable human environments.
Here is a great link that shows how birds have adapted to human activity:
http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/featured/birds-nests-most-bizarre-places/11610
I suspect that the answer to Suek’s point is that nobody has really bothered to research whether road work would disturb the bird in question and that it is instead based upon the ideological assumption: animals good, people bad!
Then there should be a link attached to the “Dealing with government bureaucracies” article…
It follows…does it not??
Slaves need shovels… since when?
Lowest responsible bidder? Does that mean lowest Democrat parasite that aren’t willing to do what needs to be done to cut costs?
Btw, Book, you really should redact certain information from that document by marking it in black highlight.
I can see that school from google map now.