Scientists: Lake Superior is 15 degrees warmer than normal

Why does it cost $2 billion? Let’s see the plan and the budget.

As if you personally have any way of actually evaluating whether or not the plan and its costs are appropriate. There’s more expertise involved than simply looking at a budget and deciding if you like the numbers.

There is also salinated bilge water, sewage dumping, drawing too much water for cities and farms.

There have been times when the water was so low that ships could not take on full loads of ore.

I am glad that President Obama has already taken action on this. I wish he would help get the canal closed before it is too late.

Dennis writes: “Why does it cost $2 billion? Let’s see the plan and the budget.”

Gee, Dennis, I Googled it and came up with this link from July 2009 where the plan went out for public comment:
http://www.epa.gov/glnpo/glri/glmyrapo.pdf

That was more than a year ago.

Here is another link about the plan:

http://www.epa.gov/greatlakes/glri/

I’m surprised you haven’t bothered to look this up yourself. Took me all of 30 seconds to find.

Next time you want to type “let’s see the plan”, why don’t you type “google.com” first? I’m sure you are a serious person who prides themselves on researching the facts, and “the plan” has been out there for more than a year. Serious scientists have been studying this for many years, and that information is available.

Now that you can find the plan, all of us will be very interested to read your expert assessment of the plan and whether the costs are appropriate, based upon your lengthy review and your extensive experience in Great Lakes ecology.

Well, look, Timmy. It’s not that I doubted that a plan exists my comments were directed at the alleged journalist for not providing it as part of the story. That’s what journalists do.

And although I thank you for taking the time to find those links, those documents are neither a plan nor a budget. The first is more of a scope document with objectives and rationale, but it doesn’t include actual deliverables, timelines or projected costs per activity.

It’s not helpful to taxpayers who foot the bill when you simply say “we’re going to spend $474 million cleaning up the water” when for all we know, half of that cost is going to be misspent. You only learn that by reviewing detailed spreadsheets.

You must work for the government because otherwise 1) you’d agree with me, and 2) you’d care.

Chayanov and Tim, Thanks for chiming in with your responses to Dennis, but I can tell you have a tough row to hoe with convincing him his initial comment was neither clever nor rational. Dennis, you just dig yourself a deeper hole by refusing to acknowledge you have an axe to grind with government expenditures you’re not capable of valuing properly, choosing instead to ignore the simple logic of their responses and holding yourself out as a fool.

Well Kent, when you find those spreadsheets perhaps you can explain to us how they arrived at those numbers. Because until then, we’re just throwing money we don’t have, down a hole. And I’m not the one who dug it.

Let us know what you come up with, ok?

So Dennis, you wanted MNIndy to publish the entire Great Lakes plan along with a detailed “spreadsheet” of all budgetary items for a multi-year $2 billion budget.

Because you are too lazy to look it up yourself? Because if they published a 2,000 page story you’d read it in detail? On the contrary, I think you’d be complaining about how if anything is 2,000 pages long, it must be bad.

I spent my career as a business executive and business owner. Never worked for any government agency. I had to make a payroll, Dennis. I paid taxes and created jobs. I ran companies that exported to countries all around the world, and I traveled to many of them and learned some things that made me re-think my prejudices and my narrow point of view.

And I always hated it when some lazy employee told me “show me the plan” instead of looking it up themselves. I also hated those who hung in the wings trying to undermine important business initiatives because they had a personal axe to grind.