Suburbs are unsustainable?

[Mikeg]

.....The research has been done and Suburban Sprawl in America is unsustainable in the long term. It hinders the growth of the region. The infrastructure needs of our ever-increasing suburban sprawl in Southeast Michigan affect everyone.

For example, as communities on the outskirts of Detroit grows, Detroit Edison is has to build new substations and new power lines to reach customers on the outskirts and new communities. Who pays for this? Every ratepayer of Detroit Edison. However, if communities were more centralized in the region our cost would be lower.

Also, the Detroit Water & Sewerage Department, provides water to over 4 million people in Southeast Michigan. If the region was more centralized in population, then the Water Department would not have pump water to communites that are on the outskirts. It takes electricity to pump water. Therefore, Detroit Water Department is one of the largest customers to Detroit Edison. Millions of dollars each year is spent on paying their electric bills. Who pays for the increased billing? We all do! The rates has went up 8% for three years in a row! Compound Interest!.......

Another load of bullshit.

Most of DTE's power plants are located on the perimeter of their service area - not centralized within it. The DWSD gets most of its treated water from it's Lake Huron treatment plant - which is not far from DTE's power generating plants in Greenwood Twp. and St. Clair. Only the DWSD's sewage treatment is centralized and it is located at the lowest elevation in the system to take advantage of gravity and a suitable waterway in which to discharge the effluent.

[iheartthed]

Empty homes dot Oakland County's upscale suburbs:

Birmingham [[9.4 percent) and Bloomfield Hills [[10.2 percent) showed vacancy rates significantly higher than 10 years ago. Those rates are similar to Detroit's vacancy rate a decade ago.

Tiny Lake Angelus, with 132 households in north Oakland County, is historically a pocket of the county's wealth. Always private, the census takers also found that 13.2 percent of the residences were unoccupied. Vacancies in Farmington Hills were 6.8 percent, up from 3.3 percent in 2000.


From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110407/...#ixzz1Iq74Fv1x

[mwilbert]

Another load of bullshit.

Most of DTE's power plants are located on the perimeter of their service area - not centralized within it. The DWSD gets most of its treated water from it's Lake Huron treatment plant - which is not far from DTE's power generating plants in Greenwood Twp. and St. Clair. Only the DWSD's sewage treatment is centralized and it is located at the lowest elevation in the system to take advantage of gravity and a suitable waterway in which to discharge the effluent.

Actually this is irrelevant to the argument. Regardless of where electricity is generated, you need to build infrastructure to support its use where people are. If the people are concentrated, you need a lot less infrastructure, if people are spread out, you need more. Same with water. Same with gas.

[Hermod]

Actually this is irrelevant to the argument. Regardless of where electricity is generated, you need to build infrastructure to support its use where people are. If the people are concentrated, you need a lot less infrastructure, if people are spread out, you need more. Same with water. Same with gas.

That ship has already sailed.

The big future costs are upgrading the lines and pipes in the older and denser sections of the service areas.

What are the DTE CURRENT costs [[less the cost of the electricity) to serve each customer in Detroit versus the costs to serve each customer in, say, Macomb Twp?

Line maintenance
Frequency of service calls
Difficulties in collection
Theft of power

[mwilbert]

The ship has only sailed where the sprawl has already occurred; it isn't an argument against restraining future development in a shrinking region. And this isn't just about sprawl; one of the arguments of the "rightsizers" is that having companies like DTE upgrading their infrastructure in empty areas of the city is also wasteful. It also doesn't make sense to look at relative costs at different points in their lifecycle--DTEs assets in Detroit have been amortized over 60-90 years. It is very likely that their cost to serve each customer in Macomb Township will be higher than to serve a customer in Detroit over the lifetime of the infrastructure.

[DetroitDad]

Empty homes dot Oakland County's upscale suburbs:

Database: Find population information for Michigan communities

You can look for information on municipalities, school districts and counties

From The Detroit News: http://detnews.com/article/20110322/CENSUS/103220401/

[HistoryNotHisStory]

another load of bullshit.

Most of dte's power plants are located on the perimeter of their service area - not centralized within it. The dwsd gets most of its treated water from it's lake huron treatment plant - which is not far from dte's power generating plants in greenwood twp. And st. Clair. Only the dwsd's sewage treatment is centralized and it is located at the lowest elevation in the system to take advantage of gravity and a suitable waterway in which to discharge the effluent.

please read carefully what i stated.

I stated that when new communities are built dte has to build substations. I did not mention power generating plants. The two are different. Substations allows for reliability and switching. Such as when there is a storm people the upscale communities often lose power more than those in urban areas due to the lack of substations.

With regards to dwsd, the power used by dwsd is used to pump water from port huron to to communites in oakland and macomb counties which requires much more energy than the elevation provides. The elevation provides only approx. 40 psi. They need much more than that to pump water over a hundred miles.

[Parkguy]

I can only explain how it worked for us. We've lived in Rosedale Park for 30+ years. We're both retired now, but could live just about anywhere we wanted to live. When we first moved here is was for the central location, convenient for both of us to get to work. The house was over twice the house we could get for the same money in the suburbs when looking at size, and many times over when compared to quality and character. Our attitude was that we could always move if things didn't work out. When our daughter was approaching school age, we ended up sending her to private schools for a variety of reasons that were unique to our family. All of that worked out very well for us. The cost was higher, to be sure, but if we had moved we probably would have chosen private education anyway [[once again: unique reasons, and not ones that you'll usually hear).

This is a fantastic neighborhood. It is walkable, beautiful, and is filled with wonderful neighbors. It is designated as a neighborhood enterprise zone, so property taxes are reduced. There is still the income tax, but I always compared the total of property and city income tax against the property taxes in an equivalent suburb for a comparable house [[comparable in size and quality, not in price). The tax burden was always about the same! Obviously, if I compared a smaller suburban house that was equal in value to my larger home in the city, the taxes in the suburbs would have been lower. I worked in the northwest suburbs for most of my years on the job, and my commute was no longer than that of most of my coworkers who commuted from other suburbs or exurbs, and often much less time. I can be downtown in 15 minutes, get to Dearborn in 10 minutes, Southfield in 8 minutes, Birmingham in 15 minutes, and Novi in 20 minutes. Or I can walk five blocks to a nice grocery store and drugstore. Are there foreclosures? Sure, at about the same percentage as the rates I saw in the news yesterday in the story about suburban foreclosures. When we moved here, prices were too good to pass up, just as they are today in this terrible real estate market. But I have always felt that we made a great investment, and my wife agrees. We were just talking about that today, in fact.

Unlike some, I don't hate suburbs. I spend a lot of time in different suburbs-- I grew up in the suburbs. I do hate sprawl, and I recognize that this region is very different than a lot of other cities. Suburbs are not going to go away soon, but things will change as cheap energy disappears. In the meantime, I don't see any pressing reason to think about leaving our fantastic neighborhood.

[Mikeg]

please read carefully what i stated.

I stated that when new communities are built dte has to build substations. I did not mention power generating plants. The two are different. Substations allows for reliability and switching. Such as when there is a storm people the upscale communities often lose power more than those in urban areas due to the lack of substations.

With regards to dwsd, the power used by dwsd is used to pump water from port huron to to communites in oakland and macomb counties which requires much more energy than the elevation provides. The elevation provides only approx. 40 psi. They need much more than that to pump water over a hundred miles.

Here is exactly what you stated [[my emphasis added):"as communities on the outskirts of Detroit grows, Detroit Edison is has to build new substations and new power lines to reach customers on the outskirts"

The reason I mentioned that the location of most generating plants are on the outskirts of the DTE service ares is that their power is transmitted to their customers by way of high-voltage power lines that run from the plants past all of those "unsustainable suburbs" on their way to the city. The high voltage is reduced at substations near where their customers are located. DTE doesn't have to build new power lines to reach the substations in the suburbs because the substations are often located on fenced parcels within the utility's high-voltage transmission line right-of-way. Since the purpose of the substation is to house the transformers used to step-down the voltage, their cost is a function of the number of transformers it contains, which is based on the amount of power that has to be provided to local customers. Move all those customers to the city and you will have to increase the number of step-down transformers in urban substations, which are often housed inside of structures instead of within an existing overhead transmission right-of-way.

It doesn't matter where the DTE customers are located, you will still have the same costs for substation transformers. However, the costs for housing those substation transformers is higher in urban settings. Therefore, I still maintain that your DTE argument is full of holes.

As for your DWSD argument, it too doesn't hold water. Water from the Lake Huron treatment plant is sent west to Imlay City and then south past all those "unsustainable suburbs" on its way to Detroit. The highest point along that route is just south of Imlay City. Since the DWSD obtains most of their water from Lake Huron, the transmission energy costs for providing water to suburban wholesale municipal customers aren't any higher than for the water sent to Detroit. However, the energy used to pump water over those long distances is minor compared to the energy used to maintain pressure during peak usage periods of the day. Put all of those retail suburban water customers in the city and you will still have to expend the same amount of energy to maintain pressure.

You're grasping at straws - give it up.

[Hermod]

The ship has only sailed where the sprawl has already occurred; it isn't an argument against restraining future development in a shrinking region. And this isn't just about sprawl; one of the arguments of the "rightsizers" is that having companies like DTE upgrading their infrastructure in empty areas of the city is also wasteful. It also doesn't make sense to look at relative costs at different points in their lifecycle--DTEs assets in Detroit have been amortized over 60-90 years. It is very likely that their cost to serve each customer in Macomb Township will be higher than to serve a customer in Detroit over the lifetime of the infrastructure.

Amortization is an accounting method. The money for construction has already been spent.

What are they paying in service calls, disconnections/reconnections, loss of electricity through theft of services, admin costs of bounced checks, efforts to collect monies owed, etc for a block of homes out by 7 Mile and Gratiot versus the same number of homes out by Hayes and 23 Mile?

[mwilbert]

Amortization is an accounting method. The money for construction has already been spent.

Sure, but you were trying to compare costs between assets at two different phases of their lifecycles, hence you need to make some kind of accounting assumptions, hence amortization. A Yugo isn't more expensive than a Boxster because you bought the Boxster last year and the Yugo today.

What are they paying in service calls, disconnections/reconnections, loss of electricity through theft of services, admin costs of bounced checks, efforts to collect monies owed, etc for a block of homes out by 7 Mile and Gratiot versus the same number of homes out by Hayes and 23 Mile?

I don't know, but I would assume those problems would be greater in the poorer area. What that has to do with the costs of providing services in different geographies I also don't know.

As far as mikeg's argument about utility costs, this is pretty clearly wrong, but let me just quote from a study done by Lexington, Massachusetts looking at consequences of deregulation.

All five analyses presented above [summaries below] are consistent with the conclusion that electricity distribution costs are lower in urban areas than in suburban areas.

A full cost-allocation study with geographical accounting data for distribution costs found that distribution was less expensive in New York City than in its suburbs.

Among the three Nstar subsidiaries, the least urban [[CommElec) has the highest distribution rates, the most urban [[Cambridge) has the lowest.

The more urban portion of the PEPCo territory [[Washington DC) has lower residential distribution rates than the suburban [[Maryland) portion.

Seattle City Light has lower delivery costs for residential customers and on average than the Snohomish PUD, which serves the surrounding suburban area.

Among the Tennessee munis, all of which have essentially the same power supply, residential rates are lowest for the munis with the highest density of customers per mile of distribution circuits.

Unfortunately the link is to a Windows document which is a pain to read. I have converted it to a Google doc, but I haven't been able to make that document publicly readable for some reason I don't understand.

[HistoryNotHisStory]

That ship has already sailed.

The big future costs are upgrading the lines and pipes in the older and denser sections of the service areas.

What are the DTE CURRENT costs [[less the cost of the electricity) to serve each customer in Detroit versus the costs to serve each customer in, say, Macomb Twp?

Line maintenance
Frequency of service calls
Difficulties in collection
Theft of power

Before you begin to talk you must first understand DTE rate structures and billing. One of the factors that they incorporate into their rates in Transmission and Distribution. According to dteenergy.com "Transmission and distribution lines - Our lines serve 2.2 million customers spread across 7,600 square miles of service area. We work year-round to maintain, repair and improve our electrical system to minimize outages and ensure reliable electric service."

If the people were more centralized then we would not have to pay for the maintenance of systems and sub-stations that are decentralized.

The difference between DTE rates and DWSD rates are different. With DWSD, each community pay for their cost of water. With DTE Energy, we all pay the cost. For example, whenever DTE is in the red the Michigan Public Service Commission approves as rate assessment so that all of DTE Energy customers pay the cost.

[HistoryNotHisStory]

Unlike DWSD, we all of DTE customers pay the fair share to make up for their losses and upgrades.

With DWSD, each community pays for the cost of water that directly affects them.

[HistoryNotHisStory]

As for your DWSD argument, it too doesn't hold water. Water from the Lake Huron treatment plant is sent west to Imlay City and then south past all those "unsustainable suburbs" on its way to Detroit. The highest point along that route is just south of Imlay City. Since the DWSD obtains most of their water from Lake Huron, the transmission energy costs for providing water to suburban wholesale municipal customers aren't any higher than for the water sent to Detroit. However, the energy used to pump water over those long distances is minor compared to the energy used to maintain pressure during peak usage periods of the day. Put all of those retail suburban water customers in the city and you will still have to expend the same amount of energy to maintain pressure.

You're grasping at straws - give it up.

You are wrong!

DWSD has five water plants. City of Detroit Customers are almost entirely served by Northeast Water Treatment Plant [[Detroit), Springwells Water Treatment Plant [[Dearborn), and Water Works Park Treatment Plant [[Detroit).

The Southwest Water Plant Provides water to customers in the Downriver communities. The Lake Huron Water Treatment Plant provides water to mostly used by customers in Oakland and Macomb County.

So before you begin to communicate to me about DTE Energy and DWSD, you must do the following:

1. Understand how they set their rates.
2. Understand how the water transmission systems operates. See link to duly informed. If questions, let me know. http://www.dwsd.org/images/water_map.gif
3. Understand how the electrical transmission and distribution system works.

[HistoryNotHisStory]

The suburban sprawl is unsustainable.

Don't take my word for it alone. See the movie:
THE END OF SUBURBIA: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream

The movies provides information and facts from scientists, sociologists and experts. The following is a trailer from the movie. http://youtu.be/qHr8OzaloLM

[DetroitDad]

I do like that much of Downtown doesn't have many above ground electrical lines. The lines strung along main roads always struck me as a somewhat dangerous eyesore. Indeed, a DTE van struck a pole in the neighborhood I grew up in as a child. The impact cause one of the power lines to come down right outside our window while I was at a friend's house playing video games. I just remember the loud electrical zapping sounds, as we all ran out of the house,with the wire dancing on the front lawn. The house was sparred any real damage, but the lawn was cooked, and the chain link fence where the wire had struck, was literally vaporized, it was a charred dark spot on the Earth.

Very scary. I don't like living near power lines, and really liked that we never had a weather related power outage in the five years I lived Downtown.

[Vox]

http://www.wxyz.com/dpp/news/major-p...wntown-detroit

Just sayin'.

And I really never pictured you as a Luddite or Amish.

[HistoryNotHisStory]

http://www.wxyz.com/dpp/news/major-p...wntown-detroit

Just sayin'.

And I really never pictured you as a Luddite or Amish.

What are you trying to say? It doesn't make sense. PLD provides power to the municipal buildings in Downtown Detroit. DTE provides power to all the other buildings.

So you are not making sense. The Public Lighiting Dept. only provides power to a few municipal buildings and Wayne State University. Downtown Detroit is powered by DTE. The Renaissance Center, and other buildings were not affected.

[DetroitDad]

http://www.wxyz.com/dpp/news/major-p...wntown-detroit

Just sayin'.

And I really never pictured you as a Luddite or Amish.

I'm out tilling the fields, while Detroit Mom is milking the cows, and the little one is down by the swimming hole, in July. We would only notice a power outage during a storm.

Vox, will you be coming by for the barn raising next weekend?

[Vox]

I'm out tilling the fields, while Detroit Mom is milking the cows, and the little one is down by the swimming hole, in July. We would only notice a power outage during a storm.

Vox, will you be coming by for the barn raising next weekend?

If you were a real Amish, you wouldn't notice at all. And they get rides in cars too.

[Vox]

Still a power outage, by any estimation. Granted, a municipal one, but still one anyway.

[Vox]

Here's a good example of sustainability. Warren has it's own version of DYES.

http://warrenforum.net/

[Mikeg]

You are wrong!

DWSD has five water plants. City of Detroit Customers are almost entirely served by Northeast Water Treatment Plant [[Detroit), Springwells Water Treatment Plant [[Dearborn), and Water Works Park Treatment Plant [[Detroit).

The Southwest Water Plant Provides water to customers in the Downriver communities. The Lake Huron Water Treatment Plant provides water to mostly used by customers in Oakland and Macomb County.

So before you begin to communicate to me about DTE Energy and DWSD, you must do the following:

1. Understand how they set their rates.
2. Understand how the water transmission systems operates. See link to duly informed. If questions, let me know. http://www.dwsd.org/images/water_map.gif
3. Understand how the electrical transmission and distribution system works.

It's true that DWSD has five water plants.

What is not true is your implication that those five plants each serve only a fixed area within the overall system.

Those five plants have a combined treatment capacity of 1,720 MGD [[million gallons per day). Since it costs less to treat the much cleaner Lake Huron water, that plant is run near its full capacity of 400 MGD and the other plants provide additional water as needed to match demand and maintain pressure. Over the past year, the daily water demand has ranged between 442 and 968 MGD, which means the Lake Huron plant was capable of providing 90% and 41% of the total amount of demand on those days. On an annual basis, the Lake Huron plant can provide up to 63% of the total 228,490 million gallons consumed by DWSD's customers in an average year.

To summarize, the Lake Huron treatment plant provides most of the water used throughout the DWSD's service area and it's "all downhill" to those customers south of Imlay City, including Detroit, which has less than 25% of the total population within the DWSD water service area. The energy costs to maintain system pressure are a function of customer demand, not location or population density - and they dwarf the energy costs for moving the water from the plants to the customers.

If you want to believe differently, you're entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts.

[DetroitDad]

Cross post with Empty Homes Dot Oakland County's Upscale Suburbs


Here is an excellent topic started by BrushStart.

Opening post:

http://www.detnews.com/article/20110...pscale-suburbs

I am not posting this to start another tiresome anti-suburbs debate, or to ignite another notoriously irritating city-vs-suburbs thread, but I want to hear what people think about the trouble some communities might be in going forward, how best to solve coming problems, and if there is a silver-lining.

Now that even well-to-do communities like the Bloomfields and Birmingham have 10%+ residential vacancy rates, what is going to happen to the region?

For right now, these communities are able to maintain vacant properties and keep up appearances, but as these cities become more cash-strapped, the level of upkeep and maintenance will probably dwindle.

If a street has 20 houses on it, and two become vacant, it's likely surrounding home values have gone down. At some point, your neighbors might get fed up and walk away from their mortgage and now you have 3 vacant homes. An investor might buy a fourth home through a short-sale and rent it to a tenant who doesn't care about the property. A year later, the city might stop maintaining the three vacant properties. Now, you have what used to be an exclusive street with three unmaintained vacant homes that are starting to look ragged, and a renter for a neighbor who is letting his house go to shit. Because more residents have starting leaving and property values have sunk, the tax base shrinks, city services are getting worse, and more people begin to leave. The city tries in vain to raise taxes on those who are left, but low and behold, it exacerbates the problem by causing more flight. Local businesses start to dry up and leave town creating vacant storefronts and further declining property values. All the while, you're sitting there and your home's value continues to free-fall. Eventually, you start wondering when you should leave.

The hypothetical above sounds a lot like what has been happening in Detroit for the last 50 years. It's the cycle of death for cities and towns. How are places like the suburbs going to deal with these issues as they happen? I think it is clear that the early symptoms are setting in. Obviously, Detroit did not cope well or address these problems adequately. So, the drawing board is ripe for ideas on how to reverse these trends. This region can't afford to lose anymore ground, especially its flagship pockets of wealth and success.

[HistoryNotHisStory]

It's true that DWSD has five water plants.

What is not true is your implication that those five plants each serve only a fixed area within the overall system.

Those five plants have a combined treatment capacity of 1,720 MGD [[million gallons per day). Since it costs less to treat the much cleaner Lake Huron water, that plant is run near its full capacity of 400 MGD and the other plants provide additional water as needed to match demand and maintain pressure. Over the past year, the daily water demand has ranged between 442 and 968 MGD, which means the Lake Huron plant was capable of providing 90% and 41% of the total amount of demand on those days. On an annual basis, the Lake Huron plant can provide up to 63% of the total 228,490 million gallons consumed by DWSD's customers in an average year.

I know that these facts already sir.

Once again you are stating trivial words. The treatment process is the same as for almost all the plants. The most efficient water treatment process would be at Water Works Park in Detroit. That is because the treatment plant is only a few years old and uses state of the art equipment.

Lake Huron water has to be treated the same way that water from Lake Erie is treated at the Southwest Plant. Before you talk do your research.

I do not base my words on opinions but on facts.