Post 56 in a series. When Green Turns Brown is an examination of a small town’s digester-energy project, in which Whitewater, Wisconsin would import other cities’ waste, claiming that the result would be both profitable and green.
Whitewater, Wisconsin’s city official began public discussion of a waste importation plan on 12.3.2013; by December 15, 2015, they’d had two years’ time to plan for both waste importation and wastewater upgrades. In the clip above, one sees the fruits of those 742 days. The discussion is a clear look at the quality of reasoning, planning, and expectations of full-time city officials and the outside engineering vendor on whom they are so evidently reliant.
In the immediate weeks ahead, I will review this meeting, discussion item by discussion item. It’s an exercise well worth undertaking. If there are other open-session items from Whitewater’s city administration about waste importation, I’ll add them, too. From those items I’ll generate questions for the Question Bin.
After that’s done, it will be time to review all the questions stored in that repository, and see which critical questions lack information. Vital pieces of information left unanswered, if any, can form the basis of public records requests. Those requests may generate additional questions, or require subsequent recourse. Work like this is an orderly, reasoned process. See, for a post in which I outline the progressive method one should adopt, Steps for Blogging on a Policy or Proposal.
One other point’s germane: a long video clip is useful for generating questions, but a video documentary including officials’ statements would not use (in full) an hours-long meeting. No one does that. Instead, one selects and includes for relevance and significance, with a pointer to the full, recorded meeting, elsewhere. Along the way, I’ll start highlighting material and relevant clips, ones much shorter than those I’ve used now for question-generating.