Public Works and Utilities Info – Page 2 – The Barron Park Association

No More Black Garbage Cans … Really?

Dec 132012

Barron Park neighbors – The City Council is going to act next Monday (Dec 17th) on a recommendation by Public Works Staff to eliminate pickups of black garbage carts. Not yet for everybody, just for folks in some as-yet-unidentified area. It’s to be a one year, pilot study in which all wastes would be placed in either the green or blue carts, eliminating entirely the collection from black garbage carts.

The idea is that kitchen wastes now disposed of in the black garbage carts would instead be deposited by those residents in the pilot study area into the green ‘compostable’ carts . These materials would be recovered by the workers after collection, and instead of ending up in landfills, they will be sent to some composting facility. Some of the other the smelly stuff – including dirty diapers and bags of doggy poop – along with other ‘garbage’ materials would go into the blue ‘recycling’ carts, and be separated by workers at another site. The one year pilot would start in March 2013, and data collected would determine feasibility of applying this change to residential collections citywide.

You can read the staff report here:

http://www.cityofpaloalto.org/civicax/filebank/documents/32395

What do you think about this ? A discussion has started on BPA-issues email list.

Barron Park will be seeing green along Matadero

Jul 302012

The old Matadero water well site has been getting a complete makeover thanks to the City’s decision to use this well as part of the system that would provide emergency water to the public in the event of a natural disaster and a cutoff of the Hetch Hetchy supply. The project has required the BPA to put on hold its plan to beautify the area adjacent to the well site that included placing some benches.

The site along Matadero, near the intersection with Josina, is currently an eyesore. A photo taken today shows some very large white pipes and associated plumbing systems, surrounded by construction forms where a concrete pad is about to be poured. Once in place, the pad will support a number of large electrical control cabinets, and the entire site will be enclosed by a new wire fence.

Matadero Well Site – July 30, 2012

However, the appearance of the pipes and pumps and cabinets will be enhanced once all equipment is in place, thanks a group of determined BPA Board members, led by President Lynnie Melena. Continue reading »

AT&T’s proposed DAS cell phone antennas in Barron Park

City Actions and Activities in Barron Park, Public Works and Utilities Info No Responses »

Jul 302012

A report by Doug Moran..with his updated Map of Proposed Towers (July 2012)

https://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msid=209482381320120716761.0004a3aa50f14ecb36fa0&msa=0

Report from the AT&T Open House June 20 on proposed DAS cell phone antennas for Barron Park (and elsewhere). Barron Park attendees included me, Art Liberman and Bob Moss (and possibly others).

AT&T had two engineers there who could answer the sorts of questions mentioned in the earlier messages (one that we had asked over a year ago). The engineer we were talking to said that this was the first time anyone had asked him about these sort of details, so apparently Barron Park _is_ different. Below is the info gathered.

1. The City’s database of cell towers had multiple errors. The relevant one was that it didn’t show AT&T using the tower at the VA Hospital (I have updated my map to reflect this). This tower provides coverage for much of western Barron Park. The proposed DAS antennas in BP follow the contour of the limits of the coverage of that antenna. EXCEPT, the antenna at the top of Matadero is intended to provide coverage for the nearby section of the Research Park. For the small coverage areas that DAS is intended for, AT&T prefers to put the antennas on telephone poles because those poles already have the high capacity link (optical fiber) to their network node, whereas adding an antenna to the roof of a commercial building involves significant costs for the additional cabling. I didn’t get an explanation for the Chimalus site (because we had already monopolized the engineer too much).

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