December 19, 2007Multiplying bearsJust a pause to say thanks to those of you who have submitted black bear sightings for our map of bears in unusual places around the region. I think I had five or six on there when I first posted the map in the DataSphere. There are now three times that. Some cool ones came in, too. Jason Ball, who lives in Amherst County not too far from Buena Vista, sent in three sightings, including a regular visitor who fishes in the pond on his property. Bruce Cody told of one invader who left claw marks 9-feet up a tree from trying to reach a bird feeder. Those are just a couple. Many more there of roadside sightings, mama's and babies in transit, and others. So, again, thanks, and keep 'em coming. December 17, 2007Recycling data in the newsRecycling data for Virginia localities posted in the DataSphere is getting some interest in the print edition of The Roanoke Times. Check out Duncan Adams' story on the rates, which has a particular focus on Floyd County's rate of 11 percent. That's well below the state mandated rate of 25 percent. That's from Sunday's paper. Today's edition brought the opinion of our editorial staff on the rates. "Virginia cities and counties could do much better. But as long as the state sticks to expectations set nearly 20 years ago, there is little reason for localities to try," it reads. December 11, 2007Recycling rates are back -- and rightWe've reposted our database of recycling rates for Virginia's 74 municipal waste handling agencies. We took it down last week after being alerted to errors in the data by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality. The errors were ours. Turns out that the numbers were correct, but they weren't matched up with the correct agencies. So have at it again. December 7, 2007Recycling rates didn't seem right because they weren'tWhen something doesn't seem right, well, sometimes that's because it's just not right. A few days ago I made a post questioning the validity of numbers in a database we posted in the DataSphere. They showed an enormous increase in the amount of municipal waste produced in Roanoke from 2005 to 2006. I was right to question the numbers -- they were indeed wrong -- but I should have looked to myself for the source of the error. I'm still not sure how it occured, but it seems the data table for 2005 is garbled. The rates shown for Roanoke City are actually for Buckingham County. We'll get it straightened out, but in the meantime, we've taken down that database. My apologies for the error and the confusion. December 5, 2007Recycling: How green is your county?New in the Datasphere, recycling rates for the 74 Virginia municipal entities that handle your trash. Our Roanoke area agencies all recycle something within a few percentage points one way or the other of a third of all their solid waste. The source is the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality's annual recycling reports, which are compliled from reports made by the municipal agencies themselves. But some of these numbers, quite frankly, seem hard to believe. They range wildly, from a rate of 7.6 percent in Northampton County to a rate of 55 percent in the town of Vienna. Can a locality, even a small one in a progressive, wealthy part of the state that produces just 12,000 tons of trash a year really recycle more than half of its waste? Part of the explanation lies in the agencies' ability to get credits added to their rate for recycling of private waste and for waste source reduction efforts. Then there's things like these numbers. Roanoke had a dramatic increase in the rate from 23 percent in 2005 to 37 percent in 2006. That sounds great, but the numbers also show reported total solid waste of 15,000 tons in 2005 compared to 80,000 tons in 2006. What? There are similar increases in Roanoke County. It all seems to suggest some change in calculations. I can find no accounting for it in the text of the 2006 DEQ report. We couldn't have a 400 percent increase in garbage from one year to the next, could we? I hate to undermine the reliablity of data I've posted in the DataSphere. Maybe there are good explanations for all this. Still, if something smells funny about the state's report on garbage, you ought to know. November 28, 2007Bears in unlikely placesYou've seen the video, the photographs: bear runs through downtown street, bear wanders into hospital, bear eats out of backyard birdfeeder. It's can't miss stuff for newspapers and TV news. We're suckers for these things. And here we go again. Now in the DataSphere, a map of sightings of black bears in interesting places around the Roanoke and New River valleys, with pictures and video in some instances. There aren't a lot there yet, and that's where you come in, gentle reader. Email me with your sightings, friends. Send the date, time, location and a description of the bear and what it did, and don't forget the pics and vids if you got 'em. I'll stick 'em on the map and we'll all have more fun than a bear dosed up on ketamine. As an aside, here's how this map "happened." A while back, the DataSphere was featured in a story on a prominent online journalism trade magazine site, called Poynter Online. Interviewing our editor, Carole Tarrant, the author asked what was next in the DataSphere. Carole replied, as a joke, that we'd be mapping sightings of black bears. The author took her seriously, and told the world that yours truly would be mapping black bear sightings. Right away, we started seeing hits on the site from people doing Google searches for black bear sightings in Roanoke. Well, we can't let the people down, now can we? |
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