Readers Support Ballot Measure for a Smoke-Free St. Louis County

The poll last week was about the November ballot measure in St. Louis County regarding the relatively weak smoke-free law (excludes casino floors, for example).  The poll question was:

In November voters in St. Louis County have a smoke-free ballot item. My thoughts are:

• I support the measure and believe it will pass. 88 (54%)
• I support the measure but feel it will fail. 31 (19%)
• I oppose the measure but feel it will pass. 20 (12%)
• I oppose the measure and believe it will fail.  19 (12%)
• I have no view/opinion 6 (4%)

If we look at this another way we see that 119 of the 164 votes support the measure (73%) while 39 oppose (24%) and the remaining 6 have no opinion.  That is the support/opposition to the measure.

Of the responses 108/164 (66%) think it will pass while 50/164 (30%)  believe it will fail.  Let’s hope the final outcome follows these numbers, assuming a simple majority is all that is needed for passage.

– Steve Patterson

Let the FUD Campaign Begin

Voters in St. Louis County will have a smoke-free measure on their November ballot.  Those addicted to nicotine to campaign against the measure.

The measure does have flaws — exemption of casino floors and bars that serve little food.  A state-wide smoke-free measure, more likely once we

The rhetoric will be high, pure FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt).

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

Bill Hannegan, who fought the county bill, said he thought opponents would have a real chance of defeating it at the polls.

People are angry about “the way it was handled and the unfairness of the law,” he said.

“For example, bowling alleys are out of luck. You can smoke on a casino gaming floor but can’t smoke at all in a bowling alley. Bowlers will be angry about this.”

This bowler will be pleased.  What Hannegan should have said is the nicotine-addicted bowler will be angry.

Next month the St. Louis Board of Aldermen will resume consideration of a bill that would create a smoke-free St. Louis, triggered by a measure in St. Louis County.  Hopefully the existence of the ballot item in the county will help the city measure pass.  In turn, I hope a passed city ordinance would motivate county voters to pass their measure.  If anything the fragmentation in our region may stretch the opposition forces thinly.  Now is the time for officials in St. Charles County and Jefferson County to push their own measures.

The poll this week, in the upper right sidebar, asks both if you support or oppose the St. Louis County ballot measure and if you think it will pass or fail.

If passed St. Louis County would go smoke-free in January 2011.

– Steve Patterson

Walkability Must Become a Priority for the St. Louis Region

I love multi-story buildings built up to the sidewalk.  If these buildings have clear windows and doors at the sidewalk level the are inherently more walkable  than others.  I recognize, however. this is not for everyone.  But that doesn’t mean walkability needs to be tossed aside.  Most drivers like the option of walking.  Development can be both non-urban and walkable.

This is the story of one part of suburban St. Louis County that was close to being minimally walkable, not ideal but minimally.  But it falls short of even being minimally walkable.

The area is around the Sam’s store at I-44 and Big Bend  (map link).  The Sam’s is obviously the big box in the bottom right corner in the above map image.   Out at Big Bend is a Hardee’s.  The other out parcel to the left of the drive is now occupied.  This is all in the City of Crestwood.  The left side of the image is in the City of Kirkwood.

As you can see a sidewalk runs along the edge of Big Bend Road.  Along one side of the drive into Sam’s the sidewalk extends into the development.  So far so good.  Except it doesn’t really work.  For sidewalks to be useful to the pedestrian they need to go door to door.

Say you live in the apartment complex on the left side of the above image and you want to get lunch at Hardee’s, then a few things at Sam’s? Would you walk or drive to each location?  Sadly this environment, because the sidewalks are mere decoration, is designed for driving only.

But let’s put  the destination closer.  You live in one of these apartments and work in the building on the other side of the fence.  It would be silly to drive.

Leaving your apartment complex your only option is the auto driveway — no sidewalk from your front door to the public sidewalk.

Once you’ve arrived at the top of the hill you can them step out of the auto drive and onto a public sidewalk.

Turning into the development you can see the entrance to your workplace but the grade difference and the fence block yuor direct route so you continue downhill.

Here you get to pretend, once again, that you are a car because you weren’t provided with a sidewalk to get you to the door. Now you decide to walk over to Sam’s on your lunch break.

Nice, you are just dumped in the parking lot.   By now you are thinking you should have driven.

You turn around and look back at your workplace.  You are in the middle of a Sam’s parking lot.  You, the pedestrian, have been treated like a car.  With the exception of a small part of the journey you don’t have your own space.  But of course you feel vulnerable compared to cars.   Tomorrow you decide to drive to work rather than walk.  Next time someone tells you that “nobody walks” in the suburbs this is part of the reason — it is not designed to accommodate walkers.  Sure, an employee that lives miles away is not going to walk.  But even the close proximities are hostile to the pedestrian.  The apartment developer in Kirkwood is partly to blame.  So is the commercial developer in Crestwood.    It is sad that we are supposed to be among the most advanced nations yet we can’t figure out how to create an environment where a person could go to work next door without driving.

blah

Clayton To Go Smoke-Free While St. Louis Debates

Board Bill #46 has been introduced at the St. Louis Board of Aldermen.  If approved it would make establishments in St. Louis smoke-free.  The trick, is it would not go into affect until St. Louis County passed a similar measure.  To give the County the political leg it needed to pass a smoke-free law I supported such a trigger mechanism.  But last month neighboring municipality and county seat, Clayton, took a big step closer to going smoke-free by July 2010:

Last night the Clayton board of aldermen gave initial approval to a smoking ban for businesses and restaurants that would go into effect in July 2010.

The bill needs one more reading before becoming law, though it looks to be virtual done deal at this point. Just one alderman voted against the ban yesterday and that’s because he believes it is too weak. (He’d like to see smoking prohibited in public parks and green spaces, as well.)

When the ban becomes law, Clayton will become only the second of St. Louis County’s 91 municipalities to enact a smoking ban.

Last night, Clayton mayor Linda Goldstein said she hoped her city would prove to be an inspiration. “If we pass this ordinance, Clayton will serve as an example to other municipalities and will give them encouragement to pass similar legislation.”  (Source: RFT)

While Illinois is smoke-free, the only smoke-free municipality among the 91 in St. Louis County is the Western suburb of Ballwin.  The Jefferson County of Arnold is also [partially] smoke-free.  But with the abutting suburb of Clayton expected to be smoke-free by July 2010 it changes the political landscape for the City of St. Louis, to a degree.

The bill to make St. Louis smoke-free was introduced by 28th Ward Alderman Lyda Krewson.  Her ward includes the many restaurants along Euclid Ave in the Central West End as well as the city’s portion of the Loop along Delmar.   Most of the Loop is in University City, in St. Louis County.  Krewson doesn’t want to pit establishments against each other, especially on the same street.

University City Mayor Joe Adams was among five Mayors that signed a letter in January urging the St . Louis County Council to adopt county-wide smoke-free legislation.  Clayton’s Goldstein was another.  University City abuts both Clayton & St. Louis.  Will University City also adopt smoke-free legislation?  If so, the Loop could be smoke-free end to end without action by St. Louis County — if University City & the City of St. Louis both passed smoke-free ordinances.

I recently tried the trendy Loop pizza place Pi, located in the City’s section of the Loop.  As regular readers know, I only patronize smoke-free establishments.  The hour long wait to be seated confirmed a place can be both smoke-free and successful.  For the record, it was totally worth the wait!

The restaurant business is tough.  I can think of many places, both smoking & smoke-free, that have closed over the years.  Smoke-free laws are often blamed for the closure of establishments that likely would have closed anyway.  But as we all know places close with or without smoke-free laws.  The smoke-free laws are simply an easy scapegoat for failed businesses and pro-smoking advocates.

Clayton & Ballwin do not have one thing St. Louis does: casinos.  While casinos are not for me, I know I’d avoid Missouri casinos and head to Illinois if so inclined.  But casinos have disproportionally more smokers than the population.  Would St. Louis’ lose business to nearby casino’s if it went smoke-free?  Maybe, maybe not.  A tourist in town wanting to take a drag as they pulled the slot machine lever would find casinos on both sides of the river downtown smoke-free.  Would they drive or take a cab to a smokey casino in St. Louis County or St. Charles County?  Perhaps?  The question is if customers & employees at St. Louis casinos should continue to be subjected to unhealthy air because of a fear of a loss of tax revenue?

So perhaps St. Louis’ smoke-free bill should be amended to take affect upon the earliest of two events:  1) the active date of a  St. Louis County smoke-free ordinance or 2) January 1, 2011.  If the St. Louis County Council passes a smoke-free regulation that would go into affect on say August 1, 2010 then St. Louis’ law would be triggered for that same date.  But otherwise St. Louis would go smoke-free on January 1, 2011 — six months after Clayton.  This doesn’t address the casino issue but it does give other municipalities the comfort of knowing they would not be alone if they too went smoke-free.

St. Louis’ bill is in the Health & Human Services committee chaired by 27th Ward Alderman Gregory Carter.  My Alderman, Kacie Starr Triplett (6th Ward) , is on this committee.

UPDATE 6/2/09 @ 3pm — added the word “partially” before Arnold.

The Origins of the River des Peres

When most of us think of the River des Peres we think of the (mostly) waterless ditch that runs near St. Louis’ limits, just South of I-44 (map).  It runs out to the Mississippi and seldom has much visible water.  Last night it was as full as I’ve seen it save for a few flood events.

Of course all waterways have both a history and a point of origin and the River des Peres is no exception:

Perhaps the first sewage the River des Peres received was from St. Louis’ Central West End chamberpots. In response to the volume of waste, the city wrote an ordinance in 1887 “to prevent discharge of sewerage or offensive matter of any kind into the River des Peres.” If the city had funded the ordinance, then a separate sewer system would have been built and the River des Peres’ history might have taken a different course. Instead, the government of St. Louis began a trend that has plagued the river for more than a century: St. Louis would support ideas to protect the River des Peres as a sewer more than as a river.

As St. Louis grew westward, so did the expanses of pavement. With less open ground to soak up the rains, the River swelled with runoff. The River des Peres flooded in 1897, 1905, 1912, and 1913. The flood of 1915 killed 11 people and forced 1025 families from their homes. Flooding – not sewage – prompted St. Louisans to action. Mayor Henry W. Kiel called for a hydrologic study, which was completed by W.W. Horner and presented to the St. Louis Board of Public Service in 1916. St. Louis voters chose to implement Horner’s recommendations, which cost $11 million.

The project was called the River des Peres Sewerage and Drainage Works, and it took nine years to complete (from 1924 to 1933). Workers re-graded and paved the River’s banks and straightened its bends. Elsewhere the River was directed below ground to join with the sewer. The engineering innovations brought national recognition for Horner (who was also the project engineer). Scientific American and Engineering News-Record featured the marvelous new River des Peres. In 1988, the American Society of Civil Engineers recognized the project as a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark.  (Source: River des Peres Watershed Coalition)

So our once natural waterway became an engineered & buried system until it reached the open air channel we all know.  Even there the river is still buried beneath the open channel.  But what about the origins?  For that we need to travel to the St. Louis suburb of Overland, MO to a subdivision of mostly ranch homes built around a lake (map).  Seriously.

This lake is not a naturally formed lake.  Here, I’ll let the historic marker explain:

It is just over 6.5 miles from this spring fed lake to where the River des Peres opens up near I-44 — in a straight line shot.  As creeks & rivers do the River des Peres took a much longer winding course. It is open in places and covered in others.

All water runs downhill, every bit of land is in a watershed.  How we treat these watersheds are important — especially to those downstream.

Back to the River des Peres Watershed Coalition:

Unfortunately, channelizing and straightening the River channel has had undesirable side effects. The River now travels much faster and the banks are much steeper. What this means is greater erosion of the banks, which threatens trees and structures and increases the sediment in the River. Repairing riverbanks and structures along the River des Peres is challenging and expensive. Many St. Louis area residents have a very negative perception of the River des Peres, viewing it as nothing more than an open sewer. Some don’t even realize that it’s a river. This unfavorable attitude toward the River allows some to mistreat it, by dumping or allowing pollutants and debris into the River. There are some very important reasons to take better care of the River des Peres. The open stretches of the River des Peres are still home to wildlife such as fish, turtles, dragonflies, and birds. The microbes in the River perform the valuable task of helping to purify the water. The River also provides aesthetic value in areas like Ruth Park Woods in University City, where it flows in a more natural state. And the River des Peres – and all the pollutants and waste it carries – empties into the Mississippi River, which is home to hundreds of species of aquatic life, including the federally endangered pallid sturgeon.

The River des Peres is at the same time part of the region’s sewer infrastructure as well as part of our natural landscape.  It connects the City of St. Louis to inner-ring suburbs.