Posted at: 06/17/2010 5:58 PM
Updated at: 06/17/2010 8:20 PM
By: Mark Mulholland

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Jury assigns blame in Hadlock Pond Dam failure

Fort Ann - Five years since the Hadlock Pond Dam collapsed, we now know who is to blame.

A Supreme Court Jury reached its verdict Thursday afternoon in Warren County.

Kubricky Construction, the builder of the dam, gets 45 percent of the blame. The engineer, HTE Northeast Engineering, is assigned 27 percent of the blame, Atlantic Testing Laboratories gets just five percent and, the jury found that the Town of Fort Ann is 23 percent of the blame.

Fort Ann resident Van Tuttle showed us how the rushing water washed away the private bridge to his home. He says it will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a new one.

When asked what he thought of the verdict, Tuttle said, "I think it was pretty fair. Overall, I really do. I feel it was fair."

But Tuttle and others won't be getting compensated any time soon. Attorneys say it could take months or even years to decide each how much of the defendants has to pay.

Paul Wein represents 85 Hadlock Pond property owners who are plaintiffs."We can tell them that even though none of these people said they were sorry, this jury made them say they were sorry."

John Aspland, the attorney for the Town of Fort Ann says the jury assigned too much blame to his client.

"It's not a matter of sour grapes when you look at the case and the proof. The 23 is a little high for what happened in this case and where we think our role was."

Treehugger, babassu takes several decades to mature. So let's stick to the facts: nobody is going to create plantations. You harvest from wild stands.

But you're right that biofuels could lead to deforestation if current practises spiral out of hand (currently, there is no link between biofuels and deforestation; as both sugarcane does not grow in the Amazon and palm oil production for biofuels has not increased - neither the U.S. nor the EU have imported more palm oil than in 2005).

The question is: does *not* investing in biofuels lead to even more deforestation? The answer is yes. Poverty is the key cause to deforestation in the tropics; biofuels can slow down deforestation by providing funds for biochar based production.

These production systems have the capacity to (1) end slash-and-burn based deforestation once and for all, (2) to save the planet because biochar based biofuels are not merely carbon-neutral, they are carbon-negative and take CO2 out of the atmosphere (and should thus be promoted over renewables like wind and solar, which contribute CO2 to the atmosphere), and (3) end hunger, because biochar based production boosts food production.

Finally, you also know the figures of the IEA and the FAO showing there is enough non-forest land for about 1500EJ worth of bioenergy by 2050 (current world oil consumption: 240EJ).

Simple international rules and certification schemes will ensure that this non-forest land (around 1.5bn hectares) is used. This will also end the false claims that biofuels are contributing to deforestation - a claim for which there is no evidence whatsoever.

There's not much of an alternative to oil except biofuels. In the hyper-wealthy world we may see an electric car here and there. But the 4 billion people in the developing world will be driving ICE cars for decades to come. And that means either $100-150pb oil (the real price of oil is around $400pb), or $35pb biofuels.

Obviously, biofuels are currently the only option for these countries.