Re: UPDATE re Coyote Crisis

From: Greg Harris (harris@Synopsys.COM-DeleteThis)
Date: Fri Jan 29 1999 - 11:21:23 PST

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Message-Id: <36B20A33.F9030D67@synopsys.com-DeleteThis>
Date: Fri, 29 Jan 1999 11:21:23 -0800
From: Greg Harris <harris@Synopsys.COM-DeleteThis>
Organization: Synopsys
To: wind_talk@opus.hpl.hp.com-DeleteThis
Subject: Re: UPDATE re Coyote Crisis
References: <199901290325.TAA95809@bluedini.engr.sgi.com-DeleteThis>
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After finally finishing the report last night these are the points that
I see:

a) the windsurfing community should be included in any tests that are
conducted if they want us to believe there will be no impact. To simply
create some tests without our input or verification calls into question
the test. We should be thinking about conducting our own study.

b) They come up with an arbitrary number of what will affect windsurfing
since they have no definition which marks a rather striking point. Even
they don't know what would effect the windsurfing site and say so in the
report, so how are they supposed to be measuring it by coming up with
their own means of verification!! They arbitrarily say a 10% decrease
will affect the site. This does not take into account the disruption to
consistency in the wind or the fact that winds can and do shift during
the day.

c) Does not take into account that Coyote already has a pronounced wind
shadow and which happends to be the reason I personally don't sail there
much. Again, 10% becomes an arbitrary number that has no real world
value. An even minor "exta" wind shadow created could push the
situation over the brink where far more people stop sailing there. Any
new wind shadow could make a marked contrast between the inside vs. the
outside where it already can amount to the difference between sailing
one type of gear vs. the other. Their study states that simply more
wind is better and there are no specific criteria for defining "good
sailing". Similair conditions can be a matter of safety to make sure
you have the gear that fits the situation. I've taken out my back by
having too big of gear on the water and breakdowns are far more likely
as well which risks peoples lives. That situation might not be so
unlikely if you had to struggle to get out to the channel with bigger
gear than you should have.

d) Funny they sort of mention that a W'ly wind has a large impact and
lump everything else into saying it's not a big deal. I'd be curious to
know the exact statistics for all the wind directions, especially the
WNW which will have a "smaller impact" than W and more than the other
directions, which I think according to their statistics was the most
common wind direction at Coyote.

e) Somehow in the report it says the low lying buildings and vegetation
already in place create a wind shadow that has more effect and is larger
than the one that would be created by the project. I simply have a
difficult time believing that to be true considering the size of the
buildings, however it also exemplifies the point that the wind can be
affected relatively easily.

f) Page 50 of the report which has the area map seems to have relatively
large areas that are affected by the buildings for a W wind. This
includes directly in front of the launching area and a significant
distance away from shore. There are even parts of the launching area
that get lumped into categories 4 and 5 down by ASD out of 6 different
levels listed. Most of the affected areas list a higher R value than
what is significant in their eyes, but there is no real world
verification of what affect this is.

g) This may not be specific to the building site, but the potential
effects to the windsurfing community can be enormous because of the
overcrowding situation. Maybe they care or not, but they should know
that this is not something that should be taken lightly and quickly
decided upon without all the facts because it can have a huge impact on
an already bad situation.

In conclusion:
Simply having them ram an "it'll all be OK, just trust us" down our
throat is not acceptable. We should think about sponsoring our own
study. We need them to understand how it looks from our perspective
that suddenly an outside entity that wants to put up buildings and never
looked for our input says there won't be an impact when all our
experience we've learned as sailors say that's BS. Any tests made need
to be open to us for input to try and get some real world value of what
might affect the sailing area and verification of methodology so we are
satisfied that this isn't BS being rammed down our throats. If it comes
down to it and they blow us off and try and move the project ahead
without that, we should attempt tie it up in court until we are
satisfied that it won't affect the site. Also, please show up on the
22nd.

Greg Harris

Martin Frankel wrote:
>
> I don't think that a bunch of whining and handwaving will do any good
> at this point. "You don't understand, this really sucks!" "It's hard
> sailing a small board through a wind shadow!" etc... isn't going to
> cut it. For all appearances, the developers have spent a lot of
> money, done their homework, and acted with due diligence to address
> our concerns. There are only two possibilities that I see:
>
> 1) Their study and their conclusions are sound, and we will not be
> significantly affected by the development.
>
> 2) Their study is unsound, due to bad methodology, mistaken
> assumptions, or even intentional misrepresentations.
>
> As a windsurfer my intuition suggests the latter. However there is a
> credibility gap which we need to address with more than intuition.
>
> On first reading there seemed to be a few things in the study that
> were kinda bogus.
>
> 1) Measured wind velocity instead of wind energy, but as they point
> out, the energy goes up with the third power of velocity. A small
> change in velocity has a large effect on a sailor.
>
> 2) They never demostrated the validity of their model against the real
> world. If you go out on a boat on a west wind day and measure the
> wind shadow on the water at the same grid points, would it match their
> wind tunnel results? The fact that they did not do this calls the
> entire study into question.
>
> 3) There are no references or literature to support their methodology,
> they just assert that it is an accurate model. If we talked with
> another meteorologist or aerodynamicist or whatever, what would they
> say?
>
> --
> Martin Frankel |||| mdf@sgi.com-DeleteThis |||| (650)933-6191

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