"Rain forest spells $85M" reads the headline. We are then assured that the $85 million is just for Johnson County, Iowa. The fake rainforest will also create 2900 "ripple effect" jobs, 1400 of them in Johnson County alone, for a total statewide impact of $187 million.



There is no mention that these figures might be speculative outside the single obligatory skeptic quote ("I've heard a lot of, 'We hope. We feel. We believe.' But it's still Coralville that is left holding the bag (if the project fails).") and a bit of hedging by former governor Bob Ray: "If this happens, and I believe it will, this could be the biggest thing that happens to our state". Note that Ray's the chairman of the board of directors, and that's the best endorsement he can give.



We are then given a dazzling array of figures: "In Johnson County, tourist spending climbed $51 million over the past five years, to reach $199 million. Josh Schamberger, executive director of the Iowa City/Coralville Convention and Visitors Bureau, said the 3,170 tourism-supported jobs pay an average $7.50 a hour, compared to Iowa's minimum wage of $5.15 a hour. The Iowa Environmental/Education Project will create 2,900 "ripple effect" jobs statewide: 1,400 full- and part-time in Johnson County." None of which address the inherent speculativeness in the figures, but rather presuming that "if you build it, they will come."



I'm as big a WP Kinsella fan as the next person, but in this case they have no facts to back up that claim.



1) The "ripple effect" on jobs has now grown. According to the Iowa Environmental/Education page on the Iowa Child website the project was going to create "400 permanent jobs with ripple effect of 2,000 jobs in eastern Iowa." However, the new "news release" here now supports the 2900 "ripple effect" job figure, with "wages exceeding $42.6 million." It puts construction jobs at 500, but gives no indication of the total permanent jobs on which this "ripple effect" is based. Taking the prior figure of 400 permanent jobs would mean they believe the ripple effect would have a multiplier of a little over 7. I'm no economist, but that seems high to me. The Iowa Porkforest website has more on this issue. I also ran a google search on the term "employment multipliers." I get websites like this one with enough math to make your head swim, but if you look at the figures they range between 1.5 and 3.5, with multipliers of about 2 being most common. Come on, guys, seven??



2) The new study on which these people are basing their figures uses "a conservative mid-range attendance scenario of 1.3 million visitors during a stabilized year of operation." That's 3,550+ visitors per day if it were open 365 days per year, down from their prior, apparently not-so-conservative estimate of 1.5 million visitors per year, or 4100 per day. Of course, they still presume that opening year attendance will reach the 1.5 million mark.



Okay, reality check time. The non-profit Denver aquarium cost $93 million to build and opened in 1999. It attracted 1 million visitors during its first year of operation. In Denver, a freaking tourist trap. It went downhill from there, and is now belly-up. What about other rainforests? We keep hearing about the one in Cornwall, England that averages 1.8 million per year, with a local population of 500,000. How about the one in New York which only averages 576,444? Or the fact that the entire Omaha zoo only gets about 1.35 million? Their adjunct rainforest keeps no separate figures. But when the director was asked whether the rainforest itself is self-sustaining, he stifled a laugh and said: "These are very energy- and manpower-intense operations," he said, adding that annual expenses easily can rise to $20 million. "That's where some of these stand-alone aquariums run into problems, is they run into these 200-plus support staffs because they had to put all the management in place, whereas we ... already have to zoo infrastructure that supports it."



This estimate is conservative????? In what universe???



3) They talk about all these adjunct programs with elemantary schools, presumably to show where these 1.3 million visitors are going to come from:



"Panelists discussed teaming up with schools across Iowa, linking curriculum with "real life experience," using Web cams to allow students to monitor plant growth and animal behavior, allowing students, teachers and scientists to work side by side in a "living lab" - exploring plant genetics, water filtration systems and biotechnology."



Did you catch the "webcam"? You mean like, remote learning, over the internet? Something Iowa's kids could do now by, say, linking with the rainforest in Cornwall? Or Omaha? We already have the technology to do virtual living labs, presuming the school has sufficient computers. If not, should we not be spending the money to get more computers and better high-speed hookups?



That's what burns me - the proponents of this monstrosity keep talking about how it will enhance Iowa's education, but when you get down to brass tacks, it would cost less to buy every kid in Iowa a ticket to the Omaha zoo. According to census statistics, there are approximately 511,825 kids in Iowa between the ages of 5 and 18 - 181,603 between 5 and 13, and 346,891 from 13-18. Ticket prices at the Zoo are: ages 5-11 $4, adults ages 12 and up $7.75. That puts ticket prices for all of them at $3.5 million or so (3,414,817.25). Factor in another mill or two for transportation and teacher tickets, and round it to 5.5 million. That means that for the total $180 million this project will cost we could send every school age kid in Iowa to the Omaha zoo 36 times. Heck, we could probably ship half of them off to South America to see a real one, but I've already spent too much time on this blog to justify researching those figures.



We could also buy many, many little personal computers for the kids to do just what they're proposing: virtual learning in a living lab. So if you want to save the rainforest, and are absolutely committed to spending this kind of money to do it, I think you should try this. Take half the money and buy a rainforest preserve of whatever size in South America. Spend the other half on computers to show allow the kids in Iowa to track "their" rainforest, link with the rangers, learn about the ecosystems. We'd have saved something real instead of building something fake, and could allow a more realistic "hands on" educational experience. Think about it: the kids could be involved from start to finish. Where can we buy the land? How much will it cost? What animals live there? How are we going to make sure they're taken care of? What happens after a storm/drought/etc?



Reality is the best teacher, after all. Then again, it appears that it's not the kids who have lost touch with reality here.