Sustainable City Network Magazine - Vol. 10 - Jan. 2014

BALANCED INFORMATION & INTELLIGENT SOLUTIONS FOR MUNICIPAL PROFESSIONALS.

SUSTAINABLE CITY NETWORK

VOLUME 10 JANUARY 2014

4

SEATTLE SETS PACE IN CLIMATE RACE

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15 CAP AND TRADE FOR SOLID WASTE? 22 BIKE-SHARE AND CAR-SHARE PROGRAMS 27 LOCAL FOOD BOOSTS REGIONAL ECONOMY

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contents

VOLUME 10 JANUARY 2014

4

Antibacterials Fuel Resistant Bacteria in Streams

13

Would Cap and Trade Work for Solid Waste?

15

Gaining Authentic Stakeholder Input

18

Deconstruction Industry Begins to Gain Traction

20

Bike-Share and Car-Share Programs Reduce VMTs

22

Hitting the Solar Energy Trifecta

25

New Report Shows Local Food Boosts Regional Economy

27

cover story

SEATTLE SETS PACE IN CLIMATE RACE

9

Bayonne Uses Private Investment to Address Water Woes

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Sustainable City Network Magazine

The Best of Sustainable City Network is a quarterly magazine highlighting the most popular articles posted on sCityNetwork.com, an online trade publication that serves municipal professionals and elected officials in all 50 U.S. states and the provinces of Canada. The magazine is available in print or as a digital download at www.sCityNetwork.com/bestof. The opinions expressed in the magazine are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sustainable City Network, Inc. SUBSCRIPTIONS Contact 563.588.4492; bestof@scitynetwork.com www.sCityNetwork.com

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Jeffrey F. Bullock, Ph.D. President University of Dubuque

Dan McDonald VP Existing Business Greater Dubuque Development Corp.

GROUP PUBLISHER Karen Ruden

Roy Buol Mayor City of Dubuque

Prof. Philip J. Parker, Ph.D., P.E. Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering University of Wisconsin - Platteville

PUBLISHER & EXECUTIVE EDITOR Randy Rodgers ASSOCIATE EDITORS Andrea Hauser Michael Manning BUSINESS MANAGER Linda Flannery CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Sara Booth Jessica Chapman Will Hoyer The Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies The Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture

Cori Burbach Sustainability Coordinator City of Dubuque Jeffrey L. Bruce Owner Jeffrey L. Bruce & Company, LLC Scott Knapp VP Marketing A.Y. McDonald Mfg. Co. David Lyons President The Iowa Institute

CREATIVE/PRODUCTION MANAGER Hobie Wood Unless otherwise noted, all images used throughout Š 2013 Ingimage, all rights reserved.

Sustainable City Network, Inc. 801 Bluff Street Dubuque, Iowa 52001

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Bob Settle Vice President, Marketing Crescent Electric Supply Company Barry Shear CEO Eagle Point Solar Cindy Steinhauser Asst. City Manager City of Dubuque Scott Taylor President & CEO CarteGraph

from the editor Welcome to Sustainable City Network Magazine – the Best of sCityNetwork.com! This quarterly magazine is a compilation of the most popular articles on our web site and in our weekly e-newsletter, the InBox, which is now delivered to more than 40,000 municipal professionals and elected officials across the U.S. and Canada.

Sustainable City Network, Inc. produces advertiser-supported, non-partisan articles, webinars, trade shows and white papers that provide local institutions with quality, organized and timely information about sustainability projects, plans and best practices. This magazine is another way we fulfill our mission.

Randy Rodgers Publisher & Executive Editor SUSTAINABLE CITY NETWORK www.sCityNetwork.com 801 Bluff Street Dubuque, IA 52001 563.588.3853 randy@scitynetwork.com

OUR MISSION “To make U.S. cities more sustainable through quality and well-organized information.”

In this issue, we continue our Leaderboard Series by showcasing the City of Seattle. A progressive community with two decades of leadership in sustainability, Seattle has more at stake than most cities, as climate change and sea-level rise threaten its water, sewer and power infrastructure. The Seattle area gets 90 percent of its electricity from hydroelectric dams, which are primarily fueled by snowmelt from mountain glaciers that are gradually disappearing.

Learn how the city plans to become carbon neutral by the year 2050 through innovations in transportation, building energy, waste reduction and community design. In other top stories: We follow up on the city of Bayonne, N.J., one year after it partnered with private companies to finance and operate its struggling water and sewer utilities. You’ll discover how city leaders, with plenty of help from financial and legal advisers, structured a deal that protects rate payers, ensures public ownership and oversight, and finances infrastructure upgrades, all while eliminating half the city’s debt in the process.

Other articles in this issue focus on local food, deconstruction, solar energy, bike- and car-sharing programs, water reuse, solid waste innovations and the latest research into what’s threatening water supplies in urban areas.

The articles in this magazine have been selected by our readers. We’ve packaged them together in this convenient magazine format, available in print or as a digital download at sCityNetwork.com/ Bestof.

We hope you find value inside.

The U.S. Leader in Sustainability News & Information [3]

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SEATTLE SETS PACE IN CLIMATE RACE CITY PLANS TO BE CARBON NEUTRAL BY 2050

BY RANDY RODGERS, PUBLISHER & EXECUTIVE EDITOR

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If there is a poster child for sustainability in local government, Mike O’Brien thinks the city of Seattle might be it. in the year 2050,” O’Brien said. “That’s far enough away that it’s hard for people to grasp that reality, and yet at high tide and during high-water events we’re already seeing the impact.”

JILL SIMMONS

MIK E O ’B R IE N

Maybe that’s because for decades this coastal city of 635,000 has branded itself as a center for environmental stewardship and social innovation. Faced with the threat of sea-level rise, which could inundate large swaths of the city in the coming decades, and diminishing snowpack in the surrounding mountains, which threatens the region’s source of water and hydroelectric power, the city in 2013 updated its plan to become carbon neutral by 2050 and protect its infrastructure from the likely effects of global warming.

While many cities were working to convince their citizens that climate change was a legitimate concern, Seattle voters took it upon themselves by electing O’Brien to the Seattle City Council in 2010. The former chairman of the Washington State Sierra Club and vocal opponent of a major highway expansion project, based mostly on concerns over emissions, O’Brien didn’t have to downplay his environmental advocacy on the campaign trail. To the contrary, it was a clear asset.

“You can’t get elected in this town without at least speaking strongly about sustainability and conservation,” O’Brien said. As chairman of the city council’s energy and environment committee and a member of the planning, land use and sustainability committee, he said he now works hard to turn those words into action.

The strong political support for sustainability allows O’Brien and his colleagues to move decisively toward climate action, albeit, not as fast as the councilman might like to go.

“The sea-level concerns are real,” O’Brien said. “Last year, we experienced the highest tide ever, and it wasn’t storm related. It flooded 100 homes.”

In January 2013, Seattle Public Utilities planners created a map, using conservative scientific assumptions, to show which parts of the city would be affected by the raising sea in the next 40 years.

“The map shows a significant amount of our industrial land under water

And, future impacts could affect more than just the homes and businesses in the new flood zones. A significant number of sewer lines and outfalls will need to be moved to prevent the backflow from flooding other areas of the city. These projected infrastructure changes, including the mitigation of combined sewer overflows and the stabilizing of the city’s antiquated seawall will cost hundreds of millions in the short term, and much more in the decades to come, depending on how high the water eventually rises.

While the seawall won’t be built higher to accommodate changes in sea level, the stabilization project will be designed to provide a foundation for future expansion, O’Brien said. For now, the project is intended primarily to prevent a disastrous failure of the wall during an earthquake, which could potentially cause large sections of the waterfront to collapse into Puget Sound.

But, the gradual rise in sea level, while a costly problem to overcome, can be dealt with through investments in infrastructure and relocation.

There is another impending problem that keeps O’Brien up at night.

“Probably the bigger concern is that we get most of our energy from the snowpack in the mountains,” he said. And, according to area climate scientists, that snowpack is gradually melting away.

The city-owned utility, Seattle City Light, which gets 90 percent of its electric supply from hydroelectric power, has been carbon neutral since 2005, O’Brien said, and there’s definitely no appetite in the city for adding fossil fuels to the mix. Should the annual snow melt decline or disappear, the Seattle area will need to make up the difference through other forms of renewable energy, along with an assertive conservation program.

Seattle was an early adopter in the sustainability movement, according to Jill Simmons, director of the city’s Office of Sustainability & Environment. Her 18-member staff serves as a research and development team that keeps up on the latest trends, conducts feasibility tests and pilots, monitors progress, and helps other city departments plan and implement sustainability programs.

“We first had a focus on sustainability back in the early 90s, when we put out our first comprehensive plan, which had a tagline of ‘Toward a Sustainable Seattle,’” Simmons said. “So, we’ve been focused on sustainability for two decades, and now it’s infused into almost every aspect of city government.”

In June, the city council voted unanimously to adopt the Seattle Climate [5]

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Action Plan. Three years in the making, the 92-page plan outlines hundreds of actions the city must take to become carbon neutral by 2050 and prepare itself for the likely effects of global warming.

“The climate action plan orients around two categories of actions,” Simmons said. “The first we call our ‘quick-start actions,’ or the things we need to be doing in the next three years to really lay the foundation for putting us on a path toward carbon neutrality. And, the second group of actions, we call our ‘by 2030 actions,’ or our mid-term actions that we recognize aren’t going to happen tomorrow, but are necessary if we’re really serious about being a climate-friendly city,” she said.

The plan focuses on three sectors where the city believes it can have the greatest influence in reducing carbon emissions: transportation and land use, building energy, and solid waste.

Transportation & Land Use

“Because we already have a carbon-neutral electric utility, transportation becomes the biggest single source of carbon emissions for us,” O’Brien said. “About 50 percent of our emissions come broadly from the transportation sector.”

As a result, the plan calls for investments in public transit, bike lanes and sidewalks. But, in the long run, if Seattle is going to reach its emission goals, there will need to be a fundamental change in the way the city is currently laid out.

Simmons said land-use patterns must evolve into a network of “complete communities” where residents can live, work, shop and play without having to drive so much. “We’re focusing on making land-use decisions and zoning code that allow for a diversity of housing types and services,” she said.

“But, we recognize that you’re not going to be able to walk to everything.

People are still going to need to move around in vehicles, so we also have a focus on greening our transportation options as much as possible using electrification and alternate fuels.”

Simmons said the city has a large fleet of electric trolleys, some electric buses, and has recently invested in light rail and street cars. Seattle is also one of the largest electric car markets, per capita, in the nation, she said. As a result, the city is making significant investments in electric charging infrastructure.

Alternative fuels, including technologies that convert waste grease into fuel, are also a focus, she said, and all the city’s garbage trucks now run on compressed natural gas.

But there are significant obstacles to building the kind of transportation system the city envisions, Simmons said.

“The biggest constraints are financial. Just like everywhere else, we’re just coming out of a major recession, so pretty much everything is underfunded. We, as a region and a state, have a transportation funding [6]

crisis. We really need to come together to create a funding package and investment strategy that allows us to build the kind of multi-modal transportation system that we have the plans for, but can’t afford. It’s not something the city of Seattle can solve alone,” she said.

Building Energy

About 25 percent of Seattle’s greenhouse gas emissions come from buildings. Reducing fossil fuel consumption will take investments in renewable energy generation and distribution systems, but also in systems that provide building owners and occupants with critical information, O’Brien said.

“We recently created an energy benchmarking requirement for all buildings over 20,000 square feet, and I just learned this week that 94 percent of the buildings are in compliance, meaning they’ve reported their energy,” he said. “That’s by far the best metric anywhere in the country, among the eight or 10 cities that have benchmarking requirements. So, we’re collecting really good data now, and we have it in one spot.”

The next step, said Simmons, is figuring out how to share and use that data to affect substantial change.

“We now have two years of really good data,” she said, “and now we’re using it to make sure we’re designing the incentive packages correctly, that we’re providing the right information to building owners so they know how they can invest in their buildings’ energy performance, and making sure we have the right financing options available to them. So, it’s all about making sure they know what they need to do, and then getting them the resources to do it.”

From a policy standpoint, Seattle has written incentives into its building code to encourage new high-rise buildings to meet LEED silver or gold certification. Making buildings “district-energy ready” also earns certain advantages, O’Brien said.

Part of the district energy plan calls for using “waste heat” generated by sewage as well as computers in some of Seattle’s biggest data centers.

Seattle, home to Microsoft, Amazon and other tech giants, is a prime location for utilizing server-farm heat, which has historically been vented into the environment or cooled artificially by systems that themselves required huge amounts of energy.

O’Brien said many of his constituents hunger to be more involved in the sustainability effort. This strong public support helped fuel Seattle’s Community Power Works program, a residential energy upgrade program that has so far provided retrofits to more than 2,900 homes and three hospitals. With an initial investment of $20 million the program is, on average, resulting in a 30 percent reduction in energy consumption with each retrofit.

Solid Waste

The city of Seattle hopes to someday be a “zero-waste” community,

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“We first had a focus on sustainability back in the early 90s, when we put out our first comprehensive plan, which had a tagline of ‘Toward a Sustainable Seattle,’” Simmons said. “So, we’ve been focused on sustainability for two decades, and now it’s infused into almost every aspect of city government.” said Director of Solid Waste, Timothy Croll. In 2012, the city had a landfill diversion rate of 55.7 percent. Its goal is to reach 60 percent by 2015 and 70 percent by 2022. Croll said the single-family residential diversion rate is already at 70 percent, achieved through a 25-year history of gradually stepping up recycling efforts.

Croll cited four keys to success: 1. Making recycling convenient by giving residents special bins and providing curbside service for yard waste, food scraps, and recyclables. The uniform bins and garbage cans provided by the city also have the benefit of increasing efficiency and reducing injuries among collectors, since they can be emptied using semiautomated systems.

2. Outreach campaigns that promote the environmental benefits of recycling and composting.

3. Financial incentives: In a “pay as you throw” system, residents are issued garbage cans of various sizes; the bigger the can, the higher the monthly fee. And, fees for using the bigger cans are exaggerated to further encourage recycling and reuse.

4. Policies that ban recyclables in garbage. Croll said these policies are “lightly enforced” with plenty of warnings. (No one has ever been fined.)

The city began curbside recycling for single-family homes in 1988. In the late 1990s, the it began collecting recyclables at apartment buildings; and in 2009 it started picking up yard and food waste once a week instead of every other week. Croll said the city council will soon be deciding whether to reduce garbage collection to every other week, in order to further encourage recycling.

“Our pilot study revealed that you get about a 15 percent reduction in land filling when you do that,” Croll said. The council may also be considering a ban on food waste in garbage, which would divert even more, he said.

The city has banned single-use plastic bags and requires merchants to charge 5 cents for a paper bag, which is money the merchants get to keep.

Croll said his department spends a great deal of time modeling and analyzing the composition of the waste stream in order to develop its diversion priorities and goals.

“The goals are all based on the cost effectiveness of diversion versus [8]

land filling,” Croll said. The processing fees the city pays to its recycling contractor are based on the market prices for recycled material, as determined by third-party indices.

“If those independent indices go up, showing the market is going up, then we get a credit to our processing fee. If they go down, then we have to pay more. Many more years than not, we’ve gotten a credit, and in some years the credit has been so big that we’ve actually made money from processing recyclables. That doesn’t count the cost of collecting,” he said.

“Overall the recycling program is cost effective because the cost of collecting the stuff is about the same as the cost of collecting garbage, so land filling it would be a lot more expensive than breaking even or possibly making a profit on processing,” Croll said.

Fighting the Good Fight

With all the efforts under way in Seattle, and with all the sustainability plans in place, Councilman O’Brien remains unsatisfied with the pace of change.

“As a community activist who’s been working on climate issues and decided a number of years ago, personally, that this was a significant problem that needed to be addressed immediately, I share the frustration with others who say we’re not doing enough and we’re not doing it soon enough. I acknowledge that, and I struggle as an elected official to figure out how I can play a role in changing that dynamic, because it’s critical, and every day we wait, more lives are going to be impacted and it’s going to cost us more to fix,” he said.

O’Brien said the problems associated with climate change need to be approached in two ways: mitigation and adaptation.

“We need to do everything we can to mitigate the impacts of climate change with aggressive policy decisions, and we also need to have an adaptation strategy, because even if we’re wildly successful on our mitigation, there’s enough carbon in the atmosphere that we’ve already bought ourselves some amount of climate change,” he said.

In his introduction to the Seattle Climate Action Plan, O’Brien called on the public to help fight the good fight: “The time to act is now. The Climate Action Plan cannot be a vision that sits on a shelf. The City is committed to getting to work immediately on the actions in this Plan and to lead the way for other cities. I hope that Seattle’s residents and businesses will join us in taking action to ensure Seattle remains a great city for future generations.” n

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Bayonne Uses Private Investment to Address Water Woes New Jersey Community Entered P3 Agreement One Year Ago

BY RANDY RODGERS, PUBLISHER & EXECUTIVE EDITOR

BAYONNE, N.J. — In the nearly universal struggle to improve and maintain crumbling infrastructure, local governments are increasingly turning to private investors to pay for and manage public services.

These public/private partnerships (often called P3s), while sometimes controversial, are the new reality for many cities squeezed by crippling debt and in dire need of major capital improvements.

One recent example is the city of Bayonne, N.J., where a P3 deal in late 2012 has progressed to implementation in this working-class port town hard hit by Hurricane Sandy and with water and sewer systems stressed by years of neglect.

Joseph P. Baumann, Jr., a lawyer representing the Bayonne Municipal Utilities Authority, provided details of the transaction in a webinar hosted recently by Sustainable City Network and sponsored by United Water, the company now managing Bayonne’s water and wastewater systems. While Baumann provided the public-sector perspective, United Water’s vice president of marketing & strategy, Dan Sugarman, spoke on behalf of the privatesector partners.

“It’s important to note that while United Water is the sponsor here, my role as the attorney for the Bayonne MUA was adverse, so to speak, to United Water in this transaction,” Baumann said. “I served as the outside counsel to the Bayonne MUA when it began to first investigate the possibility of a P3 transaction, and then as it moved through the commencement of the services by United Water. In fact, I still represent the Bayonne MUA today,” he said.

Baumann said presenting both sides of the

equation is important because, “at the end of the day, P3 transactions are successful because the public side appreciates what the private side is struggling and dealing with in a P3. And, vice versa, the private side needs to understand what the public side is trying to accomplish.”

Bayonne, a relatively isolated city of 60,000 people at the tip of the peninsula that juts out into the Port of New York, has a traditional manufacturing and distribution economy.

The city buys its water from the North Jersey District Water Supply Commission, a public entity created by a number of New Jersey municipalities. The water originates from the Wanaque and Monksville reservoirs, some 50 miles northwest of the city, and is delivered via an antiquated aqueduct that runs beneath the harbor.

Baumann said the city pays for a capacity of 17.6 million gallons of water per day, but uses only about 8.5 million gallons. That extra expense, and an aqueduct that is “in constant need of repair” were key factors in the city’s decision to seek an alternative to the status quo, Baumann said. United Water, which manages other water systems in the region and more than 100 nationwide, is able to find buyers for Bayonne’s excess water, turning a wasted expense into a new source of revenue for the city while maintaining control of the reserves in the event of future growth.

Commission treatment plant, has also had its challenges with antiquated infrastructure and combined sewer outfalls that require expensive mitigation systems to comply with federal regulations.

Baumann said Bayonne’s contracts with the water and sewer commissions both needed to be accommodated in the P3 agreement to assure the private investors that these costs would be fixed throughout the term of the deal.

The MUA’s other outstanding debt was also a significant consideration, he said.

“The MUA was deeply leveraged,” Baumann said. “It had approximately $105 to $110 million of outstanding debt, which it had accumulated over a number of years, in part from its acquisition of the wastewater system from the city when it was first created. It also had a history of deferred investment in system assets.”

The city’s sewer system, which pumps a dryweather average of 8.3 million gallons of wastewater per day to the Passaic Valley Sewerage [9]

Sustainable City Network Magazine

In other words, the authority’s water and sewer infrastructure was falling apart and its options to finance improvements were limited. The city of Bayonne, which backs the MUA’s debt, had a credit rating of Baa3 with a negative outlook prior to the P3 agreement, so borrowing more money was not a viable option.

Bayonne had difficulty managing its budget, Baumann said. “Not that it didn’t do a professional job at it, but revenues were tight. It’s a middle-class community that has significant economic issues, and limits on how much it can charge for services. …It just wasn’t able to make the capital improvements it needed to make,” he said.

Making matters worse, the utility was having trouble attracting qualified staff to replace an aging workforce, despite aggressive recruitment efforts, in highly technical positions within the water and sewer departments. “The licensing process in New Jersey is relatively long and involved, taking up to 10 years in some cases,” Baumann said, “and they were facing the retirement of a number of their licensed operators. … In fact, the MUA was really faced with outsourcing that component one way or the other,” he said.

In this economic environment, the authority made the decision to seek the services of a private company that could make the necessary capital improvements, maintain good customer service, strengthen the city’s balance sheet and pay for it all through steady and predictable rate increases, rather than the sharp and significant increases that would be required if the community itself had to pay for the improvements. Retaining existing staff and improving staff training was also an objective, Baumann said.

Three alternatives were considered: 1. Sell the system outright to a private entity. This option was almost immediately rejected by the city and MUA, Baumann said, because they were adamant that the systems remain in the public domain.

2. Enter into an operating maintenance [ 10 ]

contract with a private firm. Under New Jersey law, this option required a contract term of 20 years or less.

3. Enter into a concession fee contract, which can have a term of 40 years.

The Bayonne MUA invited contractors to bid on either an operating maintenance contract or a concession fee agreement. It took about a year for the bids to be submitted and reviewed.

“In the end, it came down to two proposals, both submitted by United Water,” Baumann said: “One for the operation and maintenance contact, and one with United Water as a partner with (private equity firm) KKR for the concession agreement.”

After analyzing the two proposals, the authority’s financial advisors determined that, in this case, the concession agreement would save the city the most money. The primary reasons, Baumann said, included the efficiencies United Water would bring to the operations, and the 40-year term of the deal, which allowed the MUA and its public partners to pay off all their outstanding water and sewer debts, totaling $125 million.

The joint venture created by United Water and KKR used a combination of two-thirds debt and one-third equity to finance the concession, and a separate O&M contract was signed with United Water for the operation and maintenance of Bayonne’s water and sewer systems.

The deal had an almost immediate impact on Bayonne’s credit rating, according to Sugarman.

“Within three months of closing this transaction, Moody’s upgraded the city’s credit outlook,” Sugarman said. “The $125 million of debt that we took off the MUA’s books represented about half of the city’s total outstanding liability. With their debt burden now cut in half, the city is in a position to borrow for other investments, and/or will benefit from lower costs associated with that remaining portion of its debt.”

The deal included a rate formula, which

adjusts the rate up or down annually, having the dual effect of preventing windfall profits while providing flexibility to guarantee ongoing investment in the infrastructure. The formula ensures that water rates will be comparable to other New Jersey municipalities and sewer rates will be considerably lower, Baumann said. Overall, the rate growth stipulated in the concession agreement is below the historical rate growth in the state, and should be somewhere between 3.375 and 4 percent per year, he said.

The agreement spells out each party’s allocation of various risks. The quantity and quality of the water supply, for instance, is guaranteed by the MUA. The authority will continue to be responsible for collections and will remit proceeds of annual lien sales for unpaid bills.

A capital improvement plan was also an important part of the deal, Baumann said.

It included an initial investment that is replacing all the water meters in the city, among other improvements, and an ongoing annual investment starting at $2.5 million and increasing each year thereafter, ultimately totaling $107 million over 40 years.

Sugarman said staff training and information technology upgrades have been a major emphasis since United Water took over the Bayonne operations.

“In particular, we’ve emphasized training related to safety and security,” Sugarman said. “We’ve made improvements to security systems and we’ve installed or upgraded systems for asset management, including a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), a graphical information system (GIS), and supervisory control and data acquisition systems (SCADA). We’ve also installed the backbone for some automated metering infrastructure, and we’ve largely finished replacing the population of larger meters that will be read through that system for commercial and industrial customers. As a result, we’ve seen noticeable improvement already in registration of water usage, which has led to the recognition of more revenue.”

Sustainable City Network Magazine

Along with the upgraded technology, Sugarman said the company has cleaned and flushed 10,300 feet of water main, televised more than 13,600 feet of sewer main and inspected more than 1,500 hydrants.

“There was a lot of work to be done just to get a handle on asset condition before we were in a position to prioritize repair and replacement of underground infrastructure,” he said. The company has also provided new personal safety equipment for employees and vehicles that meet United Water standards, as well as a variety of other capital improvements that have improved staff safety and reduced flooding in some low-lying areas.

Sugarman said a study is currently under way to develop a long-term asset management plan.

Baumann said the concerns Bayonne had going into the contract negotiations were resolved in the following ways: Concern: Who maintains system ownership?

Resolution: The city does.

Concern: Vague operational and technical standards.

Resolution: Governance and operational standard setting.

Concern: Loss of control over rates.

Resolution: Rates set by formula.

Concern: Impact on jobs.

Resolution: Maintains water authority jobs; and investment creates new local job opportunities.

Concern: Windfall to concessionaire.

Resolution: Oversight of funding; and no excess revenues.

After one year under the agreement, Baumann said all the former Bayonne water and sewer personnel have either found other jobs in the city or have been retained by United Water in Bayonne or elsewhere.

He said the system’s revenue requirements in the first year were exceeded by a small percentage, and pass-through expenses have come in below projections.

“So the first year, financially, has been a significant success,” he said, adding that Bayonne expects to save about $35 million over the duration of the contract when compared to having done nothing.

Sugarman said Bayonne is hardly alone in its need to develop creative alternatives to meeting its water and sewer infrastructure needs.

Referencing a recent study by the American Society of Civil Engineers, he said, “It’s widely agreed that hundreds of billions of dollars, and maybe even a trillion dollars, will be needed over the next 20 to 25 years to address infrastructure challenges around the country.”

Public Sector Take Aways

Baumann said other municipalities can learn the following from the Bayonne experience: 1. Set realistic goals • Risk allocation • Rate increases • Capital needs • Avoid trying to solve unrelated problems 2. Prepare extensive due diligence • Quality due diligence package • Tie up loose ends 3. Engage an experienced professional team • Engineering • Financial • Legal 4. Engage all stakeholders early • Elected officials • Employees • Users n

Sustainable Cities/Project Gallery-Sacramento The Sacramento BioDigester in Sacramento, California converts 25 tons of food waste per day into various forms of renewable energy including heat, electricity and vehicle fuel. Unison Solutions Inc., based in Dubuque, Iowa is proud to be part of the team at the Sacramento biogas project. The unique technology designed and manufactured by Unison allows them to fuel their waste haulers with conditioned biogas from the digester. Currently the site processes 100 scfm of biogas with plans to increase their vehicle fuel production and continue to reduce their dependence on petroleum products.

Learn more about it at www.unisonsolutions.com [ 12 ]

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Antibacterials Fuel Resistant Bacteria in Streams Chicago-Area Studies Show Urban Sites Most Impacted

BY THE CARY INSTITUTE OF ECOSYSTEM STUDIES

MILLBROOK, N.Y. -- Triclosan – a synthetic antibacterial widely used in personal care products – is fueling the development of resistant bacteria in streams and rivers.

So reports a new paper in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, which is the first to document triclosan resistance in a natural environment.

Invented for surgeons in the 1960s, triclosan slows or stops the growth of bacteria, fungi and mildew. Currently, around half of liquid soaps contain the chemical, as well as toothpastes, deodorants, cosmetics, liquid cleansers, and detergents.

Access the paper at: http://tinyurl.com/lagw7ge Urbanization was correlated with a rise in both triclosan concentrations in sediments and the proportion of bottom-dwelling bacteria resistant to triclosan. A woodland creek had the lowest levels of triclosanresistant bacteria, while a site on the North Shore Channel downstream of 25 combined sewer overflows had the highest levels.

Combined sewers deliver domestic sewage, industrial wastewater, and storm water to a regional treatment plant using a single pipe.

Overflows occur when a pipe’s capacity is exceeded, typically due to excessive runoff from high rainfall or snowmelt events. The result: untreated sewage flows directly into rivers and streams.

Triclosan enters streams and rivers through domestic wastewater, leaky sewer infrastructure, and sewer overflows, with residues now common throughout the United States.

Emma Rosi-Marshall, one of the paper’s authors and an aquatic ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, explains: “The bacterial resistance caused by triclosan has real environmental consequences. Not only does it disrupt aquatic life by changing native bacterial communities, but it’s linked to the rise of resistant bacteria that could diminish the usefulness of important antibiotics.”

With colleagues from Loyola University and the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center, Rosi-Marshall explored how bacteria living in stream and river sediments responded to triclosan in both natural and controlled settings. Field studies were conducted at three sites in the Chicago metropolitan region: urban North Shore Channel, suburban West Branch Dupage River, and rural Nippersink Creek.

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Antibacterial Dilemma Invented for surgeons in the 1960s, triclosan slows or stops the growth of bacteria, fungi, and mildew. Currently, around half of liquid soaps contain the chemical, as well as toothpastes, deodorants, cosmetics, liquid cleansers, and detergents. (Photo for John Kelly)

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Sustainable City Network Magazine

Emma Rosi-Marshall, one of the paper’s authors and an aquatic ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, explains: “The bacterial resistance caused by triclosan has real environmental consequences. Not only does it disrupt aquatic life by changing native bacterial communities, but it’s linked to the rise of resistant bacteria that could diminish the usefulness of important antibiotics.”

The research team found that combined sewer overflows that release untreated sewage are a major source of triclosan pollution in Chicago’s North Shore Channel.

In addition, their findings support past work that indicates sewage treatment plants can effectively remove triclosan from wastewater.

John Kelly of Loyola University Chicago, the paper’s senior author, comments, “We detected much lower levels of triclosan at a site downstream of a sewage treatment facility as compared to a site downstream of combined sewer overflows. And we demonstrated a strong link between the presence of triclosan in the environment and the development of triclosan resistant bacteria.”

Nearly 800 cities in the United States rely on combined sewer overflows, with the Environmental Protection Agency citing them as a major water pollution concern.

Artificial stream experiments, conducted at Loyola University, confirmed field findings that triclosan exposure triggers an increase in triclosan-resistant bacteria. In addition to the creation of these resistant bacteria, researchers also found a decrease in the diversity of benthic bacteria and a shift in the composition of bacterial communities.

Most notable were a 6-fold increase in cyanobacteria and a dramatic die-off of algae.

Rosi-Marshall explains how these shifts

could affect aquatic life, “Cyanobacteria are less nutritious than algae and can produce toxins. In triclosan-polluted streams and rivers, changes in microbial communities could negatively affect ecological function and animal communities.”

The study is the latest in an ongoing effort to better understand the environmental and human health consequences of synthetic antimicrobials. Funding was provided by a grant from the Illinois Sustainable Technology Center. n Authors: Bradley Drury, Loyola University Chicago John Scott, Illinois Sustainable Technology Center Emma Rosi-Marshall, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies John J. Kelly, Loyola University Chicago

The Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies is a private, not-for-profit environmental research and education organization in Millbrook, N.Y. For 30 years, Cary Institute scientists have been investigating the complex interactions that govern the natural world. Their objective findings lead to more effective policy decisions and increased environmental literacy. Focal areas include air and water pollution, climate change, invasive species, and the ecological dimensions of infectious disease. n

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CSO A combined sewer overflow on Chicago's North Shore Channel is an example of one way that antibacterial products make their way into rivers and streams. A recent study finds these products are helping create resistant bacteria that could diminish the usefulness of important antibiotics.

(Photo by John Kelly)

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Would Cap and Trade Work for Solid Waste?

City Services Director Proposes Nationalized System

BY RANDY RODGERS, PUBLISHER & EXECUTIVE EDITOR

As population and consumption trends continue to squeeze the nation’s available landfill space, one public works professional sees a possible solution: Why not try “cap and trade” for solid waste?

Jason Marcotte, director of city services for the city of Everett, JA SON MARCOT T E Mass., researched the idea for a thesis he wrote while earning his Master of Public Administration degree at Norwich University in 2011. He presented his findings in a workshop at the American Public Works Association’s Congress and Exposition held recently in Chicago.

Marcotte said the objective of his paper was “to outline a workable solution toward waste reduction using a cap-and-trade-based solid waste system.”

As an example, Marcotte held up a plastic bottle of soda. That bottle, he said, began generating waste the minute the raw materials were extracted from the earth and throughout the manufacturing process. The bottling, packaging, transporting, refrigerating and handling of the soft drink generated even more waste. Although many plastic bottles are recycled, they are still the single largest source of waste found in landfills today, according to Marcotte.

“They surpassed disposable diapers a long time ago,” he said.

Cap and trade is a market-based environmental policy tool that has been used effectively as a method of reducing air pollution in the U.S. and Europe. But so far, no one has tried using it to reduce solid waste.

Marcotte said his research suggests it would work. “But I’m not here to lecture anyone... this is just my opinion, my thought on how we could have a better waste management system,” he said.

Central to his thesis is the idea of putting a value on natural resources and assigning hard costs to waste.

“Whether you’re in Nashua, N.H. where a ton of municipal solid waste can cost you $80 dollars to dispose of, or College Station, Texas where that same ton will cost $21.50, there are hidden, external cost of waste,” he said.

About half of that waste is produced by manufacturing and mining activities, while municipal trash accounts for about 25 percent.

“What this means is that each item we purchase has already produced twice its weight in waste, even before we buy it and bring it home,” Marcotte said.

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About 54 percent of solid waste in the U.S. ends up in a landfill, according to the EPA, as of 2010. Another 13 percent is incinerated at scores of “waste-to-energy” plants across the country. But, the emissions that result from burning trash aren’t worth the electricity it generates, in Marcotte’s opinion.

Recycling is good, he said, but many materials get weaker each time they’re re-processed, resulting in a condition known as

“To set in place a cap-and-trade program, Congress would enact legislation to establish an economy-wide cap on solid waste, measured in metric tons, and the cap would be tightened over time based on population, efficiencies and the economy of individual states. The EPA would then auction “waste allowances” that correspond to the level of the waste cap,” Marcotte said.

“The program would require each state to have an allowance for each ton of their waste. States would acquire allowances during the initial auction or by trading for them with other states. This allowance market would enable states that are able to reduce their waste relatively cheaply to sell allowances to those that are unable to do so, thereby establishing a market price for waste. The program would create an incentive for states to implement the most cost-effective waste reduction options and, by putting a price on the environment, encourage investments in new technologies in recycling, reduction and re-use,” Marcotte said.

“down-cycling.” And Marcotte thinks recycling is too expensive to be the ultimate solution to the problem.

“I know a solid waste department in Texas that spends about $400,000 on recycling about 1,000 tons of material. They could very easily take that 1,000 tons and throw it into the landfill for about $30,000,” he said.

So, if recycling, landfilling and incinerating waste aren’t sustainable, then what is? Marcotte said the best solution is to stop making so much waste in the first place. And that will only happen when people have to pay the true price of waste.

“I propose a cap and trade system,” Marcotte said. “A sound strategy for implementing any type of change management in our society starts by creating awareness and a sense of urgency,” he said. [ 16 ]

He said the cap on waste would be a regulatory mechanism enforced by the EPA. States would be free to choose how or if they would reduce their waste, but if they exceeded the cap, they’d be fined. As a result, Marcotte said, states would choose the least-costly way to comply with the regulation, which would lead to the most efficient solutions to reducing waste.

“Revenues from auction trading would essentially be recycled back into the economy to facilitate the transition to an efficient, lower waste producing economy and ensure that consumers are not unduly burdened by potentially higher costs to manage their waste,” Marcotte said.

Each state would have a waste permit for every ton of waste that enters a landfill or incinerator. The tonnage limit would be based on its population.

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“To set in place a cap-and-trade program, Congress would enact legislation to establish an economywide cap on solid waste, measured in metric tons, and the cap would be tightened over time based on population, efficiencies and the economy of individual states. The EPA would then auction “waste allowances” that correspond to the level of the waste cap,” Marcotte said.

“Over time, the limits would become stricter, allowing less and less waste, until the ultimate reduction goal is met,” he said.

“This is similar to the cap and trade program enacted by the Clean Air Act of 1990, which reduced the sulfur emissions that cause acid rain, and it met the goals at a much lower cost than industry or government predicted.”

Marcotte said some states would find it easier to reduce waste than others. These more efficient states would be able to sell their extra permits to states that couldn’t make reductions as easily.

“This creates a system that guarantees a set level of overall reductions, while rewarding the most efficient states and ensuring that the cap can be met at the lowest possible cost to the economy,” he said.

Marcotte said reporting and verification systems would need to be put in place at two levels: States would generate reports based on local entity’s weights and measure reports. These would then be submitted to the EPA to verify and then used to generate a national report for states to use in the buying and trading process.

Marcotte believes more pressure needs to be put on manufacturers to design products that generate less waste, or take responsibility for the waste they create. States and municipalities would apply that pressure if a federal cap and trade system was in place, he said.

“No economic system is sustainable unless it accommodates the ecosystem it depends on,” Marcotte said, paraphrasing a line from the Green Party platform of 2010. “Our current system, based on the notion of perpetual economic expansion on a finite planet, is flawed. By creating a waste reduction plan in our society, we would devise a system of production and commerce where every act is sustainable and restorable.”

Marcotte’s thesis helped him earn his MPA, but it hasn’t gone much further than his college professor and some of his colleagues at the APWA. Still, he’s hoping to get the word out and make people think.

“When you look at everything in the big picture,” he said, “what is our environment worth to us? What is it worth to businesses?

What’s it worth to local, state and federal government? Is the true cost really represented in what we buy?” n

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Gaining Authentic Stakeholder Input Bingo Night Takeovers and Other Innovative Techniques

By Sara Booth

Propose a sustainability initiative, ask for input, and you’ll certainly hear from some people. But, how can you be sure you’re hearing from all the “right” people? People who want to change things may miss the opportunity to hear important voices, Stephen Sykes told attendees at the 6th annual Growing Sustainable Communities Stephen Sykes Conference held recently in Dubuque, Iowa. And two-way communication can lead to surprising changes on both sides of the table.

As public involvement manager at HDR, Inc., an architecture, engineering, and planning firm based in Omaha, Sykes has overseen a number of projects. And he says building in time at the beginning to solicit public comment – and really listen to it – bears fruit throughout the project process.

“Achieving broad stakeholder engagement ... requires a significant allocation of resources – staff time, financial resources – and commitment to the process. Within the project itself, there needs to be a commitment that this engagement function, this dialogue, is going to be given the time that is needed,” Sykes said. “But it results in engaged stakeholders who have an appreciation of the project. ... Projects that incorporate authentic community dialogue have the potential to improve in their design phase through innovation. They end up more likely to receive political support, more likely to receive public support, and more likely to satisfy a larger segment of society.”

But of course it’s not easy to get input from every group that will be affected by a project. Traditional methods of soliciting comments tend to draw disproportionally from certain demographic groups – particularly those with ready access to time and transportation – while excluding others.

“The only opportunity to hear from the public can’t be on a Tuesday evening from 6 to 7 at a public meeting,” Sykes said.

And if members of the public find it a little challenging to get to the place where a project team is accepting comment, who will the team hear from? Mostly people who aren’t happy about the project, because it’s worth it to them to take the trouble. Sykes shared a triangle [ 18 ]

representing the people that typical methods bring in: at the top was a small group with a disproportionate voice, one that Sykes called “the Loud, Angry, and Directly Impacted.”

“These people are very important; it’s important that we hear from them,” he said. “They can help the project grow, they can challenge the concept or the approach of the project, their input and feedback can help create innovation. But just because someone has an opinion doesn’t mean they represent the entire community.”

He pointed out the largest group on the bottom of the triangle: “In Support, But Don’t Show Up.” “I like to refer to them as the silent majority. They’re too busy, or think they’re too busy; their personal bandwidth for their day-to-day lives doesn’t allow for extra engagement ... but in large part they’re supportive of the goal of the project ... and the project team needs to hear from them so that the project doesn’t get stalled in only hearing from the loud, angry, and directly impacted and thinking that’s the community.”

Related article, A Model for Workshops: It's All In the Question at http://tinyurl.com/nhgm7xv So project leaders need to be creative and flexible. And that’s where the Bingo Night takeover comes in.

Sykes was part of a team working for a client that was developing a long-range project focusing on a community’s changing demographics.

The founders of the community – those who had built their houses there, developed the community, and worked in it – were aging; many of them lived in assisted living facilities and didn’t find it easy to attend meetings. It would have been easy to leave them out of the planning, but a commitment to involving everyone with a stake in the outcome led to taking the meeting to them.

“We decided to go to them,” Sykes said, “in the hour before their Bingo night. And what resulted was ... they ended up becoming project champions, attending all the rest of the scheduled meetings and even going to other senior centers, other places where they knew they could talk to their peers about this project. ... As a result of the staff time we invested here, we ended up gaining project champions.”

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“People care about what they put their time into,” he added. “And people put their time into what they care about.”

iPad, which many of the people involved had never used before. “They got the support they needed,” he said.

So how can project leaders get input – and, ideally, support – from a wide range of people and groups? By using a wide range of approaches. Sykes introduced a number of possibilities, some hightech and others almost tech-free.

Digital Do-It-Yourself Toolkits

Community Workshops

Public open houses, a traditional method of introducing a project, have limitations. “Even if you hold them over the lunch hour, where we find more success than we do in the evenings, they are, in my opinion, fading in their effectiveness. ... The other thing is that these types of meetings are typically about pushing information out.”

Instead, Sykes’ teams have had more success breaking stakeholders into small groups, each one with a member of the project team, to discuss the issue at hand. “You get better information to enhance decision-making ... if you can do so by sitting at a table asking questions, providing opportunities for people to document their feedback,” he said. “Ultimately these participants have an increased sense of ownership.”

Sykes has had success by putting fliers and social media content on websites; if supporters wanted to share the information digitally, this gave them the tools to do so, while keeping the message in the hands of the project team.

Online Meetings

In a sense, an online meeting is simply a website, but redesigned “to simulate what people might experience at a project meeting,” Sykes said. The key element is a short video, 10 to 15 seconds, introducing elements of the project. This approach to site design can keep people on a website longer (Sykes’ research showed that the average website visit was about 30 seconds, while the average visitor stayed on an online meeting site for four and a half minutes).

(See “A Model For Workshops” for a detailed description of one way to structure this sort of information-gathering.)

Grassroots Meetings

Like the Bingo Night Takeover, these meetings go to significant groups where they are. Of course, this means paying some attention to which groups you aren’t hearing from and then figuring out where to find them.

Mobile Workshops

Simple tables on a sidewalk can be a place to gather information.

Sykes has also worked with a public transportation organization that took buses to crowded summer locations and invited people in to participate in a mobile workshop on public transport, which worked even better because the summer was hot and the buses were air conditioned.

Project Area Tours

Bringing a group of stakeholders to the location where a project is planned can inspire them to give input. It can also give them a more direct understanding of some of the challenges a project faces.

“Everyone’s looking at this (location) together as we say, ‘Here’s the goal; here are the constraints. How would you do it?” Sykes said.

Online Surveys

You can’t simply put a survey online and expect to get usable data, but a survey on a tablet or laptop can be an excellent icebreaker, Sykes said. In the early days of tablet use, one of his project teams gained the attention of key stakeholders by showing up with a survey on an

n

Achieving broad stakeholder engagement requires significant staff time and resources as well as a commitment to the process.

(Photo by HDR, Inc.)

Smarter Social Media Usage

“Social media is about amplification and accessibility,” Sykes said, and that goes beyond simply posting. Paid advertising can be geographically targeted, and users can pay only when someone clicks the ad.

Another social-media strategy is to “follow your followers,” Sykes said.

“The dialog about the project isn’t just happening on the social media sites that are project-driven and public-facing from the project. Some of the real dialog that you really want to hear happens when folks who visit the site and like or follow the tools that we’re using go back to their communities and have their dialog. You want to be a part of that, so do the reverse: follow them, like them, and track that dialog.” n

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Sustainable City Network Magazine

Deconstruction Industry Begins to Gain Traction Even Iowa Prisoners are Getting Involved

By Jessica Chapman

presented by the Iowa Center on Sustainable Communities (COSC), the webinar highlighted the benefits of deconstruction over demolition. Whereas demolition typically features complete destruction of a building and indiscriminate dumping of the resulting waste in a landfill, deconstruction is a more careful, conscientious approach to taking down a structure.

Dan Oswald

What do hair nets, stained glass and cookie dough have in common?

This is not the beginning of a bad joke. They are all items that are currently listed on the Iowa Waste Exchange (IWE), an online database of free, unwanted materials placed up for grabs by businesses and individuals rather than hauled off to landfills. Since its establishment in 1990, the IWE has kept millions of pounds of waste out of Iowa landfills and saved, by its own estimate, $77 million by designating items for reuse.

Many items listed in the IWE – which is managed by the state’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) – are byproducts of the deconstruction of outdated, deteriorating buildings and structures.

What is deconstruction?

Defined as the dismantling of a structure with reuse and recycling as a primary goal, the practice is a responsible, cost-effective and “green” alternative to demolition. It was the featured topic of a recent webinar titled “Maximizing Reuse and Recycling Through Deconstruction” that accompanied the launch of a statewide initiative to promote the emerging industry.

Hosted by Sustainable City Network and [ 20 ]

There are a number of economic and environmental incentives for deconstruction. The practice not only protects the environment by diverting waste from landfills and making recovered materials available for reuse or sale, but also creates jobs and reduces the costs associated with demolishing buildings.

“Deconstruction really does save resources,” said Dan Oswald, COSC deconstruction program instructor. Up to 90 percent of many structures can be reused or recycled, he said. As one example, the deconstruction of a typical 2,000 square foot home can yield up to 6,000 board feet of reusable lumber, or the equivalent of the yearly output of seven football fields’ worth of pine trees.

“You can really visualize seven football fields of trees,” he said. Further, materials salvaged from many structures are of a higher quality than those readily available on the market today. Demolition, by contrast, generates about 124 million tons of waste per year in the United States.

While the environmental benefits of deconstruction are attractive, its economic incentives might initially draw more converts to the practice. Oswald reported that while demolition costs an estimated $6 – $12 per square foot, deconstruction sets contractors back, on average, just $3 – $8 per square foot. These savings derive mostly from

not having to pay landfill fees to get rid of waste and do not take into account the even greater savings potential offered from the restoration and sale of salvaged items.

The potential for job creation makes the deconstruction industry even more attractive. Oswald, in addition to serving as an instructor for COSC, also coordinates a deconstruction program at Iowa Central Community College in Fort Dodge, Iowa. The program offers students certification in lead renovation, lead abatement, asbestos, and Occupational Health and Safety Administration 30-hour Construction (OSHA30) upon completion.

Some Iowa prison inmates are also benefiting from the expansion of the deconstruction industry via a project overseen by Oswald in partnership with Iowa Prison Industries (IPI). So far, inmates have participated in one deconstruction project involving a number of barns and other buildings in Eldora, Iowa, converting the byproducts – much of it Douglas fir – into attractive credenzas and tables for sale to the public.

IPI, an arm of the Iowa Department of Corrections, trains inmates in a number of different trades with the intention of equipping them for jobs upon their release. “Offender training programs such as this are a key element in improving the success rate for released offenders,” said IPI Director Dan Clark.

Deconstruction has already gained traction in other parts of the country. Cities like Boulder, Colo., Portland, Ore., Madison, Wis., New York City and Detroit all support the industry in tangible ways. The state of California requires buildings slated for demolition be reviewed for deconstruction potential.

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Iowa intends to stand shoulder to shoulder with such efforts.

“In my opinion, Iowa is ahead of the curve with regard to deconstruction,” said Shelene Codner of the Iowa DNR. “Markets for materials and infrastructure continue to improve.

As infrastructure continues to improve several benefits come into play including revenue, positive public relations and expertise regarding building for the future.”

Are there drawbacks to deconstruction?

In Iowa, it remains a young industry, with few contractors currently employing the principles. As a result, there is presently little infrastructure to support it. Attitudes are evolving, however, and COSC is working with Iowa’s DNR to develop a directory of deconstruction contractors.

raising the cost to dump materials at landfills. COSC Interim Director Siobhan Spain is optimistic about the industry’s prospects in Iowa.

In addition to working on the directory, the state’s deconstruction initiative will also feature development of resource materials such as bid request templates and best-practice guides. COSC also intends to conduct statewide introductory contractor training, and plans to seek funding beyond the current Solid Waste Alternatives Program grant from the Iowa DNR in order to sustain the initiative.

Spain said the intent is to see the deconstruction industry functioning robustly on its own.

“Just eliminating demolition from our vocabulary; hopefully that will happen in the future and deconstruction will be the norm, but it will take persistence,” she said. n

related youtube video: http://youtu.be/nYqDsnbOSkQ

Also, Oswald admits there is a learning curve for deconstruction contractors to overcome, and at the end of the day, deconstruction just takes longer.

“It’s not as fast as demolition, and probably never will be, but there’s a lot of value to it,” Oswald said. “It is truly a sustainable, or green, thing to do.”

What does the future of the deconstruction industry look like?

Some promote imposition of financial penalties to contractors for not incorporating deconstruction principles. Others propose n

Harvesting Valuable Materials Deconstruction is the dismantling of a structure with reuse and recycling as a primary goal. The practice is a responsible, cost-effective and “green” alternative to demolition. It was the featured topic of a recent webinar titled “Maximizing Reuse and Recycling Through Deconstruction” that accompanied the launch of a statewide initiative to promote the emerging industry. (Photo by COSC) [ 21 ]

Sustainable City Network Magazine

Bike-Share and Car-Share Programs Reduce VMTs Young People Shy Away from Driving

By Will Hoyer

S tratis Giannakouros

Matt S andstrom

Kids everywhere are taught at an early age that sharing is the right thing to do, but as we grow up not many of us think about sharing our bikes or cars. Two representatives from Midwestern college towns shared their thoughts about planning and funding bike- and car-sharing programs to help reduce vehicle miles traveled in their communities.

Matt Sandstrom, business development manager for the Clean Energy Coalition in Ann Arbor, Mich., and Stratis Giannakouros, assistant director of the Center for Sustainable Communities in Decorah, Iowa, both work in what could be termed small towns, although Ann Arbor’s population is about 115,000 while Decorah’s is just 8,000.

Both are making investments in improving green transportation options for their residents and visitors.

Bike Sharing in Ann Arbor, Mich.

Bike sharing programs are relatively new to the U.S., with the first one launched in 2010. Currently 16 cities have programs and another 15, including Ann Arbor’s, are under

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development. Bike share programs can be key components of a city’s sustainability efforts, Sandstrom said, as they reduce traffic congestion and improve air quality; increase mass transit use and intermodal connections; encourage healthy and active transportation; foster vibrant communities and increase a sense of place; improve economic vitality; and provide novel and exciting transportation options for visitors.

The city of Ann Arbor has made significant investments to its bike infrastructure in recent years, with 20 miles of bike lanes added and six miles of roads marked with shared use arrows (aka “sharrows.”) This has contributed to a 46 percent increase in the number of residents biking to work in that time. Work to add a bike sharing program fits in well with these efforts, and a great deal of effort has gone into educating Ann Arbor officials and residents about what a bike sharing program is, what it is not and how it works. However Sandstrom emphasized that the real work is in planning the bike share system; this planning is absolutely critical, but it is easy to skimp on planning and can be hard to fund.

The planning process is where decisions about the scale of the bike share system (how many bikes, how many stations, etc.), the business model (who owns and who operates a system) and funding must be grappled with. During this time, community partnerships must be developed, whether they are with colleges and universities, other municipalities or levels of governments, transit authorities, non-profits, or businesses. Many of these potential partners may benefit from a bike share program and have some funding to contribute. In Ann Arbor, for instance, the University of Michigan agreed to contribute $200,000 per year for three years as they believe bike sharing will contribute significantly to their sustainability goals and the campus as a whole.

The city of Ann Arbor has also contributed financially and with in-kind support through outreach to residents as well as by developing a streamlined permitting process for the siting of bike share stations and changes to the city’s sign ordinances to make way for the advertising on stations that generates much of the system revenue.

The city itself does not own or operate the bike share system. Instead the Clean Energy Coalition, Sandstrom’s employer, is doing that and Sandstrom believes there are good reasons for having a non-profit organization like CEC own and manage the system as it “removes financial liability from the jurisdiction and places it on the non-profit which remains the organization responsible for fundraising and program implementation.” Not all bike share

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To date one of the primary sources of funding has been from the healthcare industry with Blue Cross Blue Shield, hospitals and others stepping forward to sponsor systems and individual sharing stations because of the potential for public health benefits. Other sectors, though, are also potential investors.

Local businesses and downtown associations may see the economic benefits.

programs in the U.S. use this business model. Some, like Washington, D.C. and Boston, have municipally owned and managed systems, but Ann Arbor is following the lead of places like Boulder, Colo., and Minneapolis, Minn.

Of course nothing like this happens without funding, and while the Ann Arbor bike sharing system has received some public funds, CEC is actively seeking private support as well. Sandstrom said the group hopes to provide funding for 12-15 bike share stations and 100-130 bikes in the system and will have an estimated total capital budget of $750,000 and another $1.2 million to cover the costs of planning and three years of operating expenses.

These dollars will come from a mix of public and private sources, as most systems’ have. Kansas City, however, launched a bike sharing system in 2012 that was 100 percent privately funded, according to Sandstrom.

bring to neighborhoods. The tourism and hospitality industry may see the value of branding a city with greener options. Large businesses and banks may see sponsorship as an opportunity for good publicity and community involvement. Sandstrom stressed that reaching out to each of these sectors was critical but it required a targeted approach; a one-size-fits-all pitch to a variety of sponsors would not likely be successful.

Car Sharing in Decorah, Iowa

In the second half of the session Giannakouros discussed efforts to improve transportation options on the Luther College campus and in greater Decorah community.

Luther, with its 2,500 students, has received significant national recognition for its sustainability efforts and is well on its way

Success is not guaranteed in anything and it remains to be seen whether Ann Arbor’s bike share system (or any of the others started in recent years) will be successful over the long term, but changing priorities and demographics make it likely that bike sharing will become more commonplace in cities across the country.

To date one of the primary sources of funding has been from the healthcare industry with Blue Cross Blue Shield, hospitals and others stepping forward to sponsor systems and individual sharing stations because of the potential for public health benefits.

Other sectors, though, are also potential investors.

Local businesses and downtown associations may see the economic benefits. Real estate developers may see the value bike sharing can

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Sustainable City Network Magazine

to becoming a net zero campus through the installation of a 1.6 MW wind turbine and one of the state’s largest solar photovoltaic arrays. Because it is a small town that is “100 miles from anywhere,” according to Giannakouros, and is very bike friendly (it supports two bike stores). Once on campus, students rarely need a car as they are rarely more than a 10-minute bike ride from anywhere in town.

Still, there are times when students, faculty or staff need or want a car, and the college works with U Car Share (a division of U-Haul) to provide cars for lunchtime trips to the medical clinic across town or for a weekend trip to Rochester, Minn., or one of the other “big cities” nearby. One of the reasons Luther chose to work with U Car Share is that there are no administrative costs to the college; everything is handled by the company and everything needed to access a car is done online. This is in contrast

to other car sharing programs that have monthly costs of $1,500 or more associated with them or that require some sort of local staffing presence. Luther currently has two cars available on campus and as hourly usage rates exceed 30 percent for each car another car is added by the company.

Giannakouros said that as Luther has made a push to “de-center cars from campus life” and offer wellness incentives, they have seen a strong downward trend in the number of students bringing cars to campus, a rapid ridership increase on the college’s break shuttles (which take students to and from various larger cities before and after spring break, Christmas break and others), and far more bikes on campus as evidenced by the number of bikes in racks and the number of people using the college’s winter bike storage facility.

The college, like many others, long had a

little-used bulletin board in the student union that helped students share carpool opportunities. Students and faculty have worked to build an online ride-sharing portal that enhances that concept and which interfaces with Facebook. There are efforts under way to expand that ridesharing portal so that Decorah community members not affiliated with the college can also connect.

“College campuses are the canaries in the coal mine,” said Giannakouros, who cited a recently released University of Michigan study that showed there are strong generational changes happening with dramatic declines in the numbers of young people who want to drive. Colleges and cities that are able to attract – through bike or car sharing programs, strong transit services or other options – a new generation for whom driving simply isn’t cool will have a competitive advantage over those that remain car-centric, he said. n

Declare your success. Share your expertise.

Sustainable City Network presents the Project Gallery. mento allery-Sacra G t c je ro /P Cities Sustainable ts 25 tons ifornia conver

amento, Cal including igester in Sacr D io B to wable energy en ne am re cr of Sa s e rm Th Dubuque, rious fo Inc., based in per day into va ns te tio as lu w So od n fo so of project. The e fuel. Uni ity and vehicl amento biogas ic cr tr Sa ec e el th , at at he the team to be part of tured by Iowa is proud and manufac ed gy design lo no ch ers with te ul ue ha uniq eir waste em to fuel th th s w lo ntly the al re n ur Uniso e digester. C th om fr as og to conditioned bi as with plans 0 scfm of biog 10 s inue se nt es co oc d site pr uction an hicle fuel prod ve r ucts. ei od th pr se increa petroleum pendence on de r ei .com th ns io ce nsolut to redu at www.uniso it t ou ab e or Learn m

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Project Gallery ads are $385 and include: - Project photo - 100 word description - Your logo - Your website address

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Hitting the Solar Energy Trifecta Installers Discuss the Evolving Economics of Solar PV

BY ANDREA HAUSER, ASSOCIATE EDITOR

JON DWIGHT

R A K I G IA N N A K O U R O S

“Whenever you can get three or more uses out of one thing, you should do it,” said Jon Dwight, paraphrasing a point he learned when he first began working in the solar energy industry and why this renewable option is an increasingly beneficial investment trifecta for municipalities, businesses and homeowners.

B LAZ R U ZI C

with Solar Planet in Dubuque, said solar installations offer a lot of potential.

Carports are a great example, Dwight said, of a way to hit the solar energy trifecta, “turning wasted space into energy production shelters.”

Communities and businesses need parking

lots, and shaded parking lots are popular, especially on top of parking garages or in very hot, sunny parts of the country, like the Southwest. Add solar panels to the carports and now it’s not only a desirable shaded parking spot, but also a space that is generating energy – energy that can even be used, in some instances, to charge electric vehicles.

“There is so much potential in it and we are lagging so far behind,” Dwight said.

But “they are growing a lot and we are going to see more of these.”

Navigating the regulations around installing solar panels is a considerable

Dwight and two other experts discussed the state of the solar industry, its recent growth and its future during “The Modern Economics of Solar PV” presentation at the 6th annual Growing Sustainable Communities Conference held recently in Dubuque, Iowa.

While solar energy was considered too expensive or undependable even a few years ago, Raki Giannakouros, vice president of Blue Sky Solar in Dubuque, said the industry has grown and changed quite a bit since then.

“Solar prices since 2011 have come down 40 percent, mostly driven by the drop in module costs,” he said. “It’s an incredible change in the economics of the overall system.”

As municipalities and businesses look for the best energy investments, Giannakouros and Dwight, a solar energy specialist [ 25 ]

Sustainable City Network Magazine

hurdle to be jumped, Dwight said, adding that it currently takes three to four months to get a solar power installation project approved in the Dubuque area and the industry needs to “push through regulations that make this process easier.

It’s the biggest barrier to us right now.”

In addition to the red tape, another important consideration for municipalities and businesses considering solar power is the infrastructure on which the panels will be installed, said Blaz Ruzic, a technical sales representative for Schletter Inc., which designs and constructs the foundations and structural supports for solar installations.

“The foundation, this is the key that can really make or break all of these systems to be affordable, with efficient design,” he said. For example, without good design

consideration, panels sometimes are installed at an incorrect angle, leading to less energy production. And since solar systems add a substantial amount of weight to a structure, making sure it has a solid foundation and support system is an important safety and cost-saving consideration.

Installing solar also means communicating with the local utility about how the energy produced will affect the organization’s electric bill. If the utility has “Time of Day” rate plans, Giannakouros said, it can be a great complement to solar production.

Being able to net meter the power an installation sends back to the grid also is important.

“It’s hard to predict when peak demand is going to happen and how PV is going to produce,” he said. “A little guesswork

is involved in all of these, and that’s important to understand.”

Considering that the cost of electricity is unlikely to decrease, Giannakouros said solar is still a good investment.

“Pretty soon unsubsidized solar is going to be competitive with the grid, and that’s going to be pretty amazing to see,” he said.

That’s why thinking about solar installations as a long-term investment in an organization’s overall infrastructure is the smartest approach.

“All too often when we’re talking to customers they want to know what the payback is,” Giannakouros said. “It’s an infrastructure investment in your building and that’s the way it should be viewed. It’s all about the long-term returns.” n

Online Education

Ecological Risk Assessments

Learn to develop effective Ecological Risk Assessments to evaluate potential environmental risks and liabilities associated with hazardous waste sites.

Two online courses – introductory and advanced – each held in three 2-hour sessions in early March 2014.

Instructor Chuck Harman will cover the regulatory requirements for developing the ERA paradigm as outlined in U.S. EPA’s Ecological Risk Assessment Guidance for Superfund (ERAGS).

Intended for: • consultants • environmental lawyers • governmental employees • students

Details at www.sCityNetwork.com/ERA [ 26 ]

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New Report Shows Local Food Boosts Regional Economy Iowa Study Tracked Buyers and Producers in 2012

BY THE LEOPOLD CENTER FOR SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURE

She said the report also differs in the type of sales information that was collected, which included data from institutional and intermediary markets as well as direct sales.

CORRY BREGENDAHL

ARLENE ENDERTON

AMES, Iowa -- A new report from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture shows that institutional purchases of local food added nearly $9 million to the Iowa economy in 2012.

What’s more, the report points out enormous opportunities for local foods that could benefit rural communities and farm-based businesses. Investigators measured significant sales from only a small segment of potential markets for local foods among grocery stores, restaurants, hospitals, nursing homes, college and school food services and other institutions.

The findings are part of an evaluation of the Regional Food Systems Working Group (RFSWG) that supports local food systems in 90 of Iowa’s 99 counties. It is the first coordinated, comprehensive attempt to measure actual economic and community impacts associated with regional food system development in Iowa.

The evaluation tracked local food purchases by grocery stores, restaurants and institutions, and sales from Iowa farm-based enterprises that marketed their products locally in 2012. Nearly 180 businesses and individuals participated in the data collection effort, including 74 buyers and 103 producers of local foods. The evaluation also measured job creation as a result of local food production, processing or utilization, and counted funds leveraged by the regional food groups that comprise the statewide RFSWG network.

“Most of the information we’ve had in the past came from economic models, that is, projections based on potential scenarios and assumptions, not what actually happened during a specific time period,” said associate scientist Corry Bregendahl, who coordinated the data collection project for the Leopold Center with Leopold Center program assistant Arlene Enderton.

“Most people think local food sales are only those between farmers and individual consumers, such as farmers markets or community supported agriculture (CSA) enterprises,” she explained. “We also measured sales to institutions such as hospitals and nursing homes, and schools, grocery stores and restaurants. These markets represent huge potential markets for local foods, and serve a population that needs greater access to healthy food.”

Bregendahl and the coordinators of the 15 regional food groups in the RFSWG network collaborated to gather and assess the data. The coordinators distributed surveys to area buyers and farmers they worked with to collect information about these key indicators of economic impact: • Local food purchases in 2012: 74 buyers reported total purchases of $8,934,126.

• Local food sales in 2012: 103 farmers reported total sales of $10,549,296; • New jobs related to local food in 2012: A total 36 new jobs (24 full-time equivalent) were created in 2012 (reported by a subset of buyers and farmers).

• Funds leveraged by eight regional food groups in 2012: $766,020.

Bregendahl said the 74 buyers spent an average $120,700 on local foods, or about 8.7 percent of their total food budget. If local food purchases were increased to 30 percent of the total food budget, an additional $21.5 million in sales would have been generated, leading to the creation of 71 new full-time buyer-based jobs. Less than half of one percent of the estimated 22,000 institutional and intermediary markets in Iowa participated in this evaluation.

“When you look at jobs related to public money invested in the local food groups, we found that it’s relatively inexpensive to create fulltime employment opportunities in Iowa communities,” she said. Calculations showed that it cost the public $17,874 to support one new FTE job in the local foods sector. “Local foods commerce expands and complements what we’re already doing in Iowa agriculture; it does [ 27 ]

Sustainable City Network Magazine

The statewide report, 2012 Economic Impacts of Iowa’s Regional Food Systems Working Group, is available on the Leopold Center website at www.leopold.iastate.edu/local-food not compete with it,” Bregendahl added.

The evaluation reflects efforts throughout Iowa by RFSWG’s 15 geographically-based groups. Each group works with different stakeholders – farmers, food-based businesses, non-profits, Extension, Resource Conservation and Development organizations, educational institutions and government agencies – to support local food systems development in their region.

Here are the 15 groups and counties where each group works: • Flavors of Northwest Iowa: Cherokee, Ida, Monona, Plymouth, Sioux, Lyon, O’Brien, Buena Vista, Dickinson, Emmet, Osceola, O’Brien, Buena Vista, Palo Alto and Woodbury

• Southern Iowa Regional Food Systems: Adair, Adams, Clarke, Decatur, Guthrie, Ringgold, Taylor and Union • South Central Iowa Area Partnership: Appanoose, Clarke, Decatur, Lucas, Madison, Monroe, Union, Warren and Wayne • Hometown Harvest of Southeast Iowa: Davis, Jefferson, Keokuk, Mahaska, Van Buren, Wapello, Appanoose, Lee, Des Moines, Henry, Washington, Lee, and Louisa • Dubuque Eats Well: Delaware, Dubuque, Jackson and Jones • Field to Family Food Coalition: Benton, Cedar, Iowa, Johnson, Jones, Linn, Poweshiek, Tama and Washington

• Northern Iowa Food and Farm Partnership: Benton, Black Hawk, Bremer, Buchanan, Butler, Grundy and Tama

• Healthy Harvest of North Iowa: Cerro Gordo, Floyd, Franklin, Hancock, Kossuth, Mitchell, Winnebago, Worth and Wright

• Northeast Iowa Food & Farm Coalition: Allamakee, Chickasaw, Clayton, Howard, Fayette and Winneshiek

• Eat Greater Des Moines: Polk • Quad Cities Food Hub: Clinton, Muscatine and Scott • Harvest from the Heart: Marshall • Food and Farm Initiative of the Heartland: Audubon, Cass, Fremont, Guthrie, Harrison, Mills, Montgomery, Pottawattamie and Shelby • Greene County Local Foods Working Group: Greene, Carroll, and Guthrie • Central Iowa RFSWG: Boone, Hardin and Story Additional data and profiles of local food champions also are available from coordinators of 11 regional groups. n

n

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Local Foods Program Stresses Healthy Snacks Pick a Better Snack educator Anita Turczynski connects children with local food, farming and gardens in a Des Moines, Iowabased program funded by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Pick a Better Snack is offered in schools where 60 percent or more of the children qualify for SNAP dollars. (Photo for Lyn Jenkins)

growing

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