Sustainable City Network Magazine - Vol. 20 - July 2016

FOR LEADERS IN GOVERNMENT, EDUCATION & HEALTHCARE.

SUSTAINABLE CITY NETWORK

4

VOLUME 20 July 2016

IN KANSAS CITY, IT’S ALL ABOUT PEOPLE LEADERBOARD SERIES

BEST OF

E CITY SUSTAINAWBL ORK NET

SPONSORED By: CRESCENT ELECTRIC SUPPLy CO.

10 WHAT TO DO WITH 325 MILLION TENNIS BALLS PER YEAR 12 CITIES HOLD KEY TO SAVING THE BEES 26 THE $4 MILLION LEGACY OF BOOKER T. WASHINGTON AND JULIUS ROSENWALD

www.sCityNetwork.com

REGISTER NOW at www.GSCDubuque.com 9TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE OCTOBER 4-5 2016

PRESENTED & HOSTED BY:

Grand River Center | Port of Dubuque | Dubuque, Iowa

A two-day sustainability conference for government, education and healthcare professionals..

Ideas, plans and best practices.

S P O NSO RED B Y :

MEDIA SPONSOR:

www.sCityNetwork.com

contents

4

VOLUME 20 July 2016

What to Do with 325 Million Tennis Balls Per Year

10

Financial Crisis Looms in South Florida as Seas Rise

14

Parks Without Borders

17

Upgrading Wastewater Biogas to Clean Energy

21

Inclusive Approaches Encourage Gentrification Talks

23

The $4 Million Legacy of Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald

26

cover story

IN KANSAS CITY, IT’S ALL ABOUT PEOPLE

12

Cities Hold Key to Saving the Bees

[1]

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 government, education and healthcare institutions 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 or WoodwardBizMedia.

SUBSCRIPTIONS Contact 563.588.4492; info@scitynetwork.com www.sCityNetwork.com

For Leaders in Government, Education & Healthcare

EDITORIAL INFORMATION Contact 563.588.3853; randy@scitynetwork.com ADVERTISING SALES Contact 563.588.3858, kruden@woodwardbizmedia.com Contact 563.588.3856, tkoehler@woodwardbizmedia.com

Sustainable City Network magazine is produced by WoodwardBizMedia, a division of Woodward Communications, Inc. GROUP PUBLISHER Karen Ruden PUBLISHER & EXECUTIVE EDITOR Randy Rodgers

Upcoming Online Courses

ASSOCIATE EDITORS Kathy Regan Michael Manning

Smart Green Cities: Case studies in resilient and sustainable energy technologies

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS BioFerm Energy Systems F. Alan Shirk Eric Tamulonis Leila Donn Michelle Volkmann

Free 1-Hour Webinar – July 14, 2016 New emerging technologies related to the “Internet of Things” digitalization and distributed energy resources are quickly changing the energy landscape for cities. Smart city technologies and concepts are defined broadly around the use of digital technologies to enhance performance and well-being, and reduce costs and resource consumption.

Sponsored by DNV GL, this webinar will feature Erik Caldwell, economic development director for the City of San Diego, and Seth Federspiel, net zero energy planner for the City of Cambridge, Mass.

Learn more at http://sCityNetwork.com/SmartCities

CREATIVE DESIGN Eric Faramus

Sustainability in Kansas City, Mo.

BUSINESS MANAGER Maggie Vetsch

Unless otherwise noted, all images used throughout © 2016 Ingimage, all rights reserved.

Sustainable City Network 801 Bluff Street Dubuque, Iowa 52001 Visit Us On The Web sCityNetwork.com Printed on recycled paper

[2]

Free 1-Hour Webinar - July 26, 2016 Dennis Murphey, chief environmental officer, and Gerald Shechter, sustainability coordinator, in Kansas City’s Office of Environmental Quality will share details of the city’s $5 billion stormwater management project, which includes extensive use of green infrastructure, among other sustainability initiatives.You’ll also learn how the city is putting an emphasis on equitable investment in its most vulnerable neighborhoods.

Learn more at http://sCityNetwork.com/KansasCity

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 email newsletter, the InBox, which is delivered to more than 40,000 leaders in government, education and healthcare across the U.S. and Canada.

Sustainable City Network 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 with a profile of Kansas City, Mo. you’ll learn how the city is pushing to make sure its most vulnerable citizens have access to nutritious food, quality healthcare, affordable housing, education and employment opportunities, safe neighborhoods and amenities like trails, parks and green spaces that promote a healthy lifestyle.

In our cover story, you’ll meet Dennis Murphey, chief environmental officer and leader of Kansas City’s Office of Environmental Quality, along with several of his colleagues who share numerous lessons learned and best practices discovered over 10 years of work on building energy, green infrastructure, transit-oriented development and many other programs. Murphey and Sustainability Coordinator Gerald Shechter will also be featured in an upcoming free Sustainable City Network webinar (sign up for the live event or download the recording afterwards at http://sCityNetwork.com/KansasCity).

In other top stories: Discover a new idea for recycling used tennis balls. (Did you know there are more than 325 million of them discarded every year?) On Page 12, you’ll learn what cities can do to help bees and other pollinators thrive. Believe it or not, this is not just a rural issue. Cities can make a huge difference by creating urban pollinator habitats primarily on the islands and borders of parking lots and transit corridors.

Other articles in this issue focus on south Florida’s concerns about sea-level rise; the current state of infrastructure in our nation’s parks; turning wastewater biogas into energy or fuel; protecting neighborhoods from the potential pitfalls of gentrification; and a look at what Tennessee is doing to preserve the legacy of the Rosenwald Schools for southern black children in the early 20th Century.

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

We hope you find value inside.

The U.S. Leader in Sustainability News & Information Best Practices for Leaders in Government, Education and Healthcare [3]

LEADERBOARD SERIES SPONSORED By: CRESCENT ELECTRIC SUPPLy CO.

IN KANSAS CITY, IT’S ALL ABOUT PEOPLE CREATING A LIVABLE CITy STARTS WITH EQUITy

By RANDy RODGERS, PUBLISHER & EXECUTIVE EDITOR

LEADERBOARD SERIES

BEST OF

SPONSORED By: CRESCENT ELECTRIC SUPPLy CO.

“We’re beginning to recognize that the impacts of climate change will not be experienced equally across the community and that some of the folks in our community will be disproportionally affected and are least able to respond” yes, sustainability is about reducing greenhouse gas emissions. yes it’s about saving energy and managing stormwater. yes, it’s about green building and transit-oriented development.

But, for Dennis Murphey, chief environmental officer for the city of Kansas City, Mo., those are all just means to an end. For him, the end game is creating a city that works for ALL its people. He says sustainability is ultimately about making sure the city’s most vulnerable people have access to nutritious food, quality healthcare, affordable housing, education and employment opportunities, safe

Dennis Murphey Chief environmental officer

neighborhoods and amenities like trails, parks and green spaces that promote a healthy lifestyle.

“We’re beginning to recognize that the impacts of climate change will not be experienced equally across the community and that some of the folks in our community will be disproportionally affected and are least able to respond,” Murphey said. “We need to figure out ways that we can be a better resource to help them.”

How Stormwater Management Impacts Livability Kansas City has plenty of water – sometimes way too much of it. The city’s water and sewer utility, KC Water, maintains 260 square miles of separate sewer systems, and 58 square miles of combined sewer systems. The combined sewers, some more than 150 years old, are located in the oldest and most economically distressed neighborhoods of Kansas City.

Photo: Cultivate Kansas City

Gerald (Jerry) Shechter Sustainability coordinator

■■ Cultivate Kansas City is a non-profit local foods organization that promotes small-scale community based, entrepreneurial

farming in the Kansas City metropolitan area. This photo was taken at the group’s Gibbs Road Farm.

[5]

LEADERBOARD SERIES SPONSORED By: CRESCENT ELECTRIC SUPPLy CO.

“During high storm events, which are becoming more frequent and more intense as a result of ongoing climate change, (combined sewer overflows) become a real problem,” Murphey said. He said about seven billion gallons of contaminated stormwater overflows into local waterways each year. Dealing with that problem is expected to cost about $5 billion over 25 years. The solution – a mixture of green and gray infrastructure – will be the most expensive public works project in the city’s history.

As in many cities across the nation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is mandating changes to Kansas City’s stormwater management systems to bring combined sewer overflows under control.

streetscapes. Trees provide shade and reduce the heat island effect. When sidewalks are added to accommodate the surrounding stormwater systems, neighborhoods become more walkable and inviting, which improves public health and reduces crime. Even air quality is improved when horticulture, agriculture and street trees are introduced in large enough quantities to transform the urban landscape.

But, Isch said another lesson learned in the Marlborough project was that small rain gardens in the public right-of-way require too much maintenance to be sustained on a larger scale. She said future projects, including two in the remaining 644-acre Middle Blue River watershed, will focus on larger retention facilities, turning blighted areas into neighborhood green spaces with nature trails and other amenities.

“We ended up with 36 percent reduced peak volume at our sewer outlet, 76 percent reduced peak flow, and we have about 360,000 gallons of constructed storage in that area. And, that was only in our first 100-acre pilot.”

Kansas City’s consent decree with the EPA, signed in 2010, requires the city to develop systems that will capture and treat 88 percent of combined sewer overflows and eliminate sanitary sewer overflows during a five-year rain event. Kansas City was the first city in the nation to include green infrastructure in an EPA consent decree, and the first to be given 25 years to execute the plan – an extra five years to allow the native plants used in green infrastructure to reach their full potential and see just how much they could reduce the overflows before final decisions are made on the size and scope of the vastly more expensive gray infrastructure investments.

Collateral Benefits Kansas City began making investments in green infrastructure in 2013 when it launched its $2.3 million Marlborough neighborhood project, a system of more than 150 different green infrastructure units including 133 rain gardens, said Lara Isch, water quality educator with KC Water.

“Overall, the project has been very successful,” Isch said. “We ended up with 36 percent reduced peak volume at our sewer outlet, 76 percent reduced peak flow, and we have about 360,000 gallons of constructed storage in that area. And, that was only in our first 100acre pilot.”

What the city learned during this pilot project was that green infrastructure appeals to people on a cerebral level. When done right, it brings neighborhoods together, improves aesthetics and increases property values. Curb extensions calm traffic and beautify

[6]

Urban Agriculture

Murphey said the benefits of green infrastructure, which have proven to extend far beyond stormwater management, has the city riding a wave of support for all kinds of green and healthy initiatives, including locally grown foods. He said the city has changed its development code to make it easier for citizens to practice urban agriculture. And recently, the city began developing its 400-acre “Municipal Farm,” a site that in the early 1900s was an inmate farm for the local jail on what was then the outskirts of town. Parts of the property were also used at various times as a landfill, a household hazardous waste repository, a police firing range, and storage facilities for several municipal departments.

Today, the property is well within the city limits, located near Arrowhead Stadium, home of the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs, and Kauffman Stadium, home to the Kansas City Royals. The inmate farm closed in the early 1970s and the jail was closed on 2009 and demolished in 2010, after which the property fell into disuse. After securing a brownfield grant from the EPA in 2010, the city completed an environmental analysis, cleaned up the property and developed a “sustainable reuse plan,” according to Gerald (Bo) Williams, lead planner for the Kansas City Planning and Development Department.

LEADERBOARD SERIES

SPONSORED By: CRESCENT ELECTRIC SUPPLy CO.

Williams said the farm is being converted into a showcase for a variety of sustainability initiatives including community gardens, commercial greenhouses, a solar field, some public recreational trails and some green infrastructure projects. A habitat restoration project is also under way in the western half of the property, he said.

“One of the first things we did was to establish a community garden.

We got some funding from the city; we got a partner, Kansas City Community Gardens, and we built a community garden that they now operate,” Williams said. He said plans are to nearly double the size of the garden in the near future.

Part of the property has been leased to Bright Farms, a local-foods company that plans to build two 120,000 sq. ft. greenhouses in partnership with a local grocery store chain.

“We also have Boys Grow, a local nonprofit that teaches 12- to 14-year-old boys about agriculture, ...and they have a small farm that they’re currently building on the Municipal Farm property,” Williams said. He said the project is attempting to blend urban agriculture with some ecosystem restoration.

“We’re even going to try using some Missouri native plants that are food producing, as an experiment in the edible forest concept,” he said.

“The city is also in the process of electrifying its transportation system,” Murphey said. In May, the non-profit Kansas City Streetcar Authority (KCSA) opened the first line of its new free streetcar system.

The Downtown KC Streetcar starter line is said to be the first step in a longer-range plan to create a regional, integrated transit system to connect the Greater Kansas City area. Murphey said the Kansas City Power & Light electric utility is in the process of installing the largest electric vehicle charging infrastructure system of any investor-owned utility in the country, and the city has plans to add electric buses to its rapid bus transit fleet.

“One of the first things we did was to establish a community garden. We got some funding from the city; we got a partner, Kansas City Community Gardens, and we built a community garden that they now operate,”

On a different tract of land at the Municipal Farm, the city is negotiating with another local non-profit group to make 2-acre “farmlets” available to young farmers as a training ground before moving on to bigger farms, Williams said.

Transit-Oriented Development Murphey said brownfield redevelopment, removing blighted vacant buildings, installing green infrastructure and investing in transitoriented development are all intended to transform the city into a community where residents can live and work without owning a car – a lifestyle attractive to millennials. Planned projects that will install 600 miles of bike trails and 220 miles of pedestrian trails are more than half complete.

BEST OF

“We’re also expanding our express bus service,” Murphey said. “We’re providing additional access to public transit to neighborhoods that have been the subject of economic disinvestment over the years, … and we’re trying to create a situation where our public transit system will more readily be able to provide access to places with living wage jobs for all people in our community so that folks who can’t afford to own a car will still be able to get to and from work,” he said.

“There’s a lot of focus on increasing the amount of housing opportunities, particularly in the downtown area,” he said. In the River Market area of Kansas City, just north of downtown, one young developer is creating the largest passive house designed apartment complex in the country, which will use 90 percent less energy than a traditional building. Murphey said 25 percent of the 270 housing units in the development will be leased at “workforce” rates, and the complex will be located directly on the city’s new streetcar line to give residents easy access to the downtown area.

About four blocks away, another housing project is renovating a former Commerce Bank building into a 27-story “vertical neighborhood” that will include a mixture of office and residential units, a preschool, an elementary school, an indoor playground and dog park and a small amount of retail space. Two floors will be dedicated to a local university.

“The developer himself will actually be living and sending his kids to school in that building, which is also on the new streetcar line,”

[7]

LEADERBOARD SERIES SPONSORED By: CRESCENT ELECTRIC SUPPLy CO.

Murphey said. “The new streetcar project has already spurred almost a billion dollars in private development projects along the 2.2 miles of streetcar line, and we’ve seen the ridership on that line exceed initial expectations,” he said.

Building Energy “Energy has been a high priority in our city for a number of years, both in our own operations and community wide,” Murphey said, “and that’s where we get the biggest impact in terms of greenhouse gas reductions.” He said the city’s latest greenhouse gas inventory showed city operations have reduced their emissions by 25 percent between 2000 and 2013.

Effective this year, the city’s new “Energy Empowerment Ordinance” begins taking effect, requiring the owners of the city’s largest buildings to benchmark and annually report water and energy consumption. Over the next three years, smaller buildings down to 50,000 sq. ft. will be phased in, Murphey said.

Public Health and Safety In 2015, Kansas City was one of eight U.S. cities to be recognized with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Culture of Health Prize for innovative efforts to reduce health inequities and increase life expectancy. Among the programs specifically recognized was the Kansas City Health Department’s AIM4Peace initiative, which uses health workers to interrupt violence in targeted neighborhoods, resulting in a 70 percent reduction in homicides in those “intervention zones” and a 24 percent reduction citywide.

The foundation also recognized the city, its school district and more than 50 local organizations for their efforts to promote early childhood literacy, a project that Murphey said is one of Kansas City Mayor Sylvester “Sly” James’ top priorities. Reach Out and Read Kansas City provides about 76,500 books per year to almost 30,000 low income children under the age of 6, building a 15-book library for each child.

A Supportive Political Climate Gerald (Jerry) Shechter, sustainability coordinator, said Kansas City’s Office of Environmental Quality, which is structurally part of City Manager Troy Schulte’s office, has enjoyed a tremendous amount of support from local elected officials and citizens.

Photo: Missouri Valley Special Collections, Kansas City Public Library

“All told, that will be information from about 1,500 buildings, which will represent about three percent of our non-single familyl buildings in the city, but about 60 percent of the total floor space of non-single family buildings,” he said. “So, by focusing on the largest buildings, we can target our efforts to provide technical assistance and training to the owners and operators of these large buildings.”

He said Kansas City has had two Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing programs for commercial buildings since 2013 and will soon have a similar program for residential property owners.

■■ Two unidentified men work on a tractor at the Kansas City Municipal Farm, which was once an inmate

farm operated by the Kansas City Police Department. The farm was closed in the early 1970s and later fell in to disuse. Today, the farm is being converted into a showcase for a variety of sustainability initiatives including community gardens, a commercial greenhouse, a solar field, and public trails.

[8]

“Almost every bit of legislation that we’ve brought to the mayor and city council in the last 10 years has passed unanimously,” including the 2008 climate protection plan, he said. “It’s just amazing, given some of the other things that have been going on around the Midwest. We’re one of the few cities, at least in this part of the Midwest, that can openly talk about climate change in our political setting.”

Shechter said the city’s sustainability initiatives also get strong support from citizens. He said several non-profit environmental and sustainability groups are very active in the Kansas City area.

Three specifically are Bridging the Gap, a sustainability group with more than 1,000 volunteers, the Metropolitan Energy Center, a group that has advocated for energy efficiency in the Kansas City region for more than 25 years, and two area chapters of the Sierra Club. ■

ILLUMINATE The new GE Lumination RX Downlights are the economical choice for converting existing CFL sockets to the superior performance of LED technology.

RX610830MV

Crescent Electric Supply Company offers no-obligation energy audits and municipal energy-project financing. Let our energy experts detail the potential savings that are available by upgrading to LED lighting and digital lighting controls.

Operational Benefits • LED RX downlight can CFL RETROFIT • Ideal RETROFIT solutions for traditional 1 or 2 lamp CFL downlights • Install in just minutes into most 6” and 8” CFL rough in • 50,000 hour life rating (L70) • Up to 2000 Lumens • 75 lumens per watt • Can sizes: 6” and 8” • Color temperatures: 3000, 3500K, 4000 • ENERGY STAR® Certified – Utility Rebate Eligible Contact us today to see how Crescent Electric and GE Lighting can help save energy and reduce maintenance costs.

(800) 397-3900 | info@cesco.com cesco.com/locations 7750 Dunleith Dr, East Dubuque, IL 61025

Sustainable City Network Magazine

What to Do with 325 Million Tennis Balls Per Year Inventor Struggles to Promote Tennis Ball Recycling

By F. Alan Shirk

In the grand scheme of things, old used tennis balls don’t get a lot of attention. There aren’t billions of them bobbing like plastic bottles in vast ocean cesspools. They don’t litter every empty lot in every U.S. city like singleuse plastic bags. But, when they start to lose their bounce, inquiring minds begin to wonder:

BILL Dermody is owner of Retour Tennis and inventor of a tennis ball recycling bin designed to hang courtside outdoors or indoors.

Susan McDade is community services director for the village of Waunakee, Wis.

What the heck can we do with the 325 million tennis balls that go flat every year?

Working with his wife, Sarah; his son and store co-owner, Peter; and several other individuals and organizations, Dermody invented the compact and highly visible AD-BIN® container, a recycling bin designed to hang courtside outdoors or indoors. The small business sells its invention under the brand Retour Tennis.

Two years ago, Bill Dermody realized that a lot of his customers at his tennis store in Madison, Wis., were asking him that very question.

Recognizing that not everyone has five golden retrievers or a walker that works better with tennis-ball feet, he felt compelled to find an answer.

The green and white AD-BIN made of medium-density polyethylene is 34” high and 15” in diameter and weighs 40 pounds when filled with its capacity of 200 tennis balls.

So, he did his homework and discovered several interesting facts:

“Golden retrievers, elderly with walkers, and schools with chairs can only do so much. In our tennis store we set out a ball collection basket for customers to throw old tennis balls into; the response was terrific.

However, we had no place to send them.”

• 125 million tennis balls are sold in the U.S. annually (325 million worldwide).

• 250,000 tennis courts exist in the U.S.

• 200 balls are discarded monthly by the average tennis park.

• Three new balls are used for most matches played.

• 100 million balls are dumped into landfills every year; and each takes 450 years to decompose.

• Limited options are currently available for recycled balls — they can be repressurized or ground into a powder that can be used in tennis court sub-surfaces.

• One person CAN make a difference. [ 10 ]

“Today, in 2016, less than one percent of used tennis balls in the U.S. are being ground up and recycled,” Dermody said. “The French recycle 10 percent, or more than one million of their tennis balls annually.

Our goal is to get to 50 percent here in the U.S. by 2020. There is no reason this cannot happen. It requires two things: (1) awareness, and (2) convenience. We have to let people know, and then make it convenient to contribute,” he said.

“As tennis players, we were uncomfortable with the fact that we simply threw away our used tennis balls. Kept in our tennis bags and/ or in our cars, we never knew which balls were good enough or dead, so, as a default, we tossed them all in the garbage,” Dermody said.

Today, the backend is now in place, said Dermody, with organizations such as Project Green Ball, a non-profit devoted to funneling used tennis balls to facilities where they are ground up to be part of new materials. Another company, reBounces, will provide pre-paid shipping labels to enable communities and clubs to send collected balls at no cost. Tennisballrecycling.com accepts used tennis balls to be ground up as a component in new tennis court sub-surfaces. reBounces has recently partnered with Ace Surfaces N.A., Altamonte, Fla., and Advanced Polymer Technology, Harmony, Penn., to create a material from recycled tennis balls that can be used in tennis court construction and resurfacing.

“Our mission has always been to provide a cradle-to-grave solution for tennis balls,” said reBounces co-founder Cannon Fletcher, who spearheaded the project along with Ace Surfaces owner Franz Fasold.

BEST OF

sCityNetwork.com

Up to 10,000 tennis balls are incorporated into a single cushioned surface and can provide a 21 percent force reduction, noted Fasold.

“By lessening the impact traditional hard courts have on a player’s joints, these courts will extend the careers of players of all abilities,” he said.

Susan McDade, community services director for the village of Waunakee, Wis., volunteered her community to be one of the beta sites to test Dermody’s AD-BIN product.

“We put a tennis ball recycling bin up on our park courts in May 2014, and got a steady stream of balls contributed all summer,” McDade said. “The collection bin was easy to put up, attractive, and a positive ambassador for Waunakee’s recycling efforts. We estimate about only 15 minutes of extra work every three or four weeks. It’s a small effort on our part to expand our village’s recycling efforts,” she said.

While some think recycling is a no-brainer, Dermody said it has not been easy selling the pros and the ball manufacturers.

“There is a reuse mentality among the pros who usually give them away or throw them out. Manufacturers have not shown a lot of interest. This isn’t at the top of their agenda because they don’t make a lot of money on balls. They are a commodity with the same pricing and the only differential is color, for example, pink versus yellow.”

Dermody added, “Retour Tennis is working to make all the pieces fit so that recycling will work in this country. I do believe at some point, there is a tipping point for this. It’s so easy to do.” ■

Dermody estimates there are 20,000 facilities across the country that could be recycling tennis balls.

“What has been missing until now is the compelling front end that enables tennis ball recycling to become mainstream,” he said.

“We have closed the circle with the three steps necessary for successful recycling programs — (1) a courtside presence, (2) promoting the program and (3) collecting/reusing/recycling.”

The biggest reason so many tennis balls are consumed — more than 325 million are made worldwide each year — is that tennis players tend to use them only twice, Dermody said.

“When they play, they open up a new can.

The next time they play they use the previous new balls for practice and open another new can. That results in a lot of old balls in gym bags, thrown into garage containers or thrown away,” he said.

■■ The AD-BIN by Retour Tennis Photo: David Stluka

The green and white AD-BIN made of medium-density polyethylene is 34” high and 15” in diameter and weighs 40 pounds when filled with its capacity of 200 used tennis balls.

[ 11 ]

Sustainable City Network Magazine

Cities Hold Key to Saving the Bees Advocate Calls for Bee-Friendly Parking Lot Designs

By F. Alan Shirk

“If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would have only four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.”

Danielle Bilot is an American Society of Landscape Architects associate and a consultant on urban habitats who advocates for native bees.

Despite this dire warning, sometimes dubiously attributed to Albert Einstein, America’s natural and commercial bee populations continue to decline dramatically, decimated by pesticides, pathogens, parasites, harsh weather, disappearing pollinator habitats, and climate change — all of which seem to be contributing to the mysterious phenomenon known as colony collapse disorder.

For Danielle Bilot, we don’t have to be “Einsteins” to recognize that there are serious problems facing bees.

Bilot, an American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) associate and a consultant on urban habitats, said too many people think bees only sting, swarm and make honey. Most picture the commercial

honeybee, which actually isn’t native to the U.S., but was brought here

by Europeans in the 18th Century. Native Americans called them “white men’s flies.”

“Actually there are about 4,000 species of native bees in the U.S. alone, the most familiar and largest being bumblebees and Carpenter bees.

Bumblebees especially could have a significant impact on maintaining and even increasing pollination,” she said, adding that four bumblebee species have declined 96 percent in the last 20 years.

A native of Milwaukee, and a 2013 graduate of the University of Oregon, Bilot has developed and implemented her own two-pronged approach to saving the bees and staving off a crisis in essential pollination of America’s food supply.

First, she is traversing the country as a consultant working with cities to create urban pollinator habitats primarily on the islands and borders of parking lots and transit corridors. Second, she is committed to expanding bee knowledge by working with organizations like ASLA, the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the National Resource Defense Council (NRDC) and the North American Pollinator Protection Program (NAPPC). She is also preparing to launch her own website, bumblefumble.com, in June, just in time for National Pollinator Week from June 20-26.

Photo: Stephen R Ausmus USDA-ARS

“We face so many environmental and sustainability challenges and sometimes it gets so overwhelming,” said Bilot. “People tend to overcomplicate the bee problem and, thus, fail to take action. For me, increasing pollinator habitats for native bees in the cities, especially with the growth in urban agriculture, is simple and easy, and costs virtually nothing.

■■ Busy Bee

A honey bee, with pollen attached to its hind leg, pollinating a watermelon flower.

[ 12 ]

“We replace or add to existing landscaping with bee-friendly plants and flowers and make it easy for them to survive and increase their populations,” Bilot explained.

As a graduate student at Oregon, Bilot knew she wanted to do her thesis on the food system. “Other students mainly chose topics focusing on urban agriculture, but I was thinking, ‘What can all of these things about food not live without?’ Of course, it was bees.”

BEST OF

sCityNetwork.com

Her thesis thought process led her to realize that most urban areas have a lot of surface parking lots. “If every city would just change their parking lot standards to require pollinator friendly plants, think how that would help bees who can’t fly very far before they need food, among other limitations.”

She said she focused on creating native bee habitats within cities because they possess fewer barriers than rural agricultural lands. The needs of native bees “cannot be met within our current agricultural context, especially because of the high use of pesticides and insecticides (particularly neonicotinoids, which comprise 25 percent of the global agrochemical market), as well as low genetic diversity and compaction of habitats,” she said.

There are other problems — a lack of year-round food, removing too much honey from the hives before winter, feeding bees with multivitamins or high fructose corn syrup, weaker immune systems caused by breeding from a limited number of queens and a lack of pollinator plant diversity, mostly through farmers raising the same crops.

But the bottom line, said Bilot, is the money. “California’s $3 billion almond industry spent about $294 million in pollination services in 2014 alone. Native bees essentially work for free!”

Bilot chose America’s fourth largest city, Houston, as her beta site because it had the largest concentration of surface parking lots — 18 percent. As she worked for the Houston landscape architecture office of Kudela & Weinheimer by day, at night she consulted with the city’s Parks Department to develop her prototype native bee pollinator friendly framework.

“Bees need to see or smell their food. They cannot forage, nest or travel through a fragmented landscape lacking flowers. Native bees, which can pollinate with a 91 percent efficiency compared to commercial bees with only 72 percent, are limited by how far they can fly,” said Bilot, adding that small species can go 200 yards, large bees as far as a mile.

Native bees are not fussy. They can exist on a general floral diet and are particularly attracted to clumps of flowers on the blue end of the spectrum, but they will pollinate many colors, shapes and sizes.

Bilot’s site design includes a variety of year-round food foraging plots measuring 15 to 18 square feet. Eighty percent are for foraging and 20 percent for nesting (75 percent ground and 25 percent wood.) In Houston, the framework creates a corridor that easily allows bees to travel into the city from rural areas and vice versa.

“The framework I created can be easily applied to a variety of situations, but we need to save the bees now and cannot wait for an overhaul of our agricultural system,” Bilot wrote in a 2014 ALSA blog.

“Urban areas have their own challenges in creating integrative biological solutions, but cities are in a unique position to create a

safe haven for pollinators because of the quantity and dispersal of underused land use types. Roadside strips, medians, surface parking lots, etc. all possess great potential to contribute positively toward natural ecosystems, but currently most hold very little ecological value. We have forgone diversity in the urban landscape for ease of permitting/maintenance, mass plant production techniques, and overmanicured aesthetics,” Bilot wrote.

“Unfortunately, while native bees do not produce honey, their value as pollinators is undeniable. Their needs are simple — they require food year-round and bare ground or a soft wood patch to live in. If native bees are so great, why aren’t they being used for pollination efforts on a large scale already,” questioned Bilot.

“The edge that honey bees have over native bees is that we can attach a dollar amount to honey bees’ ecosystem services for both honey and pollination. Having a hive makes them portable and quantifiable,” wrote Bilot. “Apiarists can charge a flat rate per hive and know how much area a hive can pollinate and roughly how much honey that will result in.”

Established in 1971, the Xerces Society played a major role in the passage of America’s Pollinator Habitat Protection Act, which allows existing conservation efforts to provide enhanced habitats for pollinators. The society also collaborates with the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center at the University of Texas at Austin to provide the best pollinator-attracting plants for each part of the U.S. “That’s something everyone can use to make sure their own gardens attract native bees,” said Bilot.

Currently, Bilot is living in Denver where she is helping the city to establish its urban/rural pollinator framework, and is also consulting with Huntington, W.V. “I’m also presenting at my sixth conference, this one for the American Institute of Architects in mid-May, and gearing up for the NAPPC’s Pollinator Week from June 20 to 26.”

For Bilot — who is literally as busy as a bee — the keyword is “do.”

“When we read about the bee problem, we see words like ‘identify,’ ‘understand,’ ‘determine,’ and ‘research.’ These are not action plans.

Even when ‘action’ is mentioned, some of the measures have existed for years already.

“Our food supply is in jeopardy,” she said, “and that alone should bring people together to push for action to help pollinators thrive. What if you went to Chipotle and there was no salsa or guacamole? you think carnitas coming off the menu is tragic? Just wait to see the revised menu if bees perish…”

In 2015, the Obama administration became the first to address pollinator decline by announcing the White House Pollinator Research Action Plan and the National Strategy to Promote Pollinator Health. ■ [ 13 ]

Sustainable City Network Magazine

Financial Crisis Looms in South Florida as Seas Rise Developers Look Inland, ‘Climate Refugees’ Move Out

By Michelle Volkmann

Nichole Hefty is chief of Miami-Dade County’s Office of Sustainability.

Miranda Peterson is a Research Assistant for the Energy Policy team at the Center for American Progress.

While some still think climate change is a problem to be faced by future generations, financial institutions and insurance providers in southeastern Florida are already factoring it in to investment decisions.

In August of last year, Miami-Dade County staff hosted a delegation of 35 representatives of Lloyds of London, one of the largest reinsurance agencies in the world. Separate meetings were held with Swiss Re, AJG and AIR Worldwide, as well as local real estate, business and insurance groups to discuss how the threat of sea level rise will impact future catastrophe modeling and development in south Florida.

Predictions that melting ice caps will increase global sea level by 2 to 3 feet in the next 40 years have begun to alter the very definition of “beachfront property” in the region’s coastal areas. And, as developers look inland for property on higher ground, there is concern that the poor, mostly immigrant, people in some neighborhoods will be forced out.

One takeaway from these meetings was that sea level rise is not something that there will be insurance for in the future and what that means to residents and business owners in Miami-Dade County, said Nichole Hefty, chief of Miami-Dade County’s Office of Sustainability.

Luiz Rodrigues, a local environmental advocate and former member of the City of Miami Beach Sustainability Committee, has expressed concerns that an economic crisis will impact the region ahead of the rising tides, and he thinks financial institutions have been reluctant to inform the public about the growing urgency of the situation.

“I truly feel Miami Beach can expect economic collapse 10 years before the major impacts of sea level rise,” Rodrigues said.

He said developers are continuing to build and sell condos in the projected flood zones, even though these properties are “expected to be under water in 30 years or less.”

“Nobody wants to say Miami Beach is going to be gone in 30 years, so we are trying to do what we can so that we can stay here as long as we can,” Rodrigues said. The entire city is currently less than 4.5 feet above sea level, which has risen about a foot in the past century – and the rate at which it’s been rising is accelerating.

[ 14 ]

“There is never going to be a line item that would be coverage for rising sea levels,” she said.

While developers continue to build and sell homes in the expected flood zone, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to find a lender willing to finance these sales.

Executives at BankUnited in Miami Lakes, Fla., announced in January that the bank had stopped offering retail residential mortgage loans, effective immediately. The announcement did not reference sea level rise or climate change.

“One of the biggest needs we have in this community is affordable housing, and when you have the biggest South Florida-based bank backing off residential mortgage lending that raises eyebrows,” said South Florida banking consultant Ken Thomas in a recent Miami Herald article. The article pointed out that Miami has one of the least affordable housing markets in the United States.

In the meantime, developers have been quietly purchasing property in the higher elevated areas, sometimes leaving low-income residents to migrate to other parts of the county or state. In a Miami neighborhood known as “Little Haiti,” there have been reports of a “high level of intimidation” where residents feel “pressured to sell” to wealthy investors, said Marleine Bastien, executive director of Haitian Women of Miami, an advocacy group for recent immigrants.

She said immigrant families are equally impacted by climate change even if they don’t realize it.

“They don’t understand that they are under threat in Little Haiti,” Bastien said. “Those low-income families will be in the first line of fire in the case of sea level rising.”

BEST OF

sCityNetwork.com

Bastien said there was an informational meeting about the threat of rising sea levels and hurricanes for Little Haiti residents, but “there were more people from the county offices than residents” at that meeting.

The task force presented its report and recommendations to the Miami-Dade County Board of Commissioners in January 2015. The board unanimously approved the recommendations, but each part of the plan comes with a “price tag.”

“We don’t want that,” Bastien said.

“The financial part of it is pretty daunting,” Ruvin said.

“We are not against development. We are against land grabs that displace people who have lived there for years,” she said.

He said the county has been making progress despite those who still refuse to see climate change as a reality.

Rodrigues called this quiet displacement the first stage of “climate refugees” and has urged the county to take action against it.

“We’ve heard a lot of denials. There are a lot of selfish people that don’t want to even know about it or say that they won’t be around for the effects of it,” Ruvin said.

“We are pushing the county to protect their way of life because there’s nowhere for them to go and they end up living in flood areas,” Rodrigues said.

This letter said, “Providing financial assistance with an appropriate matching formula from state and local funding sources would be a huge value-added INVESTMENT. It would:

Photo: Lynne Sladky

Harvey Ruvin was chairman of a seven-member Miami-Dade citizen Sea Level Rise Task Force created in 2013. Ruvin, who serves as clerk of courts for the county, said officials are not simply waiting for the worst to happen while they hope for the best. There are efforts across the county to reduce Miami’s vulnerability to climate change.

On May 10, Ruvin sent a letter to Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Congressman Carlos Curbelo advocating the establishment of a Federal Resiliency Superfund.

■■ CAP Report

In January, the Center for American Progress published a report, “Miami-Dade in Hot Water: Why Building Equitable Climate Resilience is Key to Public Health and Economic Stability in South Florida.” In this report, the co-authors, Cathleen Kelly, Miranda Peterson, and Madeleine Boel, wrote that “climate change risks are not equally shared” among the various community members.

[ 15 ]

Sustainable City Network Magazine

• Accelerate the development of adaptive success models, which could be employed “off the shelf” to scores of similarly situated localities elsewhere; • Spur a much needed redesign and modernization of deteriorating urban and rural infrastructures across the nation, already in desperate need of updated re-engineering, notwithstanding sea level rise; • Provide an infusive “jobs program” that would substantially enhance our economy at all levels and one that can’t be outsourced elsewhere; • Provide a far-reaching damage prevention initiative helping to reduce the ultimate financial pressure on FEMA, and after the fact, damage compensation fund.”

Ruvin called his proposal a “win-win” for local, state and federal government.

“These actions will make us sustainable instead of waiting for a payout for damages,” Ruvin said.

He pointed out that there are many plans at the local government levels to mitigate the impacts of climate change, but there needs to be a comprehensive approach for the entire shoreline.

“At some point these need to be blended together in a comprehensive approach because climate change has very little respect for municipal boundaries,” Ruvin said.

In January, the Center for American Progress published a report, “Miami-Dade in Hot Water: Why Building Equitable Climate Resilience is Key to Public Health and Economic Stability in South Florida.” In this report, the co-authors, Cathleen Kelly, Miranda Peterson, and Madeleine Boel, wrote that “climate change risks are not equally shared” among the various community members.

Six million people live in the counties of Miami-Dade, Broward, Monroe and Palm Beach in southeastern Florida.

The report said that in 2014, Miami-Dade alone had over 2.6 million residents, roughly half of whom were foreign-born. High levels of immigration are projected to continue, and the county’s population is expected to grow 18 percent by 2030 to 3.1 million people.

“You can’t talk about threats of climate change to Miami without talking about population rise,” Peterson said.

“Currently, close to 60 percent of Miami-Dade households are considered financially unstable, and one in five households live in poverty. Poverty levels are the highest among African American and Hispanic communities, which together make up 85 percent of MiamiDade’s population,” the CAP report said. [ 16 ]

“What would these households do if there was a hurricane? Really what would they do?” Peterson asked. “As far as federal disaster assistance, it doesn’t extend beyond a year. All of your wealth is in your home and you are planning to sell that home someday and retire with that money. What do you do when that home is destroyed in a hurricane?”

Peterson’s report recommended that county officials take the time to explain plans to reduce impacts of sea level rise to low-income residents while also gathering input from them about these plans.

“It can’t be a top-down approach. They need to be receiving input from the very beginning,” Peterson said.

Peterson said the Miami-Dade County Sea Level Rise Task Force recommendations and the county’s 2013 GreenPrint Progress Report are steps toward a more climate-resilient county. But the county “has no master plan to track the impacts of these efforts or to communicate progress to the public,” the report said.

“Government officials in these areas need to show that they are being proactive, that they are in control,” Peterson said. “They need to embed those climate-risk strategies in the county’s comprehensive plan. It can’t just stay in the county’s sustainability office. The county needs everybody to be thinking about resiliency.”

Peterson said that effective climate literacy will promote a feeling of “we are all in this together” among the diverse communities of southeastern Florida. This proactive approach needs to go beyond the at-risk high income coastal areas impacted by sea level rise.

Hurricanes are a constant threat for the entire area too.

“There isn’t a predication, but there is a strong possibility that it (a hurricane) will happen again,” Peterson said. “That’s why it’s important that the county and cities have a proactive approach to climate change to try to mitigate the risks.”

The CAP report might have caught the attention of local officials.

According to a recent Miami New Times article, City of Miami Commissioner Ken Russell plans to introduce a resolution that will mandate a “community representative who can specifically advocate for the needs of low-income and socioeconomically vulnerable communities” added to the city’s seven-person Sea Level Rise Committee, created in February 2015. n ■

BEST OF

sCityNetwork.com

Parks Without Borders Strengthening Our Vital Green Infrastructure

By ERIC TAMULONIS, ASLA, LEED ® AP

C+. This is the grade assigned to the condition of our nation’s parks, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers’ 2013 Report Card on America’s Infrastructure.

Every four years ASCE evaluates public parks as part of the nation’s vital public infrastructure (which earned a D+ overall). The report included this frank assessment about our parks:

If parks are so popular and important, why do they struggle for adequate funding to maintain the basic features that provide so many acknowledged environmental, social, and economic benefits? And since they do struggle, what can be done to address this concern?

Assuming that this grade is an average of exemplary, high performing “A” parks and struggling “F” parks, what are the lessons from success that can be applied to help improve the failing parks?

In general, parks that are better funded, planned, built, maintained, and operated make it easier to build the case for funding. This article

Photo: Ed Uhlir, Millennium Park Foundation

“The popularity of parks and outdoor recreation areas in the United States continues to grow, with over 140 million Americans making use of these facilities a part of their daily lives. These activities contribute $646 billion to the nation’s economy, supporting 6.1 million jobs. yet states and localities struggle to provide these benefits for parks amid

flat and declining budgets, reporting an estimated $18.5 billion in unmet needs in 2011.”

■■ Millennium Park

An investment of $490 million in 25-acre Millennium Park in Chicago has led to $2.45 billion in surrounding real estate construction resulting in 3,587 new residential units since 2005, 751 new hotel rooms, and $1.29 billion in annual tourism revenue from its five million visitors.

[ 17 ]

Photo: WRT

Sustainable City Network Magazine

■■ Parklands of Floyds Fork

In Louisville, Ky., regional authorities propose to create a new land use plan to address the impact on the area surrounding the completed 4,000 acre, $125 million Parklands of Floyds Fork in an attempt to take advantage of and help secure the investment.

identifies three responses to help improve the mediocre grade of our nation’s urban parks: the emerging trend in recent park development, called megaparks, as the source of innovative strategies to improve and fund parks; a concept called parks without borders as a tool to strengthen parks; and an undervalued source of funding, the Land and Water Conservation Fund.

The Problem: Making the Case among Competing Public Interests In general, parks and recreation programs play a critical and yet more complex and nuanced role in community stability and vitality than their competitors for funding: housing, police, health care, education, or safe roads and bridges. Accounting for the social, environmental, and economic benefits that parks provide is both a blessing and a curse because those benefits are dispersed among a wide array of other municipal services and other programs. Because of this, discussion of financial support for public parks involves civic ethics and extends to politics, environmentalism, social justice, tourism, and other realms. Therefore park stewards and advocates must cast a wide net to secure the full range of funds that support the numerous benefits parks provide.

[ 18 ]

The message to the public when seeking support is therefore based both on how parks look and function as well as less tangible improvement of community life through recreational and educational programming. One of the most important arguments in making the case for adequate funding is the role parks play as green infrastructure in our cities – soaking up rainwater and keeping it from overburdening aged storm sewers and reducing flooding downstream, as well as serving as passages for recreation and as wildlife habitat.

Public parks have long been subject to boom and bust funding cycles.

The first flourishing of public parks as a generally accepted civic asset in the early 19th century led to a systemic model that consisted of one or more major parks, some connecting boulevards, recreation grounds, and a few neighborhood parks. Author Galen Cranz describes the succession of epochs of American park-making that show progress since then, from Pleasure Grounds, to Reform Parks, Recreational Parks, Greenway Parks, Environmental Parks, and now Sustainable Parks.

In the era of declining public support, urban park systems in the U.S. became victims of this evolution: many types of parks, spread over a very large area, serving many purposes. In the decades following urban decline and disinvestment, few cities could sustain the care and feeding of so large a range of landscapes and facilities.

sCityNetwork.com

Counter Trends Despite this challenge, new opportunities have nevertheless led to myriad modern-day offspring, among which are reclaimed brownfield waterfronts, greenways, rail trails, pocket parks, roof parks, freeway decks, overlines, sidelines and underlines, community gardens, “leftover” wildscapes both above and below ground, zip lines in caves, subterranean metro parks, floating parks, pop-up parks, parking space parks, and freeway-to-park conversions. These have made possible the flowering of a new urban landscape that spans public and private sector responsibility. They are transforming many traditional park systems and in the process inciting considerable enthusiasm, stretching the public’s perception of urban open space.

Megaparks: A New Model of Public Park Among these recent developments is an emerging type of park best described as megaparks - very large, or very intensely developed start-up parks established through unconventional means. Megaparks blend 19th century American entrepreneurial spirit, City Beautiful initiative, contemporary American and international influence, with increasing citizen demand for enhanced urban quality.

Linking infrastructure and parks, New Orleans and Dallas have bundled enormous flood control, water quality, transportation, and community development projects with major parkland creation.

These high-budget megaparks are also catalysts for high stakes economic development and community revitalization.

Megaparks are not burdened by decades of declining maintenance,

by cycles of urban decay, or by the political apathy that frequently afflicts established park systems. Perversely it is sometimes easier to get buy-in for these new special parks than to maintain funding for the older parks and smaller neighborhood parks and programs.

Recognizing that maintenance is a deciding factor in long term success, megapark development strategies generally include revenue generation, endowments and other mechanisms to assure sustainability and attract private sector interest. This and other unconventional approaches represent a significant trend from which the lessons learned can be applied to other major parks and the wider realm of municipal park systems.

Parks without Borders Megaparks offer lessons in how we can plan and design parks and their settings for better chances of success. Megapark successes in New york, Chicago, and elsewhere across the country suggest models to help assure and safeguard investment.

In examining best practices in contemporary urban park development, it is increasingly apparent that, to be successful, parks must be considered in the context of their cultural and natural surroundings: adjacent developments, neighborhoods, streets, forests and waterways. While this is common sense, myriad obstacles prevent full

Photo: City of Irvine

New york remains a crucible of innovation and a global phenomenon.

Nationwide, megaparks have flourished in Chicago (Millennium Park), Irvine, Calif. (Orange County Great Park), Oklahoma City (Core to the Shore Park and Myriad Park), Houston (Discovery Green), Louisville (Waterfront Park and the Parklands of Floyds Fork), and in Birmingham (Railroad Park and Red Mountain Park).

In Washington, D.C. and Dallas, highway bridges are being transformed into parks and in several other cities, highways are being decked over to reconnect severed downtowns.

BEST OF

■■ Orange County Great Park

Orange County Great Park in Irvine, Calif. is an example of how a major park can be developed within the context of an overall 1,300 acre project, including surrounding land planned in coordination with the park.

[ 19 ]

Sustainable City Network Magazine

realization of it: political tunnel vision, siloed planning policy, lack of informed citizen support, departmental balkanization, poor timing, and inadequate funding, and sometimes plain lack of imagination and aspiration.

The challenge is to shift our way of thinking about how parks are planned and built, so that they both influence and are influenced by their surroundings. The type of unconventional partnerships and development processes that megaparks frequently enjoy can be a guide to making this happen.

Paying for Parks: the Federal Role The urgency of the message of urban parks’ importance and their plight, as well as the desire to share best practices in partnerships that could help, led to the formation of a national advocacy organization, the City Parks Alliance (CPA). CPA builds on efforts by the National Recreation and Park Association and others to strengthen urban parks. CPA has in turn formed Mayors for Parks, a coalition of mayors focused on promoting the need for adequate federal support for the nation’s urban parks.

Linking Success, Process and Funding A+ megaparks are leading the way in innovative thinking about how to make parks exciting, relevant and economically sustainable game changers in cities. The specific ideas that make them successful are applicable at a system-wide level and at smaller scales as well. These ideas are brought together in the Parks without Borders approach.

Improving our nation’s urban parks requires support at all levels of government, and the LWCF is the most promising and immediate vehicle at the federal level. Together, these can help to raise the national grade in parks from our current C+, and secure the legacy of our vital green infrastructure. n Eric Tamulonis is a landscape architect and a principal at WRT planning and design. He is a board member of the City Parks Alliance.

Photo: WRT

The most promising vehicle for this is the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF). LWCF is a 50-year-old program that dedicates up to $900 million from the royalties paid to the federal government from off shore gas and oil extraction revenue. Mayors for Parks, along with a host of

other advocates successfully advocated re-authorization of LWCF for three years, funded up to $450 million, with a dedicated percentage of funds to urban parks. Federal funding will help support innovative funding from public-private partnerships and spinoff from other programs such as transportation and Clean Water Act compliance.

■■ Red Mountain Park

The emerging 1500-acre Red Mountain Park in Birmingham, Ala. is part of a regional commitment to a transformational new open space system of major parks and greenways that has stabilized and catalyzed redevelopment of adjacent land, particularly near the new Railroad Park in downtown Birmingham.

[ 20 ]

sCityNetwork.com

BEST OF

Upgrading Wastewater Biogas to Clean Energy Byproduct Can Make Vehicle Fuel, Natural Gas, Electricity and Heat

By BIOFERM ENERGy SySTEMS

Wastewater management has come a long way since the time untreated sewage was simply discharged into rivers and canals.

and water. In the end, this process creates RNG—also known as biomethane. Upgrading biogas to RNG increases the calorific value (amount of energy released when a known volume of gas is combusted completely), and thus raises the energy potential. Whereas biogas from anaerobic digestion’s calorific value is typically around 23 MJ/Nm (or 617 BTU/ft3), the calorific value of RNG is usually approximately 39 MJ/Nm (or 1,047 BTU/ft), according to a Swedish Gas Center report published in 2012.

Today, modern municipal wastewater treatment plants trend towards using anaerobic digesters to stabilize and break down biosolids and typically flare biogas created during the process.

Anaerobic digesters can, however, create clean energy and provide additional value to wastewater treatment when the biogas is utilized instead of flared. Biogas is composed primarily of methane and carbon dioxide and is produced during the naturally occurring anaerobic digestion process as organics break down in the absence of oxygen. This gas mixture can be converted to electricity and heat when combusted in a combined heat and power unit (CHP), upgraded to renewable natural gas (RNG) for grid injection or used as a transportation fuel in the forms of compressed natural gas (CNG) or liquefied natural gas (LNG).

RNG can be used as a natural gas replacement and transportation fuel due to this elevation in energy potential. By ramping up RNG production locally, strides are made towards energy independence and carbon intensity reduction of our fuel supply. Decarbonization of fuel consumption can also reduce health related risks, hospitalizations, medical expenses and even the number of deaths associated with poor air quality.

Furthermore, greater financial value can typically be derived due to this higher energy potential.

Except in instances where biogas production is extremely low, flaring often wastes a beneficial resource and potential revenue stream.

Advantages and Options for Biogas as an Energy Source

Electricity and heat produced from the combustion of biogas may be used onsite to offset operating costs and, with net metering, excess generation can be sold to the grid for additional revenue. This process provides consistent, on-demand electricity.

Producing electricity and heat from a CHP was traditionally considered the best use for biogas, however, the advent of economically-viable biogas upgrading technologies and low electricity prices opens up alternative energy end-use options.

Biogas upgrading increases the methane concentration by removing carbon dioxide and other minor constituents including: hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, hydrocarbons, siloxanes,

Photo: City of Albert Lea, Minn.

Pumping, treating, disinfecting and processing biosolids at municipal wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) is an energy-intensive process; U.S. WWTPs consumed approximately 30.2 billion kWh of electricity annually, as of 2013, according to the Water Research Foundation.

With increased attention on community energy efficiency, greenhouse gas reductions, and the decarbonization of energy sources, WWTPs can head towards net neutral energy consumption by using their biogas as a source of energy.

■■ Biogas Cleaning

A biogas cleaning system for a combined heat and power installation at the Albert Lea, Minn., Wastewater Treatment Facility.

[ 21 ]

Sustainable City Network Magazine

to renewable natural gas,” said Volker Eichenlaub, the CEO of Carbotech. “The RNG is compressed to CNG, and used locally as a vehicle fuel, saving over 130,000t CO2 per year. Our BUP replaces a water scrubber because of its high methane yield and overall low upgrading cost.”

Biogas Upgrading Technologies Several technologies exist to upgrade biogas to natural gas quality. Common technologies include: Pressure Swing Adsorption, Water Scrubbing, Chemical Scrubbing, Cryogenic and Membrane Separation. In deciding amongst biogas upgrading systems, several factors should be considered: • Quality requirements for pipeline injection or as a vehicle fuel • Minimum heating value to be achieved • Electricity consumption for upgrading process • Heat requirement for upgrading process; • Process water requirements and related treatment • Process chemical requirements and related disposal • Available biogas flow • Environmental impact from methane off-gas • Investment cost • Operation and maintenance cost ■■ Table 1

One of the world’s largest wastewater treatment plants will soon be taking advantage of biogas upgrading benefits by converting the resource to vehicle fuel using Carbotech Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) Technology.

“The biogas upgrading plant was installed in late 2015 in the outskirts of Stockholm. The wastewater of approximately 1 million citizens is treated, converted to biogas and upgraded in our BUP3000 [ 22 ]

While advancements are continuously being made to each of the upgrading technologies there are advantages and disadvantages to each system type. (See Table 1) n■ This article was produced by BioFerm Energy Systems based in Madison, Wis., in cooperation with the Viessmann Group.

BEST OF

sCityNetwork.com

Inclusive Approaches Encourage Gentrification Talks Non-Profit Groups Help L.A. Get Input from Neighborhoods

By MICHELLE VOLKMANN

Nonprofit organizations, community development corporations and city officials are working separately toward a unifying goal in Los Angeles:

MIKE DENNIS is director of community organizing at the East LA Community Corporation.

AMANDA DAFLOS is director of the Mayor’s Innovation Team, funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Giving a voice to the under-represented communities that typically don’t speak at planning and zoning meetings, but are directly impacted by policies and decisions aimed to revitalize their urban neighborhoods.

The approaches for encouraging meaningful engagement with this demographic varies slightly depending on the organization.

The community development corporation, East LA Community Corporation, scrutinizes residential investment that lacks affordable housing components and empowers residents to take anti-gentrification action.

LA-Más, a non-profit community based organization, hosts bilingual workshops to explain land-use polices without the city planning jargon.

In addition, the Mayor’s Innovation Team, funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, is breaking down barriers between government officials and low-income residents through creative approaches.

HELEN LEUNG is co-executive director of LA-Más.

said Mike Dennis, director of community organizing at the East L.A. Community Corporation (ELACC). “It’s not smart unless it’s talking about inclusion.”

Amanda Daflos, director of the Mayor’s Innovation Team (i-team), is conducting inclusive data collection that will be used for metricoriented strategies that ensure existing residents and businesses are able to stay in their communities.

It’s having a conversation with city residents instead of “pushing policy blindly,” Daflos said.

Los Angeles was one of 14 cities to receive a Bloomberg Philanthropies grant in 2014. The grant funds the i-team for three years. The program “aims to improve the capacity of city halls to effectively design and implement new approaches that improve citizens’ lives – relying on data, open innovation, and strong project and performance management to help mayors address pressing urban challenges,” according to a press release from Bloomberg Philanthropies.

Getting input from those hard-to-reach residents isn’t easy.

The i-team partnered with IDEO to create a series of four hands-on workshops to generate, prototype and test ideas to advance the team’s work in inclusive neighborhood revitalization, Daflos explained. These workshops were held in conjunction with a community college job fair.

“Our thought was to go to them. A way to meet people where they are at,” Daflos said.

The interactive exhibits presented an inclusive perspective asking residents what matters to them. The idea workshops were run like focus groups.

“That’s not something that typically happens in the public sector,” Daflos said.

All of these avenues for community engagement hinge on one key principle: inclusion.

What was the outcome of these workshops? Besides the data collection that can be shared among different city departments and “infused into the work we do,” these workshops provided a positive experience between city employees and residents.

“Smart growth has to be inclusive and needs to be engaging the folks directly impacted, i.e. hurt by it,”

“In our experience, people are excited to be asked and included,” Daflos said.

[ 23 ]

Sustainable City Network Magazine

LA-Más facilitated and wrote the Futuro de Frogtown Report, a project aimed at bringing uncensored local perspectives on land use policy and providing a roadmap of actionable strategies to city planners, Leung said.

Having those conversations are the first steps in meaningful community engagement, said Helen Leung, co-executive director of LA-Más.

Leung agreed that policymakers need to “reach out to people where they are at” and “come without their assumptions” when holding a public workshop.

“Futuro de Frogtown was a community engagement process that asked the community what they wanted to see and what they didn’t want to see. It’s a vision plan that included people who are not normally part of the land-use policy discussions,” Leung said.

Sometimes these community interest workshops are held to “check off the box” and to “reinforce the city’s plan” instead of listening to the ideas of the community members, Leung said.

The insight gained from Futuro de Frogtown is useful for policymakers and developers.

In order to engage with residents impacted by revitalization, LA-Más facilitates bilingual meetings in the evenings that offer free child care and food. The meetings are held at community centers, like a taco shop, where residents already meet instead of a “dark city auditorium,” Leung said. Oh, one more thing – no PowerPoint.

“In Los Angeles gentrification is a complex and loaded word and as a result many people are anti-gentrification. But people want the positive impacts of gentrification, not displacement. We acknowledge those fears, anxiety and complexity,” Leung said.

Más is an “organization committed to offering architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design services to support and strengthen communities,” according to its website.

Smart growth, that is inclusive and sustainable, offers the current residents the “opportunity to shape the neighborhood we have into the neighborhood we’ve always wanted,” she said.

“Our mission is to look critically at systemic problems in the L.A. area and provide solutions based on research and community engagement.

By using alternative models of social inclusion and collaboration, we hope to shape the future of equitable city growth,” the LA-Más mission statement says.

These changes aren’t necessarily entirely negative.

“The wonderful part is investment in their community,” Leung said.

But in most cases, there is a fear of “not belonging” in the neighborhood due to gentrification. LA-Más aims to alleviate these concerns through proactive and inclusive approaches.

“We don’t want the Mom and Pop places to shut down. We don’t want the community members to be priced out,” Leung said.

Low-income residents being “priced out” of their neighborhoods is a constant concern. Rapid and intense gentrification threatens to displace low-income minorities living and working in Los Angeles, Dennis explained.

Photo: Stephanie Todaro

“And most L.A. neighborhoods are experiencing it,” he said.

■■ L.A. Innovation Event

The Mayor’s Innovation Team, funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies, is breaking down barriers between government officials and low-income residents through creative approaches. The organization is conducting inclusive data collection that will be used for metric-oriented strategies that ensure existing residents and businesses are able to stay in their communities.

[ 24 ]

ELACC was founded in 1995 after the Los Angeles riots by an urban planner, attorney, community organizer and real estate developer from Los Angeles’ Eastside. The founders wanted to create a nonprofit organization “dedicated to serving their densely populated, lowincome, urban neighborhood,” according to the ELACC website.

“The Mission of ELACC is to advocate for economic and social justice in Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles by building grassroots leadership, developing affordable housing and neighborhood assets, and providing access to economic development opportunities for low and moderate income families,” according to its mission statement.

Dennis explained that the ELACC owns and operates 600 housing units and has 3,500 members. There is between “200 and 300 units in the pipeline,” Dennis said.

BEST OF

sCityNetwork.com

Cities need to have a methodology of inclusion when making land-use decisions regarding private investment in urban neighborhoods, he said.

“We want more investment in these areas. But it needs to be the kind of investment that is beneficial to the folks that have not received that investment historically,” Dennis said. “We need to wait for the right kind of development.”

In the past, many city officials weren’t interested in community engagement.

But in recent years, that has changed. ELACC facilitates public discussion spaces to allow for inclusive community engagement.

“We’re trying to change the narrative,” Dennis said.

Inclusion isn’t a Los Angeles issue. Los Angeles isn’t the only city trying to engage with low-income residents, nor is it the only city working through the growing pains of gentrification.

How can other cities gain community input on technical land-use policies that impact their residents?

Start with open interaction, even if it’s uncharted territory, Daflos recommended.

Photo: LA-Más.

“They already made the decision and would have a town hall to tell the people how it’s going to be,” Dennis said.

■■ Futuro de Frogtown

Futuro de Frogtown is a project developed by LA-Más aimed at bringing uncensored local perspectives on land use policy and providing a roadmap of actionable strategies to city planners..

And know that you’re not alone. More cities are looking for innovative ways to engage with all their community members.

“There is absolutely a movement in this direction,” Daflos said. ■

“Don’t be afraid. I can imagine it can feel scary to ask the questions in a new way,” she said.

THE BENEFITS

NAVIGATOR

™

The Benefits Navigator™ is our landmark corporate program that dispels the myths of employee benefits by analyzing risks, ensuring compliance and maximizing communications, so that your city can align the real costs of healthcare benefits with employee accountability.

Call the Employee Benefits Division at TrueNorth today to learn how!

EMP LO YEE BENEFITS │ C OM PLIA N C E │ W ELLN ES S

truenorthcompanies.com • (800) 588 - 8993 [ 25 ]

Sustainable City Network Magazine

The $4 Million Legacy of Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald Tennessee Remembers the Rosenwald Schools

By Leila Donn • Tennessee Office of Sustainable Practices

In the early 1930s, one out of every three black children in the South attended a special type of school that few people remember today.

The Rosenwald Schools, which at their height numbered 5,000, provided black schoolchildren with the opportunity for greatly improved education, helping to decrease the gap between the quality of education available to black students as compared to white students.

In the past 60 years since the dissolution of the Rosenwald School program, the legacy of the schools has been forgotten by most.

Tennessee’s Division of Archaeology and Tennessee State Parks are working to breathe life back into this important cultural legacy. At one time, more than 300 Rosenwald buildings were located in the state.

The first school was built in Tennessee just four years after the start of the program in Alabama.

Rosenwald was a second-generation American whose parents emigrated from Germany in 1854 to escape anti-Jewish discrimination.

He made a tremendous fortune by building Sears, Roebuck and Company, serving as president and chairman. He contributed more than today’s equivalent of $4 million to fund the Rosenwald Schools.

Washington and Rosenwald met in 1911, and shortly thereafter Rosenwald joined the Board of Directors at Tuskegee. In 1912, Washington approached Rosenwald about the desperate need for rural schools across the South, and the two men began with the pilot construction of six public schools for black students near Tuskegee.

The original Rosenwald Schools were administered by Tuskegee, but after Washington died in 1915 the program was managed out of the Rosenwald Fund’s Nashville office.

Roots of the Rosenwald Program

Lasting Impact

The Rosenwald School building program was envisioned and implemented by Booker T. Washington and Julius Rosenwald, and construction of schools began in Alabama in 1912 and continued through 1932 across the South.

Many of the schools continued to operate into the 1960s, though use began to wane after the Supreme Court ordered integration of public schools in 1954. Since the schools were abandoned, many have fallen into disrepair, though some schools do remain in use as community and cultural centers, senior citizens centers, museums, and even schools. In 2002, the National Trust for Historic Preservation listed the schools as officially recognized Endangered Historic Places, and in 2011 the organization awarded the schools a National Treasure status.

The partnership was unique for its time. Washington was born a slave in Virginia in 1856. He lived through the Civil War, and in 1881 he became the first principal of the Tuskegee Normal School in Alabama. Today, Tuskegee University, as it is now called, is one of the most successful historically black universities. By the early 1900s, Washington was the most prominent and influential black man in the country, which gave him many powerful contacts across the nation.

■■ Historic Gem

One of the original Rosenwald Schools, the Farmington School in Marshall County, Tenn., now stands abandoned.

[ 26 ]

sCityNetwork.com

BEST OF

■■ Group Lodge

The Group Lodge at Booker T. Washington State Park in Tennessee is modeled after a Rosenwald School.

A study completed in 2011 by two economists from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Daniel Aaronson and Bhashkar Mazumder, compared communities that had a Rosenwald School to communities that didn’t.

In addition to the obvious benefit of increased opportunity to education, people who attended a Rosenwald School had higher IQ scores, made more money later in life, and had slightly longer life expectancies.

Crime rates decreased in areas where these schools existed.

Notable graduates of Rosenwald Schools included author and poet Maya Angelou, Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga), playwright George Wolfe, and Pulitzer Prize winner Eugene Robinson.

Because the Nashville branch of the Rosenwald Fund housed the school building program from 1920 and beyond, Fisk University in Nashville houses many of the program’s records. Some of the information is available in a publicly available online database located at Rosenwald.Fisk.edu. Tennessee is lucky to have such extensive records of an important part of the South’s cultural history.

Learning about Tennessee’s Historic Schools The Tennessee Division of Archaeology is working to give these schools recognition through a current archaeological survey of the Rosenwald School sites in Tennessee. Benjamin Nance, Division of Archaeology, noted the significance of the school building program in Tennessee.

“The Division of Archaeology’s efforts to locate and assess the condition of each school is the first stage in preserving and interpreting these valuable cultural resources,” Nance said.

Over the life of the program, 373 Rosenwald buildings were built in Tennessee, in 69 of Tennessee’s 95 counties. A total of 354 buildings were schools, and the other 19 were teacher’s homes and shop buildings. To date, 61 of the 69 counties with schools have been surveyed. The division has recorded 39 standing Rosenwald School buildings, as well as numerous partially standing ruins, surface remnants, and supporting features such as privies, cisterns, and water fountains. Though many of the buildings are in poor condition, some have been renovated or restored, and two have even been moved to new locations. [ 27 ]

Sustainable City Network Magazine

■■ School Plan

This is the historic Rosenwald School plan, on which the Group Lodge at Booker T. Washington State Park is based.

The historic West Bemis Elementary School in Jackson, built in 1916, is the oldest Rosenwald School still standing in Tennessee. The local community, with assistance from Middle Tennessee State University’s Center for Historic Preservation, is currently working to restore the building for use as a community center.

As part of the archaeological survey, the division is also talking to some of the residents that attended the schools into the 1960s. Most of the interviewees remember having a picture of Rosenwald on the wall of their school, though they didn’t necessarily know who it was at the time. Most also remember having positive experiences at the schools.

Nance said the Division of Archaeology appreciates the opportunity to record these firsthand experiences. “…Their stories add to the rich history of black education in the state. These students became the generation that helped drive the Civil Rights movement.”

Communicating the Legacy Just outside of Chattanooga at Booker T. Washington State Park, a new generation of children is learning about the Rosenwald Schools and the increased opportunities that education can provide.

Booker T. Washington State Park was originally designed in an attempt to provide a segregated park for the large black population of Chattanooga. Dedicated in 1950, recreational and educational opportunities at the park have continued to grow and improve over the last 66 years.

Persigo WWTP, Grand Junction, CO Unison Solutions Inc., based in Dubuque, Iowa is proud to be part of the team at this municipal plant. The Colorado site produces BioCNG™, a renewable natural gas, up to 500 gasoline gallons equivalent (GGE) per day of RNG. After moving through a 6 mile pipeline to the existing CNG fueling stations it is used to fuel city buses, refuse trucks, street sweepers and general utility pickups. This patent pending technology, designed and manufactured by Unison Solutions, removes moisture and impurities from the biogas for use in CNG vehicles. Learn more about it at www.unisonsolutions.com

[ 28 ]

BEST OF

sCityNetwork.com

Two years ago the park’s Oaks Group Camp, in need of remodeling, received a makeover. Brock Hill, Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation deputy commissioner of parks and conservation, saw an opportunity to create a physical link between the park and Booker T. Washington’s inspiring role in increasing access to education for black students in the South. The new group lodge and smaller cabins were therefore constructed based on Rosenwald architectural features.

Hill said the new Rosenwald-style group camp tells “a powerful story of empowerment through the opportunities created by improved education. Our group camp buildings at Booker T. Washington provide a teaching tool so that the legacy of the schools can live on and be transmitted down through the generations.”

Current Park Manager Levan Gardner grew up spending time at the park playing basketball and swimming. As manager, Gardner has developed canoeing, hiking, and birds of prey programs, among other offerings.

“We use these programs to provide environmental education to local schools and churches,” Gardner said. “The work we do is very important to the community, giving these inner city kids perspective by providing them with a safe environment in which they can learn and have fun. We like to think Booker T. Washington would have approved of the work we do here.”

The story of Julius Rosenwald, Booker T. Washington, and the schools they created together is slowly being rekindled across the South.

This past November a documentary, “Rosenwald,” directed by Aviva Kempner, was screened during the Nashville Film Festival. Kempner’s documentaries focus on the untold stories of Jewish heroes, and “Rosenwald” tells the little-known story of Rosenwald’s significant contribution to black education and culture. Little by little, with Tennessee’s help, this little-know story is becoming increasingly celebrated. ■

■■ Relic

Shannon’s Chapel School in Decatur County, Tenn.

[ 29 ]

clean water starts with a clean earth Globally, our demand for natural resources will more than double our current supply. If we don’t start working towards a solution now, it will be too late.

That’s why SUEZ is consolidating our businesses around a single mission — preparing for the resource revolution. By pooling our resources today, we’re able to bring a global network to work on a local level. We do this so you can continue to enjoy the great water and service you do today, for many years to come.

Learn more at: suez-na.com SUEZ North America @SUEZ_NA

ready for the resource revolution