Sustainable City Network Magazine - Vol. 16 - July 2015

BEST PRACTICES FOR LEADERS IN GOVERNMENT, EDUCATION & HEALTHCARE.

SUSTAINABLE CITY NETWORK

VOLUME 16 JULY 2015

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8TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE OCTOBER 6-7 2015 Grand River Center | Port of Dubuque | Dubuque, Iowa

Market your products and services Support sustainability in your community This conference, which typically attracts around 500 attendees from across the U.S. and Canada, focuses on current issues facing municipal governments, state and national agencies, educational institutions and healthcare facilities. More than 25 workshops, mobile tours, two keynote luncheons and a morning plenary session address topics such as: ■■ Saving

money by conserving energy and/or water in public or commercial

buildings.

■■ Reducing

fuel costs and greenhouse gas emissions in automotive fleets or

public transit systems.

■■ Making

communities more resilient to storms, floods, droughts and other natural

disasters.

■■ Implementing

green infrastructure that improves the effectiveness and reduces the

cost of stormwater management.

■■ Enhancing

social equity and vibrancy through development of affordable

housing, public transit systems, complete streets, local food programs and creative placemaking.

■■ Plans,

projects and/or policies that aim to reduce reliance on fossil fuels; conserve

energy; generate clean energy; reduce, reuse or recycle solid waste; abate air and water pollution; reduce vehicle miles traveled; preserve natural, native

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habitats; or engage and educate citizens on sustainability issues.

Contact us for information on exhibiting or sponsoring at this event: Karen Ruden 563.588.3858 kruden@woodwardbizmedia.com

Tim Koehler 563.588.3856 tkoehler@woodwardbizmedia.com

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SPO NSO RED BY:

Or go to www.gscdubuque.com for a complete media kit AN D OTH ER COR POR ATE S P O NSO RS

contents

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cover story

DUBUQUE COMES BACK IN A BIG WAY

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Energy Audits Cut Costs and Reduce Emissions [1]

VOLUME 16 JULY 2015

A Little Wastewater Change Produces a Lot of Savings

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Students Learn Sustainability Through Life in ‘The Domes’

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Should Schools be ‘Embedded’ in Neighborhoods?

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Solar Panels Keep Paying for Themselves

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Rethinking ‘Invasive’ Species

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California Agency Tests Water Recycling

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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 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, Inc. SUBSCRIPTIONS Contact 563.588.4492; bestof@scitynetwork.com www.sCityNetwork.com

Best Practices for Leaders in Government, Education & Healthcare

EDITORIAL INFORMATION Contact 563.588.3853; randy@scitynetwork.com ADVERTISING SALES Contact 563.588.3858, kruden@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 ASSOCIATE EDITORS Andrea Hauser Michael Manning BUSINESS MANAGER Linda Flannery CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Vaughn Cassidy Julianne Couch Mark Penland F. Alan Shirk Michelle Volkmann CREATIVE/PRODUCTION MANAGER Hobie Wood Unless otherwise noted, all images used throughout Š 2015 Ingimage, all rights reserved.

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

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Upcoming Online Courses When Leaders Lead: Creating a Motivational Work Environment

Online Course - July 28, 2015 This 3-hour class is designed for anyone assigned to lead and motivate people. New managers will learn how to get off on the right foot; and experienced managers will learn to meet leadership challenges from a new perspective. John Graci, NICC Business and Community Solutions trainer, will conduct the session. Learn more at http://sCityNetwork.com/leaders

Microsoft Excel Up to Speed

Online Course Begins Aug. 4, 2015 This online training will be presented in two parts, totaling 12 hours of instruction: Part 1 on August 4, 5 and 6 will provide instruction on shortcuts, functions and charts. Part 2 on August 18, 19 and 20 will focus on analysis and visual basic programming inside Excel. Instructor Adam Wilbert is cartographer, author and database consultant. Learn more at http://sCityNetwork.com/excel

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 Dubuque, Iowa. Branded as the Masterpiece on the Mississippi, Dubuque has not always been as vibrant and prosperous as it is today. At the peak of the farm crisis, only a few decades ago, it had the highest unemployment rate in the nation and its riverfront was strewn with the rusted remnants of its industrial past. But, through collaboration, deliberate planning and a focus on sustainability, the small city rebounded with a diversified economy and a $500 million redevelopment of its riverfront.

In our cover story, you’ll meet Dubuque Mayor Roy Buol and other key officials, including Sustainable Community Coordinator Cori Burbach, who will present a free one-hour webinar in July (sign up for the live event or download the recording afterwards at http://sCityNetwork.com/Dubuque).

In other top stories: Learn how the Tennessee Water and Wastewater Energy Efficiency Partnership, formed in 2011, is significantly reducing the energy costs of these critical municipal systems. Drinking water and wastewater treatment systems typically account for 30-40 percent of a city’s total energy demand. This unique partnership led by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation and the U.S. EPA is proving that low-cost changes to water and wastewater treatment plants can have big energy and cost savings.

Other articles in this issue focus on a unique energy-efficient student housing option at the University of California-Davis; embedding schools in neighborhoods; roof-top solar systems; invasive species; energy audits; and water recycling in California.

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]

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DUBUQUE COMES BACK IN A BIG WAY SUSTAINABILITY AND RESILIENCE ARE CORNERSTONES OF SMALL TOWN’S SUCCESS

BY RANDY RODGERS, PUBLISHER & EXECUTIVE EDITOR

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In the 1980s, Dubuque, Iowa, was down and out, or so it seemed. The farm crisis that had swept across America’s grain belt hit Dubuque’s agriculturebased economy especially hard – at one time bringing the city’s unemployment rate to a nation-high 23 percent.

Its Mississippi riverfront, arguably the community’s most precious asset, was a tangled mess of scrap yards, rusty oil tanks, shuttered factories and dilapidated warehouses.

By the end of the decade, thousands of people (nearly 8 percent of its population) had left the city for greener pastures and, adding symbolic insult to injury, even the “little old lady from Dubuque” had passed on.

Now fast forward 20 years. In 2010, various organizations, agencies and publications, including Forbes, recognized Dubuque as, among other things: the best small metro for projected job growth; the best small city to raise a family; the third most livable community in the world; the seventh best small U.S. city for economic growth; and one of the 10 smartest cities on the planet. In 2013, for the third time in five years, it was one of 10 U.S. cities honored with the National Civic League’s All-American City Award.

And what about that riverfront? Today, the junk is gone, and in its place, a $500 million facelift that includes a new convention center, hotels, casinos and bike trails; factories converted to highend restaurants; warehouses transformed into walkable multi-use communities; and the world-class National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium, a Smithsonian affiliate that attracts nearly 200,000 visitors per year. In 2014, USA Today named Dubuque the fourth “Best American Riverfront.”

The city had reinvented itself as a “Masterpiece on the Mississippi.”

But, how did that happen? In a word, said Dubuque Mayor Roy Buol, “Collaboration.”

Dubuque rallied the troops. Through a series of visioning projects, leaders of the city’s government, business and nonprofit sectors came together to set the community on a path to recovery and prosperity.

Job 1 was diversifying the economy and investing in infrastructure, with a focus on sustainability, quality of life and resilience against the outside forces that had nearly brought the city to its knees.

“Citizens have been part of the process from the beginning, and have remained a key part of the process around sustainability,” Buol said.

“You don’t see that in a lot of cities, where citizens are a part of the process and they actually feel like they’re making a difference, either individually, as an organization or as a business.”

Buol was a city councilman when he ran for mayor in 2005 on a platform of sustainability. His election, and re-elections since, have been interpreted by many as a mandate to integrate sustainability into every city project and department. A 30-member citizen task force worked for two years to gather and articulate the collective vision of its stakeholders into a list of 11 guiding principles that would serve as the criteria by which all future projects and plans would be judged.

In 2013, a 12th principle, on community health and safety, was added.

Dubuque Sustainable Community Coordinator Cori Burbach said bringing health and wellness into the sustainability conversation seemed like a natural fit.

“When you think about that ‘quality of life’ piece, health is a vital element,” Burbach said. “And, when you think about concepts as big as climate change or adaptation, it can be really challenging to explain how those big global issues impact individual people. But, if you say we’re talking about climate change and severe rain events that lead to mold and mildew at home and the increased threat of asthma, well that’s something people can understand. So, explaining it in the context of public health and wellness can be a really powerful way to tell that story,” she said.

In 2008, Burbach became the first municipal sustainability coordinator in the state of Iowa. She works with city staff to incorporate sustainability into the city’s own internal operations and policies, and she serves as a community liaison to help facilitate many of the city’s public/private partnerships on sustainability.

Each year, Burbach plays a lead role in the city’s annual Growing Sustainable Communities Conference, an educational and networking event that now draws approximately 400 attendees from across the country. The 8th annual conference, which is co-hosted by Sustainable City Network, will be held Oct. 6 and 7 at the Grand River Center in the Port of Dubuque.

The city’s “Sustainable Dubuque” initiative began paying dividends right away. In January 2009, IBM announced it would open a new technology service delivery center in a renovated historic department store in downtown Dubuque, bringing 1,300 jobs to the community.

“Our focus on sustainability was one of the three reasons (IBM) gave for selecting Dubuque out of all the other cities they were looking at [5]

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data on their water usage, compares their usage to that of similar customers, and sends leak and back-flow detection notifications to individual customers who download the free application.

■■ Live music, festivals, and special events take place in the Alliant Energy Amphitheater, which sits behind the historic Star

Brewery. All photos courtesy of TH Media.

in the country,” Buol said. The acquisition not only gave a jolt to the local economy, but it introduced Dubuque to IBM’s research team, unrelated to the service center project. At that time, IBM Research was just beginning to ramp up its “Smarter Planet” campaign and was looking for a typical American city that could serve as a test bed for several of its research projects.

Dubbed locally as the Smarter Sustainable Dubuque project, the research studies included Smarter Water, Smarter Electricity, Smarter Travel, Smarter Discards and, currently under way, Smarter Health and Wellness. The common thread running through all the pilot projects has been the use of IBM-developed software that provides the city and participants with data on resource consumption and/ or behaviors that could then be used to encourage beneficial interventions.

Some of the pilots turned in to permanent city-wide programs. For example, the Smarter Water pilot proved that having access to online data about household water usage and leak detection helped reduce water consumption by 6.6 percent among the 300 households in the pilot. The city ultimately installed smart meters city-wide and purchased an integrated online system (not developed by IBM) that provides commercial and residential customers with nearly real-time [6]

The other studies showed similar results, indicating that people respond positively when they can see data on their usage, how their household compares to similar-sized households in their neighborhood and how taking certain actions (fixing a leak, replacing an appliance, biking to work or composting their food scraps, for example) might save them money and reduce their carbon footprint.

David Lyons, a Dubuque area native and former director of the Iowa Department of Economic Development, is now sustainable innovations manager at the Greater Dubuque Development Corp. (GDDC), the city’s independent economic development group. His job is to “apply a business-case analysis to sustainability efforts” and shepherd along some of the city’s partnership initiatives, including the Smarter Sustainable Dubuque projects with IBM. “The work we’re doing now, in 2015, 16 and 17, is trying to figuring out how to unleash the data,” Lyons said. “Instead of it being six city council members trying to interpret the data to take action, it’s now going to be how our 60,000 citizens are connected and engaged with the data to take the actions they believe are appropriate.”

Dubuque Information Services Manager Chris Kohlmann, who helped connect the IBM researchers with the local data they needed, said her job is now focused on taking the lessons learned by the research to develop practical applications that can help citizens and improve the efficiency of city services at the macro level.

“We’re not there yet, but my hope is to get really granular with that water data to try to pinpoint where leaks are in the system and

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Dubuque’s sustainability programs will be the subject of a free Sustainable City Network webinar in July.

See www.sCityNetwork.com/Dubuque for registration information. potentially look at our paradigms for how we repair and replace water mains more proactively, rather than waiting for a major rupture that usually happens in the middle of winter,” Kohlmann said. Her department is now working on implementing systems that improve the transparency of the city’s financial data and give citizens interactive tools to report service needs and track the progress of public works projects.

Buol said connecting citizens with more of these technological tools will be a government priority for the next few years. “Whether they want to save money or help the environment, people will have the information that’s specific to their household or business so they can make informed decisions about how they can accomplish their goals,” Buol said.

The over-arching objective, said Burbach, is to make data-driven decisions at every level.

In 2012, a team of graduate students from the University of Iowa School of Urban and Regional Planning worked with a Dubuque task force to develop a set of 59 specific measurements intended to help the city benchmark and track the progress of its sustainability initiatives. The group looked at more than 1,200 metrics from sustainability plans around the world to come up with those that best fit the city’s goals and aspirations.

and where we need improvement. It’s also been part of that larger transition toward becoming a more data-driven organization,” she said.

Some of that data came as no surprise to the people of Dubuque: “In the Midwest, we’re seeing more frequent and more extreme rain events that are really challenging our stormwater management,” Burbach said. That would be an understatement to the people residing in the Bee Branch watershed on the city’s densely populated north end, an area that has flooded seven times since 1999.

The Bee Branch was a tiny creek that had been converted into an underground storm sewer many decades ago. But with each “unprecedented” flood it became more clear that something had to be done. The solution: Turn that “storm sewer” back into a creek.

The Bee Branch creek restoration project has been a multi-million dollar green infrastructure project that, although not complete, has already protected the neighborhood from a 2011 storm that dropped 10 to 12 inches of rain in a single day – twice the city’s previous record. To make room for the creek, contractors for the city deconstructed more than 80 buildings in the flood-prone area, diverting more than 80 percent of the materials from the landfill.

“We used that report as a stepping stone to join the Star Communities program a year and a half ago,” Burbach said, “and we just announced in May our fourstar certification, which has given us a really solid baseline of where we’re at ■■ The Bee Branch Creek

Restoration involves replacing almost one-mile of storm sewer with a creek and floodplain that resembles the one that traversed the area approximately 100 years ago. This “day-lighting” of the buried Bee Branch Creek will allow stormwater from flash floods to safely move through the area without flooding adjacent properties.

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rehabilitation, community gardens and equitable access to local amenities are ongoing.

The Dubuque Water & Resource Recovery Center is a new $65 million wastewater treatment facility that is using anaerobic digestion to make valuable resources out of wastewater and other “high-strength” fats and oils produced by local industries.

Lyons said, “The first value product is clean water; the second is the heat that comes from the anaerobic digesters, which is used to heat the plant; a portion of the excess gas is burned in micro-turbines to create most of the electricity the plant needs; and the remaining solids are used as a value-added soil amendment on local farms.”

Lyons said the plant is now generating more methane than it can use, so plans are under way to create a cottage industry around the products generated by the waste. That project, he said, is part of a community-wide effort to better understand materials and how they flow into the city, how they are utilized, and how they are ultimately discarded. The GDDC is working with local entrepreneurs to develop business models that will facilitate these circular processes to create local jobs and reduce waste streams and emissions.

■■ Construction crews work on the deconstruction of a house along Kniest

Street in Dubuque. More than 80 vacant properties were removed to make way for the Bee Branch Creek restoration. Officials said more than 80 percent of the materials were diverted from the landfill.

Since then, the city now requires deconstruction and a third-party verified diversion rate of 85 percent on all major demolition projects.

Adaptive reuse, historic preservation and affordable housing are also major priorities in Dubuque. The city, with the help of state and federal grants and private-sector investments, is in the process of restoring more than a million square feet of former warehouse space in its historic millworks district into an energy-efficient and culturally vibrant mixed-use neighborhood adjacent to its downtown.

The $200 million redevelopment project incorporates a transitoriented approach intended to appeal to young professionals and the employers they attract.

Nearby, the historic Washington Street Neighborhood, the oldest and most diverse neighborhood in the city, has been a major focus for reinvestment. Programs to encourage home ownership and

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Looking to the future, Buol said resiliency will be a key focus, and he foresees solar energy as a way for businesses and residents to stabilize energy costs and protect against disruptions in the electrical grid. Completion of the Bee Branch flood mitigation project will protect many of Dubuque’s most vulnerable neighborhoods from devastating floods, and continued investments in technology will give citizens and businesses the tools to incorporate sustainability into their daily lives, he said.

While the glitter of Dubuque’s riverfront and burgeoning warehouse district generate the headlines, Buol said some of the city’s biggest accomplishments have been less obvious. “The improvements we made to the infrastructure – our Water and Resource Recovery Center, the sewer systems and roads – were made at a time when borrowing was cheap and we had the capacity to make these investments. These are going to give us an advantage when it comes to job creation and quality of life issues in the coming years,” he said.

While no one can predict what forces, good or bad, might weigh on the city of Dubuque in the future, Mayor Buol said he’s feeling better about the prospects for his 10 grandchildren, all of whom are growing up in the city.

“But, there’s still a tremendous amount of work to be done in this country and around the world when it comes to sustainability,” he said. “That’s what keeps driving us forward.” ■

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Sustainable City Network Magazine

A Little Wastewater Change Produces a Lot of Savings Tennessee Partnership Wants to be Role Model

BY MARK PENLAND AND VAUGHN CASSIDY

Communities frequently begin energy efficiency projects with lighting or mechanical system upgrades in public buildings, or by looking at the fuel efficiency of their vehicles. However, one of the largest energy consuming operations in most cities is often a missed opportunity: Drinking water and wastewater treatment systems.

Typically these systems account for 30-40 percent of a city’s total energy demand. A unique partnership led by the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is proving that low-cost changes to water and wastewater treatment plants can have big energy and cost savings.

The program, known as the Tennessee Water and Wastewater Energy

Efficiency Partnership, was formed in 2011 as a collaborative effort between local utility districts, the U.S. EPA Region 4, the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the University of Memphis and the University of Tennessee’s Municipal Technical Advisory Service. This first statewide effort of its kind in the Southeast has drawn 16 communities to participate so far in a series of workshops and facility energy assessments. Each utility identifies low- or no-cost operational changes and earmarks larger energy efficiency investments that are incorporated when planned capital improvements occur.

Seven participating utilities in the first round completed their improvement projects in 2011. Another eight utility districts and one correctional facility participated in the recently completed second round. The focus of the program is to determine how to best reduce energy usage at plants without the financial burden of expensive capital projects, with many participants seeing almost immediate benefits.

“What the partnership did for us was make us really take a measured look at our operation and where we could be more efficient without sacrificing service or quality,” said Mark Williams, City of Columbia Wastewater director.

The Columbia Wastewater Treatment Plant was last expanded and upgraded in 2000.

The largest energy demand of the plant are the four 625,000-gallon activated sludge basins and four 380,000-gallon aerobic digesters. Air supply was provided by three 450-horsepower blowers, with one that ran 24 hours a day and one that ran 12 hours a day. An energy management team made up of partnership members was able to work with plant staff to determine that a single 450-horsepower blower would be sufficient to operate the plant under normal loading

■■ City of Columbia Turblex Aeration Blowers.

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conditions. As a result, the second 450 horsepower blower that ran 12 hours a day was shut down, resulting in an immediate annual energy savings of 1.9 million kilowatts per year, or a costs savings of $160,000. This was an energy reduction of 24 percent.

The City of Fayetteville made a similar, but even more significant discovery. The energy management team for the City of Fayetteville Wastewater Treatment Plant determined that the best opportunity for savings was the aerobic digesters for the plant’s holding tank. The greatest opportunity for energy savings was to reduce the run times on three 125-horsepower aerator motors. This provided a savings of 800,000 kilowatts per year and reduced the annual operation costs by 30 percent. The total savings in annual energy costs was more than $50,000.

As a direct result of participation in the partnership, the City of Franklin formed its own energy management team to look at potential savings in the Franklin Water Reclamation Facility. The wastewater system discharges to the Harpeth River and much of the effluent is used by the city for irrigation and coarse bubble aeration systems. The team identified that the operating time of the aeration system could be reduced without compromising performance. The savings from this project funded a lighting upgrade and a solar array installation to supplement power. Combined with other measures, such as meter change-outs and off-peak operating hour adjustments, it amounted to an annual savings of more than $127,000.

In total, the first round participants have realized annual savings in excess of nearly 7 million kilowatts per year at a cost savings of more than 650,000. Some of the successes of the utilities involved in the first round of energy assessments include: • Caryville-Jacksboro Utilities Commission (188,000 killowatts, $15,750) • First Utility District of Knox County (710,000 kilowatts, $68,000) • Lenoir City Utilities Board (523,000 kilowatts, $42,000) • Nashville Metro Water Services (2,400,000 kilowatts, $210,000) An interesting spin-off occurred in the second round. United South and Eastern Tribes began attending the workshops and saw the importance of the assessments to the facilities. They learned about the various ways to reduce operational costs and have since begun assessments at many south and eastern tribe facilities in Alabama, with the support of the EPA Region 4 and the University of Memphis’ Dr. Larry Moore.

■■ Aeration is a source of high energy use for many wastewater facilities.

“Discussions with the Environmental Protection Agency Region 4 concerning energy and sustainability really sparked the formation of the Tennessee Water and Wastewater Utilities Partnership,” said Jennifer Dodd, with the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation Division of Water Resources. “We are extremely proud to have participated in a program that has delivered significant savings to our communities and reduced energy consumption.”

The Tennessee Water and Wastewater Utilities Partnership is planning the third round of energy assessments. The partnership wants to be a role model for others around the country. ■

Read more about the Tennessee Water and Wastewater Energy Efficiency Partnership at www.tiny.cc/duybzx [ 11 ]

Sustainable City Network Magazine

Students Learn Sustainability Through Life in ‘The Domes’ Communal Living Project Thrives for Three Decades

BY MICHELLE VOLKMANN

For more than 30 years, small groups of University of California-Davis students have had a unique student housing option – 14 small, igloolike domes set on a 4-acre plot.

What started out as an experience in energy conservation and an alternative to traditional housing continues to be a popular and affordable option for 26 students looking for a tight-knit community within a campus of more than 35,000 undergraduates. The Baggins End Innovative Housing community, commonly referred to as The Domes, is located on the UC Davis campus.

“The Domes provide a space that is safer, more accepting and more challenging for people that don’t fit or don’t want to fit in to the mainstream,” said Lucas Hill, a current resident in his senior year at UC Davis.

The Baggins End Innovative Housing community features fiberglass yurts, constructed by student volunteers in the 1970s. Today’s domes have a kitchen on one side and a bathroom on the other side, along with Wi-Fi. The community also has a nearly $4,000 greywater laundry system that was installed using crowdsource funding. One of the yurts

is heated with solar power.

Students are encouraged, but not required, to grow vegetables, tend bees, feed the chickens, cook together and attend regular potlucks.

Baggins End is one of only a few student co-housing cooperative communities in the United States, and one of the earliest examples of the growing tiny-house movement.

The Domes’ vision statement states its purpose as promoting “living practices including organic agriculture and permaculture, lowimpact construction, energy efficiency, alternative forms of waste management and the general reduction of our ecological footprint, which allow us to meet our needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs.”

The community also strives for “understanding of differences and conflict resolution through the consensus process, to encourage creativity, inspiration, initiative, personal growth and diversity and to structure our place and our community as an accessible educational resource for each other, the University of California at Davis, and the greater community of the world.”

This consensus process of decision-making is one of the challenges of living at The Domes, said Kent Thompson, Domes coordinator with the Solar Community Housing Association.

“A consensus-based community is not a way that people operate very often in the larger society,” Thompson said.

The Domes closed briefly in 2011 after university officials cited structural and safety concerns, along

■■ The Domes at UC Davis. All

photos courtesy of UC Davis.

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with ADA accessibility requirements. After a “Save the Domes” campaign, community partners volunteered time, materials and resources to update the Domes. Today The Domes are managed by the Solar Community Housing Association, a Davis-based non-profit that provides environmentally friendly and affordable cooperative housing.

Residents continue to maintain their living spaces. The Solar Community Housing Association is negotiating with UC Davis for a 20-year ground lease for the domes.

“The beauty and value in the space is that people are allowed to figure it out. They are allowed to grow an ugly garden and watch it die,” Pearson said.

Through this learning process, the student usually tries again because

“It’s a good example of how universities and coops can work together,” Thompson said.

Developing long-term maintenance plans is one of the current goals for those at The Domes.

“One of my main goals is to make sure that The Domes are in good shape after those 20 years,” Kent said.

Elli Pearson, a graduate of UC Davis, lived at The Domes for three years. She was a freshmen living in a dormitory when The Domes closed. She said her desire to live there grew after watching the community members unite for The Domes’ 6-month restoration project. Pearson moved into The Domes two months after they were reopened to students. She was also an applicant coordinator for The Domes. Pearson currently works at a cooperative bakery in the Bay Area.

■■ Leslie Gardener teaches students and community members using the Domes herb garden

“The community is a huge aspect,” Pearson said.

“Anything you can dream up, you can do. If you say ‘I want to grow a tomato forest,’ they have the space, the tools, and the people are happy to help you do that. If you have a dream of a tomato forest, they will support you.”

“There isn’t the bureaucracy of permits,” Pearson said. “When you tell the community what you want to do, they say great, how can we help?”

While a student may dream of eating locally grown fruits and vegetables, this communal living allows the students to learn – through trial and error— the challenges of gardening. Many of the students living at The Domes are gardening for the first time. Pearson said many first-year residents are inspired to grow large elaborate gardens. But many of these first-year gardens fail, despite the best of intentions.

■

Raised garden beds with paths laid around them [ 13 ]

Sustainable City Network Magazine

lifestyle, residents of The Domes also learn valuable interpersonal skills. Conflict resolution is one example.

“It’s not that there’s more conflict at The Domes, it’s that you have to deal with the conflict because when you sit down at the weekly meeting, you see that neighbor there.

You can’t avoid it,” Pearson said. “People will develop very strong interpersonal skills out of necessity.”

Since the community is made up of college students from different backgrounds and experiences, a lack of communication may lead to conflict among community members, Hill said.

■■ “Domies” commute by bike to campus together

he has an intellectual and political desire to produce his own food.

And each year, the garden gets better.

“The longer you live there, the nicer your garden plot tends to be,” Pearson said.

She also enjoys the biodiversity of living at The Domes.

“Everywhere else in Davis is built up. It’s concrete and horticulturally managed,” Pearson said. “At The Domes, we regularly would see owls, woodpeckers, and jays. We were able to keep chickens while I was there. I got up early once and saw a fox. It’s a green bubble surrounded by apartments.”

Domes residents often feel there are many misconceptions about their communal lifestyle. For example, the yurts have indoor plumbing. The students still shop at Trader Joe’s. They don’t survive on only the food grown on the plot.

Plus, communal living doesn’t mean living without modern building codes and guidelines. The structures must be compliant with fire codes and the yurts are inspected at least twice a year. They also must pass inspections by the campus environmental, health and safety office.

“The difference is how we choose to handle the conflict with a focus on empathy, understanding and mediation,” Hill said.

This communal living at The Domes teaches college students sustainability practices that sustain beyond college.

“The Domes community has inspired me to have compassion for community. In communal living, if I see something that is being underutilized then I say something. I try to organize people around an issue. And that’s the whole point,” Hill said.

The Domes thrive because the community is not micromanaged by the university, Pearson said, even though it’s located on campus.

“The students have the freedom to experiment, to make mistakes, to get better, and to improve,” she said. n related youtube video: https://youtu.be/OMya3V4xXhY

Besides learning about eating locally and living a minimalistic

Read more about The Domes at UC Davis at www.daviswiki.org/The_Domes [ 14 ]

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Should Schools be ‘Embedded’ in Neighborhoods?

Income Segregation Can Be an Obstacle to Equity

BY JULIANNE COUCH

When school facility planners determine where and how to place a new school building, they have at least two sets of factors to consider.

One deals with the various state requirements for school building layout, athletic facility sizes and adequate parking. The other factors include whether it is possible to embed a new school into a neighborhood, creating a school that kids are able to walk to and that is able to serve the whole community.

Sometimes the competing requirements of state regulations and neighborhood interests make balancing these factors difficult to achieve, according to Emily Talen, an urban planner and faculty member at the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University and adjunct faculty at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

child a day was fatally struck by a car.

Perry’s vision of keeping children safer evolved into a concept of planning neighborhoods in which students could be kept away from traffic while walking to school. That is because their school was embedded in the immediate residential neighborhood where the children lived, which meant there were a lot of schools.

“A hundred years ago, that’s what schools were,” Talen said.

“They were not traffic generators; they were not suburban moms

An important factor to consider is the changing relationship between a school and its surrounding neighborhood, Talen said.

“Over the years, school sites have gotten larger, have caused more traffic, and have become something that either has to be isolated ‘out there’ on a huge multi-acre site or becomes something so busy with traffic and congestion that people don’t want to live next to it anymore,” she said, which is unfortunate. Instead, she said, “schools should be assets of a neighborhood. They should be the heart and soul of a neighborhood.”

To explain that concept, Talen goes back to an ideal model of neighborhood schools popularized by Clarence Perry in the early 1900s. Perry’s ideas began with an earlier concept of how urban planners should situate playgrounds in communities, which were steadily being reshaped by the rise of industry and automobile usage. Perry also lived in a time when traffic management features like cross walks and traffic signals were rare. Historians of the period say that in cities such as New York, at least one

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“To plan and construct school buildings that meet today’s educational needs — and that are safe, economical to build and maintain, that will last, and flexible in their program uses — is an extremely difficult task.” dropping off their kids in mini-vans. The school was embedded in the neighborhood. It was a real asset to the community.”

Perry’s concept led to the way most people understand schools today.

Although schools still are community assets, depending on where you live, Talen said things have changed and she sees a problem with school planning that connects to the social core of modern society.

That problem is communities that are segregated by income.

“The country is increasing its racial and ethnic diversity. But income segregation is growing,” she said. “That means you have rich schools

in the suburbs and dis-invested schools in the inner cities.”

This adds an additional level of complexity.

“Unless we have a more diverse population within neighborhoods, a neighborhood-based school is going to mean some kids have great schools and some don’t,” she said, adding that this problem is “incredibly difficult.”

One solution is for planners to take existing schools in the city core and turn them into charter schools. These schools are part of the public school system but have a particular educational focus. This attracts students who elect to go there because of their interest in what that specific school offers.

“A lot of people, such as city planners, have thrown up their hands and said, ‘Let’s throw our money behind charter schools. At least we won’t have people moving out of the city to suburbs to pursue better schools,’” Talen said. That could mean that people could continue living in the city core and go to a school that has been reinvigorated and updated.

“We can keep people in the city and not moving to the suburbs to find a better school,” she said. “So, a charter school that takes over an existing school buildings is probably a good thing.”

Neighborhood schools are an essential component of a healthy and functioning neighborhood, she added, citing what happened in Chicago when Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed nearly 50 schools in the city. Talen thinks a primary reason Emanuel is now facing a run-off in his effort to be re-elected is anger over those closings.

“It is heartbreaking to look at boarded up neighborhood schools. They were small, embedded, the kind of thing urban planners go for, but they were failing schools,” Talen said. “The kids were troubled, the neighborhoods impoverished, it was tragic.

“It was a tough choice,” she added. “But now you can see this whole narrative unfolding, of people wanting schools to be an anchor, not just a place for education from seven to three o’clock. Schools can be a site for adult education, an anchor of what goes on in the neighborhood, they can become community centers. That is what is lost when schools are shut down.”

■■ Neighborhood schools are an essential component of a healthy and

functioning neighborhood. [ 16 ]

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Now the kids who went to those schools have been assigned to schools elsewhere. Talen explained that can mean those kids have to take routes through gang-infested neighborhoods.

So the city has to spend more money to safely transport the children. People in the neighborhoods ask why that money wasn’t available for improving the closed schools instead.

Challenges for building new schools in newly developed neighborhoods are of a different sort. “Regulations about schools have become such that they’ve demanded larger sites to be located on rather than being tightly integrated,” Talen said. Each state has its own set of regulations and recommendations for school facility designers to consider.

Typical of most states, the Virginia Department of Education has a list of guidelines for school facility planning that is a good example of contemporary standards.

■■ New schools can be well planned, smaller and more sustainable, while still being very much a part of the

neighborhood fabric.

“The issues involved in planning and providing adequate and safe school facilities for Virginia’s public school students are complex and merit careful study and thoughtful consideration,” the guidelines state. “To plan and construct school buildings that meet today’s educational needs — and that are safe, economical to build and maintain, that will last, and flexible in their program uses — is an extremely difficult task.”

The guidelines note that local school boards have the responsibility to develop educational programs and then determine what facilities are necessary to make these programs possible. The Virginia Department of Education, school architects and school division facilities directors from across Virginia developed the guidelines together.

“The goal was to provide recommendations that will help local school divisions ensure that their school sites and facilities support the principles of good teaching and learning and promote sound

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Read more about how Virginia plans for new school sites depending on the type of school and planned enrollment in “Guidelines for School Facilities in Virginia’s Public Schools” at www.tiny.cc/qkhfzx educational programs. The recommendations contained in these optional guidelines should be considered as a useful tool when planning school facilities projects. School facilities planners and local school boards are encouraged to exceed them whenever possible.”

The document “Guidelines for School Facilities in Virginia’s Public Schools” recommends sizes for new school sites depending on the type of school and planned enrollment. A primary or elementary school should be situated on a minimum of four acres; middle schools, junior highs and high schools should be on a minimum of 10 acres. Planners should consider adequate site acreage to separate pedestrian, bus and car traffic that comes on or goes near the school campus. There also should be space for outdoor physical education programs.

Planners also need to consider the impact of the world beyond the school itself, like adequate road frontage and ease of access, the guidelines state. They need to consider noise and other pollution sources, like whether there are nearby airports, heavy traffic or industrial facilities. They also need to ensure there is a way for emergency response vehicles to reach the school campus. They recommend, “where possible, locate new schools in attendance areas that will promote students to walk or ride bicycles safely to school.

When developing a new school site or altering an existing site the design should include features that encourage pedestrian or bicycle access to and from the school site.”

Driveways, bus loading areas, unobstructed views, development for physical education, and minimum outside play areas, playground types and surfacing materials suitable for various age groups, and accessibility also are covered in the planning document.

Planners should consider developing high performance school buildings. In these energy efficient, sustainable buildings, architects use landscaping to help control climate. They minimize disturbance to natural habitats and consider water efficiency. To that end, they use natural rain water collection systems for non-potable water use. They also consider best practices with energy efficiency, including natural light and building orientation. They select energy efficient building systems, fixtures and materials. They consider indoor environmental quality, recycling of construction waste and building materials, and the life cycle cost of materials and systems.

The Virginia DOE reminds planners to remember that the building itself can be a teaching tool. Teachers can develop an educational

[ 18 ]

program to illustrate the “environmental, scientific, mathematical, and social factors” that went into the development of the school.

“Too often classrooms just house the activity and are not part of the learning activity,” the guidelines state.

Once a new school is situated in a neighborhood, most people hope the neighborhood will flourish and enrollment at the school will rise.

Even before that happens, planners need to be mindful about future expansion. The Virginia DOE planning document suggests that as students and additional classrooms are added, schools should also gauge the adequacy of the library/media centers, the cafeteria and the administrative spaces.

New schools can be well planned, smaller and more sustainable, while still being very much a part of the neighborhood fabric, Talen said. “(Embedded neighborhood) schools would not be huge, sprawling, multi-acre things,” she said. “They would be tighter, and they would not assume 100 percent car dependence. They would assume that kids would walk to school and that there would be a bond between school and neighborhood that is not only social but physical.”

Embedded schools minimize traffic by making it possible for kids to walk or take public transit, Talen said, but school facility planners often must treat the site as an isolated component, often because of space-eating outdoor sports facilities. Instead, these could be shared, multipurpose facilities, “consolidated in a way that’s more creative,” she said.

Another cause of school acreage bloating is that new schools are often required to be single story rather than multi-story to avoid the cost of elevators, which is understandable, Talen said. But the result is higher site acreage requirements. That just spreads the school out more, creating more traffic and worse air quality.

Resolving these different goals – between sustainability and perceived safety, transportation methods and space requirements – can be a good step toward more sustainable school construction in the future. n■ Emily Talen is an urban planner and faculty member at the School of Sustainability at Arizona State University and adjunct faculty at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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Solar Panels Keep Paying for Themselves Institutions, Businesses and Neighborhoods Find Ways to Get It Done

BY ANDREA HAUSER

As the solar power industry continues to grow and develop, early adopters agree that installing the panels was a great decision, whether on top of a private home, university building or city aquarium.

“We didn’t have that cash, but we had a roof and we had a mission and we had an interest,” said Mark Plunkett, GINA L ANGEN the conservation manager for the Seattle Aquarium. The aquarium had a 49 KW solar array installed on the south-facing roof of its Pier 59 facility in the fall of 2013. The project was installed through the city’s Community Solar project, which allows residents to buy into a large solar installation and then receive the benefits. Under this agreement, the aquarium receives only about 5 percent of the energy generated, Plunkett said, but when it JIM OOST ERMAN expires in 2020 the aquarium “will own 100 percent of it and will get more of a direct benefit.”

Considering the energy needs of the aquarium, Plunkett said the solar panels currently provide less than 1 percent of the facility’s electrical needs – but getting a savings windfall on in the utility bill wasn’t the project’s goal.

“The total capacity is 49 (KW) and we’re at 32 right now and it’s a cloudy day,” Plunkett said. “The numbers are there, it’s working. And on a bright, sunny day you’d be pushing that 49.”

Maintenance has primarily involved keeping the panels clean since “we have a lot of seagulls and they do seagull things to disgrace our panels, which have to be washed periodically,” he added, as well as nesting issues, but otherwise “here we are in 2015, a year and half in, we’re fine.”

While The Ohio State University has incorporated some wind energy and geothermal into its energy mix, they didn’t have any solar on the main campus until they were approached by AEP Ohio, the local utility company, asking to install a solar array on one of the campus buildings.

Like the Seattle Aquarium’s installation, the university does not own the AEP installation, said Gina Langen, the director of communications for the university’s Office of Energy & Environment, but it does provide power to the building it sits on.

“It’s a little different in that particular instance that it wasn’t us saying, ‘We’d like to have solar power on campus,’” she said.

The university already had two separate solar installations on buildings off-campus, Langen said, and while there aren’t any plans to increase solar energy, “the students are very astute and vocal about where we get energy from, so we take all of those things into consideration.”

“This is not to be viewed as a big financial benefit, it’s meant to be viewed as a sustainable effort for the community,” Plunkett said. “We are deeply concerned about climate change and ocean acidification and this was a positive action that we could take.”

The aquarium is taking additional steps to increase its energy efficiency, and has incorporated all of these efforts into the education program for its more than 800,000 annual visitors, Plunkett added.

“The educational outreach is of considerable importance, in addition to any financial gain,” he said, and future construction to the facility will continue to incorporate the panels, which are very productive, in spite of Seattle’s notoriously overcast weather.

■■ A solar panel array was installed on the south-facing roof of the Seattle

Aquarium's Pier 59 facility in the fall of 2013. [ 19 ]

Sustainable City Network Magazine

Learn more about Melrose’s initiatives at www.masscec.com/solarizemass lower the price was for everybody,” Timmermann said. Since the Solarize initiative ended, the city now directs residents to the Energy Sage site for guidance choosing financing and a vendor.

“We wanted people to be able to pick their own vendor,” Timmermann said. “This brought them options through the solar marketplace.”

Adding solar panels is especially attractive due to the state’s increasing energy costs as it phases out coal-fired power, with the last plant scheduled to close in 2017.

Considering that energy rates now run around 24 cents/KW hour, Martha Grover said she isn’t sure precisely how much she has saved since her 4.5 KW solar array was installed in 2011, but knows it’s saving her household money.

“Once you do it, you kind of don’t pay any attention,” she said. “It’s definitely a reason more people are considering it for sure, in the last year this spike in electricity prices and as solar prices have come down.”

■■ Melrose, Mass. has seen increased interest in residential and business

solar installations since it participated in the Solarize program in 2012.

Photos by Lori Timmermann.

One of the primary drivers behind the university’s green energy decisions has been the needs of its researchers, Langen added.

“With AEP, one thing we were interested in was having access to data, so we do have that and in some cases faculty members could have that for research purposes if they wanted to,” she said. “We see the need to diversify energy sources and also recognize that there’s a lot of research being done in these areas. We want to be able to provide resources for faculty members.”

Diversifying energy sources was also a primary motivation behind the City of Melrose, Mass., initiative to increase solar installations in its community. The project started with Solarize Mass, said Lori Timmermann, co-chair of the Melrose Energy Commission, who acted as the program’s solar coach and helped guide residents through the process in 2012.

“Melrose went from having seven installations to signing on 79 people that year, and then by the following spring up over 100,” she said.

The program provided a designated vendor for the city and gave a bulk purchasing price so “the more people signed on in the community, the [ 20 ]

Now that solar companies are developing more options for homeowners with East/West roofs and financing options have improved, Grover, the city’s energy efficiency manager, said she expects residents to continue adding solar.

“Especially in this day and age of ridiculous energy prices in New England, it will pay for itself in a very, very short time,” she added.

The only thing Grover said she would change about her solar installation is buying the system outright instead of leasing it from a vendor, since federal and state tax credits make it more affordable and the panels continue to pay for themselves for decades.

“All of those financial benefits that any system owner has, they’re built into any financing method that you choose, so it’s just who’s going to benefit? If you own it yourself, you’re going to get the benefit,” she said.

“The benefits of outright purchase are just hands down financially the best way to go.”

Still, the lease agreement has worked out for Grover’s family.

“I do get the benefit of a decreased energy bill, and knowing that I’m doing the right thing,” she said.

The benefit of a lower electricity bill has also impressed Jim Oosterman and his wife, Lisa, who had their solar array installed in 2012 as part of the Solarize initiative. He estimated the bill covers at least 50 percent of their home’s energy use.

“We’ve seen a significant drop” in the bill, said Oosterman, who financed

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the array through a power purchase agreement (PPA). “The benefit with the power purchase was it didn’t cost anything up front, so it’s all savings. When we look at the portion of our bill not covered by solar production, we say, ‘Wow, imagine if it was all on the national grid.’”

While the panels didn’t generate as much energy after the heavy snows the state experienced this past February, Oosterman said they haven’t had to worry about any other maintenance issues and “the inverter works without us even knowing that it’s working. It’s seamless for us.”

Since their panels were installed, Oosterman said several other homes in their neighborhood have also added arrays to their roofs, and he and his wife now often drive around noticing them and wondering how they designed a certain array and how much electricity it’s producing.

“Just like as soon as you buy a red car, you start to notice every other red car on the road,” he said. “Our neighbors down the street, I drive by their house and think, ‘Man, I wish I could put more panels up.’”

As the technology continues to evolve, Oosterman said he hopes he’ll be able to expand his home’s array. In the meantime, it is an “incentive to stay in the home,” he said. “And any other home we would look to buy would have to be suitable for solar panels somewhere.

“I think anybody else looking to buy a house would probably see it as a perk, as value added.” ■

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Rethinking ‘Invasive’ Species Experts Suggest Less Emphasis on Non-Native Plants

BY JULIANNE COUCH

It’s generally accepted that invasive plants and animals are bad for biodiversity and should be eradicated. Many individuals, organizations and municipal leaders have enlisted in the battle against these non-native species - plants in particular.

Millions of dollars, not to mention hours, are spent yanking, cutting or applying herbicides to certain species, while simultaneously nurturing others. However, without an understanding of their repercussions, these efforts can do more harm than good. Some experts in urban ecology warn that labeling plants as native or non-native, bad or good, and allowing those labels to direct policy, could be the wrong approach.

Toby Query has worked as a natural resources ecologist for the city of Portland, Ore., Watershed Revegetation Program since 1999, and manages several hundred acres of forests and wetlands in the city. Under his watch, more than 3 million native seedlings and many tons of native grass and wildflower seeds have been planted.

He also is the founder of Portland Ecologists Unite!, a monthly

discussion group working to improve land management practices and increase the resiliency of the community of ecologists.

Through the years, Query said, he has slowly shifted his thinking from one that “combats evil invasives” to a more nuanced approach. When managing natural areas, it is first important to know what you have living in them by surveying the plants, birds and animals, he said, then documenting and assessing their status on a routine basis.

“The most important thing is to then line out specific goals that you have for them,” Query said, adding that the goals, especially in urban areas, need to be flexible to deal with what the needs are, and specific enough to highlight certain species managers want to recover.

Query learned this lesson first-hand when his team was trying to remove an invasive reed canary grass, as well as clear out nonnative blackberry bushes, from an area. They wanted to instead plant hawthorn and other native trees. However, during the process of removing the plants they no longer desired, they realized a rare bird, the willow flycatcher, liked to nest in the blackberry bushes. Before realizing what was occurring, they cut out the blackberry bushes in the middle of bird nesting season. Query’s team destroyed some nests in the blackberry bushes, not realizing they were habitat for a species of concern.

“Early in my career I didn’t know about that bird.

Now with the help of other biologists we’re trying to assess natural areas and tailor our treatments and interventions to do the least amount of damage and to make those treatments move the natural area in the direction we want them. That is, to make the environments more sustainable and healthier for all species that are there,” he said.

■■ Chicory is not native to North America, but provides

food and habitat for native animals. It also has been in North America longer than anyone now alive, contributing to the sense of place for many people [ 22 ]

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Overly simplistic approaches to the natural world can create harm, Query said, as began to happen with his blackberry bush project.

“It is not as simple as bad and good,” he added. “It is a lot more complex than that. For example, there are certain species that ecologists love to revile, such as garlic mustard,” which many people will do anything to get rid of because it is considered a nonnative that will change forest dynamics.

But “we’re moving toward dialogue that tries not to label plants or animals as good or bad, as invasive or not,” Query said. “Various species have different capacities for adapting to change, some faster than others.”

Plants like garlic mustard do quite well on disturbed soil, he said.

They propagate quickly and their seeds live for a long time. But he pointed out an important set of questions that should be asked, such as the underlying causes of why a non-native plant is thriving there. Is it because of the disturbed ground? Because of climate change? Because of earthworms in soil?

“We need to look at the underlying drivers of ecological change and realize that a plant or animal isn’t bad or good,” he said. “It is just living its life. It is up to us whether it fits in with our goals or not.”

The city of Portland has a broad, long term assessment map of the Portland Area Watershed, Query said. It looks at specific randomized points mostly in riparian areas to assess the biocommunity, streams, plant community, bird community and longterm trends. Then it ranks those communities on what is doing well and how they can work on other areas to make them healthier.

But of course, nature doesn’t always follow a predictable path, since weather patterns and many other variables are constantly changing.

“There’s a lot of basic biology we don’t know about including soils and insects. The ecosystem is almost infinitely complex. There is too much information to know,” Query said. “There are multiple examples of where we tried something but it didn’t necessarily work, but that’s the nature of sites — each site we manage is kind of its own problem to solve, so failures are part of what we need to learn. We start trials here and there to see if it works. If it does, we expand, if not we abandon. It’s a constant learning process.”

There will always be individuals concerned about changes in a habitat area they see on a regular basis. Where there are natural spaces, there will be creatures. In the wooded area around Portland, that might include black-tail deer, a rare bear or mountain lion, and on local golf courses, the ever-present Canada goose.

Although Query doesn’t work directly with these sorts of animal species, he understands that their prospects are directly tied to what is occurring in the woodlands he manages.

■■ A bird nest made out of invasive reed canary grass (Phalaris arundinacea)

built in a planted hawthorn trees. Eradicating the canary grass (or reducing its cover substantially) during the bird nesting season would reduce the nesting habitat for this bird and others.

“It is important to communicate with the public that we’re trying to do what is best for the health of the ecosystem and what is good for the public,” he said. “We want people to be able to enjoy nature.

When we do an ecological restoration treatment, we know we are impacting negatively some part of that ecosystem and positively some other part. We all are trying to figure out the best timing, best treatment, best target sites. That’s a learning process.”

Mark Davis agrees with Query about ecological practices and the nuanced use of language to describe them. He is the Dewitt Wallace professor and chair of biology at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minn., and was once Query’s professor. Davis considers words like “invasive species” to be a value-laden term.

“People, including conservationists and scientists, apply these terms indiscriminately,” he said. “It is best to call them ‘recent arrivals’ or even ‘non-native and native.’ But words like ‘invasive,’ ‘alien’ and ‘exotic’ suggest these are bad things and shouldn’t be there.”

Davis worries we’ve somehow gotten into an armed conflict with nature that we can’t possibly win.

“A problem that arises is that a lot of money is spent to eradicate them (non-native species) through the use of chemicals,” Davis said. “The recognition that species are doing desirable ecological services will be overlooked. We could be getting rid of species that are providing benefits.” [ 23 ]

Sustainable City Network Magazine

A change of perspective about these plants and animals is the new reality, he said.

“That is not saying just don’t worry about anything but let nature take its course, because some things cause problems,” he said, using the example that too many stinging bees make a city less attractive and public parks less usable, and too many deer can cause safety issues when they are hit by cars.

“When it comes to human safety, a city needs to intercede. Best practices will vary by community and what their key issues are,” he said, and just like with most other decisions made by government officials and other leaders on behalf of the larger community, it is best when the decisions are made by many people.

Most cities only have the resources to focus on a few things and should get input from as many stakeholders as they can, Davis said, “but the herbiciding of non-native plants should be stopped.

A lot of the public does not like having chemicals sprayed, and a lot of these plants go back a long time. Continuing to think of them as non-natives and therefore something that shouldn’t be here is stupid.”

Some non-native species even provide a sense of place for local residents, Davis said, because these plants have been there longer than any individuals currently alive.

Ultimately, it’s very hard to manage nature so it “is just enough but not too much,” Davis said. Not too hot or cold, not to buggy or too humid, not overrun with nuisance wildlife but not barren and sterile.

“That’s the natural world out there,” he said. Deer don’t have predators. Raccoon populations have exploded. Coyotes are adaptable. Wild turkeys were reintroduced or introduced to new places and now wildlife managers get complaints that turkeys cause problems when they eat crops and gardens. “There is a fantasy out there that we have the ability to create an environment with everything at the desired level. If you think that way, you will be perpetually unhappy.”

Davis advised urban ecologists, conservation advocates and even backyard gardeners to realize they can only focus on a few things.

“It makes people feel good to be out waging war against a diabolical enemy,” he said. “But, it’s not really a war because the other side isn’t fighting. Humans brought them over, they’re just here living because that’s where we put them. It is a one-sided war.”

If we really want something to fight, Davis has a few suggestions.

“You should worry about introduced pathogens, viruses, bacteria and fungi,” he said. “Besides harming people, they can decimate food production crops, livestock and wild populations. Then next on the list is the introduced insects that can devastate and threaten society. There is not enough emphasis on that and way too much preoccupation worrying about non-native plants.”

Anyone who has witnessed the pine beetle invasion in our western landscapes, or the emerald ash borer currently chewing through the tree stock of many American cities, will understand Davis’ point.

According to the National Invasive Species Council, these and other destructive species cost the U.S. $100 billion per year. n

Loyd Ray Farms Waste to Energy Project, Boonville, NC Unison Solutions Inc., based in Dubuque, Iowa is proud to be part of the team at this commercial swine facility. At the site in North Carolina, waste from over 8,000 hogs housed at the farm is placed in covered lagoons.

The system designed and manufactured by Unison Solutions, removes moisture and impurities from the biogas so it is a suitable fuel for the turbine. More than 50,000 ft3 of biogas is produced per day and used as fuel for a turbine that produces 65 kW of electricity.

Learn more about it at www.unisonsolutions.com [ 24 ]

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Energy Audits Cut Costs and Reduce Emissions Commercial Buildings Could Save 30% on Average

BY F. ALAN SHIRK

Tax season might not be the best time to talk about audits, but this kind of audit could save institutions a lot of money and help them reach their emission reduction goals, too.

The Abraxas accounting products include utility bill tracking software and databases, and energy management project support for federal, commercial and ESCO clients.

Experts say not enough building owners are taking advantage of energy audits.

“We hate waste of any kind!”

Energy audits date back to the 1973 energy crisis, but they have dramatically increased with the growing interest in sustainability, climate change and energy conservation. Yet, according to one East Coast electric utility, nearly 90 percent of their customers have not asked for an audit.

In addition to saving money, there are some powerful reasons for an audit. According to the Environmental Defense Fund: • 65 percent of greenhouse gas emissions come from energy generation • $108 billion is spent each year on energy bills for commercial buildings • 30 percent of the energy used by commercial buildings could be cut through investments in energy efficiency. (The book, “Rules of Thumb,” reports that lighting uses 30 percent of the power for a building and is considered “low hanging fruit” for conserving energy, i.e. change outs to LED and CFL.)

“We hate waste of any kind,” Avina said. “Our resources are finite, and wasting them is shortsighted, expensive and ultimately detrimental to all of us on the planet. Through our energy assessments, training, software tools and daily interactions with the outside world, we provide guidance to others so that they can reduce energy and water waste at their facilities. This is our calling, and it makes achieving a sustainable environment a cornerstone of all we do.”

“An audit will point you in the right direction,” he added. “An audit is in essence a plan, a road map, written specifically for your building.

It identifies energy savings opportunities, explains how one can save energy, and gives an estimate of savings and the cost to implement them.

“With a good audit, you can make intelligent choices that will reduce your energy spend, and make your company more sustainable,” Avina stressed.

Other advantages are reducing operating expenses, increasing profits,

Sustainability is another reason.

“To be sustainable is to use less energy,” said John Avina, president of Abraxas Energy Consulting in San Luis Obispo, Calif., which he founded in 2001. The company divides its offerings into the energy analysis and energy accounting spheres.

With analysis, Abraxas provides energy audits (electricity, propane, natural gas, fuel oil, water and maybe diesel), retrocommissioning, and measurement and verification services for the federal government, energy savings companies (ESCOs), utilities and commercial customers. The company also does audits for LEED certification and provides Environmental and Social Impact Assessments (EISA) audits for the Federal Government.

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determining the best energy efficiency measures for your building and increasing the value of a building.

What is an energy audit?

■■ An energy audit can show property

owners where their energy is going and identify the most costeffective ways to reduce energy consumption. Regular audits can show progress, or reveal emerging new areas that need improvement.

According to Avina, a nonresidential or commercial energy audit is the process of having a professional or certified auditor‎ assess your building for energy savings possibilities and provide you with an “energy audit report,” a carefully thought-out plan that – if followed – cuts energy usage.

Considering that every building is different, and each offers unique opportunities to reduce consumption, Avina emphasized that “this is why every different building requires its own energy audit.”

The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) developed four levels of analysis applied to most audits: • Level 0 – Benchmarking: A preliminary Whole Building Energy Use (WBEU) analysis based on the analysis of the historic utility use and costs and the comparison of the performances of the buildings to those of similar buildings. Benchmarking determines if further analysis is required.

• Level I – Walk-through audit: More preliminary analysis to assess building energy efficiency to identify not only simple and low-cost improvements, but also a list of energy conservation measures to orient the future detailed audit. Level I is based on visual verifications, study of installed equipment and operating data and detailed analysis of recorded energy consumption collected during the benchmarking phase.

• Level II – Detailed/General energy audit: Based on the preaudit, this level includes an energy use survey to provide a comprehensive analysis of the studied installation, a more detailed analysis of the facility, a breakdown of the energy use and a first quantitative evaluation of the measures selected to correct the defects or improve the existing installation. Finally, analysis can involve advanced on-site measurements and sophisticated computer-based tools to evaluate precisely the selected energy retrofits.

• Level III – Investment-Grade audit: Detailed analysis of capital-intensive modifications focusing on potential costly options requiring rigorous engineering study. [ 26 ]

Costs and benefits While audits can be very beneficial, not all buildings should go through the process.

“It depends on the size of the building or, more so, on the amount the (owner) is paying for utilities,” Avina said. “If cutting, say 25 percent of the total energy spend is an attractive option, then yes, a company should.”

The next question is whether to pay for it or get a free utility audit, and that also depends on the building’s size, Avina said. Paying a qualified person, like a Certified Energy Manager‎, is worth the thousands of dollars they charge for the detailed 50-page report that might save hundreds of thousands of dollars in the long run.

Audit results and paybacks vary. Abraxas has audited more than 40 million sq. ft. of space in the last four years in more than 400 buildings, resulting in at least $20 million in energy savings. Clients usually see between 15 and 40 percent in savings with a simple payback of four years. A 10,000 sq. ft. building that uses about $20,000 worth of energy per year may save only $5,000, which might not justify a costly audit.

“On a hospital, we found that they were being overcharged by their utility by $1.4 million annually. They are resolving this now,” Avina said. “We also audited a very large federal office in Washington in which we were able to find over 50 percent in utility cost savings, just under $5 million annually with a simple payback of under two years.

“I know this sounds impossible, but a large part of this was that the client was paying a very high rate for district steam and installing their own boiler system would cut their heating cost by about 65 percent.”

Additional cost factors There are additional cost factors. If a building has not aggressively pursued energy conservation during the last 10 years, a 20 percent savings might be possible. If the building owner has, an audit might reveal possible savings of 10 percent. Follow-up audits might not be necessary, since savings from the initial audit can be tracked by billing software.

Another excellent example of the value of audits is the success of EnerNOC Inc., which reported it generated more than $1 billion in customer savings during nearly 15 years. Headquartered in Boston and with offices across the globe, EnerNOC is a leading provider of cloud-based energy intelligence software (EIS) and services to thousands of enterprise customers and utilities globally.

Its EIS solutions improve energy productivity by optimizing how customers buy, how much they use and when they use energy.

EIS for enterprise includes budgeting and procurement, utility bill management, facility optimization, visibility and reporting, project

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tracking, demand management and demand response.

EIS solutions for utilities help maximize customer engagement and the value of demand-side resources, including demand response and energy efficiency.

Subsidiaries and affiliates of FirstEnergy Corp., a diversified energy company headquartered in Akron, Ohio, are involved in the generation (14,000+ MW of capacity), transmission and distribution of electricity, as well as energy management and other energy-related services.

Its seven operating companies in Pennsylvania, Ohio and New Jersey serve 4.5 million customers.

Committed to conservation Scott Surgeoner, FirstEnergy manager of communications for Pennsylvania and Ohio, said the utility is very committed to helping its industrial, commercial and residential customers manage and save electricity, spending about $100 million annually for energy conservation programs.

Some of those programs are mandated by the Public Utility Commission (PUC), including Act 129 that requires Met-Ed and its sister companies — PenElec, Penn Power and West Penn Power — to reduce consumption by as much as 3 percent and peak demand by as much as 4.5 percent in three phases in three-year blocks through 2020.

“It costs a lot of money to try to get people to cut electricity, and legislating energy savings is a tough sell. Education is simple and effective. And we are continually working on energy conservation programs and encouraging especially our commercial and residential customers to audit,” Surgeoner said.

“However, while audits may reveal a lot of options, cost remains an issue. It may be easy for a homeowner to change out light bulbs versus spending $1,000 for a new refrigerator that will only mean saving $50 a year on electricity. A manufacturer might not be able to afford a five-year payback on more energy efficient machine tools,” he said.

Kent Hatt, FirstEnergy senior consultant for energy efficiency, said the utility does all it can to encourage participation in its audit programs for residential and commercial users.

“Not only do we offer them free, but we absorb most of the cost of paid audits. For example, if a homeowner wants a detailed audit costing $500, they only have to pay $100, which is quickly paid back.

We contract our residential audits to Honeywell and commercial and residential to CLEAResult.”

FirstEnergy also focuses on urging small businesses to audit, Hatt said.

“We run into understandable resistance with them. A small pizza shop owner running his oven from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. to earn a decent living doesn’t see an audit as a priority,” he said. “That’s true for a lot of our home businesses, too. But, there is a lot of potential energy savings being overlooked.”

FirstEnergy employees see many examples of savings, but the customers have to choose to go after them, Surgeoner said.

“One small town in our service area has a number of very small, highly sensitive companies with 15 to 20 employees and operating on thin margins in a highly competitive global economy,” he said.

“Audits are not in their budgets. The economy also plays a huge role.

It’s not the same as it was prior to 2007-2008.”

Financial incentives offered FirstEnergy offers businesses financial incentives, like one that encourages customers to have an ASHRAE Level II and gives up to 0.05 cents per kilowatt-hour if they implement qualifying auditrecommended improvements such as lighting, HVAC, refrigeration and custom measures.

“Another offer is the Building Systems Energy Efficiency Rebate for electricity savings demonstrated to improve the energy performance of whole-building systems, including new construction projects, renovations, and shell improvements,” Hatt said.

The bottom line for many larger businesses and institutions is that they are looking for a maximum two-year payback for energy improvements, he said, thinking “How can I spend $100,000 for a new conveyor and recoup that on my electric bill in 18 months? And, U.S. companies aren’t benefiting from government energy subsidies like those available in other countries.”

Finally, Avina said there is another key financial point regarding audits.

“Anyone can just install solar photovoltaics on their building, but it may not be the most cost-effective option. Generally, energy efficiency is the least expensive way to reduce your energy spend. Once you are using less energy, then you can size a smaller solar system, saving yourself quite a lot of money on the photovoltaics.”

There’s also the most obvious advice, which Avina uses often.

“The best energy conservation measure is to just turn things off when they are not needed!” ■

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California Agency Tests Water Recycling Padre Dam Purification Demo Goes Live Near San Diego

BY ANDREA HAUSER

California’s drought is getting worse, prompting a new willingness across the state to try solutions that go beyond water rationing and desalinating ocean water.

the dam’s communications officer, adding that the facility will do this using a four-step process that includes free chlorine disinfection, membrane filtration, reverse osmosis and advanced oxidation.

The prospect of recycling wastewater into potable, drinking quality water has raised some eyebrows among customers of the Padre Dam Municipal Water District, in San Diego’s east county, which is why education was a key component of the test facility’s launch on April 10.

The fourth step should give the facility additional credits for removing more constituents from the water, with the goal of shortening the environmental buffer time – or the amount of time the treated water needs to sit in the Padre Dam aquifer before being reused as potable water.

“This is just as much an engineering project as it is a communication project,” said Albert Lau, Padre Dam director of Engineering. “We have to communicate to the general public about the technology and about the benefit of reusing that water. Once we explain to them and educate them about the process, they get excited about it.”

“This idea was really built off of what Orange County has done already with the full scale project there,” Lau said. “They’re blessed with a big groundwater basin, but we’re not.”

The Padre Dam Advanced Water Purification Demonstration Facility in Santee, Calif., is expected to produce approximately 100,000 gallons of purified water every day, but it won’t be put into the drinking water system just yet.

“The demonstration facility is treating water to prove to California regulators that Padre Dam has the ability to produce and treat this kind of water,” said Melissa McChesney,

The demonstration facility plans to test the water treatment system for a few months and then move forward on a full scale design, with construction potentially finished by 2019, Lau said.

“We’re facing droughts, the water situation is more dire than ever and people are recognizing that this could help some of the water issues we’re facing here,” Lau added.

According to the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, more than 50 local emergency proclamations were filed as of April 14, including more than 20 counties. The state has even set up a special section of its website as a clearinghouse for drought information, listing updates on conservation rates across the state and expected changes to water rights.

Besides Orange County and the Padre Dam, several other counties also are considering recycling wastewater into potable water, Lau said, including the cities of San Diego, Monterrey and Santa Clara. El Segundo, Calif., also has utilized the Edward C. Little Water Recycling Facility since the 1990s, which is under ownership of the West Basin Municipal Water District and operated by United Water. (Download a free webinar on that project in the Sustainable City Network content store.)

“It’s picking up momentum statewide, it’s not just Padre Dam,” Lau said. “Every agency has a slightly different situation and has their own twist on how to accomplish meeting regulation requirements.”

Because of the drought conditions the state has allocated more money for water supply projects, McChesney said, which Padre Dam officials hope will also help move the water purification project forward more quickly.

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“We are at the end of the pipeline, we are in essentially a desert, and we looked at what we need to do as a region to increase reliability...Padre Dam is 100 percent imported water, and if we’re able to do this project full-scale, we can provide up to 20 percent of our current water use.”

“We are at the end of the pipeline, we are in essentially a desert, and we looked at what we need to do as a region to increase reliability,” she said. “Padre Dam is 100 percent imported water, and if we’re able to do this project full-scale, we can provide up to 20 percent of our current water use.”

Local customers have already learned to conserve their water, reducing the amount used by 30 percent since the last major drought in 2007, Lau said, adding that customers are “either using water very efficiently or not at all these days. Most are recognizing that we do live in a desert.”

McChesney agreed, adding that the water shortage is hard for many residents to claim ignorance about, considering it’s a focus of the local and state news every day. That emphasis has helped bring customers around to solutions like the water recycling facility, she added, citing a recent survey about customer’s knowledge of water purification and that the majority supported the idea and wanted more information.

As other regions of the United States continue to struggle with drought conditions, Lau said projects like the one at Padre Dam will likely become more common. He has already been asked to make a presentation about the project at the California Water Environment Association annual conference, planned this year for April 28-May 1 in San Diego.

“I suspect we’ll probably get more interest from folks out of state,” he said, adding that tours of the demonstration facility are filling up quickly.

The prospect of being able to both conserve water and provide a more reliable supply are two of the most exciting aspects of the new project, McChesney added.

“We’ve never had an opportunity to provide a local water supply for our customers, and to be able to provide that reliability is fantastic,” she said. ■

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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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