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In this tight economy your city may be looking for new ways to more efficiently spend your financial resources and attract green jobs, while making your community more livable. You might want to take a look at what San Francisco is doing. continue

Engineering firm Wight & Company announced Tuesday that the 9^th District Police Station in Chicago, a new facility located along S. Halsted St. from W. 31^st St. south to just past W. 32^nd St., achieved LEED Gold certification. The facility includes a 250-car parking structure, up-to-date holding cells, a secure viewing and line-up area, community room for group functions and a fitness room for officers and staff. One of the unique aspects of the project is its water management design that Wight & Company’s civil engineering group devised. A rain garden was constructed at the north end of the building to help implement this aggressive approach. Building on the city’s green initiatives, another notable achievement for the project was the diversion of over 97% of construction debris from landfills. This number surpassed the city’s requirement of 50% and was able to earn an Innovation point under LEED for going above and beyond. continue

Transition Towns is an international movement started in England that is gathering momentum in the US. The purpose of Transition Town is to help local communities become resilient to the challenges of climate change, peak oil and economic crisis. So far there are 36 US communities formerly designated as Transition Towns and another 600 who are “mulling over” getting their communities involved.

As a member of government or as an educator you can work with people within your community without having to re-invent the wheel. The process is already formed and the specific actions are determined by the individual communities. continue

If you live in Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, Kansas City, St. Louis, Louisville, Milwaukee or Minneapolis/St. Paul, you just got one step closer to a high-speed rail system that would link those cities in what will be called the Chicago Hub High Speed Rail (or Midwest) Corridor.
According to Environment News Service , a meeting of Midwest governors and rail executives, hosted by Illinois Governor Pat Quinn, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Chicago Mayor Richard Dailey, has resulted in an agreement that establishes a Midwest steering group to coordinate each state’s individual applications and to lobby the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) for funding under the Obama Administration’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. President Obama has targeted $8 billion to jump-start a high-speed passenger rail system, along with five years’ worth of $1 billion budget requests.
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Think your town is too small to go big into sustainability? Think it takes too much money to make a real statement? Think again. Ashton Hayes, a village in Northwest England, is becoming a global model for how to live sustainably. And it’s doing so in ways that any town, no matter how small, can emulate.

The village has made becoming the country’s first zero carbon emissions community its goal, according to a piece by Sarah Mukherjee, environment correspondent for BBC News. continue

Montana State University in Bozeman is employing roof tiles that include 80 percent recycled content to put the lid on its Zero Energy House Project. The house, a project of the university’s Extension Housing and Environmental Health Program, is designed to educate builders, architects, engineers, homeowners, students and the general public about resource efficiency.

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If you’ve been here before, you see it looks all different. We moved to a new host and a new template. The template promises a lot more flexibility for future development, but first we have to figure out its basics. Please pardon missing bits and the like while we learn.

San Francisco has approved the strictest composting law in the US, aiming to increase recycling from today’s 72% to 90%, save landfill space and costs, reduce methane generation, and create compost to return to gardeners and others. According to SFGate, this is part of fulfilling the city’s aim to be sending nothing to landfills or incinerators by 2020.

Don Voigt has a question:
Hi, I’m a resident of a city which is struggling to get a resolution passed at the city council level wherein the city states that it wants to be a “green” community. We attempted to get a resolution passed last week but it failed to get a majority on the basis that it was too general in nature and that it did not have any specific items or targets in it.

What do you find as the first level of “position statements” for communities who are going green?

Don Voigt,
Port Washington, WI

What’s your advice?

A “National Town Hall on our Energy Future” is happening nationwide this Saturday on college campuses across the US. Sponsored by Focus the Nation, it will focus on identifying regionally appropriate energy solutions and accelerating their deployment. Building on last year’s successful gatherings, they will incorporate students, local residents, local businesses, and government officials, with both educational and interactive events. The ultimate aim is to energize citizens to take part in determining the future of their communities in the areas of green jobs development, energy efficiency, and renewable energy.

You are invited to participate. Here’s a map of all the events. Click to read the article in full.