Wednesday, 11 March 2009
By Stewart Taggart
Australia needs electricity and Australia needs water. Concentrating solar power can help provide both.
Unlike solar photovoltaics, which creates electricity directly from sunlight, concentrating solar power first creates heat. This heat can then be used either to generate electricity or to desalinate water. Properly configured, concentrating solar power can switch back and forth from creating electricity to water.
Given these attributes, Concentrating solar powered desalination is a technology with hugely positive potential implications for global drinking water supplies. With futurists warning that water could emerge as a 21st Century flashpoint for strife, solar desalination is an avenue that should be explored aggressively.
Australia is ideally suited to take a global lead in concentrating solar-powered desalination. Australia has sunshine, seafront land, an advanced industrial economy and pressing water and energy needs. More favorable conditions for developing an infant industry like solar desalination are hard to imagine.
One solar powered desalination plant is already in development in Australia.
Known as 'Acquasol 1,' the plant will be located outside Port Augusta, South Australia. It will mesh together parabolic trough concentrating solar power, combined cycle gas turbines, multi-effects desalination and solar salt harvesting. In so doing, it will achieve the closest thing yet to a 'closed loop' in desalination.
The plant is being built by Acquasol Infrastructure Ltd., an Adelaide-based company of which I'm a director. To better understand 'Acquasol 1,' it pays to look at the underlying technologies.
Concentrating solar power
There are four main technologies in concentrating solar power: parabolic troughs, solar dishes,solar towers and compact linear fresnel reflectors. Of the four, parabolic troughs are the most commercially proven, with plants operating in California, Nevada and Spain.
Solar thermal storage and combined cycle natural gas
Solar thermal energy storage allows excess solar heat gathered during morning hours to be stored for use during afternoon electricity demand peak periods. Adding a combined cycle natural gas turbine provides provides redundancy and the ability to double up power production when needed, for instance on hot afternoons when grid demand spikes.
Desalination
There are two main forms of desalination: reverse osmosis and multi-effects distillation. Reverse osmosis uses electricity to push seawater through screens to separate water from salt. Multi-effects uses heat to boil seawater under pressure and then recondenses the vapor. Given that concentrating solar power can create temperatures of 400-1,000+ degrees Celsius, the thermal energy can be used as a direct input to desalination.
Solar salt harvesting
Solar salt harvesting involves putting hypersaline byproduct waste brine from the desalination process into land-based holding ponds and then allowing the sun to evaporate the water. This leaves only salt which can be sold as an additional revenue stream. Solar salt harvesting keeps brine out of sensitive coastal marine environments where its impact remains poorly understood.
By bundling existing technologies in a novel way, 'Acquasol 1' aims to create lower cost power for consumers, enhanced grid stability, more assured water supplies and safeguarded marine environments.
Solar-powered desalination is benefiting from favorable cost trends. Desalination technology costs are falling by about 5-7 per cent per year and concentrating solar power costs are falling at about the same rate. Meanwhile, depletion and pollution of natural water resources is causing the cost of traditional water extraction to rise.
Research conducted for the Western Australian government in 2004 estimated the three cost trends could mean that desalinated water becomes cheaper than groundwater in some parts of that state as early as 2020. The 'cross-over' point for other states may not be far behind.
Australia needs solutions to its energy and water problems. Australia is a 'smart country.' But what Australia needs is a sense of adventure, a sense of open frontiers and a sense of prudent risk-taking in pursuit of climate change and environmental problems in pressing need of solutions.
'Acquasol 1' is just one good idea. There are many others, including those in wave energy, tidal energy, geothermal and hydrogen creation -- all of which may yield 1+1=3 solutions down the track similar to the potential of solar powered desalination.
Stewart Taggart is a director of Acquasol Infrastructure Ltd., a developer of environmentally-friendly power and water solutions building a municipal-scale solar desalination plant in South Australia's Upper Spencer Gulf. Stewart is also founder/administrator of DESERTEC-Australia, DESERTEC-USA and DESERTEC-China. DESERTEC promotes the concept of "Clean Power From Deserts."
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Barack Obama Announces Another $1.2 billion for Energy R&D
March 24th, 2009 in Technology / Energy
Renewable energy
(PhysOrg.com) -- One of the more interesting areas of technological development in the coming years is likely to be energy development -- specifically green energy development. With new advances in physics allowing for such items as organic thin-film solar cells, it appears that energy technology could be one of the uses for cutting edge scientific advancements. U.S. President Barack Obama is hoping to spur further advancements in energy technology through increased funding for research and development.
Monday, President Obama announced that money would be provided for research at the national laboratories for the Department of Energy. Additionally, grants will be available for those wishing to do research in renewable energy. Areas such as wind, solar, biofuels and hydrogen will be encouraged. Even nuclear energy and questions about storing carbon dioxide underground will be eligible for grant funding under the new rules. The funding is in addition to tax credits and spending approved in the recently passed economic stimulus package.
Some of the technologies and companies that are like to benefit from energy R&D funding include:
* Serious Materials, which uses energy efficient materials to make drywall.an energy-draining process of mixing raw materials in a wet slurry and then using outside energy to dry it, the company has a recipe that makes use of chemicals -- and their reactions -- for the drying heat necessary.
* Solyndra, a solar power start-up. This company is receiving the first Department of Energy loan given out in years. Instead of using silicon, Solyndra manufactures soalr cells out of copper, indium, gallium and selenide (CIGS) and shapes them into cylinders that are placed on panels. The efficiency of Solyndra's solar panels is between 12 an 14 percent -- a number boosted by a special reflective coating on the roof below the panel.
* 1366 Technologies is on a quest to make solar energy cheaper than coal. The company is associated with Emanuel Sachs, who is on leave from MIT right now. The company claims it cracked the $1 barrier using cadmium telluride for its thin-film cells. But further advances in chemistry and physics are needed to reach that sort of cost-efficiency using silicon.
* Winsupply, a company that offers geothermal, wind and solar equipment, could use tax credits and other funding to make its products more widely available.
* Universities might also receive some funding. MIT is one of the hottest places right now for developing technology that can boost energy efficiency. Additionally, projects like those at different universities to use LED lights as wi-fi access points could also bring energy use dollars to higher education institutions languishing due to the economic crisis.
The biggest needs in green technology R&D involve using scientific breakthroughs to make renewable energy cost-efficient. Until science and technology can give us energy that costs less than fossil fuels, renewable/green energy will be limited. But this funding may put energy R&D on that track.
© 2009 PhysOrg.com
Renewable energy
(PhysOrg.com) -- One of the more interesting areas of technological development in the coming years is likely to be energy development -- specifically green energy development. With new advances in physics allowing for such items as organic thin-film solar cells, it appears that energy technology could be one of the uses for cutting edge scientific advancements. U.S. President Barack Obama is hoping to spur further advancements in energy technology through increased funding for research and development.
Monday, President Obama announced that money would be provided for research at the national laboratories for the Department of Energy. Additionally, grants will be available for those wishing to do research in renewable energy. Areas such as wind, solar, biofuels and hydrogen will be encouraged. Even nuclear energy and questions about storing carbon dioxide underground will be eligible for grant funding under the new rules. The funding is in addition to tax credits and spending approved in the recently passed economic stimulus package.
Some of the technologies and companies that are like to benefit from energy R&D funding include:
* Serious Materials, which uses energy efficient materials to make drywall.an energy-draining process of mixing raw materials in a wet slurry and then using outside energy to dry it, the company has a recipe that makes use of chemicals -- and their reactions -- for the drying heat necessary.
* Solyndra, a solar power start-up. This company is receiving the first Department of Energy loan given out in years. Instead of using silicon, Solyndra manufactures soalr cells out of copper, indium, gallium and selenide (CIGS) and shapes them into cylinders that are placed on panels. The efficiency of Solyndra's solar panels is between 12 an 14 percent -- a number boosted by a special reflective coating on the roof below the panel.
* 1366 Technologies is on a quest to make solar energy cheaper than coal. The company is associated with Emanuel Sachs, who is on leave from MIT right now. The company claims it cracked the $1 barrier using cadmium telluride for its thin-film cells. But further advances in chemistry and physics are needed to reach that sort of cost-efficiency using silicon.
* Winsupply, a company that offers geothermal, wind and solar equipment, could use tax credits and other funding to make its products more widely available.
* Universities might also receive some funding. MIT is one of the hottest places right now for developing technology that can boost energy efficiency. Additionally, projects like those at different universities to use LED lights as wi-fi access points could also bring energy use dollars to higher education institutions languishing due to the economic crisis.
The biggest needs in green technology R&D involve using scientific breakthroughs to make renewable energy cost-efficient. Until science and technology can give us energy that costs less than fossil fuels, renewable/green energy will be limited. But this funding may put energy R&D on that track.
© 2009 PhysOrg.com
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
EPA Raises Heat on Emissions Debate
Ian Talley – Wall Street Journal
March 24, 2009
WASHINGTON -- The Environmental Protection Agency has sent the White House a proposed finding that carbon dioxide is a danger to public health, a step that could trigger a clampdown on emissions of greenhouse gases across a wide swath of the economy.
If approved by the White House Office of Management and Budget, the endangerment finding could clear the way for the EPA to use the Clean Air Act to control emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases believed to contribute to climate change. In effect, the government would treat carbon dioxide as a pollutant. The EPA submitted the proposed rule to the White House on Friday, according to federal records published Monday.
Such a finding would raise pressure on Congress to enact a system that caps greenhouse gases -- which trap the sun's heat in the earth's atmosphere -- and creates a market for businesses to buy and sell the right to emit them, as President Barack Obama has proposed.
A White House representative said Monday that Mr. Obama's "strong preference is for Congress to pass energy security legislation that includes a cap on greenhouse-gas emissions. The Supreme Court ruled that the EPA must review whether greenhouse-gas emissions pose a threat to public health or welfare, and this is simply the next step in what will be a long process that engages stakeholders and the public."
The administration has proposed a cap-and-trade system that could raise $646 billion by 2019 through government auctions of emission allowances. Environmentalists want the administration to act on climate change before December, ahead of talks aimed at forging a successor to the Koyoto Protocol, the 1997 agreement that commits many industrialized countries to reducing their greenhouse-gas emissions.
EPA spokeswoman Cathy Milbourn declined to comment on the details of the endangerment proposal, saying it is "still [an] internal and deliberative" document. But in a move that indicated the potential scope of regulation, the agency earlier this month proposed a national system for reporting carbon-dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions by major emitters. The EPA has said about 13,000 facilities, accounting for about 85% to 90% of greenhouse gases emitted in the U.S., would be covered under the proposal.
Industry officials say it will still take months, possibly even years, for the administration to finalize rules for regulating greenhouse-gas emissions.
According to an internal document presented by the EPA to White House officials earlier this month, the EPA believes the health effects of elevated greenhouse-gas levels could cause "severe heat waves...with likely increases in mortality and morbidity, especially among the elderly, young and frail." The agency also said climate change caused by higher greenhouse-gas levels could result in more severe storms and more suffering related to "floods, storms, droughts and fires."
Business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers warn that if the EPA moves forward on regulation of CO2 under the Clean Air Act -- instead of a measured legislative approach -- it could hobble the already weak economy.
Coal-fired power plants, oil refineries and domestic industries, such as energy-intensive paper, cement, fertilizer, steel, and glass manufacturers, worry that increased cost burdens imposed by climate-change laws will put them at a severe competitive disadvantage to their international peers that aren't bound by similar environmental rules.
Environmentalists have called for the endangerment finding, and say action by Congress or the Obama administration to curb greenhouse gases is necessary to halt the ill effects of climate change.
March 24, 2009
WASHINGTON -- The Environmental Protection Agency has sent the White House a proposed finding that carbon dioxide is a danger to public health, a step that could trigger a clampdown on emissions of greenhouse gases across a wide swath of the economy.
If approved by the White House Office of Management and Budget, the endangerment finding could clear the way for the EPA to use the Clean Air Act to control emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases believed to contribute to climate change. In effect, the government would treat carbon dioxide as a pollutant. The EPA submitted the proposed rule to the White House on Friday, according to federal records published Monday.
Such a finding would raise pressure on Congress to enact a system that caps greenhouse gases -- which trap the sun's heat in the earth's atmosphere -- and creates a market for businesses to buy and sell the right to emit them, as President Barack Obama has proposed.
A White House representative said Monday that Mr. Obama's "strong preference is for Congress to pass energy security legislation that includes a cap on greenhouse-gas emissions. The Supreme Court ruled that the EPA must review whether greenhouse-gas emissions pose a threat to public health or welfare, and this is simply the next step in what will be a long process that engages stakeholders and the public."
The administration has proposed a cap-and-trade system that could raise $646 billion by 2019 through government auctions of emission allowances. Environmentalists want the administration to act on climate change before December, ahead of talks aimed at forging a successor to the Koyoto Protocol, the 1997 agreement that commits many industrialized countries to reducing their greenhouse-gas emissions.
EPA spokeswoman Cathy Milbourn declined to comment on the details of the endangerment proposal, saying it is "still [an] internal and deliberative" document. But in a move that indicated the potential scope of regulation, the agency earlier this month proposed a national system for reporting carbon-dioxide and other greenhouse-gas emissions by major emitters. The EPA has said about 13,000 facilities, accounting for about 85% to 90% of greenhouse gases emitted in the U.S., would be covered under the proposal.
Industry officials say it will still take months, possibly even years, for the administration to finalize rules for regulating greenhouse-gas emissions.
According to an internal document presented by the EPA to White House officials earlier this month, the EPA believes the health effects of elevated greenhouse-gas levels could cause "severe heat waves...with likely increases in mortality and morbidity, especially among the elderly, young and frail." The agency also said climate change caused by higher greenhouse-gas levels could result in more severe storms and more suffering related to "floods, storms, droughts and fires."
Business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers warn that if the EPA moves forward on regulation of CO2 under the Clean Air Act -- instead of a measured legislative approach -- it could hobble the already weak economy.
Coal-fired power plants, oil refineries and domestic industries, such as energy-intensive paper, cement, fertilizer, steel, and glass manufacturers, worry that increased cost burdens imposed by climate-change laws will put them at a severe competitive disadvantage to their international peers that aren't bound by similar environmental rules.
Environmentalists have called for the endangerment finding, and say action by Congress or the Obama administration to curb greenhouse gases is necessary to halt the ill effects of climate change.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Looking ahead with tech icon Bob Metcalfe
March 18th, 2009 By Mike Cassidy
One of the great things about living in Silicon Valley is that the history of technology is alive all around us.
I mean really alive, as in walking around, the way Bob Metcalfe was the other day at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. Metcalfe - Xerox PARC researcher, inventor, 3Com founder, former InfoWorld columnist and museum fellow - was to take the stage that evening for one of those "Bob Metcalfe in Conversation" deals. It wasn't exactly his thing.
See, when Metcalfe takes the stage, everyone wants to hear the old stories and about how he co-invented Ethernet, a stunning breakthrough in the '70s and a key way computers talk to each other today. But Metcalfe would prefer to talk about what lies ahead.
Metcalfe, who lives in Boston now, was telling me this at the end of an informal lunch at the computer museum with about 30 of the institution's backers. He'd just finished provoking, inspiring and entertaining the lunch crowd with a brief talk about the future of energy production. A talk that he warned would be in parts "controversial and annoying."
But that's the way Metcalfe is. Not so much controversial and annoying, but old-school Silicon Valley. He's not afraid to say what he thinks. But he doesn't say it just to upset people. He says what he says because he thinks ideas have value, that ideas are the way things get invented and problems get solved. If you disagree with him? Good. Let's hear it.
Metcalfe, 62, was happy to have a lunch crowd willing to hear his thoughts about the future, a group that understands he still has a pulse. He wants to be clear about one thing: He's no relic.
"I'm not finished," he told me as he pointed to a museum display case honoring the Ethernet. "I worked on that in 1973 and they're not going to get me into that box."
No they're not. See, Metcalfe is an out-of-the-box guy. Take his lunchtime talk on green energy. Run-of-the-mill topic. Not a run-of-the-mill approach.
First off, he doesn't like the label "green." The green movement, he says, conjures up "anti-capitalism, anti-technology, anti-Americanism." Why not blue tech? Blue for power coming maybe from the sky (sun) or the oceans. Global warming? It could be happening, but it's overblown by the media and others. The United States' skittishness about nuclear power? Silly.
And why are we so focused on energy conservation? Metcalfe isn't against it. He just downsized from a Mercedes to a Smart car. But forget conservation long term. The goal in the next six or seven decades should be to produce "squanderably abundant, cheap and clean energy."
How can we do that? Metcalfe takes the Internet's evolution as his guide. In the beginning no one working on the Internet could have foreseen where it would end up or all it would be used for.
"When we started building the Internet, and I remember this clearly," Metcalfe said, "we did not set out to build a network to support YouTube."
There were innovations no one saw coming that made the Internet possible and better - the semiconductor, the PC, packet-switching, Ethernet, TPC/IP protocol. There will be surprises in the energy field, too.
Metcalfe, now a venture capitalist, believes that squanderable energy supply will come from people who paid a lot of attention in science class: Maybe we'll create abundant biofuel out of algae, or use the sun to turn water into high-energy fuel. We might rely on nuclear schemes that don't require hulking power plants. No doubt we'll rely on many technologies.
You might find much to disagree with in Metcalfe's specifics. But it's hard to argue with his general optimism. After all, this is a man who made history but isn't finished living it.
___
Mike Cassidy is a technology columnist for the San Jose Mercury News.
(c) 2009, San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.).
One of the great things about living in Silicon Valley is that the history of technology is alive all around us.
I mean really alive, as in walking around, the way Bob Metcalfe was the other day at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. Metcalfe - Xerox PARC researcher, inventor, 3Com founder, former InfoWorld columnist and museum fellow - was to take the stage that evening for one of those "Bob Metcalfe in Conversation" deals. It wasn't exactly his thing.
See, when Metcalfe takes the stage, everyone wants to hear the old stories and about how he co-invented Ethernet, a stunning breakthrough in the '70s and a key way computers talk to each other today. But Metcalfe would prefer to talk about what lies ahead.
Metcalfe, who lives in Boston now, was telling me this at the end of an informal lunch at the computer museum with about 30 of the institution's backers. He'd just finished provoking, inspiring and entertaining the lunch crowd with a brief talk about the future of energy production. A talk that he warned would be in parts "controversial and annoying."
But that's the way Metcalfe is. Not so much controversial and annoying, but old-school Silicon Valley. He's not afraid to say what he thinks. But he doesn't say it just to upset people. He says what he says because he thinks ideas have value, that ideas are the way things get invented and problems get solved. If you disagree with him? Good. Let's hear it.
Metcalfe, 62, was happy to have a lunch crowd willing to hear his thoughts about the future, a group that understands he still has a pulse. He wants to be clear about one thing: He's no relic.
"I'm not finished," he told me as he pointed to a museum display case honoring the Ethernet. "I worked on that in 1973 and they're not going to get me into that box."
No they're not. See, Metcalfe is an out-of-the-box guy. Take his lunchtime talk on green energy. Run-of-the-mill topic. Not a run-of-the-mill approach.
First off, he doesn't like the label "green." The green movement, he says, conjures up "anti-capitalism, anti-technology, anti-Americanism." Why not blue tech? Blue for power coming maybe from the sky (sun) or the oceans. Global warming? It could be happening, but it's overblown by the media and others. The United States' skittishness about nuclear power? Silly.
And why are we so focused on energy conservation? Metcalfe isn't against it. He just downsized from a Mercedes to a Smart car. But forget conservation long term. The goal in the next six or seven decades should be to produce "squanderably abundant, cheap and clean energy."
How can we do that? Metcalfe takes the Internet's evolution as his guide. In the beginning no one working on the Internet could have foreseen where it would end up or all it would be used for.
"When we started building the Internet, and I remember this clearly," Metcalfe said, "we did not set out to build a network to support YouTube."
There were innovations no one saw coming that made the Internet possible and better - the semiconductor, the PC, packet-switching, Ethernet, TPC/IP protocol. There will be surprises in the energy field, too.
Metcalfe, now a venture capitalist, believes that squanderable energy supply will come from people who paid a lot of attention in science class: Maybe we'll create abundant biofuel out of algae, or use the sun to turn water into high-energy fuel. We might rely on nuclear schemes that don't require hulking power plants. No doubt we'll rely on many technologies.
You might find much to disagree with in Metcalfe's specifics. But it's hard to argue with his general optimism. After all, this is a man who made history but isn't finished living it.
___
Mike Cassidy is a technology columnist for the San Jose Mercury News.
(c) 2009, San Jose Mercury News (San Jose, Calif.).
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Brown Is the New Green
APA March 2009
More and more brownfields are being developed, not just cleaned up. And they're going green in a variety of ways.
By JoAnn Greco
Since Americans first became acquainted with the idea of revitalizing brownfields, the economic impact of saving these former wastelands has been remarkable. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, its brownfields program has leveraged more than $12 billion in cleanup and redevelopment funding from the private and public sectors and created about 50,000 new jobs.
The agency began distributing funds to local governments through a pilot program in 1994. That program is designed to help states with voluntary brownfield cleanups. As the years passed, the program expanded its definition of what merits cleanup, broadening it to encompass much more than the public health emergencies associated with Superfund sites — a program, officially known as the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, that got its start in 1980 in response to New York State's Love Canal disaster.
Then, in 2003, funding for the brownfields program was officially separated from the Superfund program. A lot has changed in the five years since then, especially at the local level. Brownfields are increasingly given priority in economic development offices and, consequently, are increasingly on the radar of planners and private developers.
"More states are channeling resources to properties with a clearly identified end use or economic development activity," reports the EPA in a recent update of state activity. State and local governments have compiled brownfield inventories and instituted other marketing programs to keep developers informed. Thinking has shifted from a "cleanup-only mentality to a cleanup and reuse strategy," the EPA report concludes. And, both facets — cleanup and reuse — are going green.
A long drive from here to there
Cathedral Kitchen, a soup kitchen in Camden, New Jersey, was built on a reclaimed site that once housed a series of light industriesProgress, yes, but there's still a long way to go. The rough-hewn outskirts of America's big cities and small river towns taunt the eye with hulking factories, their windows broken and brick crumbling; seldom-used rail yards, overgrown with weeds and litter; and acres of empty lots protected by barbed wire. Whether filled with muck and ooze underground, or decay and blight above, these brownfields — defined by the EPA as "property, the expansion, redevelopment, or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant" — too often remain unremediated and undeveloped.
According to David Lloyd, director of the EPA's office of Brownfields and Land Revitalization, the nation has between 450,000 and one million of these in-limbo properties. Still, Lloyd is encouraged.
"In the last two years alone, our state and tribal response programs — which include all 50 states and some 60 tribes — reported that they had cleaned 19,000 properties, for a total of 250,000 acres," he says, adding that this exceeds the pace of previous years. And, many in the field agree, the hurdles associated with the cleanup and redevelopment of brownfields are gradually disappearing.
"Slowly, the stigma associated with brownfields is being removed," says Evangeline Linkous, planning analyst at the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, which serves nine counties in Philadelphia and New Jersey. "Planners see them as a development opportunity that can be placed into context with other areas they're interested in, such as transit-oriented development, and developers are becoming more comfortable as they understand the wealth of new choices for remediation and for use."
Governments, too, are coming around. Pennsylvania just passed a bill, modeled on a New Jersey program, that could be signed into law soon. The Pennsylvania act allows up to 75 percent of remediation costs to be reimbursed by the state. And TIFs (tax increment financing districts) are being used in all kinds of brownfield projects. Linkous acknowledges that these financial measures "can be controversial, but we need to remember that brownfields present a strong economic catalyst and opportunity to change the market," she says.
The ravaged city of Camden, New Jersey (pop. 80,000), has come to this realization. It recently hired a locally based consulting firm, Brownfield Redevelopment Solutions, to conduct an inventory of priority brownfields and other underused industrial and manufacturing sites, as part of a plan to reestablish the city's manufacturing base.
"If every municipality did this, they'd get a better handle on whether these properties were sufficiently productive, whether they could be more consistent with surrounding land uses, and whether there was land with contamination issues that still need to be addressed," says Judy Shaw, AICP, of the National Center for Neighborhood and Brownfields Redevelopment at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. (The university also has a major presence in Camden.)
"It puts them in a good position to initiate a discussion with their community and with developers. For too long, it's been very easy to warehouse our brownfield sites," Shaw continues. "But now there's a much stronger understanding of their planning and use aspects and their value. There are developers who will come in and take risks and who know there's money to be made. It's a matter of the community taking a leadership role."
While Camden may be looking for manufacturing sites, ex-brownfields can, of course, be converted into housing, retail, entertainment, and office uses. Some of the largest mixed use developments under construction or recently completed are reclamations of rubber-making plants and railroad yards, of steel mills and textile mills.
These include: Atlanta's $2 billion, 138-acre Atlantic Station; Denver's $1 billion Cherokee Denver; Las Vegas's $6 billion, 61-acre Union Park; Bridgeport, Connecticut's $1.5 billion, 52-acre Steel Point; North Carolina's $1.5 billion, 350-acre multiuniversity research campus; and Elizabeth, New Jersey's $2 billion, 30-acre Celadon. Several redevelopment projects are slated for the sprawling, swampy New Jersey Meadowlands, some of which includes brownfields, and an $800 million casino intends to incorporate much of the massive ruins of Bethlehem Steel in Pennsylvania.
Hundreds of much smaller projects are under way, too, promising to turn ground that once was home to neighborhood gas stations, dry cleaning facilities, and auto repair shops into green community centers, high school athletic fields, and affordable housing developments.
Take the brand new home of Cathedral Kitchen, a Camden, New Jersey, soup kitchen.
Initially, the nonprofit intended to build on a lot it had bought closer to downtown. But because that area is slated for a major redevelopment project to be anchored by the new headquarters of Campbell Soup, the city suggested a swap, offering to pick up remediation costs at a brownfield site. Today, the soup kitchen's low-slung building occupies a reclaimed site that had housed a series of light industries.
"This worked out perfectly for us," says Karen Talarico, the group's executive director. "Not only did we get to design the space from scratch, but we hope our presence will bring other development to the neighborhood." Further, in what looks like a first, Cathedral Kitchen hopes to apply for LEED certification. The building features water-efficient landscaping and interior finishes manufactured from recycled materials. A large quantity of construction waste was salvaged during excavation of the site and demolition of its one burned-out building.
Going green
The building under constructionThis small, $4 million project is just the beginning of a trend that's turning brownfields into green sites. New site remediation strategies are using green technology to limit air pollution caused by particulate matter disturbed during demolition, soil erosion and nutrient depletion, and emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Remedies include leaving as much soil as possible in place during excavation (to cut down both on transportation and on particulate disturbance), taking measures to capture stormwater runoff, and using alternative fuels to run construction equipment.
After they're cleaned, some properties are even being transformed into solar and wind farms. Others redirect gases emitted by contaminated soil, generating fossil fuel.
One interesting example of the latter is a 121-acre landfill Superfund site in Antioch, Illinois (pop. 14,000), north of Chicago, which is transporting methane produced onsite to a nearby high school, which has not only gained cheap heat, but also a new athletic field on top of the landfill. "As part of remediation, the gas has to be captured no matter what," explains Jack Dowden, an area director at Waste Management, the private firm that operates the landfill. "Energy use is one of the few practical applications that really works."
Typically, such gas-to-energy byproducts are sold to manufacturing facilities and industrial boiler systems, Dowden says. He's confident the process has greater applications, especially for older landfills — Antioch's dates to the early 1960s — that were placed closer to residential areas.
Similar convergences between brown and green have been "brewing for a few years now," says Kristeen Gaffney of the EPA's Region 3 (Mid-Atlantic) brownfields office. "Our initial focus on green buildings for brownfield sites is just coming to fruition. These buildings are up and functioning, and there's a lot of success to report. Now we're ready to go beyond just the buildings."
Even though the EPA's main goal is still cleaning up contaminated sites, she adds, "we want to go full cycle — to take the site from being a terrific problem to being a cutting-edge example of green living."
LEED-ND fills a niche
To that end, the EPA helped develop a new LEED certification category, LEED for Neighborhood Development, which evaluates newly built neighborhoods using criteria related to location, neighborhood patterns and overall design, green construction and technology, and water and energy conservation. The program also awards separate points for brownfield reuse and, thus far, an estimated 25 percent of applicants have sought credits in that area.
One already designated project is Union Park in Las Vegas, which is being built on land that once served a rail terminal and switching yard. "Everyone thought we were crazy when we acquired this contaminated downtown land for $32 million in 2000," says Scott Adams, director of business development for the Las Vegas Redevelopment Agency. "But a recent appraisal put its value at between $150 million and $200 million."
The city is operating as a master developer for the entire 17-block parcel, whose individual projects include a performing arts complex and a Frank Gehry-designed brain research center. For Las Vegas, says Adams, "this site cleanup is a top priority; it's allowing us to reclaim the very heart of the city."
The EPA'S Gaffney agrees that many brownfields are desirable because of their central location. "Just think about it: A lot of brownfields are ideally located in the first place," she says. "They're near where people live and work, they're near transportation centers."
In addition to its involvement with LEED-ND, the EPA has worked on several other initiatives designed to encourage communities to green their brownfields. The "Lifecycle Building Challenge," an EPA partnership with, among others, the American Institute of Architects, promises national recognition to designs and projects that maximize material recovery in demolitions and excavations and lead to plans to reuse building components. Early last year, the EPA also released its first Green Remediation Primer, aimed at helping developers understand environmentally friendly cleanup techniques.
Most sweeping of all, the agency announced last summer that it would provide more than $500,000 in technical assistance grants to 16 brownfields sustainability pilots. The projects demonstrate reuse and recycling of construction and demolition materials, renewable energy development, and native landscaping.
"We're hoping that when these projects are complete — and most are already under way — we'll be able to use them as specific examples for other communities, so they don't have to reinvent the wheel," says Lloyd. He cites as an example a 300-acre landfill where the city of Houston hopes to build a solar plant.
One project that was a natural fit is The Waterfront, in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Dunn Twiggar, a developer there, is the only builder to be awarded one of the grants. "Looking at this site, it's not difficult to imagine the reuse and recycling of materials," says Andrew Twiggar, a partner in the firm.
Located along the Lehigh River, this 26-acre brownfield once housed iron and steel plants. What interested the EPA was the potential to restore and enhance a riparian property.
"I've been passing it for 15 years, thinking there has to be a better use," Twiggar says, "something that acknowledges the prime waterfront location." One day his firm approached the property owner with an idea for a mixed use community that would be lively at all times of the day. "We've looked at a lot of successful waterfront developments across the country, and we think we've pieced together the elements of success," he says.
Riverfront park space and walking trails play a large role in the redevelopment, which is not slated to begin for another 18 months or so, or until the leases of the current industrial tenants expire. Twiggar notes that the riverbank is graded on a steep, 30-foot slope, built on slag and other fill material. "It's not attractive, it's not natural — and it's just a waste, in more ways than one. The grant will help us see how we can remediate and remove that slag."
Plants do the work
Summerset at Frick Park was built on a brownfield site five miles from downtown PittsburghOne idea is to put nature to work. That's what Design Workshop, the Denver-based landscape design and planning firm, did during remediation of a Superfund site in Sugar Creek, Missouri (pop. 3,500). The site, a 500-acre oil refinery that neighbors could smell half a mile away on a windy day, presented a major challenge for the firm.
"You'd step in the soil, and the oil would just ooze to the surface and leave a film of scum on your boots," says principal Gyles Thornley. Capping the site by covering it with a thick layer of impenetrable clay would cost tens of millions of dollars and would only "paper over the problem, from our perspective," Thornley recalls thinking.
As he considered the vegetation that had grown back since 1982, when the site had been shut down, Thornley conceived of a novel approach: Why not let the trees and grasses do the heavy lifting through a process called phytoremediation? To minimize runoff, Design Workshop channeled the site's stormwater through swales — "more of a given today, but something new when we began this project several years back," says Thornley — and then lined them with willows and poplars, part of the natural habitat that has taken over the site.
"Plants absorb the bad stuff through their roots, transpirate it through their leaves, and it comes out clean, instead of removing and transporting the soil," Thornley says.
Making use of what's there also helped the site's owners, BP Amoco, save millions of dollars on pipes and treatment plants. Ongoing for 10 years now, and just ready to house new facilities for the town's police and fire departments, the project was a first for Thornley. But he's become a convert.
"The end result, as far as green buildings or green uses goes, is wonderful," he says. "But it's the cherry, a few sprinkles, really, on the great big wedding cake of the cleanup. We can't just continue moving contaminated material from place to place. It's going to come back and bite us. We really need to start approaching these sites differently."
JoAnn Greco is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia.
More and more brownfields are being developed, not just cleaned up. And they're going green in a variety of ways.
By JoAnn Greco
Since Americans first became acquainted with the idea of revitalizing brownfields, the economic impact of saving these former wastelands has been remarkable. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, its brownfields program has leveraged more than $12 billion in cleanup and redevelopment funding from the private and public sectors and created about 50,000 new jobs.
The agency began distributing funds to local governments through a pilot program in 1994. That program is designed to help states with voluntary brownfield cleanups. As the years passed, the program expanded its definition of what merits cleanup, broadening it to encompass much more than the public health emergencies associated with Superfund sites — a program, officially known as the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act, that got its start in 1980 in response to New York State's Love Canal disaster.
Then, in 2003, funding for the brownfields program was officially separated from the Superfund program. A lot has changed in the five years since then, especially at the local level. Brownfields are increasingly given priority in economic development offices and, consequently, are increasingly on the radar of planners and private developers.
"More states are channeling resources to properties with a clearly identified end use or economic development activity," reports the EPA in a recent update of state activity. State and local governments have compiled brownfield inventories and instituted other marketing programs to keep developers informed. Thinking has shifted from a "cleanup-only mentality to a cleanup and reuse strategy," the EPA report concludes. And, both facets — cleanup and reuse — are going green.
A long drive from here to there
Cathedral Kitchen, a soup kitchen in Camden, New Jersey, was built on a reclaimed site that once housed a series of light industriesProgress, yes, but there's still a long way to go. The rough-hewn outskirts of America's big cities and small river towns taunt the eye with hulking factories, their windows broken and brick crumbling; seldom-used rail yards, overgrown with weeds and litter; and acres of empty lots protected by barbed wire. Whether filled with muck and ooze underground, or decay and blight above, these brownfields — defined by the EPA as "property, the expansion, redevelopment, or reuse of which may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant" — too often remain unremediated and undeveloped.
According to David Lloyd, director of the EPA's office of Brownfields and Land Revitalization, the nation has between 450,000 and one million of these in-limbo properties. Still, Lloyd is encouraged.
"In the last two years alone, our state and tribal response programs — which include all 50 states and some 60 tribes — reported that they had cleaned 19,000 properties, for a total of 250,000 acres," he says, adding that this exceeds the pace of previous years. And, many in the field agree, the hurdles associated with the cleanup and redevelopment of brownfields are gradually disappearing.
"Slowly, the stigma associated with brownfields is being removed," says Evangeline Linkous, planning analyst at the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission, which serves nine counties in Philadelphia and New Jersey. "Planners see them as a development opportunity that can be placed into context with other areas they're interested in, such as transit-oriented development, and developers are becoming more comfortable as they understand the wealth of new choices for remediation and for use."
Governments, too, are coming around. Pennsylvania just passed a bill, modeled on a New Jersey program, that could be signed into law soon. The Pennsylvania act allows up to 75 percent of remediation costs to be reimbursed by the state. And TIFs (tax increment financing districts) are being used in all kinds of brownfield projects. Linkous acknowledges that these financial measures "can be controversial, but we need to remember that brownfields present a strong economic catalyst and opportunity to change the market," she says.
The ravaged city of Camden, New Jersey (pop. 80,000), has come to this realization. It recently hired a locally based consulting firm, Brownfield Redevelopment Solutions, to conduct an inventory of priority brownfields and other underused industrial and manufacturing sites, as part of a plan to reestablish the city's manufacturing base.
"If every municipality did this, they'd get a better handle on whether these properties were sufficiently productive, whether they could be more consistent with surrounding land uses, and whether there was land with contamination issues that still need to be addressed," says Judy Shaw, AICP, of the National Center for Neighborhood and Brownfields Redevelopment at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. (The university also has a major presence in Camden.)
"It puts them in a good position to initiate a discussion with their community and with developers. For too long, it's been very easy to warehouse our brownfield sites," Shaw continues. "But now there's a much stronger understanding of their planning and use aspects and their value. There are developers who will come in and take risks and who know there's money to be made. It's a matter of the community taking a leadership role."
While Camden may be looking for manufacturing sites, ex-brownfields can, of course, be converted into housing, retail, entertainment, and office uses. Some of the largest mixed use developments under construction or recently completed are reclamations of rubber-making plants and railroad yards, of steel mills and textile mills.
These include: Atlanta's $2 billion, 138-acre Atlantic Station; Denver's $1 billion Cherokee Denver; Las Vegas's $6 billion, 61-acre Union Park; Bridgeport, Connecticut's $1.5 billion, 52-acre Steel Point; North Carolina's $1.5 billion, 350-acre multiuniversity research campus; and Elizabeth, New Jersey's $2 billion, 30-acre Celadon. Several redevelopment projects are slated for the sprawling, swampy New Jersey Meadowlands, some of which includes brownfields, and an $800 million casino intends to incorporate much of the massive ruins of Bethlehem Steel in Pennsylvania.
Hundreds of much smaller projects are under way, too, promising to turn ground that once was home to neighborhood gas stations, dry cleaning facilities, and auto repair shops into green community centers, high school athletic fields, and affordable housing developments.
Take the brand new home of Cathedral Kitchen, a Camden, New Jersey, soup kitchen.
Initially, the nonprofit intended to build on a lot it had bought closer to downtown. But because that area is slated for a major redevelopment project to be anchored by the new headquarters of Campbell Soup, the city suggested a swap, offering to pick up remediation costs at a brownfield site. Today, the soup kitchen's low-slung building occupies a reclaimed site that had housed a series of light industries.
"This worked out perfectly for us," says Karen Talarico, the group's executive director. "Not only did we get to design the space from scratch, but we hope our presence will bring other development to the neighborhood." Further, in what looks like a first, Cathedral Kitchen hopes to apply for LEED certification. The building features water-efficient landscaping and interior finishes manufactured from recycled materials. A large quantity of construction waste was salvaged during excavation of the site and demolition of its one burned-out building.
Going green
The building under constructionThis small, $4 million project is just the beginning of a trend that's turning brownfields into green sites. New site remediation strategies are using green technology to limit air pollution caused by particulate matter disturbed during demolition, soil erosion and nutrient depletion, and emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Remedies include leaving as much soil as possible in place during excavation (to cut down both on transportation and on particulate disturbance), taking measures to capture stormwater runoff, and using alternative fuels to run construction equipment.
After they're cleaned, some properties are even being transformed into solar and wind farms. Others redirect gases emitted by contaminated soil, generating fossil fuel.
One interesting example of the latter is a 121-acre landfill Superfund site in Antioch, Illinois (pop. 14,000), north of Chicago, which is transporting methane produced onsite to a nearby high school, which has not only gained cheap heat, but also a new athletic field on top of the landfill. "As part of remediation, the gas has to be captured no matter what," explains Jack Dowden, an area director at Waste Management, the private firm that operates the landfill. "Energy use is one of the few practical applications that really works."
Typically, such gas-to-energy byproducts are sold to manufacturing facilities and industrial boiler systems, Dowden says. He's confident the process has greater applications, especially for older landfills — Antioch's dates to the early 1960s — that were placed closer to residential areas.
Similar convergences between brown and green have been "brewing for a few years now," says Kristeen Gaffney of the EPA's Region 3 (Mid-Atlantic) brownfields office. "Our initial focus on green buildings for brownfield sites is just coming to fruition. These buildings are up and functioning, and there's a lot of success to report. Now we're ready to go beyond just the buildings."
Even though the EPA's main goal is still cleaning up contaminated sites, she adds, "we want to go full cycle — to take the site from being a terrific problem to being a cutting-edge example of green living."
LEED-ND fills a niche
To that end, the EPA helped develop a new LEED certification category, LEED for Neighborhood Development, which evaluates newly built neighborhoods using criteria related to location, neighborhood patterns and overall design, green construction and technology, and water and energy conservation. The program also awards separate points for brownfield reuse and, thus far, an estimated 25 percent of applicants have sought credits in that area.
One already designated project is Union Park in Las Vegas, which is being built on land that once served a rail terminal and switching yard. "Everyone thought we were crazy when we acquired this contaminated downtown land for $32 million in 2000," says Scott Adams, director of business development for the Las Vegas Redevelopment Agency. "But a recent appraisal put its value at between $150 million and $200 million."
The city is operating as a master developer for the entire 17-block parcel, whose individual projects include a performing arts complex and a Frank Gehry-designed brain research center. For Las Vegas, says Adams, "this site cleanup is a top priority; it's allowing us to reclaim the very heart of the city."
The EPA'S Gaffney agrees that many brownfields are desirable because of their central location. "Just think about it: A lot of brownfields are ideally located in the first place," she says. "They're near where people live and work, they're near transportation centers."
In addition to its involvement with LEED-ND, the EPA has worked on several other initiatives designed to encourage communities to green their brownfields. The "Lifecycle Building Challenge," an EPA partnership with, among others, the American Institute of Architects, promises national recognition to designs and projects that maximize material recovery in demolitions and excavations and lead to plans to reuse building components. Early last year, the EPA also released its first Green Remediation Primer, aimed at helping developers understand environmentally friendly cleanup techniques.
Most sweeping of all, the agency announced last summer that it would provide more than $500,000 in technical assistance grants to 16 brownfields sustainability pilots. The projects demonstrate reuse and recycling of construction and demolition materials, renewable energy development, and native landscaping.
"We're hoping that when these projects are complete — and most are already under way — we'll be able to use them as specific examples for other communities, so they don't have to reinvent the wheel," says Lloyd. He cites as an example a 300-acre landfill where the city of Houston hopes to build a solar plant.
One project that was a natural fit is The Waterfront, in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Dunn Twiggar, a developer there, is the only builder to be awarded one of the grants. "Looking at this site, it's not difficult to imagine the reuse and recycling of materials," says Andrew Twiggar, a partner in the firm.
Located along the Lehigh River, this 26-acre brownfield once housed iron and steel plants. What interested the EPA was the potential to restore and enhance a riparian property.
"I've been passing it for 15 years, thinking there has to be a better use," Twiggar says, "something that acknowledges the prime waterfront location." One day his firm approached the property owner with an idea for a mixed use community that would be lively at all times of the day. "We've looked at a lot of successful waterfront developments across the country, and we think we've pieced together the elements of success," he says.
Riverfront park space and walking trails play a large role in the redevelopment, which is not slated to begin for another 18 months or so, or until the leases of the current industrial tenants expire. Twiggar notes that the riverbank is graded on a steep, 30-foot slope, built on slag and other fill material. "It's not attractive, it's not natural — and it's just a waste, in more ways than one. The grant will help us see how we can remediate and remove that slag."
Plants do the work
Summerset at Frick Park was built on a brownfield site five miles from downtown PittsburghOne idea is to put nature to work. That's what Design Workshop, the Denver-based landscape design and planning firm, did during remediation of a Superfund site in Sugar Creek, Missouri (pop. 3,500). The site, a 500-acre oil refinery that neighbors could smell half a mile away on a windy day, presented a major challenge for the firm.
"You'd step in the soil, and the oil would just ooze to the surface and leave a film of scum on your boots," says principal Gyles Thornley. Capping the site by covering it with a thick layer of impenetrable clay would cost tens of millions of dollars and would only "paper over the problem, from our perspective," Thornley recalls thinking.
As he considered the vegetation that had grown back since 1982, when the site had been shut down, Thornley conceived of a novel approach: Why not let the trees and grasses do the heavy lifting through a process called phytoremediation? To minimize runoff, Design Workshop channeled the site's stormwater through swales — "more of a given today, but something new when we began this project several years back," says Thornley — and then lined them with willows and poplars, part of the natural habitat that has taken over the site.
"Plants absorb the bad stuff through their roots, transpirate it through their leaves, and it comes out clean, instead of removing and transporting the soil," Thornley says.
Making use of what's there also helped the site's owners, BP Amoco, save millions of dollars on pipes and treatment plants. Ongoing for 10 years now, and just ready to house new facilities for the town's police and fire departments, the project was a first for Thornley. But he's become a convert.
"The end result, as far as green buildings or green uses goes, is wonderful," he says. "But it's the cherry, a few sprinkles, really, on the great big wedding cake of the cleanup. We can't just continue moving contaminated material from place to place. It's going to come back and bite us. We really need to start approaching these sites differently."
JoAnn Greco is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia.
Who owns Colorado's rainwater?
Environmentalists and others like to gather it in containers for use
in drier times. But state law says it belongs to those who bought the
rights to waterways.
By Nicholas Riccardi March 18, 2009
Reporting from Denver --
Every time it rains here, Kris Holstrom
knowingly breaks the law.
Holstrom's violation is the fancifully painted 55-gallon buckets
underneath the gutters of her farmhouse on a mesa 15 miles from the
resort town of Telluride. The barrels catch rain and snowmelt, which
Holstrom uses to irrigate the small vegetable garden she and her
husband maintain.
But according to the state of Colorado, the rain that falls on
Holstrom's property is not hers to keep. It should be allowed to fall
to the ground and flow unimpeded into surrounding creeks and streams,
the law states, to become the property of farmers, ranchers,
developers and water agencies that have bought the rights to those
waterways.
What Holstrom does is called rainwater harvesting. It's a practice
that dates back to the dawn of civilization, and is increasingly in
vogue among environmentalists and others who pursue sustainable
lifestyles. They collect varying amounts of water, depending on the
rainfall and the vessels they collect it in. The only risk involved is
losing it to evaporation. Or running afoul of Western states' water
laws.
Those laws, some of them more than a century old, have governed the
development of the region since pioneer days.
"If you try to collect rainwater, well, that water really belongs to
someone else," said Doug Kemper, executive director of the Colorado
Water Congress. "We get into a very detailed accounting on every
little drop."
Frank Jaeger of the Parker Water and Sanitation District, on the arid
foothills south of Denver, sees water harvesting as an insidious
attempt to take water from entities that have paid dearly for the
resource.
"Every drop of water that comes down keeps the ground wet and helps
the flow of the river," Jaeger said. He scoffs at arguments that
harvesters like Holstrom only take a few drops from rivers.
"Everything always starts with one little bite at a time."
Increasingly, however, states are trying to make the practice more
welcome. Bills in Colorado and Utah, two states that have limited
harvesting over the years, would adjust their laws to allow it in
certain scenarios, over the protest of people like Jaeger.
Organic farmers and urban dreamers aren't the only people pushing to
legalize water harvesting. Developer Harold Smethills wants to build
more than 10,000 homes southwest of Denver that would be supplied by
giant cisterns that capture the rain that falls on the 3,200-acre
subdivision. He supports the change in Colorado law.
"We believe there is something to rainwater harvesting," Smethills
said. "We believe it makes economic sense."
Collected rainwater is generally considered "gray water," or water
that is not reliably pure enough to drink but can be used to water
yards, flush toilets and power heaters. In some states, developers try
to include a network of cisterns and catchment pools in every
subdivision, but in others, those who catch the rain tend to do so
covertly.
In Colorado, rights to bodies of water are held by entities who get
preference based on the dates of their claims. Like many other Western
states, Colorado has more claims than available water, and even those
who hold rights dating back to the late 19th century sometimes find
they do not get all of the water they should.
"If I decide to [take rainwater] in 2009, somewhere, maybe 100 miles
downstream, there's a water right that outdates me by 100 years"
that's losing water, said Kevin Rein, assistant state engineer.
State Sen. Chris Romer found out about this facet of state water
policy when he built his ecological dream house in Denver, entirely
powered by solar energy. He wanted to install a system to catch
rainwater, but the state said it couldn't be permitted.
"It was stunning to me that this common-sense thing couldn't be done,"
said Romer, a Democrat. He sponsored a bill last year to allow water
harvesting, but it did not pass.
"Welcome to water politics in Colorado," Romer said. "You don't touch
my gun, you don't touch my whiskey, and you don't touch my water."
Romer and Republican state Rep. Marsha Looper introduced bills this
year to allow harvesting in certain circumstances. Armed with a study
that shows that 97% of rainwater that falls on the soil never makes it
to streams, they propose to allow harvesting in 11 pilot projects in
urban areas, and for rural users like Kris Holstrom whose wells are
depleted by drought.
In contrast to the high-stakes maneuvering in the capital, Holstrom
looks upon the state's regulation of rainwater with exasperated
amusement.
Holstrom, director of sustainability for Telluride, and her husband,
John, have lived on their farm since 1988. During the severe drought
at the start of this decade, their well began drying up. Placing rain
barrels under the gutters was the natural thing to do, said Holstrom,
51.
"Rain out here comes occasionally, and can come really hard," she
said. "To be able to store it for when you need it is really great."
Holstrom had a vague awareness of state regulations. She decided to
test it last summer when she was teaching a class on water harvesting.
She called the state water department, which told her it was
technically illegal, though it was unlikely that she would be cited.
Holstrom is known in southwestern Colorado for a lifestyle and causes
that many deem quixotic. The land she and her husband own holds a yurt
and tepees to house "interns" who help on their organic farm in the
summers. It boasts a greenhouse, which even on a recent snowy day held
an oasis of rosemary, artichokes, salad greens and a fig tree.
She plucked a bit of greens from one plant and munched on it as
goldfish swam in a small, algae-filled pond that helps heat the
enclosure. "This has been my passion for a long time -- trying to live
the best way I know how," she said.
nicholas.riccardi@latimes.com
in drier times. But state law says it belongs to those who bought the
rights to waterways.
By Nicholas Riccardi March 18, 2009
Reporting from Denver --
Every time it rains here, Kris Holstrom
knowingly breaks the law.
Holstrom's violation is the fancifully painted 55-gallon buckets
underneath the gutters of her farmhouse on a mesa 15 miles from the
resort town of Telluride. The barrels catch rain and snowmelt, which
Holstrom uses to irrigate the small vegetable garden she and her
husband maintain.
But according to the state of Colorado, the rain that falls on
Holstrom's property is not hers to keep. It should be allowed to fall
to the ground and flow unimpeded into surrounding creeks and streams,
the law states, to become the property of farmers, ranchers,
developers and water agencies that have bought the rights to those
waterways.
What Holstrom does is called rainwater harvesting. It's a practice
that dates back to the dawn of civilization, and is increasingly in
vogue among environmentalists and others who pursue sustainable
lifestyles. They collect varying amounts of water, depending on the
rainfall and the vessels they collect it in. The only risk involved is
losing it to evaporation. Or running afoul of Western states' water
laws.
Those laws, some of them more than a century old, have governed the
development of the region since pioneer days.
"If you try to collect rainwater, well, that water really belongs to
someone else," said Doug Kemper, executive director of the Colorado
Water Congress. "We get into a very detailed accounting on every
little drop."
Frank Jaeger of the Parker Water and Sanitation District, on the arid
foothills south of Denver, sees water harvesting as an insidious
attempt to take water from entities that have paid dearly for the
resource.
"Every drop of water that comes down keeps the ground wet and helps
the flow of the river," Jaeger said. He scoffs at arguments that
harvesters like Holstrom only take a few drops from rivers.
"Everything always starts with one little bite at a time."
Increasingly, however, states are trying to make the practice more
welcome. Bills in Colorado and Utah, two states that have limited
harvesting over the years, would adjust their laws to allow it in
certain scenarios, over the protest of people like Jaeger.
Organic farmers and urban dreamers aren't the only people pushing to
legalize water harvesting. Developer Harold Smethills wants to build
more than 10,000 homes southwest of Denver that would be supplied by
giant cisterns that capture the rain that falls on the 3,200-acre
subdivision. He supports the change in Colorado law.
"We believe there is something to rainwater harvesting," Smethills
said. "We believe it makes economic sense."
Collected rainwater is generally considered "gray water," or water
that is not reliably pure enough to drink but can be used to water
yards, flush toilets and power heaters. In some states, developers try
to include a network of cisterns and catchment pools in every
subdivision, but in others, those who catch the rain tend to do so
covertly.
In Colorado, rights to bodies of water are held by entities who get
preference based on the dates of their claims. Like many other Western
states, Colorado has more claims than available water, and even those
who hold rights dating back to the late 19th century sometimes find
they do not get all of the water they should.
"If I decide to [take rainwater] in 2009, somewhere, maybe 100 miles
downstream, there's a water right that outdates me by 100 years"
that's losing water, said Kevin Rein, assistant state engineer.
State Sen. Chris Romer found out about this facet of state water
policy when he built his ecological dream house in Denver, entirely
powered by solar energy. He wanted to install a system to catch
rainwater, but the state said it couldn't be permitted.
"It was stunning to me that this common-sense thing couldn't be done,"
said Romer, a Democrat. He sponsored a bill last year to allow water
harvesting, but it did not pass.
"Welcome to water politics in Colorado," Romer said. "You don't touch
my gun, you don't touch my whiskey, and you don't touch my water."
Romer and Republican state Rep. Marsha Looper introduced bills this
year to allow harvesting in certain circumstances. Armed with a study
that shows that 97% of rainwater that falls on the soil never makes it
to streams, they propose to allow harvesting in 11 pilot projects in
urban areas, and for rural users like Kris Holstrom whose wells are
depleted by drought.
In contrast to the high-stakes maneuvering in the capital, Holstrom
looks upon the state's regulation of rainwater with exasperated
amusement.
Holstrom, director of sustainability for Telluride, and her husband,
John, have lived on their farm since 1988. During the severe drought
at the start of this decade, their well began drying up. Placing rain
barrels under the gutters was the natural thing to do, said Holstrom,
51.
"Rain out here comes occasionally, and can come really hard," she
said. "To be able to store it for when you need it is really great."
Holstrom had a vague awareness of state regulations. She decided to
test it last summer when she was teaching a class on water harvesting.
She called the state water department, which told her it was
technically illegal, though it was unlikely that she would be cited.
Holstrom is known in southwestern Colorado for a lifestyle and causes
that many deem quixotic. The land she and her husband own holds a yurt
and tepees to house "interns" who help on their organic farm in the
summers. It boasts a greenhouse, which even on a recent snowy day held
an oasis of rosemary, artichokes, salad greens and a fig tree.
She plucked a bit of greens from one plant and munched on it as
goldfish swam in a small, algae-filled pond that helps heat the
enclosure. "This has been my passion for a long time -- trying to live
the best way I know how," she said.
nicholas.riccardi@latimes.com
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Scientists are grim, economists more optimistic about climate change's effects
Jean-Marie MacAbrey – ClimateWire
March 13, 2009
COPENHAGEN -- Scientists are gloomy; economists are more upbeat. Such was the bottom line of an epic, three-day international congress of climate change experts that ended here yesterday.
At the congress, it seemed that all the scientists had to share with their peers was bad news, but a number of economists saw the climate crisis rather as an historic opportunity to reorganize the world economy and develop new, clean and job-creating activities.
At the opening of yesterday's session, Lord Nicholas Stern, former chief economist for the World Bank, added his own dose of gloom by saying that his now-famous report on the risks of global warming, written for the British government in 2006, had underestimated them. "The reason is that emissions are growing faster than we thought, the absorption capacity of the planet is less than we thought, the probability of high temperatures is likely higher than we thought, and some of the effects are coming faster than we thought," he explained.
Stern called for $400 billion in extra public funding -- 20 percent of a global package of $2 trillion -- to be made available for the 'green component' of the world stimulus over the next year or two.
Several other economists also sent messages of growth promotion via support for green investments. These included Terry Barker, director of the Centre for Climate Change Mitigation Research of the University of Cambridge. "The current global financial crisis must be seen as a timely stimulus to tackling climate change, not a hindrance," Barker said.
Obama's 'green New Deal' praised
"If all G-20 countries adopted a 'green New Deal' similar to the one proposed by President Obama, the world economy would be greatly strengthened, especially the sectors producing low-carbon technologies," he went on. "But global coordination is critical. Any single country's New Deal may fail if its extra demand for goods and services is met with imports. If we act together, everyone's exports will increase and we can recover employment much more quickly."
Barker went a step further, saying, "Where many current calculations get it wrong is in the assumption that more stringent [climate mitigation] measures will necessarily raise the overall cost, especially when there is substantial unemployment and underuse of capacity as there is today."
He added: "There is some evidence that harder greenhouse gas targets and regulation may actually increase benefits through improved innovation and distribution of low-carbon technologies and increased revenues from taxes or permits. These revenues can be spent to further support new technology and to lower other indirect taxes, ensuring the fiscal neutrality of these measures."
Stern and most of the economists at the conference strongly supported the cap-and-trade approach to reducing emissions. Stern said it "has many advantages -- including a much greater quantity and certainty than taxation would give you, and allows funds to cross borders in a way which couldn't happen through [carbon] taxes."
In an interview, Stern said he was impressed by the Obama administration's climate policy, though he noted that Europeans are questioning the credibility of Obama's proposed emissions reductions, which they believe push the more difficult cuts too far into the future.
"Barack Obama has said that, on the way to an 80 percent cut [in U.S greenhouse gas emissions] by 2050, he would aim at returning to 1990 levels by 2020. This would mean that the U.S. would accomplish its entire 80 percent in three decades instead of six. Is this credible? So that's the challenge. Europe has to recognize where the United States is and show some understanding, but the U.S. has to go a bit further."
'Major migrations' will be part of social disruptions
As the congress wound down, members produced a list of six key conclusions that will be included in a report to U.N. decision-makers prior to December's climate change protocol negotiations in Copenhagen.
On climate trends, the conference noted: "Given high rates of observed emissions, the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are becoming a reality. There is a significant risk that many of the trends will accelerate, leading to an increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climatic shifts."
On social disruption, it said: "Societies are highly vulnerable to even modest levels of climate change, with poor nations and communities particularly at risk. Temperature rises above 2° C will be very difficult for contemporary societies to cope with, and will increase the level of climate disruption for the remainder of the century."
Major migrations will be part of these potential social disruptions. On this topic, one of the conference's key speakers, John Schellnhuber of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact and Research, proposed that rich countries accommodate future climate refugees on their soil according to their historical share of greenhouse gas emissions.
"So, if the USA produces 25 percent of emissions, it would have to accommodate 25 percent of the world's climate refugees," he said, to hearty applause from some conference participants.
March 13, 2009
COPENHAGEN -- Scientists are gloomy; economists are more upbeat. Such was the bottom line of an epic, three-day international congress of climate change experts that ended here yesterday.
At the congress, it seemed that all the scientists had to share with their peers was bad news, but a number of economists saw the climate crisis rather as an historic opportunity to reorganize the world economy and develop new, clean and job-creating activities.
At the opening of yesterday's session, Lord Nicholas Stern, former chief economist for the World Bank, added his own dose of gloom by saying that his now-famous report on the risks of global warming, written for the British government in 2006, had underestimated them. "The reason is that emissions are growing faster than we thought, the absorption capacity of the planet is less than we thought, the probability of high temperatures is likely higher than we thought, and some of the effects are coming faster than we thought," he explained.
Stern called for $400 billion in extra public funding -- 20 percent of a global package of $2 trillion -- to be made available for the 'green component' of the world stimulus over the next year or two.
Several other economists also sent messages of growth promotion via support for green investments. These included Terry Barker, director of the Centre for Climate Change Mitigation Research of the University of Cambridge. "The current global financial crisis must be seen as a timely stimulus to tackling climate change, not a hindrance," Barker said.
Obama's 'green New Deal' praised
"If all G-20 countries adopted a 'green New Deal' similar to the one proposed by President Obama, the world economy would be greatly strengthened, especially the sectors producing low-carbon technologies," he went on. "But global coordination is critical. Any single country's New Deal may fail if its extra demand for goods and services is met with imports. If we act together, everyone's exports will increase and we can recover employment much more quickly."
Barker went a step further, saying, "Where many current calculations get it wrong is in the assumption that more stringent [climate mitigation] measures will necessarily raise the overall cost, especially when there is substantial unemployment and underuse of capacity as there is today."
He added: "There is some evidence that harder greenhouse gas targets and regulation may actually increase benefits through improved innovation and distribution of low-carbon technologies and increased revenues from taxes or permits. These revenues can be spent to further support new technology and to lower other indirect taxes, ensuring the fiscal neutrality of these measures."
Stern and most of the economists at the conference strongly supported the cap-and-trade approach to reducing emissions. Stern said it "has many advantages -- including a much greater quantity and certainty than taxation would give you, and allows funds to cross borders in a way which couldn't happen through [carbon] taxes."
In an interview, Stern said he was impressed by the Obama administration's climate policy, though he noted that Europeans are questioning the credibility of Obama's proposed emissions reductions, which they believe push the more difficult cuts too far into the future.
"Barack Obama has said that, on the way to an 80 percent cut [in U.S greenhouse gas emissions] by 2050, he would aim at returning to 1990 levels by 2020. This would mean that the U.S. would accomplish its entire 80 percent in three decades instead of six. Is this credible? So that's the challenge. Europe has to recognize where the United States is and show some understanding, but the U.S. has to go a bit further."
'Major migrations' will be part of social disruptions
As the congress wound down, members produced a list of six key conclusions that will be included in a report to U.N. decision-makers prior to December's climate change protocol negotiations in Copenhagen.
On climate trends, the conference noted: "Given high rates of observed emissions, the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are becoming a reality. There is a significant risk that many of the trends will accelerate, leading to an increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climatic shifts."
On social disruption, it said: "Societies are highly vulnerable to even modest levels of climate change, with poor nations and communities particularly at risk. Temperature rises above 2° C will be very difficult for contemporary societies to cope with, and will increase the level of climate disruption for the remainder of the century."
Major migrations will be part of these potential social disruptions. On this topic, one of the conference's key speakers, John Schellnhuber of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact and Research, proposed that rich countries accommodate future climate refugees on their soil according to their historical share of greenhouse gas emissions.
"So, if the USA produces 25 percent of emissions, it would have to accommodate 25 percent of the world's climate refugees," he said, to hearty applause from some conference participants.
Monday, March 16, 2009
Ocean expected to rise 5 feet along coastlines
I know you’ve already read or heard this ad nauseum. However, a friend and colleague, Mike Mehaffy is attending the IPPC in Copenhagen reports that “...the models are getting quite good, with much of the former uncertainty now eliminated. The latest models have a number of redundant ways of testing the predictions – looking back in the fossil record (where there is a very tight correlation between average global temperature and sea level, for example), and making back-dated model predictions from a point in the past, say, 1980 or 1900, and then running the models and seeing how they actually track with measured reality. So it’s getting very, very close now.
Jane Kay, SF Chronicle Environment Writer
Thursday, March 12, 2009
(03-11) 18:04 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- Driven by global warming, the ocean is expected to rise nearly 5 feet along California's coastline by the end of the century, hitting San Francisco Bay the hardest of all, according to a state study released Wednesday.
Nearly half a million people and $100 billion in property, two-thirds of it concentrated around the bay, are at risk of major flooding, researchers found in the most comprehensive study to date of how climate change will alter the state's coastal areas.
Rising seas, storms and extreme high tides are expected to send saltwater into low-lying areas, flooding freeways, the Oakland and San Francisco airports, hospitals, power plants, schools and sewage plants. Thousands of structures at risk are the homes of low- and middle-income people, the study said.
Vast wetlands that nourish fish and birds and act as a buffer against flooding will be inundated and could turn into dead pools. Constructing seawalls and levees, if needed, could cost $14 billion plus an annual maintenance cost of $1.4 billion, the study said.
The study shows a greater sea-level rise for California than previous studies because it takes into account recent changes in glaciers and ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland.
Worldwide forecasts
Scientists worldwide forecast that sea levels will rise for centuries even if greenhouse gas emissions are halted immediately, and California cities and counties must learn to deal with that inevitability just as they plan for earthquakes, the study advises.
Regional planners are recommending that some new construction be halted, other properties protected and still others abandoned.
The study was conducted by the internationally known Pacific Institute, a nonprofit research group in Oakland, and was paid for by the California Energy Commission, Caltrans and the state Ocean Protection Council.
With California leading the nation in regulating greenhouse gas emissions, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2005 ordered state agencies to form a Climate Action Team to research and plan for global warming. Three dozen studies are expected this year, on air quality and health, frequency of wildfires, the use of energy and fresh water supplies.
"No other state has done this kind of assessment of coastal risk," said Peter Gleick, president and founder of the Pacific Institute and a leading water expert. The new assessment, he said, puts the state "far ahead in our ability to both identify possible impacts and implement effective policies to prevent them."
Although large sections of the Pacific Coast are not vulnerable to flooding, sea-level rise is expected to accelerate erosion, resulting in a loss of 41 square miles of the coast and affecting 14,000 people, the study said.
Flooding projections
Researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey prepared maps of San Francisco Bay showing projected inundation, though they don't include the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Calculations for inundation don't take into account existing seawalls and levees along the Peninsula and at Oakland International Airport.
Large portions of the Bay Area are at risk because European settlers in the 1800s filled shoreline marshes to build towns and cities.
Will Travis, executive director of the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, said the Pacific Institute study struck him because two-thirds of the projected property damage was in low-lying areas around San Francisco Bay. Cities and counties haven't planned for the rise, he said, and his agency is trying to build awareness.
"We as a region have to get out in front of the state and nation in dealing with the problem. The study shows that low- and moderate-income people will be dealing with it. We have the equivalent of New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward."
Lessons from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina are not to build below sea level, he said. But parts of northern Silicon Valley - where pumping groundwater in past decades has caused land to subside - are already below sea level, he said, leaving Google, Sun, Intel and other large company complexes vulnerable to inundation.
Earthquake lessons
Just as Californians learned about seismic safety in response to earthquakes, "we have to learn to build in areas that will someday be below sea level," he said. It's particularly difficult, he said, because there is "no certainty which areas would be below sea level." His agency is co-sponsoring an international design competition to come up with designs for sea-level rise.
As the atmosphere and oceans warm, ice sheets and glaciers melt, swelling the volume of oceans. Oceans already have started to rise. Over the past century, San Francisco waterfront tidal gauges show a rise of 8 inches.
The new projection of a 4.6-foot, or 55-inch, rise is higher than the 23-inch estimate of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the body that compiles findings of international scientists.
In its last calculations, the panel didn't include melt from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which have accelerated over the past decade. Since then, scientists have begun to forecast higher rises.
For the regional study, Pacific Institute scientists used the 4.6-foot sea-level rise based on forecasts by a Scripps Institution of Oceanography team led by oceanographer Daniel Cayan, which draws on sophisticated models, satellite sensors and a broad range of data.
Concentrations of greenhouse gases have been increasing in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution, and the bulk of climate scientists agree that the gases are trapping the sun's radiation emanating from Earth, warming the planet.
Infrastructure in danger along the bay, coast
Some of the infrastructure at risk along the 1,000-mile- long shore of San Francisco Bay and the 1,200-mile-long California coast, according to a new study on the rising sea level:
3,500 miles of roads and highways
330 hazardous waste sites, including several in Alameda, Santa Clara, San Mateo and Los Angeles counties
280 miles of railway
140 schools
34 police and fire stations
30 coastal power plants
29 sewage-treatment plants, including 22 on the bay and seven on the Pacific Coast
2 Bay Area airports:
San Francisco and Oakland international
To learn more: Read the study at links.sfgate.com/ZGJX.
Source: Pacific Institute
E-mail Jane Kay at jkay@sfchronicle.com.
Jane Kay, SF Chronicle Environment Writer
Thursday, March 12, 2009
(03-11) 18:04 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- Driven by global warming, the ocean is expected to rise nearly 5 feet along California's coastline by the end of the century, hitting San Francisco Bay the hardest of all, according to a state study released Wednesday.
Nearly half a million people and $100 billion in property, two-thirds of it concentrated around the bay, are at risk of major flooding, researchers found in the most comprehensive study to date of how climate change will alter the state's coastal areas.
Rising seas, storms and extreme high tides are expected to send saltwater into low-lying areas, flooding freeways, the Oakland and San Francisco airports, hospitals, power plants, schools and sewage plants. Thousands of structures at risk are the homes of low- and middle-income people, the study said.
Vast wetlands that nourish fish and birds and act as a buffer against flooding will be inundated and could turn into dead pools. Constructing seawalls and levees, if needed, could cost $14 billion plus an annual maintenance cost of $1.4 billion, the study said.
The study shows a greater sea-level rise for California than previous studies because it takes into account recent changes in glaciers and ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland.
Worldwide forecasts
Scientists worldwide forecast that sea levels will rise for centuries even if greenhouse gas emissions are halted immediately, and California cities and counties must learn to deal with that inevitability just as they plan for earthquakes, the study advises.
Regional planners are recommending that some new construction be halted, other properties protected and still others abandoned.
The study was conducted by the internationally known Pacific Institute, a nonprofit research group in Oakland, and was paid for by the California Energy Commission, Caltrans and the state Ocean Protection Council.
With California leading the nation in regulating greenhouse gas emissions, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2005 ordered state agencies to form a Climate Action Team to research and plan for global warming. Three dozen studies are expected this year, on air quality and health, frequency of wildfires, the use of energy and fresh water supplies.
"No other state has done this kind of assessment of coastal risk," said Peter Gleick, president and founder of the Pacific Institute and a leading water expert. The new assessment, he said, puts the state "far ahead in our ability to both identify possible impacts and implement effective policies to prevent them."
Although large sections of the Pacific Coast are not vulnerable to flooding, sea-level rise is expected to accelerate erosion, resulting in a loss of 41 square miles of the coast and affecting 14,000 people, the study said.
Flooding projections
Researchers at the U.S. Geological Survey prepared maps of San Francisco Bay showing projected inundation, though they don't include the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. Calculations for inundation don't take into account existing seawalls and levees along the Peninsula and at Oakland International Airport.
Large portions of the Bay Area are at risk because European settlers in the 1800s filled shoreline marshes to build towns and cities.
Will Travis, executive director of the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, said the Pacific Institute study struck him because two-thirds of the projected property damage was in low-lying areas around San Francisco Bay. Cities and counties haven't planned for the rise, he said, and his agency is trying to build awareness.
"We as a region have to get out in front of the state and nation in dealing with the problem. The study shows that low- and moderate-income people will be dealing with it. We have the equivalent of New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward."
Lessons from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina are not to build below sea level, he said. But parts of northern Silicon Valley - where pumping groundwater in past decades has caused land to subside - are already below sea level, he said, leaving Google, Sun, Intel and other large company complexes vulnerable to inundation.
Earthquake lessons
Just as Californians learned about seismic safety in response to earthquakes, "we have to learn to build in areas that will someday be below sea level," he said. It's particularly difficult, he said, because there is "no certainty which areas would be below sea level." His agency is co-sponsoring an international design competition to come up with designs for sea-level rise.
As the atmosphere and oceans warm, ice sheets and glaciers melt, swelling the volume of oceans. Oceans already have started to rise. Over the past century, San Francisco waterfront tidal gauges show a rise of 8 inches.
The new projection of a 4.6-foot, or 55-inch, rise is higher than the 23-inch estimate of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the body that compiles findings of international scientists.
In its last calculations, the panel didn't include melt from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, which have accelerated over the past decade. Since then, scientists have begun to forecast higher rises.
For the regional study, Pacific Institute scientists used the 4.6-foot sea-level rise based on forecasts by a Scripps Institution of Oceanography team led by oceanographer Daniel Cayan, which draws on sophisticated models, satellite sensors and a broad range of data.
Concentrations of greenhouse gases have been increasing in the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution, and the bulk of climate scientists agree that the gases are trapping the sun's radiation emanating from Earth, warming the planet.
Infrastructure in danger along the bay, coast
Some of the infrastructure at risk along the 1,000-mile- long shore of San Francisco Bay and the 1,200-mile-long California coast, according to a new study on the rising sea level:
3,500 miles of roads and highways
330 hazardous waste sites, including several in Alameda, Santa Clara, San Mateo and Los Angeles counties
280 miles of railway
140 schools
34 police and fire stations
30 coastal power plants
29 sewage-treatment plants, including 22 on the bay and seven on the Pacific Coast
2 Bay Area airports:
San Francisco and Oakland international
To learn more: Read the study at links.sfgate.com/ZGJX.
Source: Pacific Institute
E-mail Jane Kay at jkay@sfchronicle.com.
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