Oregon Sustainability Center Shot Down

The Rainbow Water Coalition has been following this project for quite sometime now, most recently with  this posting regarding the precarious funding and political situation. The OregonBEST group who has been championing the Oregon Sustainability Center visited the Oregon State University campus last week where we had a chance to mix it up with these very dedicated green building experts and advocates. But then earlier this week the final verdict came out regarding the state investment - no more green for you. At the risk of raising the wrath of The Oregonian over copyright issues, I reproduce the editorial cartoon by their talented and very humorous cartoonist, Jack Ohman, which encapsulates the issue in a nutshell.

For full disclosure, I have been following the Oregon Sustainability Center closely because I am one of the OregonBEST faculty members. I have participated in the Oregon BEST-FEST and spoken about the use and reuse of water for the building. I have also lectured to my undergraduate students about the proposed building, as well as other large living building projects across the US and abroad. But the saga of the Oregon Sustainability Center has been most interesting to me beyond the technical and educational involvement. This project has been an eye-opener because of how political the concept of sustainability apparently has become over the past decade. If one is confused by this statement, revisit this posting, particularly the student polling, and then review the comments section of this newspaper article.

And the timing of the Oregon Sustainability Center demise is ironic in that Oregon State University just yesterday announced the offering of a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in Sustainability (double-degree program), where "The primary objective of this degree program is to prepare students to incorporate sustainability into varied disciplinary and career pathways and to be agents of positive change in their professions and their communities....The B.S. in Sustainability will require an explicit integration of economic, political, social, and ecological disciplines that transcends disciplinary boundaries". I guess this is good news, but to further underscore why the Oregon Sustainability Center might not have secured the support it needed is the fact that I spoke to a few members of the OSU faculty that have a direct stake in this new degree program, and what was most surprising to me was that NONE of them had heard of the Oregon Sustainability Center. The only faculty that I encountered at the OSU-OregonBEST mixer were primarily the folks interested in building the thing - Engineering and Technology faculty.

The other irony regarding the Oregon Sustainability Center article is that the news was paired with legislative bills on concealed weapons. One of the bullets aimed at killing the Oregon Sustainability Center is the competing, privately-funded Bullitt Center in Seattle, pegged as the "greenest commercial building in the world".

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People are always looking for the single magic bullet that will totally change everything. There is no single magic bullet.

~ Temple Grandin

Top Greywater University Denied Greywater Use

If one examines the map of Graywater States at the bottom of the blog, Colorado stands out like a BTG. The irony is that Colorado State University is one of the top greywater universities in research, yet Colorado's water law, especially applied to greywater,  is a little different than most western states. Oh, they recognize the value of end-of-life greywater, just not graywater greywater. So imagine the horror of the University of Colorado building a green dormitory, but not being able to use the greywater as planned to maintain the green building status.

Yes, the Boulder Daily Camera reports that "convoluted health regulations and state law prevent the university from using the "graywater" system -- which could save at least 1 million gallons of water every year at Williams Village North"..."CU has spent $230,000 on a plumbing system in the Williams Village North building capable of recapturing water from showers and sinks, sending it to a collection tank to be disinfected through a filtration system and then re-circulating it through separate plumbing system that would only be used for toilets..."

I am certain this is an embarrassment for the school with the first zero waste sports stadium in the nation.

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Let Your Light Shine

~University of Colorado School Motto

Graywater Permit Machine Almost Ready

Against all odds, the Oregon Graywater Permit Machine is almost up and running. The process is out for comment for a couple of more weeks. If you were wondering where the information regarding the permitting was located, it is not under permitting, but rather under "Current News". The permit application is fairly straight forward, with a few exceptions. It requires a listing of sources of greywater and quantities, site evaluation information, and, of course, a check for $90!

In my opinion, why would anyone not list all of the sources of greywater in their application? Why be pinned down to one source especially as one learns more about how to reuse greywater and expands their system?

The site evaluation information is apparently something that will only be required if it is requested by DEQ. This information is not something that everyone will have ready access to, or even know where to look for it. Will someone need to have a licensed surveyor measure the "slope? The soil profile is requested. Does this mean that a boring or trench will have to be dug? Does this mean a soil scientist or geologist will have to sign off on the descriptions of the soil profile since this is professional practice for the public? Likewise, who will measure the depth to water and report this information and how will it be measured? Will this be needed to be collected over the various seasons? And where does the public find the ET rates for the various types of vegetation? Why an assessment of offsite features and at what distance from the property? Instead, would it not make more sense for DEQ to send an inspector to secure this information for the $90 application and processing fee?

Many of these same questions have been previously raised in other postings here and here to get started.  Other communities who also had permit machines finally gave them up because they did not garner the hoped for goals - saving water.

As stated here, I will apply for my own permit as soon as the machine starts printing. Stay tuned for news!

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The problem is that agencies sometimes lose sight of common sense as they create regulations.

~ Former Tennessee Senator, actor, attorney, lobbyist, columnist, and radio host Fred Thompson

The Art of Recycling Waste

I substituted for a colleague while she conducted research in South America during the first couple of weeks of the winter 2012 term in a class titled The Surface of the Earth. The class is an entry into Physical Geography, and it was a great review for me since I never took the class as an undergraduate majoring in Geophysics - my advisor at the time indicated this stuff was beneath geophysicists. The students surprised me as they were very professional and mature as freshmen and sophomores, something much different than I have encountered in some of the upper level courses which is what I have been historically assigned to teach. Do students become corrupted with time at a university? I don't know the answer, but I enjoyed this experience very much simply because the students were gung-ho. So I gave opportunities for earning extra credit, and one was visiting one of the most interesting examples of recycling toxic waste and volunteerism I have ever witnessed while at the same time teaching about the Surface of the Earth, geography, and water resources. It is called the Eco-Earth and it is located in the Riverfront Park in Salem, Oregon.

The regional newspaper, Statesman Journal, ran a great series on the Eco-Earth ball, but here is the short story why it is one of the 160 reasons why we like living in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. The before and after photos give one the idea of what transpired. A steel ball once used to store acid associated with manufacturing plywood was donated to the City of Salem as the manufacturing facility was being decommissioned. This is how I found it when I visited in late 1999-2000. At the time there was nothing but a four-by-four post stuck in the ground with a small placard describing what was envisioned for the rusting ball - make a globe out of tiles. The sign also asked for donations and ideas on how to design the tiles. If one was interested in donating money, they also asked if one wanted to dedicate their donation to a water feature like an ocean, lake, river, etc. I was working on a deep groundwater well near Oakley, Utah at the time called the "Humbug" well - a well about 1,600 feet deep targeting the limestones and dolomites of the Paleozoic Humbug formation, so I donated $50 and dedicated it to the Humbug Well. This well has its own unique story, but suffice it to say that it was productive, and yielded water of such excellent taste that it became the source of a brand of bottled water known as Park City IceWater or IceRok Glacier Water. The name has changed a few times, probably as the bottling plant changed owners. I regularly purchase it as part of my class lectures on bottled water.

When I visited the Eco-Earth upon its dedication in the Riverfront Park here is what it looked like. I am standing in front of the south-facing part of the Eco-Earth near southeast Asia.

As one walks around the Eco-Earth it lists some of the big time donors and their dedications. Imagine my surprise to find my name listed along with the dedication to the Oakley City Humbug Well shown here. Not bad for $50!

Oregon has a tourist promotion proclaiming "We love Dreamers". The many volunteer ceramicists who threw the nearly 86,000 tiles, geographers who made certain the globe was depicted correctly both geographically and to scale, and the many donors certainly lived up to the dream of recycling something great out of something that was an eyesore and potential liability for demolition and disposal.

And if the Eco-Earth is not enough to bring you to the Riverfront Park, check out the Chihuly blown glass sculpture (update - was removed due to insurance costs) within the carousel housing many beautiful hand carved wooden creatures.

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Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot,

Nothing is going to get better. It's not.

~Dr. Seuss, from The Lorax

Hughies Invading US

Greywatermaster Paul James provides an update that about 1,000 Hughies have landed in the US, with more to come soon. Watch their new educational video. Buy a Hughie and support US green jobs.