How Green is Your Public Transit?

Take a bus that runs on compressed natural gas and compare it to a light rail car. Which one is more environmentally friendly?

It depends. The light rail car has the potential to produce less air pollution because it runs on electricity. But if the source of the electricity is derived from coal, then its carbon footprint is bigger than the bus.

LEED-ND Isn't Just for Luxury Housing Developments

Envision a green neighborhood and you might think of energy-efficient buildings, bike lanes, parks and open spaces. Creating a green neighborhood means implementing some of these sustainable design concepts from the very beginning.

New neighborhoods – or those with at least half the square footage of their buildings undergoing major renovations – can look to the criteria outlined in LEED for Neighborhood Development. And, hitting those benchmarks can mean getting officially certified as a green neighborhood.

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Growing Sustainable Communities is Focus of California Conference

ROHNERT PARK, Calif. -- More than 100 municipal government leaders and staff representing 40 Western jurisdictions will be on hand for the Growing Sustainable Communities Conference - Western Region next week.

Late registrations are still being accepted at http://gscwest.com.

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Climate Expert Advocates Intergenerational Equity

A climate expert this week urged the nation's urban and regional planners to help slow global warming, as the levels of greenhouse gas emissions continue to trend upward.

Dr. Andrew Weaver, a lead author of a United Nations report on climate change, addressed several thousand members of the American Planning Association in his opening keynote speech on Sunday at the organization's national conference in Los Angeles.

• Related: Staying Below 2°C

HUD Office Aims to Create Sustainable Communities

Having drawn a funding goose egg in fiscal year 2012, the Obama administration's Sustainable Communities Initiative is going back to the well for 2013, asking for $100 million to restore two popular sustainability grant programs.

The mission of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Sustainable Housing and Communities (OSHC) is to create strong, sustainable communities by connecting housing to jobs, fostering local innovation, and helping to build a clean energy economy.

• Related: HUD Secretary Donovan Speech

Community Choice Aggregation Advances Renewable Energy

How about a power play that allows residential, commercial and industrial utility customers to not only have a major say in the rates they pay for electricity and natural gas, but also expands the use of renewable energy, reducing pollution caused by fossil fuel generation?

It’s called Community Choice Aggregation (CCA).

Virginia Waterways Take Two Steps Forward and One Step Back

Acknowledging that 81 percent of Virginia’s lakes and an estimated 71 percent of its rivers and streams are considered “impaired” by a variety of pollutants including E. coli bacteria and oxygen-depleting nutrients, the state’s director of environmental quality said progress is being made and the Commonwealth has seen an overall improvement in the quality of its waterways since 2002.

But, with half its assessed river miles deemed unsafe for swimming, and 43 percent of assessed lake acres impaired for aquatic life, Virginia, like many states, has a long way to go.

• Related: Executive Summary

City Partners with University to Develop Sustainability Metrics

DUBUQUE, Iowa - A unique partnership between a Big Ten university and this Midwestern town of 58,000 has developed a set of sustainability metrics that might be a good place to start for any community.

Acknowledging that each city has its own set of unique circumstances, Cori Burbach, sustainable community coordinator for the city of Dubuque, said a group of graduate students from the University of Iowa’s School of Urban and Regional Planning has put a lot of research into measuring sustainability, and the lessons learned could apply almost anywhere.

• Related: Draft Report

Conference Addresses 'Cutting-Edge' Concepts in Sustainability

ROHNERT PARK, Calif. - The Growing Sustainable Communities Conference – Western Region, scheduled for May 2-3 in Sonoma County California, will feature sessions on some of the most cutting-edge concepts in sustainability for local governments, particularly for those on the West Coast.

Community choice aggregation, climate adaptation planning, neighborhood-scale water reuse systems, sustainable energy utilities and advanced urban water conservation techniques are just some of the topical programming sessions on the agenda for the May 3 general conference. Four concurrent tracks in water, transportation, energy and resource management will round-out the educational programming, and a variety of networking sessions and roundtable discussions will also be held at the conference. A pre-conference legislative roundtable for California local government officials and senior staff will be held at a separate location on the afternoon of May 2.

Reduce Pollution and Flooding with Bioretention Systems

When a hard rain falls, water splashes through the leaves of towering trees, drips among the limbs, and slowly seeps into the ground, regenerating plant life, renewing habitat, and recharging the aquifer below. Unless of course that forest has been replaced by an urban landscape complete with asphalt roofs and impermeable pavement. In that case, the water rushes along, picking up sediment and junk until, shimmering with petroleum goop, it rips apart the banks of shallow local streams.

Scenario A is a distant memory for much of our natural environment, and unfortunately, Scenario B has been taking its place. Thanks to water resource experts like Roger Bannerman of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, a third scenario featuring the restoration of natural processes is already underway.

Why Not Flush Rooftop Rainwater?

WASHINGTON, D.C. -– As America’s expanding urban areas struggle with major water supply shortages and runoff pollution problems, capturing rainwater from rooftops provides a tremendous untapped opportunity to increase water supply and improve water quality, according to a recent analysis on Capturing Rainwater from Rooftops by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

In its report, NRDC demonstrates the benefits and potential of rooftop rainwater capture, a "green infrastructure" practice that can be used to retain stormwater runoff on-site, by analyzing ways in which eight diverse U.S. cities could incorporate this simple water collection approach. By comparing annual rainfall totals to rooftop coverage, NRDC determined that opportunities exist in each city to capture hundreds of millions of gallons of rainfall every year for reuse. By doing so, residents of these communities would obtain inexpensive onsite water supplies for non-potable uses, such as yard watering and toilet flushing; reduce runoff pollution; and would lower energy costs associated with treating and delivering drinkable-quality water.

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