Sustainability Education: May 2008 Archives
The Donald BREN School of Environmental Science & Management at the U. of California, Santa Barbara is making where students learn and explore a very green environment.
Greening Bren Hall
Bren Hall, which earned recognition as the "greenest" laboratory building in the United States shortly after it was completed, is a physical manifestation of the School's mission and provides a world-class arena for scientific and academic initiative, leadership, invention, and research. By combining cutting-edge technology with environmentally sound principles, products, and services, Bren Hall has set a new standard for sustainable design.
Opened in April 2002, Bren Hall is the only laboratory building in the United States to have received the U.S. Green Building Council's Platinum LEEDTM accreditation - the highest level possible - since the USGBC established its LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program. Bren Hall sets the highest standard for sustainable buildings of the future, and is being used as a model for other facilities and operations, particularly throughout the campuses and institutions in the state of California. In July 2003, the UC Regents adopted a Green Building Policy for all ten of its campuses, and in November of that year UCSB committed to constructing all new buildings to the level of LEEDTM silver. This represents an extraordinary benchmark and demonstrates a serious commitment to sustainability. UCSB's new Marine Science Institute (also designed by Bren Hall's architects, Zimmer Gunsul Fransca) has obtained a silver LEEDTM rating.
The total cost of the building was $26 million. Building in a sustainable manner with sustainable materials added only 2% to the overall costs, which will easily be recovered through energy savings over time. Bren Hall is proof that cost is not a significant deterrent to green construction.
For descriptions and images of individual building spaces in Bren Hall, please visit our Rooms & Halls, Teaching Labs, and Research Labs web pages.
Awards & Honors
Flex Your Power Energy Efficiency Award (February 2004)
International Interior Design Association Environmental Award (May 2003)
Parade of Green Buildings featured site (April 2003)
Goleta Valley Beautiful Award (November 2002)
LEEDTM Platinum Award, USGBC(April 2002) Commendation from former California Governor Gray Davis (2002)
Commendation from the County of Santa Barbara (2002)
Case Study for the California Energy Commission
Case Study for the California State and Consumer Services Agency
LEED Rating
The USGBC's LEEDTM program is a credit system. The pilot program in effect when Bren Hall was being built (version 1.0) specified a total of 44 available credits, 6 bonus credits, and 10 prerequisites, arranged in the following five categories describing major areas of sustainable design: sustainable site planning, improving energy efficiency, conserving materials and resources, enhancing indoor air quality, and safeguarding water. Click here to view or print the Acrobat pdf document that itemizes Bren Hall's sustainable features in these areas.
Bren Hall achieved a score of 37 points to receive a Platinum rating,
the highest available. It surpasses the new Title 24 requirements for
energy efficiency standards by more than 31%.
Click here to view the document that itemizes each LEEDTM category and credit, and how it was achieved.
Ms. Migiro pointed out that the world is faced with an “unprecedented” rise of food prices, plunging many developing countries into a crisis that threatens to thwart efforts to achieve the global anti-poverty targets known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Highlighting some of the effects of the crisis, Ms. Migiro noted that families that do not have enough to eat are being forced to make terrible choices, such as deciding between food or medicine, or choosing whether to send their children to school or to the fields where they might earn money to help the family.
“And it’s women who are hit the hardest,” she said. “The development emergency engulfing whole communities is taking its heaviest toll on women.”
The crisis offers an opportunity to re-invest in agriculture in Africa.
“Helping African farmers can have a decisive impact on women’s lives,”
Ms. Migiro said, noting that for the most part it is women – who make
up 80 per cent of Africa’s farmers – that are out there under the hot
sun, tending the fields and harvesting crops.
“But the same women hit hardest by the food crisis are ready to hit
back,” she added, stressing that with the right support, they can move
their communities from subsistence farming to commercial farming and
even industry. This is crucial not only for the continent but for the
world, which is just not producing as much food as it consumes.
“We need to do much more… to empower women. Women can drive the Green Revolution in Africa. They hold the key to breaking out of the food crisis; to educating the young; to peace, progress and prosperity,” the Deputy Secretary-General stated.
SOURCE: UN.org
Technology News and Trends is a newsletter for environmental professionals that features a combination of articles on innovative, in-situ technologies for the characterization and treatment of soil, sediment, and ground water. Technology News and Trends replaces Tech Trends and Ground Water Currents, which were published from 1992 through 2002. Technology News and Trends is published quarterly.
Technology Innovation News Survey contains market/commercialization information; reports on demonstrations, feasibility studies and research; and other news relevant to the hazardous waste community interested in technology development. This report is updated each month.
Federal Business Opportunities (FedBizOpps) is published weekly. This update contains summaries of procurement and contract award notices issued the previous week that pertain to hazardous waste, solid waste, underground storage tank remediation, and other environmental topics. However, it does not necessarily contain EVERY notice on these topics.
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MISSISSIPPI BARGE TRAFFIC DOWN YET AGAIN IN 2007 — 18-Year Downward Trend Undercuts Congressional Plan to Build Bigger Locks
Barge traffic on the Upper Mississippi River
and Illinois Waterway continued an 18-year downward trend through 2007,
according to the latest U.S. Army Corps of Engineers figures compiled
and released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
(PEER).
Despite this long, steep decline in demand for barge transportation, Congress brushed aside a veto to make expansion of the lock system on these rivers one of the centerpieces of its new Water Resources Development Act.
The question now is whether Congress funds the $2 billion lock expansion plan that it authorized. The Water Resources Development Act authorized some 940 projects that would cost a total of approximately $23 billion to complete. The Upper Mississippi Lock project is the second largest project in that bill, behind the multi-year Everglades “restoration” effort.
Large, cumulative and sustained decreases in barge traffic have occurred at every Upper Mississippi River and Illinois Waterway lock, with the most heavily utilized locks experiencing an average 36 percent traffic reduction since the Corps and its boosters began advocating for lock expansion back in the early 1990s. This downward trend is likely to continue as the leading barge line forecasts even lower grain traffic in coming years; barge demand in the region consists primarily of grain and other agricultural products.
Barge traffic is now so light that the locks sit idle more than half of the year. At the same time, an aggressive rehabilitation program pursued by the Corps is keeping lock unavailability at historic lows.
“Traffic is so sparse that the Corps does not even bother to schedule the barges to minimize congestion,” stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. “The Upper Mississippi lock expansion is the poster child for pork barrel myopia in Congress.”
This project has been steeped in controversy since 2000, when the Corps’ own lead economist on the project, Dr. Donald Sweeney, filed an explosive whistleblower disclosure documenting how top Corps commanders had grossly manipulated the cost-benefit study used to justify the project. This scandal triggered a battle about how to “reform the Corps” which was a major factor in holding up subsequent Water Resource Development Acts until late 2007.
Nonetheless, the Corps ultimately endorsed the lock expansion but, in response to scathing critiques from the National Academies of Science and other authorities, promised to correct its economic models to eliminate systematic biases favoring construction. Its revised study on the Upper Mississippi project is still not completed.
“When it comes to public works, Congress and the Corps are two addicts who feed off each other,” added Ruch, whose organization represented Dr. Sweeney. “As we did with military base closures where it was recognized that corrosive parochial politics could not be controlled, we need an independent national commission to rank our infrastructure priorities.”
SOURCE:
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility
Date: January 15, 2008
Contact: Carol Goldberg (202) 265-7337
