“How many members of Sustainable Flatbush does it take to change a light bulb?” asked State Senator Kevin Parker during his remarks at our Neighborhood Energy Forum last month, riffing on the perennial joke.

Brooklyn Apartment Building (photo by Keka Marzagão)

“None, because you already changed your incandescent  bulbs to CFLs and they last forever.”

Well, maybe not forever, but the long-time advocate of energy and the environment made his point.  At our Energy Forum on March 20 at the Brooklyn College Student Center, we learned that to meet our ambitious local, state, and federal energy efficiency goals, we’re going to have to do a lot more than change our light bulbs.

More than 70 people gathered to find out how to make major energy efficiency and renewable energy upgrades on the large and small homes of Flatbush.  Our Executive Director Anne Pope fulfilled her promise to share what she learned on her quest to reduce her coop building’s energy use, save money for its residents, and reduce the carbon emissions that damage our health and contribute to global warming.

Multi-Family Buildings

Most of us have had to open a window in an overheated apartment in the middle of winter, and we recognize that, as Anne noted at our panel on multi-family buildings, we might as well be throwing money out the window.  Here in New York City, large multi-family buildings present one of our biggest challenges.  We can’t build new state-of-the-art buildings in our dense neighborhoods; we have to work with what we have.
Because of our density, New York City uses less energy per resident than other cities, but as panelist Andy Padian pointed out, the average NYC apartment uses 3 to 5 times the energy per square foot per heating degree day as a dwelling in Iowa.

Neighborhood Energy Forum (photos by Keka Marzagão)

Padian, Vice President for Energy Initiatives at the Community Preservation Corporation and this year’s recipient of the Distinguished Service Award from the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association, also provided the title of this post: “Green is the stuff you DO in buildings, not what you put on them”. His presentation included a photo of the roofs of Manhattan’s Stuyvesant Town housing complex–where 500 vents leak a lot of heat–to make the point that building managers need to know how to find and seal holes.  Padian made other recommendations, too, such as turning off or dimming common area lighting, cutting way back on water use (40% of the heat in our buildings is used for hot water), and fixing those leaks.  One leaky toilet can cost up to $12,000 per year!

Panelist Jonathan Flothow of The Steam Balancing Company advised a “balanced” approach to heating in our large residential buildings.  Before replacing a boiler, make sure the pipes and radiators are properly maintained, sized, and vented.  Simply replacing a boiler won’t save you much energy or money.  If you do replace a boiler, make sure it’s the right size.  Most boilers are wasteful because they’re too big.

Lucas Falk of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, and National Grid’s Paolo Morisi touched on incentives offered by the State and utility.

For more details, download a report on the Multi-Family Session by Lois Sturm (Neighborhood Energy Network).

1-4 Family Homes

It’s an ideal time for energy efficiency upgrades and renewable energy projects on our 1-4 family homes, according to panelists Louis Rizzo of National Grid and  Ellen Honigstock, an architect, LEED-AP, and certified building auditor.  With a range of tax credits and government and utility incentive programs, you can get funding for new windows, energy efficient appliances, solar-electric installations, and much more.  Then you can start saving money on your energy bills and make back your investment in a few years.

Ellen’s presentation gives all the details, with numbers from sample projects, but your investment and payback may be different. Download the presentation here.

“Sustainability Starts with Us”

Those were words that Lucas Falk left us with on March 20, and it’s a mandate we take to heart.  It’s our goal at Sustainable Flatbush to increase the energy efficiency of our neighborhood.  Stay tuned for your in-depth guide to all the resources we gathered at the Neighborhood Energy Forum to assist you on your path to energy efficiency and affordability.

Thanks to Lois Sturm for her contribution to this post.

Dear Anne,

Your New York State Senator is one of 18 legislators who showed exceptional leadership when it came to protecting the health of the environment this year by supporting all four of the environmental community’s priority Super Bills.

The Super Bills include:

*The Wetlands Protection Act

*The Bigger Better Bottle Bill

*The Global Warming Pollution Cap/Greenhouse Gas Pollution Control Act

*Net Metering Reforms

Please thank your New York State Senators for supporting these critical measures. Without his or her leadership, these bills may never have gotten as far as they did in the Senate. By taking the time to recognize your Senator’s support of the Super Bills, you’re telling our lawmakers that the environment is an important issue to you and to thousands of New Yorkers across the state. Click here to thank your Senator.

I believe I will! It is important to note that only one of these four Super Bills actually became law (the Net Metering Reforms) so we have a long way to go. More details on the bills, including their Assembly supporters, are available here.

East 4th Street Community Garden, Kensington, Brooklyn, photo by Flatbush Gardener

Campus Road Garden at Brooklyn College

East Village community garden, Manhattan

There was also talk of composting, rainwater harvesting, permaculture, urban agriculture, and many of the other sustainability concepts that I for one have been hoping for a location to demonstrate and educate the community about (myself included!). It’s great to learn that other folks in the neighborhood share the same goals.

A tour of the site is scheduled for this Sunday afternoon… stay tuned for details.

Rebecca’s container gardening demonstration

Last Sunday’s event, “Greening Flatbush: Garden Where You Are” was a huge success! The Sustainable Flatbush Gardening Committee assembled a stellar program of speakers and demonstrations on topics including Container Gardening, Urban Composting, Street Trees, Permaculture and more.

Mela and Sandra talk trees

Karla advocates for worm composting

We can’t wait for spring to get our hands dirty and start planting up the neighborhood!

“This local law is good for the City’s environment and makes sound economic sense,” said Basil Seggos, Riverkeeper’s Chief Investigator. “By regarding stormwater as a resource for irrigating the landscape, we not only improve water quality, but also capture all the added economic benefits of green infrastructure, including cooler streets, reduced energy costs (by reducing building cooling needs), cleaner air, sequestration and reduction of global warming pollution, flood mitigation, and more livable communities.”

Follow the link below to read the complete press release…

New York City to Clean Up Waterways by Greening Roadways and Roofs
City Council Adopts New Measure for Sustainable Stormwater Management Plan

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

CONTACT:
Jenny Powers, Natural Resources Defense Council: 212/727-4566
Alan Saly, LCG Communications: 718/853-5568
Teresa Crimmens, Bronx River Alliance: 718/430-4690
Basil Seggos, Riverkeeper: 917/597-6883
Kate Zidar, Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice: 718/328-5622
Rob Crauderueff, Sustainable South Bronx: 718/617-4668
Paul Mankiewicz, The Gaia Institute 718/885-1906

New York City to Clean Up Waterways by Greening Roadways and Roofs
City Council Adopts New Measure for Sustainable Stormwater Management Plan

NEW YORK (January 30th, 2008) – The New York City Council passed legislation today to tackle the sewage overflow problem in the City’s overburdened sewer system. The legislation advances the implementation of green design elements, which mimic nature’s own filtering systems, into the City’s existing streets, parks, and other public spaces and into existing and new development projects.

By adopting ‘green infrastructure’ solutions, such as green roofs, permeable pavement, wetland restoration, and smarter design of street tree plantings, stormwater can be captured where it falls and used to green the city, instead of overwhelming sewers and flushing raw sewage directly into City waterways. The legislation, City Council Intro No. 630, ensures that New York City will follow through with the initiatives outlined in Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC 2030, by requiring the development of a city-wide Sustainable Stormwater Management Plan focusing on such measures. The mayor is expected to sign it into law.

“The adoption of this local law means cleaner rivers and bays in all five boroughs – and, literally, a greener New York City,” said Larry Levine, Natural Resources Defense Council attorney. “Green infrastructure is the perfect blend of simple common sense and innovative technology. Green roofs, smarter design of tree plantings, porous surfaces for parking lots and roads, and other creative uses of urban landscaping – all of these things help rainfall evaporate or soak into the ground, rather than polluting the nearest water body and causing our city’s overburdened sewer system to overflow with raw sewage. It’s a win-win.”

Currently, more than 27 billion gallons of raw sewage and polluted stormwater discharge out of 460 combined sewer overflows (“CSOs”) into New York Harbor each year. Although water quality in the harbor has improved significantly over the last few decades, most of the waterfront and its beaches are still unsafe for recreation after it rains. New York City’s outmoded sewer system combines sewage from buildings with dirty stormwater from streets. As little as one-tenth of an inch of rain can overload the system, causing raw sewage to overflow into the harbor.

The city’s most recent plans for addressing this problem, submitted to the state Department of Environmental Conservation last year, would reduce these sewer overflows by only about 40% – leaving about 17 billion gallons still pouring into waterbodies around the city each year.

Storm Water Infrastructure Matters (S.W.I.M.) – a coalition of more than 50 organizations, including community and environmental groups, environmental justice organizations, architects, water engineers, and community development corporations – partnered with Councilmember James Gennaro, Chair of the City Council’s Environmental Protection Committee, to advance the landmark legislation. In addition to providing a roadmap for solutions to the CSO problem, the law requires the City to notify the public when sewer overflows occur, so recreational boaters, kayakers, swimmers, and fishermen can take appropriate precautions.

“Currently, there is no mechanism for alerting people who work or recreate on New York City’s waterways to the time and place of sewer overflows,” said Kate Zidar, Environmental Planner for Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice. “While we work toward the long term goal of preventing CSOs altogether, this new law will ensure that the city keeps the public informed of sewage overflows to protect public health – and to make sure people know the importance of solving this problem.”

CSOs and stormwater runoff not only make waters unsightly and unsafe for recreation after a rainfall due to the release of raw sewage, they also significantly harm aquatic ecosystems, by lowering dissolved oxygen levels, contaminating the food web, and persisting in sediments for the long term. Stormwater that enters the sewers carries litter, petrochemicals from roadways, pesticides fertilizers from landscaped areas, and even pet waste.

“This local law is good for the City’s environment and makes sound economic sense,” said Basil Seggos, Riverkeeper’s Chief Investigator. “By regarding stormwater as a resource for irrigating the landscape, we not only improve water quality, but also capture all the added economic benefits of green infrastructure, including cooler streets, reduced energy costs (by reducing building cooling needs), cleaner air, sequestration and reduction of global warming pollution, flood mitigation, and more livable communities.”

“Too frequently, opportunities for creating jobs for the poor are missed when planning for our future, said Rob Crauderueff, Sustainable Alternatives Director for Sustainable South Bronx. “This legislation creates a vehicle for improving job training and job creation for green jobs – while supporting the development of local markets in the process. We can make our waterways and economy accessible for all New Yorkers by building and maintaining green infrastructure and green-collar jobs throughout New York City.”

“Many New Yorkers have already shown a commitment to this type of greening, which is endorsed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a cost-effective tool for reducing urban water pollution, and already being implemented in dozens of cities around the globe, including Chicago, Pittsburgh, Portland, and Seattle in the U.S.,” said Teresa Crimmens, Ecology Director of the Bronx River Alliance. “The passage of this local law shows the City of New York’s commitment to make the water cleaner by making the city greener.”

“This new law builds on Mayor Bloomberg’s PlaNYC, which is already on the right track with plans to plant a million new trees, improve parks in every neighborhood, and provide tax incentives for green roofs,” said Dr. Paul Mankiewicz, Executive Director of the Gaia Institute. “With widespread implementation of green infrastructure throughout the city, we could ultimately capture over a billion gallons of stormwater from a single storm, and plant enough vegetation to reverse the urban heat island and significantly decrease the air conditioning expenses and associated air pollution in New York City.”

The S.W.I.M. coalition also supports other initiatives pending before the City Council and City Planning Commission to promote the use of green infrastructure in New York City, including zoning and other legislative requirements that would ensure that all of the million trees to be planted under PlaNYC are installed in common-sense ways that optimize their stormwater capture potential.

#####
SWIM (Storm Water Infrastructure Matters) is a coalition of more than 50 organizations dedicated to ensuring swimmable waters around New York City through natural, sustainable storm water management practices in our neighborhoods. This approach is environmentally and fiscally responsible because it utilizes storm water, currently viewed as a waste, as a resource. For more information on CSOs and green infrastructure solutions in New York City, go to www.swimmablenyc.org.

The full text of Intro. 630 is available here

Tap water promotional campaigns would have seemed quaint a few decades ago, when water in bottles was a rarity. Now such endeavors are needed to counteract the pervasive marketing that has caused consumers to lose faith in the faucet. In fact, more than a quarter of bottled water is just processed tap water, including top-selling Aquafina and Coca-Cola’s Dasani.

Issues at stake here range from the huge trash problem created by plastic water bottles (recycling rates tend to be very low, especially in states — including NY — where there is no bottle deposit on non-carbonated beverages), to the amount of petroleum used in the creation of those bottles and transporting them around the globe, to the threat to funding of municipal water systems — which in some cases has resulted in their privatization.

I would venture to say that there is also a social justice issue involved when the public has been led to believe that a product will be healthier for themselves and their families at such an astronomical cost difference compared to an equal or better product they can already access for free. Here in NYC we are blessed with excellent tap water, and even using a filter system only adds a few dollars a year to the cost. It has been a great step to see bottled water promoted in schools instead of sodas, but an even better step would be for every child to have their own reusable water bottle. Sounds crazy? To see how one NYC teacher (and parent) did it, check out Brooklyn’s own Urban Botany blog. Who says one person can’t make a difference?

The time has come to take back the tap. As individuals and as a society, we can find better uses for the many dollars we would save by doing so:

With more than 1 billion people around the globe still lacking access to a safe and reliable source of water, the $100 billion the world spends on bottled water every year could certainly be put to better use creating and maintaining safe public water infrastructure everywhere.

So… maybe an excellent holiday gift would be a reusable water bottle, eh?

If everybody used the term landfill instead of garbage, they would think twice before throwing things away.

Science Barge – Powered By Nature!, originally uploaded by Sustainable Flatbush.

Finally visited the Science Barge during GreenHome NYC’s Green Buildings Open House.

The Science Barge is a sustainable urban farm. It demonstrates renewable energy supporting sustainable food production in New York City. The Science Barge grows tomatoes, cucumbers, and lettuce with zero net carbon emissions, zero chemical pesticides, and zero runoff. Operating from May to October in 2007 and 2008, the Barge tours waterfront parks in Manhattan, hosting thousands of visitors and public school students.

For more photos of this event, check out the Sustainable Flatbush Flickr gallery.

Maitreya Eco-village, Eugene, OR

The trip began in Eugene, where we camped for the first few nights at a place called Dharmalaya. This is a privately owned home with land that hosts a yoga and meditation studio and acts as a community center for concerts and educational events. It is also an experiment in sustainable living, with an organic garden, composting toilets, and greywater reuse system. (More on Dharmalaya, including their ups and downs with the Eugene zoning board, here.) We visited a community called Maitreya Eco-Village, where we received some lessons in green building techniques (specifically straw bale and cob construction) from founder and architect Rob Bolman. We dropped by the factory and showroom of Bike Friday, manufacturer of world-famous sublime folding bikes, and got to take a few for a spin around the parking lot. We also checked out Eugene’s Center for Appropriate Transport, which hosts a community bike workshop and educational programs that teach kids how to build and design bikes and bike accessories.

Center for Appropriate Transport, Eugene, OR

Once this show actually got on the road, the distances each day were pretty significant for my wimpy self. (One point of pride was that I did actually RIDE up the hilliest portion of the trip, albeit at approximately 1.5 miles per hour.) I discovered that I like traveling by bike very much, and am looking forward to doing more in the future. It’s a great way to see the countryside, silently self-propelled, while still actually covering some distance in the course of a day. The weather was fantastic and Oregon’s Willamette Valley is a beautiful place.

Willamette River Valley, Oregon

We camped at organic farms and spent some time with the farmers who shared the reality of their work and lives with our group, including some delicious produce! We got our hands a little dirty on these farms too (though I personally can’t claim to have been very useful). Seeing both the beauty and the difficulty of this life made me more determined than ever to support the people whose labor and dedication brings beautiful healthy food to the rest of us.

Cyndi gives her chickens lots of love!

Next: “How What I Did On My Summer Vacation Changed My Life”... for real!

I had seen ads for a sustainability-themed bike tour last year, but was unable to go at the time. The idea of travelling by bicycle was intriguing to me in and of itself, and the trip seemed pretty affordable by comparison with other supported bike tours (meaning, you camp but your luggage is transported in a van). The itinerary — visits to organic farms, green buildings and permaculture sites — was very attractive. To top it off, the support vehicle runs on biodiesel! What’s not to like? The tour company promotes their trips as

“Holistic – Vegan – Alcohol-free – Intrinsically Political – Community-Building Experience(s)”

… Um, okay… but I must confess I had a few fears about what I was getting into. Prominent among them was that I would be not only the oldest person there, but also the only person who was (a) not a vegan in “real” life, (b) not super-buff in that quasi-anorexic hipster way, (c) not covered with tattoos and/or piercings, (d) politically slightly to the right of anarchist, (e) blessed/cursed with the sarcastic sense of humor that can be a rarity on the West Coast. It’s not that I feel incapable of hanging with a crowd that fits this description (though perhaps not for an entire week), it’s just that growing up in Berkeley has made me somewhat weary of uber-political-correctness. Ironically, this breeding has also made me completely unfit for any other environment. I took a deep breath and sent in my deposit.

Fortunately all of the fears cited above were unfounded. The age range of our tour group was 12 years old to 70! In fact the folks older than me were among the strongest cyclists, usually found sipping cappuccinos at the 30-mile rest stop by the time I straggled in (great role models!). All the participants were really friendly and nice, with interesting lives and stories, some hailing from as far away as Canada and New Zealand. There were even a few fellow New Yorkers, one of whom provided a daily opportunity to make fun of the vegan fare by referring fondly to pastrami sandwiches at Katz’s Deli.

Lunch stop (biodiesel support van in the background)