Sustainability

SACOG hosts rural-urban strategy forum

2010-12-07T01:56:15Z

Soil Born Farms and Mulvaney's B & L are among those being honored Friday when the Sacramento Area Council of Governments hosts a regional forum as the next step in the region's smart-growth plan.

SACOG is hosting the Rural-Urban Connection Strategy to provide an update on best practices they've uncovered here and elsewhere for containing urban sprawl and protecting farmlands from being lost, partly through expanding local markets for local produce.

This year, SACOG's Salutes! Awards have a rural focus after being incorporated into the forum. SACOG will present awards to 10 organizations, people and projects. More than 500 people are registered for the forum, set for 7:30 a.m. Friday at the Sacramento Convention Center.

The forum is the culmination of three years of meetings between SACOG planners and stakeholders such as farmers, ranchers, grocery store owners, restaurateurs and others involved in the agricultural industry and rural economy.

SACOG bills the upcoming forum as the “greenprint” to the Blueprint Transportation and Land Use project. That project was adopted by SACOG’s board in December 2004 to help plan more compact growth, protect natural resources, and reduce traffic congestion and pollution over the next 50 years.

"We've been losing farmland not just in our region, but all across the state and the country," said SACOG Government and Media Affairs Coordinator Erik Johnson. "Farmland has been converted to urban uses, for housing, for the last couple of decades. A lot of the farmland in our region is classified as prime farmland in our state. It's very productive."

The forum will include a look at how farmers, ranchers and open-space advocates can work together to protect natural habitat and resources. Glenda Humiston, California state director for U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development, will provide the keynote speech.

The event will also introduce people to other issues that need to be studied regionally, such as water, labor and regulations, and inform them how they can be involved in future work, Johnson said.

The free event, which runs until 12:30 p.m., starts with the Salutes! Awards and a breakfast.

Mulvaney's is being recognized as a “Business of the Year” for promoting local farmers and ranchers through the restaurant's emphasis on dishes that use local, seasonal products, as well as for its community service.

Soil Born Farms, which has two farms on more than 40 acres in Sacramento and Rancho Cordova, is being honored as "Organization of the Year" for its efforts to educate people about agriculture and ecology, promote access to healthy local produce and provide produce to schools and community groups.

Other Salutes! honorees include U.S. Rep. Doris Matsui as "Bill Hughes Elected Official," Yolo County 2030 General Plan for "Blueprint Excellence," Bogle Vineyards as another “Business of the Year,” Joanne Neft of Placer County as "Citizen of the Year," Jim Campbell of Yolo County as "Employee of the Year," GEO Environmental Science & Design Academy at Grant Union High School as "Mary Brill Youth Excellence," Highway 70 East Nicolaus Bypass as "Project of the Year" and Apple Hill Growers Association for "Special Recognition."

Photos of Mulvaney's B & L, Soil Born Farms and Glenda Humiston provided by SACOG. Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for the Sacramento Press.

Region wins $1.5m for sustainability

2010-10-16T00:28:32Z

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has earmarked $1.5 million to help fund sustainable planning for the Sacramento region, HUD Deputy Secretary Ron Sims said Friday.

The money is being awarded to the Sacramento Area Council of Governments and its planning partners through HUD's new Sustainable Communities Regional Planning Grant Program.

A day earlier, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan announced Sacramento was among 45 regions to win a portion of nearly $100 million in grants created under President Barack Obama's Partnership for Sustainable Communities. The grant program is designed to boost regional economies through coordinated planning for housing, transportation, the environment and economic development.

"You are among that remarkable list of people who said our communities are going to move forward in a sustainable fashion," Sims said Friday morning in a press conference at the Township 9 construction site. "You have to have people thinking about that now."

At least 80 people turned out for the event. U.S. Rep. Doris Matsui and SACOG officials also spoke to the crowd, which included community advocates and city, county and state officials and planners.

The Nehemiah Corporation's Township 9 is a "perfect" example of a sustainable community because the plan is to build mixed use, including 2,500 to 2,800 homes, next to a new light rail station and extended line and the American River Parkway. Projects like that are leading the way in terms of planning for smart growth, he said.

The one-mile light rail line extension has been delayed by five months and is now expected to be completed in June. Building demolition work by Otto Construction has been under way. Roadway construction on Richards Boulevard and North Seventh Street is expected to start in early November and finish by mid-2011. Construction of Township 9 housing units is expected to begin late next year.

Sims applauded Matsui for the way she has championed sustainability and clean technology in the region. Matsui has worked hard to get funding such as this grant for Sacramento, he said.

The $1.5 million grant will be used for ongoing work under SACOG's Sacramento Region Blueprint Transportation and Land Use Study, first adopted in 2004, and its Metropolitan Transportation Plan for 2035. The only other grant being awarded in this state is $4 million, which is going to the California Partnership for the San Joaquin Valley, administered by the California State University Fresno Foundation.

SACOG and its partners are matching the HUD funds with another $3.3 million in local funds and in-kind work. The money will help develop plans for infill development of six sustainable communities in highly used transit corridors throughout the six-county region, SACOG Executive Director Mike McKeever.

Township 9 wins Prop. 1C money

2010-08-27T01:20:24Z

Township 9, a mixed-use project planned for the River District, is eligible for up to $1.35 million in Proposition 1C state bond funds after being recognized for its sustainable design plans, a state agency official said Thursday.

The 65-acre development, which will be built between the American River and Richards Boulevard east of Fifth Street, was named a Catalyst Project in the California Sustainable Strategies Pilot Program. The program was created to promote the goals of Senate Bill 375 promoting sustainable building strategies and less dependency on cars, according to the California Department of Housing and Community Development, which awards the funding.

More than 10 state agencies partnered to create the program.

"When state departments work together, California is a leader in sustainability strategies," said Housing and Community Development Director Lynn Jacobs in a prepared statement. "This program will help spur innovation at the local level ... as well as create models for other communities to increase long-term prosperity.”

Township 9 was one of 13 Catalyst Projects named from throughout the state. Township 9 received a "gold" designation, along with two Bay Area projects and two Southern California projects.

Feds award $5m for alternative energy

2010-01-23T04:24:14Z

The federal government has awarded $5 million in stimulus funding for Sacramento-area alternative energy projects, including the state's first "solar highway," U.S. Rep. Doris Matsui announced Friday.

The U.S. Department of Energy has set aside money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for projects to install a section of the state's first "solar highway" — a system of photovoltaic panels erected along a freeway — and to build facilities for sustainable biogas energy production from food and dairy animal waste. The latter also is intended to also reduce the smell and pollution around two Sacramento County dairy farms.

The funding is part of $20.5 million in stimulus grants being released by the agency. The money will go to the Sacramento Municipal Utility District and its partners in these projects: the California Department of Transportation, Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District, New Hope Dairy, Van Warmerdam Dairy and Garden Highway Foods. The funding is being distributed through the Department of Energy's Renewable Energy Deployment program.

The federal money will help the local economy by investing in green energy technology and promoting Sacramento as "a clean-tech capital,” Matsui said in a prepared statement.

Solar panel systems have been used along roads in Germany and Switzerland for 20 years. Oregon was the first state to develop a renewable energy project along a U.S. highway. That project powers highway traffic lights and signs at an interchange for I-5 and I-205 south of Portland in 2008.

Now, a SMUD distribution engineer working with the California Department of Transportation has designed a solar panel system that will be installed in the right-of-way on Highway 50 from 59th Street near SMUD headquarters to Stockton Boulevard, and at the Mather Field exit, said Mike DeAngelis, program manager for SMUD's advanced renewable energy department.

Enough panels will be installed on the berm to produce a megawatt of energy at peak times, the same amount of energy that can be produced by two-kilowatt solar panel systems on 500 homes. During the project's design review, SMUD will consider which panels would be most attractive for the very visible installation, he said.

Solar panels require a lot of land for the amount of energy they produce, DeAngelis said. That must be taken into account when a utility such as SMUD tries to increase solar power production.

"We think it's great for areas of land that can't be used for other purposes, and the highways have a lot of land," he said.

SMUD and partners have been awarded $5 million of a $6.8 million proposal. Installation of the solar panel system will take place, but SMUD and its partners must find the additional $1.8 million or adjust the proposal, DeAngelis said. That could include dropping one of four other proposed projects, he added.

Those four projects would build facilities that use co-digestion and anaerobic digestion, or composting, of organic waste to create energy. The facilities would use grease and food waste, as well as manure and urine from dairy cows.

SMUD proposed building two dairy digester facilities in Galt — at New Hope and Van Warmerdam dairies. There are already two other dairy farm installations in south Sacramento County.

Usually, dairy farms wash cow manure and urine into open pools, and methane is created during decomposition. Although some argue about the effectiveness of anaerobic digesters, the technology is designed to capture the methane and use it to replace natural gas for electricity and to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming.

"Dairy cows (each) produce about 125 pounds of manure and urine a day. They produce a lot more of undesirable things than the milk they produce," DeAngelis said. "This is an advanced way of cleaning up the waste at dairies."

The third project would be a grease-waste and food-waste project at Sacramento Regional County Sanitation District's wastewater plant.

SMUD also proposed a food processing waste facility at Garden Highway Foods, which packages fresh-cut produce in Rancho Cordova.

SMUD is the country's sixth-largest publicly owned utility company. In December, the Department of Energy awarded SMUD and five partners a $7.3 million Smart Grid Energy Storage Demonstration Grant, also through the stimulus program. In addition, the department awarded SMUD $4.3 million in October for a year-long photovoltaic and smart-grid pilot project to study the value of "distributed" energy sources and how energy storage integration can increase that value.

Forum: Cities must reduce sprawl

2009-08-22T15:27:40Z

Ending urban sprawl is one of the keys to fighting global warming.

That's why Sacramento and its outlying areas must focus on building sustainability through infill development and other measures, developer/architect David Mogavero said Thursday night at the first Sacramento Sustainability Forum.

In fact, land use is the most important environmental issue in the state and the country, said Mogavero, who said he's been fighting sprawl in Sacramento for 20 years as head of the sustainable design firm Mogavero Notestine Associates.

While the environmentally friendly or green elements of buildings are important, issues involving land use and transportation are even more critical because they are the foundations of communities, he said.

"The focus has to be on transforming our communities," said Mogavero at the Radisson Hotel, which hosted the meeting.

More than 50 people turned out for the forum, a new monthly event that seeks to raise awareness about sustainable practices and development in the region. The forum is believed to be the first interdisciplinary, community-wide gathering to focus on sustainability in Sacramento.

The forums will be held the third Thursday of every month. Organizer Rick Noss, who founded the forum with Jacob Griscom, said the turnout for the "experimental" event was "amazing." Noss owns Green Vision, which helps companies reduce the use of paper and toxic presentation materials.

People like Tony Woicekowski, a commercial energy management consultant, and Bing Gu, who owns solar-energy product manufacturer California Sunlight, said they came out to see what the forum was all about and to do some networking.

"It's a great concept," Woicekowski said. "This kind of interdisciplinary networking is something I've wanted to see happen for a long time."

During the event, participants broke out into five groups to discuss issues involving development, transportation, energy efficiency, water and food.

Forum organizers hoped the first event would help determine who's already working on sustainability in the community and where there may be opportunities to collaborate going forward, said Griscom, western regional manager for BetterWorld Telecom, a telecommunications company serving only businesses that support sustainability and social justice.

Mogavero said he got interested in fighting urban sprawl a few years into his practice, after he realized he was building "environmentally friendly," energy-efficient houses with passive solar energy in outlying areas — and the inhabitants were commuting 50 miles to work, which added to carbon emissions and other pollution, increased gas use, traffic and more. He decided to build homes in Sacramento at a time when few wanted to.

"The most important rule of ecological building is: location, location, location," he said. "Critical, critical, critical."
Mogavero said other approaches for building in an ecologically conscious way include:

1. Reusing existing buildings unless there's a good "density rationale" to destroy them;
2. Understanding how the body works and designing buildings to work with human physiology and the environment to minimize energy use;
3. Integrating each building's energy systems into a synergistic whole;
4. Choosing building materials manufactured in ways that don't produce harmful environmental impacts, such as mining and harvesting, high energy consumption or toxic by-products;
5. Using biomimicry, or materials that mimic biology in their manufacture and application;
6. Employing context integration, or using the location, environment and social context of a place to determine what a building needs to be;
7. Minimizing long-term obsolescence by designing buildings to accommodate changing needs and to accept future conservation adaptations.

Urban infill can be a difficult concept to sell, because not everyone wants it, Mogavero said.

However, he gave kudos to the city for leading the way in this region. The "real culprits" creating urban sprawl in the region are Elk Grove, Rancho Cordova and Placer County, he said.

"Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad," said Mogavero. "Those are the places where the real battles are in the long-term."

The suburbs hold plenty of opportunity for infill. Parking lots are just one example of developed land that can be redeveloped for higher density, he said.

By reducing sprawl, communities will be able to cut down on the costs of building and maintaining infrastructure.

"Our tax dollars are wasted by sprawl, and that's why we can't afford to maintain our infrastructure," Mogavero said. "That's one reason our local government is bankrupt."

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press. She can be reached at 804-2856 or suzanne@sacramentopress.com

Sustainability forums start Aug. 20

2009-08-13T03:15:54Z

The move toward a more sustainable city will take a step forward when the Sacramento Sustainability Forum launches next Thursday.

The regular monthly forum has been created to raise awareness about sustainable practices and development among people living and working in Sacramento, including those in business and government, said Rick Noss, who founded the forum with Jacob Griscom.

"For us, it gets the whole topic elevated throughout the community," said Noss, who also owns Green Vision, which helps companies reduce the use of paper and toxic presentation materials. "Awareness fosters growth and a paradigm shift to a more sustainable existence."

Sacramento is home to other groups and business organizations interested in sustainability, including Green Capital Alliance, the Environmental Council of Sacramento (ECOS), Sustainable Sacramento Business, Sustainable Urban Gardens and the Sacramento Area Regional Technology Alliance. One of the forum's goals is to gather people from these niche groups to discuss conservation and how it impacts business.

Another goal is to raise the influence of sustainability in Sacramento's marketplace, which, Noss said, would support businesses like his.

"From an ethical and moral standpoint, (sustainability is) something I believe in," he added.

About 50 people are expected to attend the first forum, which is scheduled for 6 p.m. Thursday, Aug. 20, at the Radisson Hotel, 500 Leisure Lane. They include local residents, environmentally friendly business owners, museum staff, architects, environmental engineers, developers and government employees.

Developer and architect David Mogavero of the sustainable design firm Mogavero Notestine Associates will give the keynote speech. Mogavero is president of ECOS and a board member for The Planning and Conservation League. He has long promoted sustainable building and smart-growth practices and policies.

The forum will include roundtable discussions of key topics related to sustainability in the local community and on a larger scale. The break-out sessions will be led by Angela Shepard of Green Capital Alliance. Someone from each table will make a brief presentation summing up that table's discussion.

Griscom and Noss came up with the idea for the forum at a networking event. Griscom serves as western regional manager for BetterWorld Telecom, a telecommunications company serving only businesses that support sustainability and social justice.

For more information, go to the Sustainability Forum event page.

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter for The Sacramento Press.