GreenClips.199 08.28.02 DOE'S DECATHLON SHOWCASES STUDENT-DESIGNED SOLAR HOUSES A house designed and built by Carnegie Mellon University students will be entered in the inaugural Solar Decathlon, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) contest that culminates in late September on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The Solar Decathlon is the brainchild of Richard King, who heads photovoltaic research and development for DOE and who earlier dreamed up the Sunrayce, a contest of solar-powered cars designed by engineering students. For the Decathlon, 14 teams of university students are designing and building 500- to 800-square-foot houses that depend completely on solar energy. The houses will be set up on the Mall for the competition. Each entry will be judged in 10 categories, including livability, refrigeration, lighting and "getting around." Unlike the other entries, which are all ranch-style houses, the CMU house is designed with a loft bedroom to better fit on a city lot. The CMU house includes triple-pane windows, an electric heat pump for heating and cooling (the National Park Service won't allow drilling on the Mall for a ground-source heat pump), a heat-recovery ventilator, and solar hot water collectors. On the roof, 42 photovoltaic panels will produce a total of 7 kilowatts of electricity. After the competition, the team may re-erect the house on a permanent foundation on campus, and have students live in it to see how it works. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 12 Aug 2002, by Byron Spice. [More: http://www.eren.doe.gov/solar_decathlon ] REPORT TIES SPRAWL TO WATER WOES In a just released study, three national environmental organizations call attention to the connection between suburban development and water shortages. Greater Boston loses up to 100 billion gallons of water each year because parking lots, roads and buildings send rain into storm drains instead of into underground lakes, according to the report, titled "Paving Our Way to Water Shortages." And the worst regional drought on record is taking a heavy toll in the Carolinas, where some of the country's fastest-growing cities and suburbs are proving unexpectedly vulnerable to water shortages. "We know sprawl wastes land -- now we know it wastes an astonishing amount of water," said Elizabeth Heyd of the Natural Resources Defense Council, which sponsored the study along with American Rivers and Smart Growth America. But Clayton Traylor of the National Association of Homebuilders said the report's premise was flawed because "water doesn't just disappear." Rainfall that doesn't penetrate the ground is captured in some other closed system, such as a lake, reservoir or stream, he said. Independent water experts cautioned that hydrology makes it difficult to gauge the exact effect of development on natural water flows, but that rapid growth is making more American communities prone to drought. "Because of development, we're much more vulnerable than we've ever been," said Mark Svoboda, a climatologist at the National Drought Mitigation Center in Lincoln, Nebraska. Boston Globe, 29 Aug 2002, p B1, by Anthony Flint, and The New York Times, 28 Aug 2002, p A1, by Douglas Jehl. [Download report: http://www.americanrivers.org/landuse/sprawldroughtreport.htm ] CATAWBA COLLEGE ENVIRONMENTAL CENTER TEACHES BY EXAMPLE The new building housing the Center for the Environment at Catawba College in Salisbury, North Carolina was designed to be as much a place of learning as the sprawling wetland preserve that's outside its doors. Designed by KKA Architecture in Salisbury, the 21,000-square-foot, three-story environmental education center is tall and thin to minimize its footprint and save indigenous vegetation. Trees and plants that had to be cleared were used in and around the building as mantels, landscaping mulch and wildlife habitat. The building is oriented for daylighting, with large overhangs on the southeastern side to reduce summer heat gain. In winter, a bluff protects the building from northern winds. Rooftop photovoltaic panels generate electricity and solar panels provide hot water. The center's landscape provides a natural transition from the facility to the wetlands preserve. Irrigation for three wildlife ponds, numerous bogs, flowing streams and waterfalls comes from the building's rainwater runoff, which is collected in two 5,000-gallon cisterns. Eighty-six percent of construction debris was recycled, including steel, gypsum, PVC piping and cardboard. The center cost 20 to 25 percent more than a similarly sized conventional building but those costs should be recouped in a few years thanks to reduced operating costs. Students will monitor the building's systems to track how weather and building usage affect energy consumption. More: http://www.catawba.edu/environ/center.htm IS Magazine, Jul-Aug 2002, p 40, by Diane Wintroub Calmenson. [Full text: http://www.isdesignet.com/Magazine/J_A02/sfeature_building.shtml ] ARSENIC LEVELS REMAIN HIGH FOR YEARS IN CCA-TREATED WOOD A new study warns that arsenic used to treat outdoor wood products doesn't dissipate with time and that children who play on decade-old equipment are as likely to be exposed to high levels of the potential cancer-causing agent as are those who play on structures manufactured recently. Last February, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the chemical and home-improvement industries announced a two-year phaseout of the use of the wood preservative -- known as chromated copper arsenate or CCA -- in pressure-treated wood used for fences, decks, playground equipment and boardwalks. The EPA has said it "does not believe there is any reason to remove or replace arsenic-treated structures, including decks or playground equipment." But the new study, released by the Environmental Working Group and the University of North Carolina-Asheville, strongly challenges the EPA's assertion that older arsenic-treated lumber poses less of a threat than newer wood products treated with CCA. Using wipe tests from 263 decks, playsets, picnic tables and sandboxes in 45 states, researchers found that arsenic levels on wood surfaces remain high for 20 years -- the entire useful life of the wood. The Washington Post, 29 Aug 2002, p A02, by Eric Pianin. [Download report: http://www.ewg.org/reports/allhandsondeck ] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 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