GreenClips.46 04.24.96 SAN JOSE DRAWS A GREEN LINE San Jose, the unofficial capital of California's Silicon Valley and the Bay Area's largest city, plans to contain development within a new long-term growth boundary. "My intent is to lock in a permanent green line around the city of San Jose," says Mayor Susan Hammer, the initiative's principal sponsor. "I think we have a responsibility to protect our hillsides and protect some open space for future generations." Setting growth limits has been the city's strategy since the 1980s. San Jose's current 2020 General Plan includes an "urban service area" boundary defining the area where the city will provide services. But Mayor Hammer's green-line initiative virtually sets it in stone, expanding the boundary a bit to include reserve lands. Studies show that extending urban services - roads, sewers, water, schools - to new suburbs costs cities more than revenue gains from expansion. A recent American Farmland Trust study, for example, showed that continue dsprawl in California's Central Valley would lead to city budget shortfalls in the region. But some developers argue that a green line is inflexible and attempts to impose urban living on people who want to live in suburbs. -The Christian Science Monitor, April 17, 1996, p. 3, by Daniel Sneider. REPORT MEASURES UK's SUSTAINABLE PROGRESS The UK's Department of the Environment (DoE) recently published a report titled "Indicators of Sustainable Development for the United Kingdom" to stimulate debate about what sustainable development means and how to measure progress toward achieving it. The DoE measured indicators in 21 areas including land use, water, climate change, trade, agriculture, waste, forestry, marine, and energy - where they identified the most notable finding. DoE found no significant energy savings in buildings over the last 25 years. More energy consumption in residential buildings - mainly for greater comfort and more appliances - offset savings from new efficiencies. Peter Burberry is professor emeritus of building engineering at UMIST. He believes the UK should focus on the energy efficiency of existing building stock instead of new buildings. Since the UK's present new building rate is 0.75 percent per year, action on new buildings will not have a useful effect soon. The report is the DoE's first attempt to measure sustainability. They plan to repeat the exercise every two years or so. - The Architects' Journal, 21 March 1996, p. 17, by Barrie Evans, and 11 April 1996, p. 22, by Peter Burberry. TAXING POLLUTION AND DEPLETION As our checks find their way to the Internal Revenue Service, David Roodman, a research associate with the Worldwatch Institute in Washington DC, offers some food for thought. Instead of dampening work and investment by taxing wages and profit, Roodman thinks the government should tax activities that hurt the economy and society. Farmers who spray fertilizer and pesticide on their crops to boost yields, for example, should directly pay the cost of the harm they do to our air, water, and health instead of leaving society with the environmental bill. Taxing air and water pollution and natural resource depletion would force environmental costs onto business ledgers, slowing environmental destruction. And "polluter pays" taxes could do double duty by replacing other taxes and environmental protection programs. – The Christian Science Monitor, April 9, 1996, p. 18, by David Roodman. AIA REVISES ENVIRONMENTAL RESOURCE GUIDE The American Institute of Architects has revised its Environmental Resource Guide (ERG), a comprehensive resource on green building design and construction. The ERG has three main sections - Project Reports, Application Reports, Materials Reports - in a three-ring binder to accommodate annual updates beginning in 1997. Project Reports feature case studies of recently completed projects. Application Reports compare environmental and performance characteristics of different materials [in these product categories – light framing, insulation, claddings, wall finishes, and resilient flooring]. Materials Reports detail the environmental life-cycle of 20 building materials from brick to plastic laminates, from terrazzo tile to office workstation fabrics. Publisher John Wiley & Sons offers the ERG at an introductory price of $150 until May 1,1996. [To order call 800.225.5945.] - The Green Business Letter, February 1996, p. 2. SCHLUMBERGER'S MODEL TEXAS HILL COUNTRY CAMPUS Schlumberger Well Systems designs software to collect oil drilling data from the earth. Landscape architect J. Robert Anderson protected existing oak trees and two endangered species at the company's new 438-acre campus in the Texas Hill Country northwest of Austin. Schlumberger limited the imprint of its 200,000 square-foot, six-building campus to 12 acres - only 544 square feet is mown turf. Anderson and a team of environmental consultants surveyed every tree with a trunk more than eight inches in diameter, then identified construction techniques to avoid clearing them. By changing a proposed drainage pattern, Anderson spared 120 live oaks and other trees. An engineer proposed running utility trenching lines through natural areas, but Anderson rerouted them to a single right-of-way along two buildings, preventing vegetation destruction. Jim Fries, director of the Nature Conservancy's Texas Hill Country Bioreserve, calls Schlumberger's campus "a model of compatible economic development within an incredibly sensitive area of ecological significance. When we want to show people how to do R&D-style campus development, we take them to Schlumberger." - Landscape Architecture, April 1996, p. 56, by Michael Leccese. AUBURN'S RURAL STUDIO PUTS GREEN MATERIALS TO GOOD USE Auburn University architecture students built Shephard and Alberta Bryant, both in their 70s, their first real house. With little money, the students relied on straw, old automobile tires, and broken concrete curbing – all inexpensive and plentiful - to replace the Bryant's leaky shed of worn outboards and rusty tin patched with tar paper. Grants and gifts from local merchants covered the $16,500 needed to build the 850 square-foot straw bale house. The straw cost $350. Auburn's Rural Studio in Greensboro designs and constructs homes like this for rural Hale County, Alabama residents. Since the Rural Studio's start in 1993, about 90 students have gone to Greensboro for three-month periods to "do something useful for someone," says recent Auburn graduate Ruard Veltman. In another Rural Studio project, three students built a chapel for themselves. The owners of an estate in nearby Sawyerville offered them a wooded part of their property for the chapel. The team scavenged rusted I-beams from the Alabama Transportation Department, big trusses, pine from a 100-year old house, tin sheets from an old barn, and river slate. And a man under court order to clear his land of used automobile tires donated them to the project. The students covered the tire walls in stucco and painted them an earthy red-brown that looks like fieldstone. [For more information about Rural Studio, contact architect and Auburn professor Samuel Mockbee at 334.844.5429 or mockbsa@mail.auburn.edu.] - The New York Times, April 18, 1996, p. B1, by Sydney LeBlanc.