thelifesimple

Low Impact Development: Projects for a Healthy Watershed

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

Contact:            Lana Adams

                        (805) 286-0072

[email protected]

                        http://slogreenbuild.org/

 

Low Impact Development: Projects for a Healthy Watershed

 

Sustainability implies long-term, stretched time-scales...forever. It's intimidating! SLO Green Build, the San Luis Bay Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation and Santa Lucia Chapter of the Sierra Club, and local government agencies have joined together to present ideas on low impact development and a healthy watershed on Wednesday, April 1 from 6:00 until 9:00 pm at the Atascadero Lake Pavilion.

 

Three presentations will focus on sharing a watershed approach to focus our individual and collective efforts towards sustainability and will show tools available to ensure that those efforts lead to real change, on-the-ground.

 

There will be beer, wine and pizza available while guests enjoy live music and networking between the presentations.

 

Keynote Speakers

 

Noah Smukler, Morro Bay City Council Member, will present the local Spencer's Market LID Stormwater Restoration Project where low impact development is modeled for future renovation and development.

 

Dominic Roques, PG, is a registered geologist working for the Central Coast Water Board where he is helping to define and pursue the Board's vision of Healthy Watersheds. He has embraced the watershed approach in his work in water quality protection, which has included: creating water quality monitoring programs for citizens; designing pollutant reduction strategies in impaired waterbodies; research and administration of stream and wetland protection; and regulation of urban stormwater. Dominic represents the Water Board on the Executive Committee of the Morro Bay National Estuary Program and also serves on the Water Operations Advisory Committee of his local community.

 

Darla Inglis, PhD, is the Director of the Central Coast Low Impact Development Center. Darla has provided expertise on many LID projects nationwide including award-winning designs that balance growth with environmental integrity through the use of innovative and sustainable water resource protection strategies and techniques. An integral part of her work is bringing together government agencies, the public, developers, and environmental groups to integrate natural watershed functions as part of livable communities.

 

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Green Residential Renovation and Remodels

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:            Lana Adams
                        (805) 286-0072
                        [email protected] 
                        http://slogreenbuild.org/

Green Residential Renovation and Remodels

SLO Green Build presents a Learn-Build-Save workshop focused on energy-efficient residential renovations and remodels Monday, March 30, 2009 from 6:30 until 8:30 pm.

Jim McNamaraof EOC will discuss both the utility company and the federally funded low-income energy efficiency programs throughout the county.

Kevin Hauber of the Mortgage House will share special funding opportunities specifically for energy efficiency improvements.

Location: San Luis Obispo Library, 995 Palm Street

Networking opportunities and snacks provided.  Suggested donation: $5

The SLO Green Build Learn-Build-Save workshop series is co-sponsored by the California Central Coast Chapter of the USGBC. These workshops bring useful green building topics to builders and home owners on a monthly basis. 

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John Williams (Frog's Leap Winery) at the GEL Conference 2007

Frog's Leap creates outstanding wines - but that's just the beginning. For almost 30 years, John Williams has built an organization that creates good outcomes for customers, employees, and the earth. (Frog's Leap was organic from the beginning, well before it became the trend.) Case study in "creating good" in many ways simultaneously.

John Williams at Gel 2007 from Gel Conference on Vimeo.

The GEL (Good Experience Live) 2009 Conference is coming at the end of April in NYC, wish I could go, it looks great!

Also take a look at the Good Experiencewebsite and blog, really good stuff there (including this video and others from the GEL conferences.)

simply,

Tim

Killing the Phone Book to Save the Environment - Bracco HFP

You've got to take a look at this great post by Bob Ragsdale over at Bracco HFP.  He's pointing us to an effort to get rid of duplicate phone books.  This is and has been a pet peeve of mine!  Here's what he says about talking with the folks over at Yellowpagesgonegreen.org.

"When I spoke with Philip he told me “We don’t want to eliminate the phone books, we just want to give people the option to have them or not have them. We want to stop the throwing away of phone books.” Philip’s mission is to eliminate the “incredible waste” that these extra books account for. According to YellowPagesGoesGreen over 500 Million phone books (nearly two for every U.S. citizen) are produced each year. Their statistics go on to show that if that number were cut in half (one book per citizen) the annual resource savings would equal:

• 10 million trees
• 800 million tons of paper
• 3.6 million barrels of oil
• 1.6 billion kilowatt hours of electricity"

This is good stuff - go there now and sign up - I did!

simply,

Tim

Running out of Power

There's an interesting analogy by John Maeda in his book "The Laws of Simplicity":

He compares our actions in the world today as we consume the natural resources that are not renewable to his consuming his battery on his laptop.  He says at times he takes his laptops on trips without the power cord to see how long he can keep working without charging.  this requires him to conserve the battery and use the laptop sparingly.

This would be a great activity for all of us to try to connect us personally with a planet that is running out of natural resources.  Perhaps have our kids go a week without their iPod or cell phone chargers to give them an idea about conservation.  Give it a shot and let me know how it works out. 

simply,

Tim