Chicago's Comer Youth Center green roof wins ASLA award

I've got this fantasy about starting a network of agriculture-supporting green roofs, akin to the one at Rooftop Farms in Brooklyn. Seems as though I'm onto something. Much more here.

Fragile Waterways

In honor of Earth Day, New York's PBS station just ran a good overview of some of the most pressing water resource issues in New York State. The piece includes investigations of the Gowanus Canal, the Great Lakes, hydrofracking, and Peconic Bay. A decent soundtrack too: Radiohead, Explosions in the Sky (?), Phish, etc. Check it out:

Hydrofracking for dummies

I found an informative, easy to read USGS primer on hydrofracking today. A great, quick read that explains the very contentious practice from an unbiased, scientific perspective and even provides a spoonful of geology to those of us that somehow escaped undergrad without taking any...

Check it out here.

Upper Green River Valley, Wyoming, post-hydrofracking (walkeastwood.org)

Greenroofs for Redstarts

In another success story for urban wildlife, green roof professionals in Sheffield, England have replicated habitat favored by the Black Redstart to the degree that the birds now appear to inhabit the roofs.

Also, there's an audio slideshow of a "greenroof safari" here. The narration explains some of the benefits of green roofs and depicts a variety of those found in Sheffield (actually, the show provides a good sense of the different intents and designs associated with greenroofs, from recreation areas to those made to mimic habitat). Our intrepid narrator gets inexplicably and disconcertingly winded at the end... perhaps an issue with heights?

The Bronx River Lives!

Alewife are back for a second year in a row.

Water quality impacts of hydrofracking

While doing some research on hydrofracking, I turned up this great article from ProPublica. As it turns out, the site has an entire section devoted to the environmental impacts of gas drilling.

More recently, Yale's Environment 360 published an enlightening piece on hydrofracking in the NYC watershed and the Philadelphia City Council requested that the Delaware River Basin Commission deny a permit to drill until an environmental impact statement can be completed.

In Brooklyn, Lettuce, Not Steel, Scrapes the Sky

Today the Atlantic published an inspiring piece by Annie Novak of Rooftop Farms. Check it out: In Brooklyn, Lettuce, Not Steel, Scrapes the Sky.

Coupla videos to share

First, I present The Story of Bottled Water.

Second, A Simple Question: The Story of STRAW:



Third, Tapped:

Sayonara to the bluefin tuna?

Perhaps.

Here is the review of ICCAT referenced in the NY Times article. And here is a salient excerpt:

The judgement of the international community will be based largely on how ICCAT manages fisheries on bluefin tuna. ICCAT CPCs’ performance in managing fisheries on bluefin tuna particularly in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea is widely regarded as an international disgrace and the international community which has entrusted the management of this iconic species to ICCAT deserve better performance from ICCAT than it has received to date.

For more interesting/depressing reading on ICCAT's bluefin tuna management efforts, check out pages 56-62 of the linked document.

EPA will study hydrofracking again

Today, EPA confirmed that its Office of Research and Development will investigate hydrofracking again.

I was asked yesterday to be involved in the study design effort, so I'm researching to get up to speed. Here's some of the background material I've unearthed thus far:

EPA conducted a study in 2004 on the impact that hydrofracking coalbed methane (CBM) wells has on underground sources of drinking water (USDW) and found that "the injection of hydraulic fracturing fluids into CBM wells poses little or no threat to USDWs." That report can be found here. EPA also entered into a Memorandum of Agreement with BJ Services Company, Halliburton Energy Services, Inc., and Schlumberger Technology Corporation regarding the elimination of the use of diesel fuel in hydrofracking fluids. The MOA can be found here.

Recently, there has been interest in using hydrofracking to get to gas buried beneath other types of geology. For example, there is considerable interest in hydrofracking gas wells to crack the the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania and southwestern New York State. (Check out the NY Times archive if you're curious.) The NYS Dept. of Environmental Conservation released a draft supplemental generic environmental impact statement (EIS) regarding proposed hydrofracking in the Marcellus on September 30, 2009. EPA submitted comments on the EIS on December 30, 2009.

More to come...