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Events

Resources

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS - Grant funds available to support municipal Green Vehicle Fleet

This competitive grant opportunity for municipalities is provided through The Heinz Endowments 2011 Summer Youth Philanthropy Program in partnership with Sustainable Pittsburgh.

This grant program, developed and administered by Sustainable Pittsburgh's three interns, is in response to need indentified in the Sustainable Community Essentials Rapid Assessment. For example, of the 108 municipalities who have completed the Rapid Assessment, the data reveals many municipalities have conducted energy audits of facilities. By contrast very few have examined vehicle fleets for parallel opportunities to save money and conserve resources. With gas prices on the rise, savings can be achieved by addressing the vehicle fleet.

Municipalities in southwestern PA are encouraged to explore the RFP and associated case study on Green Vehicle Fleets and consider how they can save money while getting more miles per gallon and producing less emissions too.

Resources Continued

Improving Healing Environments:
Strategic Environmental Solutions

Thursday, July 21
7:30 am – 3:00 pm
Fairmont Pittsburgh, 510 Market Street, Downtown Pittsburgh 15222
Cost: $105 for C4S/Sustainable Pittsburgh Members
$125 Nonmembers
Students: Special Rate
Lunch and Coffee Provided
More information and registration

This workshop, the second of a five-part series on sustainability and healthcare, features interactive work sessions with healthcare experts in energy, waste, infection control/green cleaning, and green building operational areas.

According to the US Environmental Protection Agency, "Hospitals operate all day everyday, making their environmental footprint large in many communities. Hospitals generate approximately 7,000 tons per day of waste, including infectious waste, hazardous waste, and solid waste."

During the workshop, each session will provide information on cutting edge solutions for health organization leaders in addressing the challenges of energy, waste, infection control, and facility design in practical and strategic ways.

What happened at the first session of this series?
Click here for highlights from the previous Sustainability and Healthcare session on June 2, "Making the Business Case."

About the C4S Sustainable Healthcare Series: Improving the Healing Environment
Sustainable Pittsburgh’s sustainable business network, Champions for Sustainability (C4S), in collaboration with the region’s healthcare partners, has launched this series of workshops that advances the mutually reinforcing agendas of sustainability and healthcare. The series is designed to build social capital and capacity in sustainability. The emphasis for each event involves articulating the health outcomes, healthcare benefits, and business case, as well as best practices, resources, examples, and how to get started.
Learn about the entire series here.

Reduce you and your family's exposure to everyday toxins

Saturday, July 9
10:00 am - 11:30 am
Peter’s Township Library, 616 E. McMurray Road, McMurray 15317
Cost: $20 per person/$25 per couple
To register, contact Sarah Alessio at (412) 488-7490 ext. 236, by email at saraha@ccicenter.org or by registering online at www.zerowastepgh.org.

The workshop, entitled Healthy Body, Healthy Home, Healthy Planet, is designed to heighten the public’s awareness and encourage action around the issues of common toxins in the environment and their affect on human health.

In 2004 the Environmental Working Group tested the blood of 10 Americans and found over 287 chemicals present. What was even more troubling was that these 10 Americans were newborn babies, blood taken from their umbilical cords.

Everyone is exposed to a number of different chemicals, carcinogens, and toxins in our environment on a daily basis. These exposures can come from cell phones, ingredients in personal care products, cleaning products, plastics, and so on. While individuals may have no control over some exposures, there are many that people do have control over, and there are steps to take to reduce exposure and improve the health of the environment.

The program provides the public with practical solutions such as safe alternatives for cleaning products, personal care products and healthy lifestyle choices. In an effort to reduce one’s exposure to toxins and to reduce the amount of toxins in our environment, all workshop participants will receive a non-toxic green cleaning kit.

Citizen Water Quality Monitoring Training

Wednesday, July 13
9:00 am - 3:00 pm
Blackberry Meadows Farm, 7115 Ridge Road, Natrona Heights 15065
The workshop is FREE and open to the public, however, pre-registration is required.
For more information about the workshop and to register online visit www.pasafarming.org/marcellusshalechoices.
Contact Leah Smith at leah@pasafarming.org or (412) 977-6514 with questions.

The Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture (PASA) has received a grant from the Colcom Foundation to develop action-oriented tools and trainings throughout western Pennsylvania to help farmers, rural land owners, and other citizens make informed, integrated decisions, understand legal issues, and engage in environmental monitoring and local organizing efforts related to Marcellus Shale Gas issues within their communities.

This second workshop in the Marcellus Shale Choices series, “Citizen Water Quality Monitoring Training” will be facilitated by staff of the Dickinson College Alliance of Aquatic Resource Monitoring (ALLARM) and the Mountain Watershed Association. This training will focus on environmental monitoring. Participants will learn water quality monitoring protocols that have been developed for citizen projects with the goal of monitoring small streams and their watersheds for early detection of the impacts from Marcellus Shale gas extraction in PA.

Participants in this training will learn:
• The Science of Marcellus Shale Gas
• The Science of ALLARM's Water Quality Monitoring Protocol
• How to choose monitoring locations
• How to get information on well sites
• Visual Assessment of Natural Gas Activities
• Chemical Water Quality Monitoring Protocol

Monitoring Equipment will be available for purchase from ALLARM during the workshop. If you would like to purchase the monitoring equipment, please indicate your preference when you register. Information on equipment available is online.

Live Webcast/Report Release: Sizing the Clean Economy: A National and Regional Green Jobs Assessment

Wednesday, July 13
9:00 am
Registration is not required to view the webcast.
Please visit www.brookings.edu/cleaneconomy for details.

The Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings will host a forum entitled, “Sizing the Clean Economy: A National and Regional Green Jobs Assessment” highlighting the release of a major new report on the growth and status of the clean economy in the U.S. The event will draw together business, economic development, and political leaders to review the clean industries’ progress, identify policy issues and opportunities, and consider how the nation, states and regions might facilitate faster and broader growth of the clean economy.

REVITALIZING ROUTE 51 - Challenges and Opportunities along a Multi-Municipal Commercial Corridor

REGISTRATION RE-OPENED
Wednesday, July 13
6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Brentwood Community Room, 3501 Brownsville Road, Pittsburgh 15227
Registration is now open at http://pittsburgh.uli.org

From the Liberty Tunnels to the neighborhood of Jefferson Hills, Route 51 has long been an area of hopeful improvement. What would it take to create a sustainable corridor in this important thoroughfare serving more than a half dozen municipalities?

Join presenters Greg Jones, Executive Director – Economic Development South; Ruthann Omer, Borough Engineer along Rt. 51; and Jen Bee, Design Architect with AIA to hear the latest on the challenges and opportunities facing the revitalization of the South Hills Parkway.

Backyard Composting Workshop

Monday, July 18
6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
Whole Foods Market, 5880 Centre Avenue, East Liberty 15206
Cost: $50 Single/$55 Couple (Includes one compost unit per registration)
Click here to register or call (412) 488-7490 ext. 226.

Composting is nature’s way of recycling. By utilizing the natural process of decomposition, organic materials often considered “waste,” such as grass clippings, food scraps, autumn leaves and even paper, can be recycled back into a rich soil conditioner. Through this transition, soil organisms, many of which are too small to see, break down the organic material in a compost pile so that valuable plant nutrients can be released for future generations of plants to use. Composting helps you reduce your waste stream, it improves the health of your gardens, and most of all its easy to do and enjoyable.

This workshop thoroughly covers the importance of composting, setting up a compost pile, proper maintenance and ways of using finished compost. Participants will receive an Earth Machine Compost Bin with attendance. This bin, approved across the state as an ideal bin for urban and suburban areas, has an eighty-gallon capacity.

Resources

REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS - Grant funds available to support municipal Green Vehicle Fleet

This competitive grant opportunity for municipalities is provided through The Heinz Endowments 2011 Summer Youth Philanthropy Program in partnership with Sustainable Pittsburgh.

This grant program, developed and administered by Sustainable Pittsburgh's three interns, is in response to need indentified in the Sustainable Community Essentials Rapid Assessment. For example, of the 108 municipalities who have completed the Rapid Assessment, the data reveals many municipalities have conducted energy audits of facilities. By contrast very few have examined vehicle fleets for parallel opportunities to save money and conserve resources. With gas prices on the rise, savings can be achieved by addressing the vehicle fleet.

Municipalities in southwestern PA are encouraged to explore the RFP and associated case study on Green Vehicle Fleets and consider how they can save money while getting more miles per gallon and producing less emissions too.

Monaca in Beaver County becomes a model of sustainability

The Beaver County river town of Monaca -- with 6,000 residents, if that -- had good reason to respond to the call for municipalities to take a how-sustainable-are-you test earlier this year.

To almost every question in Sustainable Pittsburgh's checklist of things municipalities are doing to save more, waste less and develop -- even reinvent -- themselves sustainably, Monaca was one municipality in about two handfuls that could answer yes.

Greening Southwest PA: A blog from The Heinz Endowments Interns
"Monaca, A Model for Sustainability"

The Heinz Endowments Program is an internship that grants 36 high-school students the chance to work to improve their community by developing and implementing a youth philanthropy project. The interns at Sustainable Pittsburgh have launched a blog as part of their project to highlight efforts that southwestern Pennsylvanian municipalities are doing to make their communities more sustainable. It is their hope that these creative ideas will inspire other municipal governments to start their own programs, as well as inform citizens how they can help with their efforts. The interns' philanthropy is focused on making municipal vehicle fleets more sustainable, either through education, alternative fuels, alternative transportation or through other means.

Public housing is facing a steep cutback

The region's biggest landlords fear they may not have the money next year to update boilers, redo kitchens and bathrooms, maintain security and pay staff. That's because public housing agencies, which put roofs over the heads of 31,438 households in the Pittsburgh region, have gotten word that funding from Washington is about to plunge to levels last seen during some of the thriftiest years of President George W. Bush's administration. . . Regionwide, 12,020 families and individuals are on waiting lists to get into public housing units, and 9,111 households are waiting to get Section 8 rental vouchers.

Economic woes threaten Section 8 public housing

Fayette's troubles are shared by authorities nationwide, as the program that helps house 3 million households nationwide, and around 15,000 in the Pittsburgh region, shares the pain from an overall cut in public housing funding. . . The Housing Authority of the City of Pittsburgh has a Section 8 waiting list that is nearly 4,000 names long. The Allegheny County Housing Authority's list is just 484 families long, but it has been closed to new names for years and creation of a fresh list by summer's end should result in a much longer queue. Other counties' authorities report voucher waiting lists ranging from 1,786 households in Westmoreland to 25 in Greene.

Seven Billion Souls and Counting: The Issue We Won’t Discuss

Nothing in human or natural life is infinite: One day world population must and will stop expanding. Yet there's remarkably little U.S. or global discussion of the perils in today's rising world population — to food, to climate, and in fomenting social tensions and economic crises.

Mother, Caring for Seven Billion

Mother, the film, breaks a 40-year taboo by bringing to light an issue that silently fuels our most pressing environmental, humanitarian and social crises - population growth. For the first time in 2011, the world’s population will reach seven billion people. Population was once at the top of the international agenda, dominating the first Earth Day and the subject of best-selling books like "The Population Bomb". Since the 1960s the world population has nearly doubled, adding more than 3 billion people. At the same time, talking about population has become politically incorrect because of the sensitivity of the issues surrounding the topic–religion, economics, family planning and gender inequality. Yet it is an issue we cannot afford to ignore.

Alternative sources energize businesses

So far, the state's utilities are meeting requirements mandated by the Alternative Energy Portfolio Standards Act of 2004. It set targets for the utilities to obtain an increasing portion of the electricity they supply from alternative sources, said Public Utility Commission spokeswoman Denise McCracken. Electric companies in Pennsylvania are required to have 9.73 percent of power sales come from alternative sources during the year that started in June through May 2012. The requirements began in 2006 and increase annually to 18.5 percent by June 2020.

On the Allegheny Front: David And Goliath Shale Battle Plays Out in SWPA Town

The Allegheny Front is now on Essential Public Radio, 90.5 FM. Listen to the entire show: A small rural town gets in a tussle with a major Marcellus gas driller. While the firework smoke may have blown away, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Pipeline editor points out that every day is Independence Day in the Marcellus shale game. The Marcellus News Roundup looks at EPA's evaluation of fracturing and the latest on Morgantown W.Va's attempt to regulate the industry. TAF Executive Producer Kathy Knauer welcomes new listeners to the show. And a fond farewell to a connoisseur of common flowers.

Timeline: 70 Years of Environmental Change

Environmental milestones over 13 presidential administrations.

The Official Map: A Handbook for Preserving and Providing Public Lands & Facilities

The Pennsylvania Land Trust Association partnered with state agencies in developing a comprehensive handbook for municipalities, counties and planners on the implementation of an official map for the purpose of preserving lands and providing public facilities.

State program helps novices get a taste of camping out

"Almost a whole generation has missed out, where they're not participating in outdoors activities. They're not getting outside," he said. "We think we can provide a learning activity for youth through their parents, by giving them a brush-up on outdoor activities. Basically, we want to impart a natural resources stewardship attitude in the general public." The program enables families to rent basic camping equipment at 14 state parks. The rental fee is $20, plus the base site fee of $15 per night for Pennsylvania residents. On arrival, a park worker shows them how to use the gear.

E.P.A. Chief Stands Firm as Tough Rules Loom

In the next weeks and months, Lisa P. Jackson, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, is scheduled to establish regulations on smog, mercury, carbon dioxide, mining waste and vehicle emissions that will affect every corner of the economy.

More

Large cut in U.S. transportation budget proposed

Mr. Mica's bill will propose eliminating or consolidating about 70 programs and dropping a requirement that states spend a small percentage of their funding on "transportation enhancements" like pedestrian and bicycle improvements. It would not allow states to impose tolls on existing interstate highway lanes but they would be permitted to impose tolls on new lanes and existing non-interstate highways. The bill also will seek to speed up project delivery by eliminating or modifying permit and environmental requirements.

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Sustainable Pittsburgh affects decision-making in the Pittsburgh Region to integrate economic prosperity, social equity and environmental quality bringing sustainable solutions to communities and businesses.

Sustainable Pittsburgh benefits from support ($1,000 and up) in 2011 from:

Allegheny County - Dan Onorato, County Executive
Bayer Corporation
Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation
BNY Mellon
Dollar Bank
FedEx Ground
The Heinz Endowments
Highmark
Elsie H. Hillman Foundation
Richard King Mellon Foundation
Pashek Associates LTD
Pittsburgh Quarterly
PNC Financial Services Group
Port Authority of Allegheny County
UPMC


Special thanks to the SP Members

Sustainable Pittsburgh
425 Sixth Avenue, Suite 1335
Pittsburgh, PA 15219
(412) 258-6642
fax (412) 258-6645
E-mail SP