SusanCampriello: My Works

As heard on Uptown Radio.

TRANSCRIPT: 

CAMPRIELLO:
For decades, some building owners have welcomed an evaluation their building on a range of criteria around issues of environmental quality. Board inspectors mainly judge a building’s interior—how efficiently water and electricity are used. They evaluate indoor air quality. But for the outside of the building, inspectors look at just one thing: is stormwater is routed in such a way to prevent flooding. And some landscape architects say it is time for inspectors to put more emphasis on the design of the exterior of buildings and the land on which they sit.

Leonard Hopper is one. He teaches landscape architecture at City College at New York School of Architecture. He says the current inspection system, known as LEED, with its focus on buildings, neglects other sustainable practices.

AX HOPPER (9.4 seconds):
It turned out you could have a very well designed landscape that actually would not be suitable for any sort of LEED recognition at all unless it was associated with a building.

CAMPRIELLO:
Hopper says the problem is that there’s no incentive, or recognition, for land developed in an environmentally friendly way. That’s changing. A few years ago, a consortium of universities, landscape architects and botanic gardens joined together to create something called Sustainable Sites Initiative, with a rating system for landscapes—standards separate from current standards for buildings.

Hopper says sites could be certified based on sustainability, regardless of whether a building is there, or not.

Heather Venhaus, of Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center at the University of Texas at Austin, is the project manager for this new landscape initiative. She says in an ideal future, buildings and their surrounding landscapes will be rated not as separate spheres, but on the way in which they compliment each other.

AX VENHAUS (15.8 seconds):
So with those properties that do have have buildings, you’re looking for a symbiotic relationship between the building and the landscape, how can waste of one become a resource for the other, and how can there be mutual benefits to achieve the sustainability.

CAMPRIELLO:
One mutual benefit, for example, is how wastewater might be filtered and reused for landscape irrigation. Thoughtful landscaping can help prevent floods. Rooftop gardens can cool buildings. Trees can shield a structure from wind.

Increasingly, technology is being used to chart and map elevation changes and watercourses. This enables high-tech designers to create wastewater systems that prevent flooding. Professor Hopper says increasingly the curriculum is bringing students of architecture and landscape together into the same classroom.

AX HOPPER (19.5 seconds):
So they’re beginning at a very early stage, in their second year, to begin to understand that stormwater management, and orientation and site analysis and all kinds of environmental factors play an important part in not only siting their building, but in designing their buildings, as well.

CAMPRIELLO:
Hopper says technology is advancing green initiatives in other ways, too. He says students have access to an increasing number of environmentally friendly building materials. This year, for example, he’s teaching students how to work with permeable pavements.

The market is catching up with green designers, too. Jim Lapides with the American Society of Landscape Architects says developers can now apply for government funds and tax credits if their property is environmentally friendly. And, he says, there’s a certain amount of cache that landscapers have over the competition if they propose a sustainable site.

AX LAPIDES (14.3 seconds):
That’s how you differentiate your project from someone else if you’re looking to give yourself an edge if you’re getting something approved, if it’s going to be a minimal, if not positive benefit, to the environment: it’s important.

CAMPRIELLO:
Lapides says business owners are beginning to reap the benefits of going green, too. Landlords can charge more rent if they own high-tech, green buildings. Increasingly, tenants want to live and work in buildings that make them feel like they’re helping the environment.

Going forward, landscape designs will be rated differently depending on where they’re located. Heather Venhaus says this will reflect the varied environmental concerns across the country.

AX VENHAUS (15.7 seconds):
And so it may be that in one region, water may be more of an issue than air quality, so in that region, the water points will be ranked higher than the air quality points, and it may be vice versa in other areas.

CAMPRIELLO:
Landscapers say rating their sites should have happened long ago. But agree, when it comes to the environment, it’s better late than never.

Susan Campriello, Columbia Radio News.

On Thurday, a panel of environmentalists from around the globe met to discuss geetically engineered trees and wood based biofuels.

As heard on Uptown Radio. 

CAMPRIELLO:
The panel took place during the UN Forum on Indigenous Issues. Ann Peterman, of the Global Environmental Justice Project, said there are lots of reason why deforestation is taking place.

AX PETERMAN (16.15 seconds):
The basic driver, I think, of deforestation globally at this point is just massive over consumption of all kinds of wood-based products from construction material to paper to advertisements in newspapers to, you know, throw-away cups, you know, you name it.

CAMPRIELLO:
And there’s one more: forests are being used for biofuel production.

Trees are either felled and pulped and converted into biofuel, or, forests are cleared so that farmers can plant other crops, like eucalyptus, poplars and oil palms, which can be used to make biofuels.

That’s bad news for indigenous people who live in forests, according to Abdon Nababan, the secretary general of an Indonesian group called Indigenous Peoples Alliance of the Archipelago. He says that Indonesia has seen the world’s most rapid rate of tropical forest deforestation. Between 1950 and 2000, Indonesia lost forty percent of its forest cover. Over the last ten years, the rate of loss has increased by over sixty-six percent.

He played a video [”My Forest Tears”] for the panel that showed scenes of uncut, natural forests full of life, human and animal…and then pictures of dry, barren land.

Income from logging and production of wood-based ethanol has been good for the country, he says, but bad for indigenous people who have lost their forest homelands and landed in poverty.

AX NABABAN (1.71 seconds):
Poverty in the midst of plenty.

CAMPRIELLO:
Nababan says corrupt political and economic systems in Indonesia have made the problem only worse. The gap between these people and the elite has become even more apparent.

AX NABABAN (2.38 seconds):
So you control the forests, you control the country.

CAMPRIELLO:
Meanwhile, as more and more land is being used to grow crops for fuel production, the price of food has gone up according to Simone Lovera, of the Global Forest Coalition.

AX LOVERA (9.33 seconds):
[I] mean there are so many poor families all over the world who cannot buy food for their children anymore as we speak because of agri-diesels, because of agri-fuel.

CAMPRIELLO:
There are also serious ecological problems that accompany deforestation. Ann Peterman says that burning roots and stumps to clear a logged forest pumping carbon into the atmosphere.

AX PETERMAN (7.62 seconds):
The burning of peat forests for oil palm plantations has made Indonesia the third largest emitter of carbon in the world.

CAMPRIELLO:
Also, agri-businesses genetically engineer plants to produce more biofuel and to resist insect infestations. Just as the use of antibiotics can give rise to so-called super-bugs, Peterman worries that engineering trees to naturally produce a pesticide known as “Bt” may literally create super-bugs.

AX PETERMAN (16.3 seconds):
The use of Bt trees will contribute to the existence to Bt-resistant super-insects. In other words, because there’s Bt present all the time in every part of the tree, insects can rapidly develop an immunity to the Bt, which means more toxic pesticides will be needed in the future.

CAMPRIELLO:
Peterman says the world needs to address overconsumption first, before the global discussion turns to generating biofuels.

Susan Campriello, Columbia Radio News.

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TRANSCRIPT (Tape Time:4:22):

CAMPRIELLO:
Brownfields must be cleaned before anything can be built on them. For example, work is going on at a site in Manhattan on West 61st Street, near Eleventh Avenue.

AMBIANCE UP, FADE UNDER NARRATION AND OUT AT “2003″.

CAMPRIELLO:
Brownfields that don’t get cleaned are left abandoned. A highly contaminated site in an expensive area, like Westchester County and Manhattan can cost millions of dollars to clean up. So, to encourage remediation, the State of New York has been offering tax credits as incentives for contractors to take on this work since 2003.

In the past, the State Department of Environmental Conservation, or DEC, could accept or reject a developer’s application to clean up a Brownfield based on “public interest”. But several developers whose applications were denied filed lawsuits against the DEC. In December of last year, a court in Rochester threw out the department’s criteria for determining eligibility, and said that every site has to be admitted to the program.

Val Washington is a deputy commissioner of the DEC.

AX WASHINGTON (5.0 seconds)
It’s in everybody’s interest to have this get fixed sooner rather than later.

CAMPRIELLO:
But admitting every site could cost a lot of money.

AX WASHINGTON (21.2 seconds)
The first 25 projects that have gone through the Brownfield system are worth $1 billion–that’s billion with a “B”–for 25 development projects. Four of them, three in New York City and one in Westchester County account for over half of that, over $500,000, and that’s not sustainable over time.

CAMPRIELLO:
So, to stave off a budget crisis, former Governor Eliot Spitzer proposed in January a cap of 15 million dollars in tax credits for Brownfield cleanup projects.

Joel Landes works for Langan Engineering, a firm that performs Brownfield remediation. He says that everyone had been looking to the Governor to solve the problem.

AX LANDES (13.3 seconds)
I think his proposal was developed along those lines, to solve that issue, so that more developments can get into the program, to become eligible and they can go through the program without bankrupting the state.

CAMPRIELLO:
Now that ALL sites are approved automatically, developers face a new obstacle because their tax credits are set after they’ve been accepted into the program. For developers to get the credits, Landes says:

AX LANDES (6.3 seconds)
They’re going to have to show that without the tax credits, the project is not financially feasible.

CAMPRIELLO:
But not all projects in New York State are created equal. Those which are Downstate tend to cost much more than those Upstate. Yet, Brownfields are evenly distributed throughout the state. So Landes worries that projects Upstate will benefit more than those Downstate.

Val Washington of DEC sees a clear division, too.

AX WASHINGTON (24.2 seconds)
Under the current program to get 15 million dollars you’d have to have a 68 million dollar development. But a 68 million dollar development is a substantial development. And essentially that’s more or less the cut off point where you’d do better in the new program than the current program. So clearly right there Downstate - LARGE Downstate projects - wouldn’t do as well under the current program.

CAMPRIELLO:
There’s a second problem with the proposal: The cap will apply only to sites whose clean-up agreements were signed after July 1, 2007.

An environmental lawyer thinks that’s unfair to a developer who was promised, for example, twenty million dollars in tax credits under the old system, but would now receive only fifteen million. The lawyer worries that developers might be inclined to pull out of the program. Joel Landes, of Langan Engineering, agrees, but says that developers will have to work within the proposal if it goes into effect.

AX LANDES (5.2 seconds)
There’s not much they can do about it. They can argue, and take the State to court, but that’s always a chanc-y thing.

CAMPRIELLO:
Val Washington of DEC says developers who are angry about the loss of tax credits can find a way to make up the difference. They can appeal to a number of State development programs to procure funding.

AX WASHINGTON (10.0 seconds)
They layer these funding sources, so I find it hard to be sympathetic that people are unhappy about getting fifteen million dollars for developing a Brownfield site.

CAMPRIELLO:
Washington says that New York State has the best program in the nation. She also says that fifteen million dollars is a lot of money.

New York State’s new Governor, David Paterson, has submitted the proposal to the State legislature. If it’s approved, the Brownfield tax credit cap will go into effect on April 1.

Susan Campriello, Columbia Radio News.

Click here to listen

TRANSCRIPT:

CAMPRIELLO:
Ford offered a modified natural gas pickup truck in the 1980s. Chrysler, General Motors and Honda were quick to follow, rolling out their own models over the next decade. Natural gas, which burns cleanly and emits less greenhouse gases than regular gasoline and diesel, looked like the fuel of choice. The Energy Policy Act of 1992 encouraged production of the natural gas vehicles, because it required that certain government fleets obtain alternative fuel vehicles. But obtaining the gas was a problem, and now, there is only one vehicle on the market that runs on compressed natural gas, or C-N-G. That’s the Honda Civic GX.

Jean Nonna test-drove a Honda Civic GX for three months in 2006. She immediately noticed a potential problem with the foot-and-a-half-wide gas tank.

AX 1: NONNA (6.3 seconds)
It’s in the trunk which…which limits the volume of the trunk, considerably.

CAMPRIELLO:
Nonna thinks her Civic lacked the pickup of other cars.

AX 2: NONNA (12.8 seconds)
You couldn’t go from one to sixty in five seconds–[laughs]–I don’t know what the…it’s a little slow on the uptake, but I wasn’t getting onto super-highways a lot.

CAMPRIELLO:
Nonna mostly drove her car near her Westchester County home, where we spoke. She filled up at a C-N-G station five miles from her house. She was lucky.

There are roughly twelve hundred public service stations offering C-N-G in the United States. They are heavily concentrated in California and New York. Even those are near urban hubs, like airports and major government or corporate offices, because delivery trucks, buses and other vehicles in a fleet travel short distances and can always refuel at a home base. A C-N-G car can be driven over two hundred miles on a full, eight-gallon tank of gas.

Nonna said because there are so few stations, she could not drive her car everywhere she wanted.

AX 3: NONNA (10 seconds)
I would have loved to take it up to Vermont to visit my mother, but I would have had to stop in Albany to fill up to go over to Vermont and then stop back in Albany to come down.

CAMPRIELLO:
What’s more, not all service stations are accessible to all drivers. Once, Nonna’s husband drove the car to Manhattan. He found that he could not access the C-N-G stations there without a key-card. He barely made it home to the C-N-G station near the house.

The New York State Department of Transportation has a fleet with roughly one-thousand natural gas vehicles, including one-third of its light-duty vehicles. But lately, replacing those vehicles has been difficult.

Joe Darling is the department’s Director of Fleet Administration and Support.

AX 4: DARLING (14.3 seconds)
We’re running into obstacles with the auto manufacturers with producing the autos that we need. General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, none of them are currently producing a dedicated natural gas vehicle anymore.

CAMPRIELLO:
The scarcity of C-N-G stations lead to the discontinuation of those maker’s vehicles.

But there is a movement to convert diesel-running trucks to use natural gas. And C-N-G cars are beginning to attract individual drivers again.

Todd Mittleman, of Honda, says that the recent rise of gasoline prices has played a part in the trend; in New York, C-N-G costs around fifty cents less than regular gasoline. C-N-G vehicles are allowed to drive in carpool lanes. That’s attractive, too. And, the Federal Government offers buyers tax incentives for up to four thousand dollars. Without the incentives, the C-N-G Civic costs about seven thousand dollars more than a standard gasoline model. Mittleman says that individuals purchased almost half of the thousand C-N-G- vehicles his company sold in the model year 2007.

Honda and a partner have developed a device that connects a car to a home natural gas supply. So drivers don’t need to access C-N-G stations in order to drive locally.

But, Mittleman says, he hopes the automobile industry and the fuel industry can help each other grow.

AX 6: MITTLEMAN (18.2 seconds)
If theres more natural gas cars out there, if other manufacturers are making them, then there’ll be more call for infrastructure. And if there’s more infrastructure, then hopefully, natural gas cars will become more mainstream.

CAMPRIELLO:
An executive with a company responsible for City C-N-G stations agrees and thinks that public fueling stations will in time become more widespread.

Jean Nonna liked her Civic GX a lot, she said, but did not buy one. If there were more C-N-G stations to accommodate longer trips, her decision would have been different.

I’m Susan Campriello, Columbia Radio News.