CLF President John Kassel in front of the MA State House on his commute from work.

Every year, environmentalists and the public alike celebrate Earth Day in late April. It is a day with a long, proud history – a day when, for a brief moment, we share our environmental concern with a broader public. But let’s be clear: one day is not enough.

This year marks more than 40 years since the first Earth Day, 50 years since Silent Spring, and 20 years since the Rio Earth Summit. The mounting environmental threats we face as a region, and as a nation, cannot be dealt with in a day. They require sustained effort towards a sustainable future. They require every one of us to do our part, every day.

That may sound daunting, but here’s one solution that’s as easy as walking or riding a bike: one of the best things you can do for the environment is to bike more, to walk more, or to take public transportation. This Earth Day, give your car a rest.

There’s no question that driving is a strain on our environment, our economy and our health. Transportation is the largest US consumer of petroleum, accounting for twenty percent of US greenhouse gas emissions. High prices aren’t slowing us down, either: last year Americans spent $481 billion on gas, a record high. That’s in part because the number of “extreme commuters”— those who travel ninety minutes or more each way—have been the fastest-growing category.

For all the money (and time) spent, it’s not making us happy. Drawing on a body of research, David Brooks wrote in the NY Times that “The daily activity most injurious to happiness is commuting.” Nor is it making us healthy. Commuting by car raises people’s risk of obesity, increases their exposure to pollution, reduces air quality through hazardous air pollution, and reduces sleep and exercise. Across the US, vehicle exhaust accounts for 55% of nitrogen oxides, and 60% of carbon monoxide emissions. For those driving, and the 25 million Americans living with asthma, this is a bad thing. These reasons and many more, CLF is proud to be affiliated with the Environmental Insurance Agency (EIA) that offers discounted insurance rates for those who drive less.

The portrait is clear: driving is one of the most polluting things we do nearly every day – and we don’t even think about it. If you want to celebrate Earth Day, drive less.

I’ve been a bike commuter my entire adult life. I rode to work in Boston in the mid-1980’s, and now, 25 years later, I’m doing it again. I can tell you that the over those years, the biking culture here in Boston has changed dramatically. When I first began riding, it was very common for me to stop at an intersection and be the only bike commuter. Now, I’m almost always part of a large pack.

A MassBike fact sheet claims that “in 2000, 0.52% of Massachusetts workers 16 and older (15,980 people total) used a bicycle to get to work.” Meanwhile, the League of American Cyclists claims that between 2000 and 2009 bike ridership in Boston increased by 118%. This rise makes sense, given the efforts by Boston’s bike-supporting Mayor Menino and his bike Czar Nicole Freedman, under whose tenure the city of Boston has installed more than 50 miles of bike lanes. Boston’s great bike sharing program, Hubway, also undoubtedly helps. After having been named one of the country’s worst biking cities by Bicycling magazine, last year they named us one of the country’s 26 best.

There’s no doubt we’ve come a long way. Back when I began riding to work in Boston, there was a fend-for-yourself, cowboy sort of attitude. That’s all changed, and for the better. Cyclists follow the rules far more frequently now. This makes for safer travel for all, and gains respect among drivers and the general public for this alternative form of transportation. Biking shares the road, and also reduces the need for public expenditures on roads. By encouraging biking, we make the most of our shared investment in transportation.

We need the same increase in respect for other forms of transit, like buses, subways and trains, which also help us get the most out of our transportation dollars. Instead of continuing to build infrastructure that funnels everyone onto roads across New England, in their cars, we need to share our transportation resources, for our benefit, and the planet’s.

We also need to optimize our transit system for walking, for biking, for trains and for buses. And we need to treat all forms of transportation equally. As CLF’s former President Doug Foy once said at UVA’s Miller Center, “It’s always amazed me that we refer to driving, roads and bridges and then everything else an alternative form of transportation.” Indeed. Isn’t walking the primary form, for all of us? The one we first learned to use? All of these “alternatives” should be equal forms of transportation, with equal access for all.

The growth of urban biking is due in large part, in recent years, to the power of numbers. And the improvement in bikers’ attitudes also continues to help: if you give respect, you get respect. But there’s also something else going on here: You can’t keep a good idea down. Let’s consider a few stats:

• A short, four-mile round trip by bicycle keeps about 15 pounds of pollutants out of the air we breathe. Source: MassBike.
• A 15-minute bike ride to and from work five times a week burns off the equivalent of 11 pounds of fat in a year. Source: MassBike.
• Individuals who switch from driving to taking public transit can save, on average $10,120 this year, and up to $844 a month. Source: American Public Transportation Association APTA

Who wouldn’t want to save money, improve their health, and save the earth? A newspaper put it well when they ran a headline that said, “Commuting to work is ‘bad for your health’ (unless you cycle or go by foot…).”

This Earth Day, ditch the car and pick up your bike. Or go for a walk. And then, when it comes time to go back to work, keep on riding. I’ll see you on the road.

Photo courtesy of Putneypics @ flickr. Creative Commons.

A couple of weeks ago I met a young farmer near Rutland, VT who was stunned to be out plowing his fields in the month of March. At that time the fields are usually knee-deep muddy, if not still covered in snow, ice or the slow-melting crust of the long winter. He was stunned:  if he plows and plants now, what’s going to happen next? How will his crops respond? Should he wait, for something more like a “normal” planting season to return?

These are questions that thousands of us gardeners across New England have been struggling with lately, in the wake of an unseasonably warm spell, and a winter that broke records first for early snowfall, and then low overall snowfall and high temperatures. Looking out our windows when the weather warms, we are drawn to one place: the soil – we long to get our hands in the dirt, and smell the wonderful scents of spring. For the farmer I mentioned above, the decision wasn’t just recreational or therapeutic; the crops for the CSA he recently founded with his partner were at risk. He had to plan carefully, not knowing what lies ahead.

In Vermont, where my wife and I have tended our garden for years, you start your seeds on Town Meeting Day and plant on Memorial Day. But this year, that timeline is way off.

Recently, for the first time in 22 years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture released an updated version of its Plant Hardiness Zone Map. The map charts average winter minimum temperatures, or cold intensity. What this map confirmed in VT is what we have observed anecdotally across New England and the United States: that our world is warming, as this map by the Arbor Day Foundation shows vividly. For the first time in VT, for instance, zone 5b has crept into the southern edges of our state. And the south coast of Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts includes zone 7a, which is also found in Northern Alabama. The commentary on the new map carefully avoids concluding the shifts are the results of climate change; most gardeners will draw their own conclusions.

For me, the question of whether or not to plant returned me to a question about my greenhouse. Previous owners of our house built a small, traditional greenhouse that helped with the slow and wet transition from winter to spring, with consistency and in the same place for 15 years. It succumbed to the elements recently, and we decided to try smaller, portable hoop houses over our raised beds. They’re more suitable to highly variable temperatures. Where once a rigid structure suited our weather and our needs, that’s no longer the case. We need to be more flexible. More adaptable.

This winter ranks as the 4th warmest nationally since the late 1880s, when climatologists began keeping records. People still consider Memorial Day as a safe time to plant, but the average last frost day is 10 days prior, as Vern Grubinger, University of Vermont Extension vegetable and berry specialist, said in this Brattelboro Reformer article.

What happens when you plan according to tradition, but the seasonal calendar is out of kilter? What happens when convention no longer suits our contemporary reality? These are questions of adaptation, and they apply to backyard gardens – and also flood zone mapping, transportation, and almost everything we do in the natural world. We have to start building differently, for a different world.

And so I wanted to ask you – CLF members, and members of the public alike – how are you adapting? What have you done with your garden this spring?  Are you anticipating odd weather in the months ahead? How will you respond? Please share your comments here and share your photos with us on our Facebook page.

I look forward to hearing from you. And happy planting.

Creative Commons image courtesy of BenandAsho on Flickr

We throw away a lot of food. Sometimes the scraps are inedible, like banana peels. Sometimes we forget about things in the refrigerator until we notice the smell. And sometimes our eyes are just bigger than our stomachs. Regardless of the reason, a lot of food scraps end up in our trash and ultimately the landfill. This is a wasted opportunity to realize environmental and economic benefits by using food scraps to improve soil health and generate renewable energy.

By diverting food scraps to other uses, such as generating energy and creating compost, we avoid the need to expand landfills in the state or transport waste long distances to out-of-state facilities. When food scraps and other organic matter decompose in landfills, they produce methane gas, a potent contributor to climate change. So diverting food scraps from landfills also helps us meet the state’s aggressive greenhouse-gas emission reduction goals.

To realize these benefits, the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is supporting public and private investment in a new kind of infrastructure for managing organic materials. But for this new infrastructure to succeed, DEP and the project developers that will build and operate this infrastructure need to convince the public that food scraps are not garbage, but something else entirely.

The DEP is currently working on an action plan for managing Massachusetts’s organic waste. The state needs a plan, because it has set lofty goals to divert organic material from landfill disposal to be used in other processes. The state’s draft Solid Waste Master Plan calls for diverting 35% of food waste, estimated to be about 350,000 tons of material per year. This goal is echoed by the Clean Energy Results Program, which sets a further goal of 50 megawatts of installed capacity of renewable energy from aerobic and anaerobic digestion facilities by 2020. And let’s not forget the proposal to ban commercial food waste from Massachusetts landfills in 2014. These are great goals, because diverting organic material out of the solid waste stream provides opportunities for economic development that can improve the environmental impacts of solid waste management, and now DEP is developing the plan to make sure we get there.

The plan aims to ensure that organic “waste” isn’t wasted in a landfill. It calls for a few things:

• Gathering better and more current information about sources of food waste,
• Providing funding and technical assistance to work out the logistics of separating food waste from the actual trash, and
• Working with haulers to move this material to appropriate processing facilities.

There are also provisions for funding and technical assistance to facilitate the construction of additional processing infrastructure, like anaerobic digestion (AD) facilities, and to develop good markets for the resulting products.

Organics diversion presents an economic opportunity for cash-strapped municipalities to save money through reduced trash fees. It also allows developers – municipal or private – to generate revenue by using “waste” organics as inputs for marketable products like compost and other soil amendments and as a source of clean, renewable heat and electricity. At a time when municipal budgets are facing historic shortfalls and municipalities are seeking means of both cutting costs and creating revenue, this is surely a good thing.

DEP’s draft action plan is a progressive, proactive approach to organics management, but it’s missing something very important. It provides much-needed support and direction for people and organizations that are already proponents of better organic material management and will help project proponents navigate the technical and regulatory processes to achieve success. But what about the majority of people who likely have no idea that the DEP is interested in doing something dramatically different with organic waste?

This action plan and DEP efforts to date on this issue do little to address the very real need for public engagement and outreach to help citizens and businesses understand the good reasons for organics diversion. These include:

• Mitigating greenhouse gas emissions through improved methane utilization;
• Generating renewable energy from anaerobic digestion; and
• Producing nutrient-rich soil amendments through composting.

The intersection of waste management and energy development is more complex than either of these individual business sectors taken on their own. For instance, energy facilities such as anaerobic digesters, which use “waste” materials as inputs to generate energy, face the siting hurdles typically encountered by both energy and waste facilities. Public concerns with other renewable energy technologies, such as wind and solar, have emerged relatively recently, but communities and individuals have been fighting against landfills and transfer stations for a very long time.

Today, forward-thinking people and businesses are beginning to talk about “materials management” rather than “waste management,” and those on the inside know what we mean by that. But most people don’t currently make the distinction, especially when the materials in question are leftover food and other organics that can rot. In the case of a proposed anaerobic digestion facility, the result is often a contested siting process. While AD proponents see facilities that will produce clean energy and environmentally beneficial soil products, opponents are concerned about siting waste incinerators, trash transfer stations, and toxic sludge.

The DEP, along with other state agencies such as the Department of Agriculture and Department of Energy Resources, is pushing to change the way “waste” materials are managed in Massachusetts. This is a good thing for economic development and the environmental performance of our materials-based economy. However, many people will not readily accept the subtle changes in regulatory definitions that distinguish separated materials from mixed solid waste. With these changes, materials that formerly had to be permitted as solid waste (trash) and processed at a permitted solid waste facility are no longer legally considered trash, so they can be processed at a composting or AD facility without a solid waste permit. I’m very happy this distinction is being made for organic material, but I know that many other people will consider this just another form of garbage disposal.

An action plan to encourage better organic materials management through diversion to composting and digestion needs to include significant resources to engage stakeholders around the Commonwealth to have open and honest conversations about the wide-ranging benefits, the potential pitfalls, and what everyone needs to know to avoid problems.

There is no reason to continue to dump organic material into landfills and many reasons to get everyone on board with using this material to generate more economic value and more environmental benefits for Massachusetts. But we can’t just “dot the i’s and cross the t’s” on the permit applications; we have to engage with people and navigate the changes in a collaborative and productive way. Diverting organic material from landfills can lead to a host of economic, environmental, and community benefits, but anyone who thinks changing the system will be as easy as selecting a site, telling the neighbors about the benefits, and awaiting approval and praise is in for a rude awakening. CLF Ventures looks forward to working with communities and project proponents to engage in open, clear discussions of the real impacts and benefits of organics management facilities so that all stakeholders share the same understanding of the issues and speak with the same terminology.

MIT graduate student Zach Youngerman asks an excellent question in an opinion piece in the Boston Globe: Did bad neighborhood design doom Trayvon Martin?

Of course, my lawyerly impulse is to say that clearly urban planning and local culture was not the “proximate cause” of that young man’s death – clearly the man with the gun is the place to look for that.

But Mr. Youngerman makes a very good point – a place that lacks the “eyes on the street” (to use the phrase that he quotes from the great urbanist writer Jane Jacobs), sidewalks and where there are few sidewalks transforms the fundamental human activity of walking into suspicious behavior. As Mr. Youngerman says, “. . . behavior is not simply a matter of character; it is also a matter of setting. Less than 1.2 percent of the population in Sanford walks to work, and the subdivision where the killing took place is designed for driving, so something as human as walking is odd behavior. Suspicious even.”

What does any of this have to do with “low carbon communities”?  Why is this grist for the blog of an environmental group?

Because, among the many tragic consequences (along with the kind of tragic incidents like the one that ended the life of Mr. Martin) of these isolating communities is deep dependence on the automobile.  As Mr. Youngerman concludes, “Maybe with a small convenience store or café in the clubhouse, Zimmerman wouldn’t have gotten into his car to go to Target. Maybe he would have walked to the clubhouse, and simply passed Martin on a sidewalk designed for him to be there.”

The connection between good neighborhood design, smarter growth, reduced driving and lowering greenhouse gas emissions is well documented by government, academics and advocates.  These liveable communities allow all residents to live their lives with a minimum of driving and create a safe place for raising “free-range kids” who can safely walk to the store and back again.  They also allow us to build smarter communities where we are not constantly in our cars producing the emissions that threaten to subject our communities to the constant hazard of extreme weather and other dangerous effects of global warming. Effects which will be especially marked in places like Florida where even inland communities face very real and looming threats to the supply of drinking water as sea levels rise and the porous stone that underlies the states and are home to its vulnerable aquifers face saltwater intrusion.

Can walkable community where there are stores on every corner, a constant flow of pedestrians and those “eyes on the street” guarantee the safety of our children and solve global warming? Of course not – but they are part of the many solutions we will need to embrace to solve these problems. And as we plan and build our future we need to truly protect all of our children and our communities by making smart and well considered decisions about how we build, grow and travel as well as how we treat each other in the dark of night.

Image courtesy of Dan4th @ flickr. Creative Commons.

The MBTA voted today to approve “Scenario 3,” the proposal put forth last week to close the $159 million budget gap the T is facing this fiscal year. The plan is a lot better than the draconian fare increases and drastic service cuts that it initially proposed and we commend the MBTA for listening to the public and all stakeholders’ concerns to get to a 23% increase with minimal service cuts that is within the range of reasonableness, given the T’s desperate financial straits.

Still, that increase will have a very significant impact on low income riders and must be accompanied by measures to mitigate that impact. The MBTA should immediately take action to reduce the impact of a blanket fare increase on transit-dependent riders by implementing reduced or discounted fares for low-income passengers before any increase goes into effect. The MBTA would be following a growing trend around the country. The Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), for example, in September of 2011, launched free fare cards for low-income seniors, paired with reduced fares for all seniors. Sun Tran in Tuscan, Arizona offers all Pima County residents over the age of five who meet low-income requirements a reduced fare.  C-TRAN in Vancouver, Washington, also has a similar program for low-income residents, as do Iowa City Transit in Iowa City, Iowa and Kitsap Transit in Kitsap County, Washington.

Looking ahead, the T must adopt a regular schedule for more modest increases that will mitigate the impact of necessary fare increases and make its own budgeting process more predictable.

To close the FY13 budget gap, the Legislature should immediately approve the revenue solutions proposed in Scenario 3, as well as raise some of its own revenue by drawing on the innovative proposals from the MBTA and leading transportation finance experts. The strategies underpinning these approaches—to diversify revenue sources, and ensure that all who benefit, including our leading institutions, pay their fare share for the benefits they receive from the T—have long been advocated for by CLF and its partners. At at 2010 Blue Ribbon Summit  convened by CLF and the Dukakis Center, where some of these ideas were generated, attendees showed support for these approaches, and indeed, many have begun to be implemented in cities across the country.

With Scenario 3, the MBTA has acted in good faith to minimize the burden on riders overall and has done just about as much as the agency can do within its authority. However, CLF believes that the MBTA should go the last mile to ensure that the fare increases don’t prevent the most transit-dependent segments of the population—low-income riders—from the using the system. Then, it’s the Legislature’s turn.

You can read CLF’s detailed position on Scenario 3 here, including specific recommendations for next steps by the MBTA and the Massachusetts legislature.

Update 4/11/12: The Joint Committee on Transportation held a hearing on Monday to consider Governor Patrick’s mini transportation reform bill (H. 4011) which includes the MBTA FY13 budget items that need legislative approval, such as the $51 million in surplus funds expected to accumulate in the vehicle inspection trust fund. During the hearing, some legislators brought up the concern that these surplus funds raised from vehicle inspection fees across the state would be spent only in the MBTA service area.  Transportation Secretary Richard Davey explained that 75% of these funds stem from vehicle inspection in the MBTA service area.  CLF’s staff attorney Rafael Mares also testified and expressed that CLF supports funding for the Regional Transit Authorities (RTAs) around the state in addition to the Governor’s request for funding for the MBTA.  The RTAs have requested an additional $15 million for FY13.

In the last of a long and loud chorus of concern for the MBTA’s draconian service cuts and drastic fare increases, today is the last opportunity for members of the public to testify or comment formally on the MBTA’s proposals. If you have concerns, take a moment to share them. Some of us use the MBTA regularly, but all of us need it.

Tonight’s public hearing is the final in a series of more than 30. It will be held in the Brighton neighborhood of Boston. To find more details about that event, click here.

Fast Five. Alternatives for Community and Environment

Monday is also the last day written comments can be submitted through the T’s Web site. CLF submitted its comments in early March. A copy of these comments can be found here.

CLF is not alone in expressing its concerns about the proposed draconian service cuts and drastic fare increases. According to an article in Boston.com, “An agency spokesman says about 5,800 people have attended the public hearings over the past two months.” So popular have the events been that superheroes have attended (see photo on right). Similarly, the T has so far received 4,800 emails from customers.

To join in this chorus, you can do a few things:

-          Attend tonight’s hearing

-          Use this form to contact your legislators, or

-          Email fareproposal@mbta.com.

Once all the comments have been collected, the T will review comments and then make a final recommendation to its board. These recommendations are expected by April 15, the deadline for approval of a new budget for the transit system.

Boston University (BU) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are preparing a mandatory revised risk assessment for BU’s National Emerging Infectious Disease Laboratories (NEIDL), which has received substantial federal funding through NIH. I described the specifics of this risk assessment in an earlier post. The draft of that risk assessment is currently ready for public review. Though we reported in our last post that the public hearing for NIH’s draft risk assessment would be held February 16, that hearing was delayed by NIH. NIH recently announced that the hearing has been rescheduled for April 19 and that they are accepting public comments on the draft risk assessment. Your input in this public process is crucial – here is how you can get involved:

• Review the Draft Risk Assessment: The first step is to review what NIH has prepared. You can access the draft risk assessment electronically here, and the accompanying Reader’s Guide here. You can also obtain a hard copy of the draft risk assessment and Reader’s Guide in the mail by e-mailing NIH at NIH_BRP@od.nih.gov or calling (301) 496-9838 to place your request.

• Submit Written Comments: Any member of the public can submit comments to NIH on the draft assessment – that means you! The public comment period closes on May 1, 2012. After reviewing the draft risk assessment, submit your comments to NIH by May 1^st via email at NIH_BRP@od.nih.gov or in hard copy to: The National Institutes of Health, ATTN: NEIDL Risk Assessment, 6705 Rockledge Drive, Suite 750, Bethesda, MD 20892.

• Attend the Hearing: The public hearing on the draft risk assessment has been rescheduled for Thursday, April 19, 2012, from 6:30-9:30 PM at Roxbury Community College, 1234 Columbus Avenue, Boston, MA 02120. This is your opportunity to offer comments on the risk assessment verbally. We strongly encourage you to support the local community members opposing this project by attending this public hearing – either to offer comments yourself, or to offer support through your presence. If you would like to offer oral comments, you will need to sign-in prior to the start of the meeting. You can sign-in beginning at 5:30 PM.

Your written and oral comments can be as long/detailed or brief/big-picture as you like – there is no one way to express your opinion. The important thing is that you speak up.

Check the CLF Scoop for more updates or contact me at jrushlow@clf.org with any questions.

Earlier this month I was pleased to join Boston Neighborhood Network (BNN) to discuss the MBTA’s proposed fare hikes and service cuts. See below for a copy of that interview.

More and more, studies are recognizing the positive benefits of environmental improvements to communities. Now, potential changes to IRS non-profit reporting rules would allow nonprofit hospitals to report the cost of the environmental improvements they make.

IRS Schedule H is a mandatory reporting form introduced by the IRS in 2008. Its purpose is to quantify, in a way that is comparable across institutions, how nonprofit hospitals meet their community benefit obligations and therefore document their tax-exempt status. Schedule H requires hospitals to report on total community benefit and charity care expenses as well as proportion of total institutional spending on these categories. Changes to the reporting rules, released in draft form on December 15, 2011, will allow hospitals to report on costs associated with their community-building activities, such as activities to protect/improve the community’s health or safety.

The rule change now allows hospitals to include activities related to “environmental improvements” if the activity:

1) is provided for the primary purpose of improving community health;

2) addresses an environmental issue known to affect community health; and

3) is subsidized by the organization at a net loss.

The potential implications of this rule change could see a great positive benefit for communities since hospitals would now have additional incentive to implement activities with environmental and community health benefits. CLF Ventures, the market-based strategy consulting arm of Conservation Law Foundation, is encouraged by this rule change.

Working to support local sustainable agriculture by buying local produce, increasing recycling which reduces landfill burdens, or promoting carpooling or public transit to reduce emissions are all potential items that could be documented under these new rules as they support a hospital’s community mission and would be considered environmental improvements. At the same time, the IRS rule change explicitly forbids inclusion of environmental improvement expenses that are “primarily for marketing purposes,” so ostensibly, nonprofit hospitals will have to implement meaningful environmental improvements in order to receive credit for them.

As nonprofit institutions’ tax-exempt status come under increased scrutiny, both in and outside of Massachusetts, nonprofit hospitals will have an interest in augmenting the share of their total expenses that count as “community benefits.” The Affordable Care Act requires nonprofit hospitals to conduct community health needs assessments every three years. The proposed changes to the IRS nonprofit reporting rules provide nonprofit hospitals a new opportunity to include within these needs assessments information about potential improvements to air quality, water, energy systems, etc.—and a new incentive to implement measures that can benefit both the environment and local community health.