Against a backdrop of protesters vehemently opposing bad proposals to bring energy from Canada into New England, governors from the six New England states this week demonstrated their commitment to a clean energy future for our region. They resolved to pool their buying power, regionally, for renewable energy. This will boost wind and solar energy, among other clean sources, at the best available price — a much-needed step on our path to affordable renewable energy and independence from dirty fossil fuels.

The resolution was announced at the 36th annual meeting of New England Governors and Eastern Canadian Premiers, held July 29th and 30th in Burlington, Vermont. The protesters outside the meeting had the attention of high-ranking officials from Canada, whose energy system has been linked with ours – in small ways so far – for decades.  That linkage could grow dramatically in the future, for mutual benefit.  Eastern Canada has the potential to serve markets all over New England with low-carbon, low-cost and clean electricity from renewable sources. And New England needs it, if we get it on the right terms.

The wrong terms are exemplified by the Trailbreaker proposal and the Northern Pass transmission project, the two Canadian energy proposals galvanizing protesters outside the meetings in Burlington. Trailbreaker would send slurry oil derived from tar sands in Western Canada to Portland, Maine by reversing the flow of the Portland-to-Montreal pipeline that has cut across Quebec, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine since it was built over 50 years ago. Northern Pass would cut a route running the length of New Hampshire, including through the White Mountains, for a high-voltage DC transmission line to deliver Canadian hydropower to parts of New England. In both cases, the environmental burdens far outweigh any benefits for our region.

However, long-term supplies of hydro, wind and other sources of power – that respect and significantly benefit the landscape through which they are transmitted, support rather than undermine the development of New England’s own renewable energy resources, replace coal  and other dirty fuels, keep the lights on at reasonable cost, and accurately account for their impacts – are what New England needs. The details will be complicated, but they can be worked out.

Conversations inside the meeting were tilting in the direction of such productive cross-border cooperation, and the announcement of a regional resolution to bring clean, affordable energy to New England may have provided some salve for the protesters. Still, we need to continue to be vigilant about Trailbreaker and Northern Pass and we will spend the effort to defeat them if we must. But any effort spent on these deeply-flawed proposals –whether advancing them or fighting them – is an unfortunate use of precious time for both countries, given the urgent call of climate change.

The sooner we get to the task of building our shared clean energy future the better, for New Englanders and our friends to the north.

Environmental issues span the globe. When it comes to nuclear power, global action is needed. That’s why it was a privilege for CLF advocates to meet with a number of environmental lawyers from Japan, many of whom are members of the Japan Environmental Lawyers Federation.

The tragedy of Fukushima shows the need for the US to stop giving nuclear power a free pass. Just yesterday another mishap at the accident-prone Vermont Yankee facility resulted in the draining of some of the radioactive cooling water. Enough already.

Our conversation addressed how environmental groups operate. We also touched on some of the litigation tools available to protect our environment from the risks of nuclear power – from problems with the storage of waste, the possibilities of accidents, and the economic problems that nuclear power creates.

Our colleagues in Japan have a far keener sense of how important this work is. As different as our legal systems are, it was interesting to find the similarities as well, including how challenging it is to navigate the interplay of state or local government oversight with federal regulations.

The attorneys shared with CLF MA advocate Jenny Rushlow that most Japanese attorneys interested in practicing environmental law are only able to dedicate a small percentage of their time to environmental cases, as it is difficult to find compensation for that work. As a result, the attorneys we met with mostly take on environmental cases on a volunteer basis. The group reported on a number of high impact cases, including a current lawsuit aimed at classifying carbon dioxide as a pollutant, much like the Massachusetts v. EPA case.

photo courtesy of Department of Energy @ flickr.com

In the past 25 years, our lives have become increasingly “plugged in.” We have an ever-increasing number of devices in our lives, our homes, and our offices that use electricity. What is amazing is that with our foresight and work during this same time period, our region now uses energy efficiently more than ever – reducing pollution, saving money, growing jobs, and cutting through partisan politics to succeed.

That’s a regional legacy to be proud of and one highlighted in the recent op-ed co-authored by former CLF President Douglas Foy. 

With the publication of “Power to Spare”  in 1987, CLF and others set forth the effective “out of the box” thinking that allows for reduced energy consumption while increasing economic growth. As the op-ed recounts:

“Our proposition was unique: To shift incentives that encouraged utilities to sell more power, to a new model that would reward them for promoting conservation. By putting efficiency on a level playing field with coal, gas, oil and nuclear, we would be able to lower demand, cut consumption, decrease total use and reduce pollution. We promised to boost the local economy at the same time through the job intensive investments in efficiency and by reaping the economic benefits of lower energy costs.”

And it’s been a success that continues.

Massachusetts passed the “Green Communities Act” and has grown energy efficiency jobs and lowered electric costs, with average rates for residential consumers dropping from the 4^th highest to 11^th highest place.

Rhode Island recently approved an aggressive efficiency budget and is expected to meet more than 100% of its anticipated load growth with energy efficiency, not through additional polluting electricity generation.

In New Hampshire, CLF Ventures recently managed a statewide project helping communities throughout the state identify ways to reduce energy consumption and costs through greater efficiency.

Vermont has its own efficiency utility that works statewide providing one-stop-shopping for businesses and residents to reduce costs and energy use with a budget designed to achieve over 2% annual savings.

Maine now has an independent energy efficiency authority which, in 2011, obtained state-wide energy savings equivalent to the output of a 110MW power plant by obtaining $3 of savings for every $1 invested by the program.

The transformation begun 25 years ago – that we are all a part of – continues. It provides a model for the country, and a model for further action to tackle climate change.

photo courtesy of Mark Setchell@flickr

When Vermont’s Governor Shumlin announced last year that the outdated, expensive and ill-conceived Circ Highway would not be built as planned, it opened the door for lower cost and less polluting solutions that would actually help folks get around and not just pave over farmland, forests, and wetlands.

In the first round a number of good solutions are advancing, including the Crescent Connector in Essex Junction which transforms a small downtown with thoughtful design, making it easier and more pleasant to walk, shop, get around and not simply drive in traffic.

Unfortunately, for the next phase, some officials still seem stuck in the dark ages.

When presented with an evaluation by the County’s transportation planning officials that building portions of the old highway would be expensive, have the same environmental problems and opposition as the Circ, and fail to solve congestion problems in the area, town officials still decided to advance this project for further consideration.

The sad part is that being stuck with these outdated non-solutions, keeps real solutions at bay. Any trapeze artist will tell you that you have to let go of one trapeze before you can grab the next one and move forward. If you just keep hanging on to the first trapeze all you will do is swing back and forth in place.

It is time to let go of the old Circ trapeze and move forward with real solutions like fixing the existing roadways and improving transit so everyone can get around more easily and not simply suffer through more traffic and more sprawl.

Moving to a clean energy future means keeping the dirty stuff out. If you are cleaning house in a dust storm, the first thing you do is close the door. 

photo courtesy of Zak Griefen

Environmental groups gathered to show the need to close the door in New England on tar sands oil – the dirtiest of dirty oil. We are moving in the wrong direction to bring oil in and through New England that increases global warming pollution even more.  

Tar sands are a carbon bomb that will catapult us past several dangerous climate tipping points. It has no part in our region’s clean energy future.

A new report, Going in Reverse: The Tar Sands Threat to Central Canada and New England, outlines an array of threats associated with tar sands.

In late May, a pipeline company announced it would reverse the flow of a 62-year-old pipeline bringing oil from southern Ontario to Montreal. Reversing the pipeline opend the door to another pipeline reversal enabling tar sands to flow through Vermont, and New Hampshire to Portland, Maine. The tar sands industry has been in a desperate search for a port of export since the Keystone XL and Northern Gateway projects have become mired in controversy. CLF and others expressed concern that these proposals are being advanced by the same pipeline company responsible for the largest tar sands spill in U.S. history resulting the devastation of the Kalamazoo River near Marshall, Michigan. 

As the placard of one young CLF supporter noted, we need “More Tarzan, Less Tar Sand.” The help of a super-hero would be nice. In the meantime, let’s just shut the door.

Associated Press story:  Alarm Raised About Potential Tar Sands Pipeline

Conservation Law Foundation filed an Amicus (Friend of the Court) brief on behalf of Conservation Law Foundation, New England Coalition, Vermont Natural Resources Council and Vermont Public Interest Research Group in support of the State’s appeal to overturn the decision of Judge Murtha that Vermont has no say regarding Vermont Yankee.

Not so fast. As the Brief notes, the Vermont Legislature has clear authority to determine whether to allow the continued operation of Vermont Yankee. Vermont’s laws do not conflict with federal law and they are part of a decade of energy legislation focused on moving Vermont’s power supply away from older and more polluting power sources, like Vermont Yankee. 

There is a much longer history here. Vermont Yankee is a tired old nuclear plant and its owners are untrustworthy. Our brief shows that Vermont’s actions are authorized and reasonable.

“The Legislature’s track record shows that the Vermont Legislature has been passing energy legislation for years in response to constituents’ strong support for transitioning to renewable energy. Vermont engaged in the legitimate exercise of its traditional authority over power planning, including the future use of nuclear power plants. Vermont’s purposes, including planning, economics and reliability, are not only plausible, but show how the General Assembly has been preparing for the eventual closure of Vermont Yankee, whether in 2012 or thereafter, by enacting legislation, including Act 74 and Act 160, to assure that Vermont will be able to timely transition to an economical and environmentally sustainable energy supply” (pg 19)

Vermont Yankee’s troubled history also shows the validity of the Legislature’s actions. “Since Entergy Nuclear Vermont Yankee (Entergy) purchased the Vermont Yankee facility in 2002, a steady stream of mishaps, misrepresentations and disappointments shattered Vermont’s faith and trust in Vermont Yankee and its owners. From the failure to make any contributions to the decommissioning fund, followed by the collapse of the cooling towers in 2007, the proposed “spin off” of the plant to a highly leveraged subsidiary, the false statements to regulators and the broken promises of a power contract that never materialized, Entergy’s actions have had what an Entergy executive described as a “corrosive effect” on the relationships needed to maintain a major electric generating facility within the State.” (Pg 5). 

“These events evidence the untrustworthiness and lack of credibility in Entergy management that precluded the Vermont Legislature from affirming a continued business relationship with Entergy.” (Pg 23).

The Brief was a joint effort of our organizations. As organizations that have been involved in matters concerning energy legislation and Vermont Yankee for decades, our brief provides the Court with the perspective of how Vermont’s laws are part of Vermont’s broader efforts to responsibly manage energy supply. 

See Brief Here and Brattleboro Reformer story here.

An urban garden -- precisely what we need more of. Photo courtesy of Tony Fischer Photography @ flickr.

It began with our tomatoes. As I’ve written before, my wife and I are avid gardeners and have grown tomatoes many times before but these – these tomatoes were proving difficult to grow. This was not due to the plants, but due to me and to the setting in which we were growing them: the rooftop of our apartment building in the city of Somerville, MA.

My wife and I had decided to grow tomatoes in containers on our roof for the same reasons many do: we wanted to continue our hobby after moving to the city, and we wanted fresh vegetables we had grown our selves. Much like catching a trout on a fly you yourself have tied, there is something immensely gratifying about this sort of self-reliance. The tomatoes just taste better.

But they did prove difficult. Growing tomatoes in plastic buckets on a black roof under the summer sun requires mastering the art of properly irrigating your plants. First we watered them too much. Then we watered them too little. I remember at one point standing over my plants, wondering at what I had done wrong, and looking enviously at the elaborate, automatic watering system my engineering neighbor had constructed and perfected for her tomatoes. Finally, we got it right.

Adapting to growing a garden on an urban roof, not a field in Vermont, proved to be a challenge. And I learned some lessons that help me to understand some of CLF’s work better.

We need to grow food in areas we don’t think of as farmland. As I hear more about urban agriculture growing in our cities, the more I am convinced that our cities are fertile ground for growing food. Cities are not only sites of consumption, but also of production, and are essential to a strong regional food system. Just as we support traditional New England farms, so too should we support community gardens, rooftop gardens, porch and patios plantings, and other urban horticulture. To eat in the city, we need to grow in the city.

As I look around, I see plenty of evidence that we’re on the way to making this happen.

Many of the staff at CLF are growing their own food: a few have plots in community gardens, one works for a CSA in Concord, MA, many have gardens, one raises goats, another a slew of barn animals, while plenty others have small porch or window plantings at their apartments and homes.

I know we’re not alone, either. Young people are turning to farming not just as avocation but as vocation. They’re tilling rural soil, certainly, but also planting new beds amongst our city streets. It’s a new generation, in more ways than one.

I also see more CSAs now than I ever noticed before. My wife and I have been members of several CSAs for a number of years, in Burlington, VT, and Boston, MA. Now, I see more access, in more areas, to the kinds of food provided by these CSAs than ever before.

We participate in food systems whether we choose to or not, by virtue of the fact that we all eat. And, as the old saying goes, you are what you eat. Phrased slightly differently, food is at the heart of many of our problems: our thirst for fossil fuels, our polluting farm infrastructure, economic inequity and the obesity epidemic. If we fix our food problem, we make it easier to fix some of these other problems as well.

In the current issue of Conservation Matters, there is an article about how CLF and CLF Ventures are working to improve our regional food system. As I said in my president’s letter, “sustainable agriculture, when applied to cities, makes them more resilient, economically vibrant and livable.”

Standing on my rooftop, viewing my tomatoes, this struck me as true: we need to grow more food in areas we don’t think of as farmland. We will be more vibrant as a region, stronger as communities, and healthier as individuals.

When people think of Sugarbush Resort, they envision scenes like the one pictured below: high mountain peaks blanketed with pristine snow beckoning skiers to swoosh down the slopes.  Of course when springtime comes that snow melts, feeding small streams that flow first into the iconic Mad River and eventually to Lake Champlain.  These high mountain streams are incredibly important yet sensitive and vulnerable links in the clean water chain.

A skier rests on a sunny day at Sugarbush. Photo by pinneyshaun @ Flickr Creative Commons

Rice Brook is one of the streams that flows through the heart of the resort area.  Over the years, runoff polluted with sediment from gravel roads, driveways, and parking lots degraded water quality and habitat conditions in the stream. By 1996, the Brook no longer supported a healthy community of aquatic wildlife, leading state officials and EPA to “list” the Brook as “impaired.”

Sadly, it was a story unfolding around build-out at other ski areas across the state and in areas around lower elevation streams where forest and farmland was being converted into stripmalls and other pavement-heavy uses.  By the early-2000′s, sixteen other Vermont streams were also officially listed as impaired due to runoff pollution, a.k.a. “stormwater,” with many more placed at risk of impairment.

During this time, Conservation Law Foundation and other partners began an 0ngoing advocacy campaign pressuring regulators to enforce requirements in clean water laws designed to ensure that developers of properties that contributed polluted runoff to streams were doing their part for cleanup.

Sugarbush got ahead of the curve in accepting responsibility and committing the resources necessary to do its part for clean water moving forward.  Sugarbush partnered with the environmental consulting firm of Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Inc. (VHB) to tackle the problem.

Through implementation of a time-bound, state-approved “Water Quality Remediation Plan,” the Sugarbush team restored clean water and healthy aquatic communities to Rice Brook, creating a template for action that can be copied by others responsible for restoring degraded streams around the state and the region. Sugarbush and VHB:

• Identified the specific sources of the problem
• Established cleanup targets by studying conditions in healthy streams similar to Rice Brook
• Designed and implemented “best management practices” and structures to restore the landscape’s natural flood storage and pollutant-removal capacity
• Educated resort employees and contractors about streambank restoration, erosion prevention, and other water quality practices
• Monitored water quality and aquatic organisms to track progress
• Committed resources to ongoing operation and maintenance of runoff control and treatment structures

In recognition of the results, EPA approved the removal of Rice Brook from the list of impaired waters and Governor Peter Shumlin bestowed Sugarbush and VHB with a 2012 Environmental Excellence Award.

Too often, critics complain that it is either too expensive or too difficult to restore clean water to degraded rivers and streams. In their application for the Environmental Excellence Award, Sugarbush and VHB answered those critics, pointing out the multiple economic benefits to the tourist-based economy from their successful cleanup effort, including:

• water supply protection
• access to recreation such as swimming and fishing
• aesthetic enjoyment of clean waters by resort guests and others
• ecological sustainability
• greater certainty in future permitting processes based on proven approaches to mitigate development runoff impacts

Congratulations to Sugarbush and VHB for showing Vermont how sweet clean water success can be.

photo credit: Ivy Dawned, Flickr

The end of any legislative session is tumultuous. Vermont’s citizen legislature, that meets part-time only a few months each year, is no different. In this year’s end-of-session tumult, progress on clean energy was left on the cutting room floor. This is a big disappointment. The same legislature that made skiing and snowboarding Vermont’s official winter sports failed to pass legislation that would keep those sports off the endangered list.

The Vermont Legislature stripped the Renewable Energy Standard from the energy bill it approved. Renewable standards require utilities to help address climate change by providing their customers with a certain percentage of power from clean, renewable sources. The more power we get from clean sources, the less power we get from older and dirtier fossil fuel plants. Twenty-nine states, including every other New England state, already have renewable standards, but Vermont is left behind in the dark ages of dirty power.

Throughout the session, CLF worked closely with other environmental organizations, business leaders and renewable developers to put in place a meaningful renewable standard so Vermont’s electric power users can do more to reduce carbon. The urgency of the climate crisis demands strong action.

There will be opportunities to move further ahead on renewable electricity next year, along with some legislation to help heating efficiency and electric vehicles, but each year we delay means more carbon reduction is needed. It is disappointing that in a year in which Vermont saw, in the form of flooding from Hurricane Irene, the kind of damage that climate change can do, and then saw one of the warmest winters on record (which wreaked havoc on ski areas and maple syrup production), we are not doing more to tackle climate change.