Air quality (EPA AIRNow) conditions remain poor (code yellow-red; 16 < PM2.5 –ug/m3 < 150) in California due to many fires. PM2.5 (left) and Ozone (right) levels are particularly high in the Northern part of the state. Smoke is likely…

Each big storm with a high tide and an
onshore wind takes a big bite out of Sarichef.
Photo by Shishmaref Erosion and Relocation Coalition

In an email this week from John Woodward, an Alaska builder and Home Energy author, he wrote, “I put together a working/management group to manage the relocation of the community of Shishmaref sustainabely. They live on Sarichef, a barrier island that global warming is wiping out.”Shishmaref is home to a small community of Inupiat, a Native American tribe. John is working with the Inupiat Tribal Government, the City of Shishmaref, and the Shishmaref Erosion & Relocation Coalition, to salvage as much of the village as possible before it goes under water and move it, along with the island inhabitants, to a new plot of land in the interior of Alaska.

The Army Corp of Engineers gives the island about 5 or 10 more years of livability. But as the ocean and permafrost warm and the ocean rises, unpredictable storms take a heavy toll on the island. “Each big storm with a high tide and an on-shore wind takes a big bite out of Sarichef,” says Woodward.

The community is seeking funds for a comprehensive alternative energy plan, an anaerobic pump/methane generator, and the retrofit of all existing buildings, including more than 110 homes, community buildings and a school. The homes will be retrofit to use less than 5 Btu per square foot to heat. Heating load calculations can be pretty complicated, but in general, contractors recommend furnaces that can provide 30-50 Btu per square foot to heat homes in the Bay Area. To reach such a high level of energy efficiency, the Shishmaref homes will have the insulation installed on the outside of the structure, a technique that Woodward has successfully used in the past. The new village will have the look and functionality of the Inupiat culture as defined and designed through community planning.

“Our community planning process involves community charettes with the whole community gathered in the school gym,” say Woodward. “The goal of these meetings is the rough-out of a comprehensive community plan for sustainable relocation of the existing salvageable infrastructure and the development of the new village site.”

The Inupiat will build their new village to suit their needs and lifestyles, to be efficient, and to be in harmony with its surroundings-in other words, sustainabely. Let’s keep an eye on our northern neighbors, who may teach us some valuable lessons. How long before whole towns in California will have to relocate because of water shortages? We all witnessed what happened in New Orleans a few years ago. How long before towns and cities on the coast of California will have to move inland or be seriously reconfigured because of the rising Pacific Ocean?

You can e-mail John Woodward with questions, comments, ideas, and offers of help at panuktuk@yahoo.com.

Since incandescent light bulbs use more energy than other light sources (compact fluorescent lamps and LED lamps), some laws and regulations have been passed to start phasing out their usage.

By 2018, California plans on eliminating incandescent bulbs thanks to a bill passed by the California State Assembly. The bill also requires a general reduction in electricity usage. In 2007, New Jersey called for the state to switch to fluorescent lighting in government buildings over the next three years.

When the Clean Energy Act of 2007 was signed, some of these state efforts became moot. This legislation decided to ban incandescent bulbs that produce 310 - 2600 lumens of light by 2014. Bulbs outside this range are exempt from the ban. Lights like colored lamps, appliance lamps, and plant lights are also exempt.

Let us all do our part as individuals to help this cause as well!

To find out more ways to save energy, please visit our Awareness Ideas website!

There was an interesting article from the Associated Press yesterday titled “Economy Makes Bottled Water Out, Tap Water In”. They say that Tap water is making a comeback. Here are a few paragraphs from their article:

Marriott International Inc. distributed free refillable water bottles and coffee mugs to the 3,500 employees at its corporate offices in Bethesda, [...]

Book Review
"The Last Taboo: Opening the Door on the Global Sanitation Crisis"
By Maggie Black and Ben Fawcett
Published 2008 by Earthscan, UK and USA

Despite its subject matter (human waste), "The Last Taboo" is a surprisingly readable and interesting book, even for the lay person, and it challenges the currently fashionable focus among those who fund such projects on providing third world peoples with clean drinking water. The authors, Maggie Black and Ben Fawcett, seek to reframe the discussion toward fixing the underlying problem of human sanitation. The book was funded by UNESCO and offers an extended analysis of the connection between human fecal matter, water contamination and disease.

The authors suggest that while most of the developed world’s attention is focused on the need for clean drinking water in the undeveloped world, the more basic problem of preventing contamination of drinkable water by human waste is largely ignored. The authors see this situation as an environmental and human health time bomb, especially in third world mega cities where official counts have climbed to over 10 million residents and millions more go uncounted. At least a billion people, one sixth of the world population, now live in and around these mega cities in dwellings that lack adequate sanitation. At the current rate of rural migrants leaving home to find work in these cities, "The moment is expected sometime in 2008, when humanity will become a mainly urban instead of a mainly rural species."

Making matters worse, the authors cite the strong tendency in developing countries to undercount the poorest urban dwellers. These undercounted folks are also underserved when it comes to sewage systems. They frequently occupy squatters’ quarters or floating slums outside official city limits and outside any semblance of sewage disposal. In seeming contradiction to this urban squalor, the World Bank and other funding sources have been concentrating on rural areas in the third world with the apparent hope that they might thereby reverse migration to the cities.  While appearing to address a great need, this rural focus leaves neighboring mega cities to continue to fill up with rural migrants and no sewage systems to serve them.

The authors offer an enlightening, even entertaining, history of human sanitation from Roman times to London’s cholera epidemics and beyond. Until John Snow applied scientific methodology to determining how cholera spread in London in an 1854 epidemic, wild theories thrived.  Miasma, or bad air, led the list of causes for much of Western history.  Nobody considered  human fecal matter to be  a contaminate which  caused  disease. It was a terribly smelly problem, and especially bad in hot and overcrowded dwelling areas of cities.  

By the 1850s and ’60s, the unsanitary conditions in parts of London had become so bad that politics, if not smell, finally brought action to clean up the poorest areas of the city. It may have been more fear of revolution, now rampant in much of continental Europe, that prompted London to do something about delivering clean water and sewage disposal even in the poorest neighborhoods.

The most basic of human needs – sanitary living conditions, appropriately safe,  private places for disposing of fecal matter and accessible running water – continue to be unavailable to much of the world’s population.  

In the last chapter, "Bringing on the New Sanitary Revolution," the authors address the question of if we build enough toilets for the urban poor, will they use them. The answer is a qualified yes: people tend to adopt cleaner living habits when they have the oprion to do so. The authors seem to hold great hope in particular for educational efforts where children, though their good example and social pressure, become the change agents for the entire community.

Bringing modern, affordable sanitation to millions of poor urban residents in Africa, Asia and Central and South America poses both a terrific problem and a wonderful opportunity for those who are able to supply the solutions. Although the problem areas are easy enough to find on a map, solutions can come from anywhere. This huge human sanitation problem presents us with an opportunity to  improve  health and productivity among a significant portion of the world’s inhabitants. 

The book is available on Amazon.com, click here for more information.

Don Dunnington
Moderator

As the California wildfires continue to burn, the smoke has intensified in Northern California, and has spread to portions of Nevada, Oregon, Idaho, Utah, and Colorado. The image below (left) shows the MODIS Terra True Color image from today, with…

Global Prevention Services® Promotes Seasoned IAQ Expert to Vice …WebWire (press release), GA - 17 hours agoMr. Purpura brings close to ten years of environmental and indoor air quality experience to the resources of Global Prevention Services®. …

Welcome to HomeSmarte.com your guide to finding new and innovative eco-friendly and energy saving products & services for your home. … Buy Smart… Think Green and Save

WE ARE REDESIGNING OUR WEBSITE SO PLEASE LEAVE US YOUR EMAIL ON OUR CONTACT US LINK AND WE WILL CONTACT YOU WHEN WE ANNOUNCE OUR GRAND OPENING.

Thank you for visiting and Caring about OUR Environment.

HomeSmarte.com

Meanwhile, Please visit our active Site at Atlantic Environmental Service & Products, Inc.