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Housing renewal: Last week, LEAP (the Local Energy Alliance Program) announced its new Energize 250 campaign, a twist on Charlottesville’s 250th anniversary celebration. The effort aims to get 250 local homeowners to pledge to improve their houses’ energy efficiency by 10 percent within 250 days. “We’re looking forward to another 250 years,” said LEAP director Cynthia Adams, right, also a contributor to this week’s Green Scene, pictured here with homeowner Laura Merricks. (Photo by Carissa Dezort)
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Can’t go home again
Last weekend, visiting my family in southwestern Pennsylvania, I saw something shocking. I was driving a mile up the road from my mom’s house, and passed a house where I’d spent a lot of time as a kid—the house of my friend Stephanie and her mother Dian, who cared for me and my brothers. But the house no longer existed. There was just a flat place on the ground and a nearby pile of smoldering wood.
Apparently, a new owner had bought the house and discovered a bad mold problem, so he had it torn down.
It was only one such moment in a weekend full of vertigo. My hometown happens to be in one of the most active areas for hydro-fracking in Pennsylvania. There’s more drilling evident every time I go home—more than 500 gas wells dotting the rumpled topography of my home county. Many of these are on hilltops and ridges and, thus, can be seen for long distances. The wells consist of narrow metal towers, but they require several acres of surrounding flat ground to support storage containers and a parade of large trucks.
Therefore, those hilltops have to be massively reshaped before drilling can begin. After a well is done producing, the tower can be removed and the truck traffic will cease. But the manmade mesa will remain. The soft shapes of the hills are being changed quickly and forever.
Fracking is a possibility in Virginia, too; as near a neighbor as Rockingham County came close to approving a fracking permit in 2010. The U.S. Forest Service is considering allowing limited fracking in Virginia’s George Washington and Jefferson National Forests, too, with a final decision expected in July.
Razing a house might be a necessity, though it does violence to the memories and experience of people who spent time within. When we tear down the hills, what is the reach of our violation?—Erika Howsare
BULLETIN BOARD
Heritage on film: Grad students at UVA have spent the semester making short films about Virginia’s food heritage, and you can see them on May 2 at 7pm and May 3 at 5pm. The latter event will also include presentations about ideas for food-based economic development. See vafoodheritage.com for locations.
Feeling crabby: The Chesapeake Bay Foundation released good news last month about the blue crab population in the Bay. Namely, it’s up. The total crab count is 764 million—the highest level since 1993 and a 66 percent increase since 2011.
Drawing a line: Local activists will join others worldwide for a May 5 rally organized by the climate change network 350.org. Demonstrators intend to “connect the dots” between climate change and extreme weather patterns. They’ll gather at the Down-
town Free Speech Wall from 5-6pm.
Baby spinach: The Local Food Hub hosts a plant sale at Scottsville’s Maple Hill Farm, May 5 from 10am to 3pm. Hear music, munch food, and paint murals (besides, of course, buying plants and produce).
Chronicling progress
When Tanya Denckla Cobb set out to write a book about local food, she didn’t intend to create a field guide to a movement.
An environmental mediator and the author of books on organic gardening, Denckla Cobb was developing a course on food systems planning at UVA when she met Will Allen, whose Milwaukee-based urban farming initiative Growing Power has inspired community gardening projects all over the country.
Denckla Cobb said she was so inspired by his methods—which include using compost to keep winter beds warm, and establishing inner-city apiaries—that she decided to chronicle his organization’s efforts in a book.
But Allen helped convince her that the story was bigger than his group alone, “so we set out to cover the breadth and depth of the food market,” said Denckla Cobb. Her book, Reclaiming Our Food: How the Grassroots Food Movement Is Changing the Way We Eat, has been named one of Booklist’s top ten titles on the environment for 2012, and offers a comprehensive look at how and why small, local farming and food distribution projects are succeeding around the country.
With help from a team of graduate students and colleagues, Denckla Cobb researched and found hundreds of operations across the country tackling all aspects of the food-supply chain. Eventually, they narrowed their focus to a few dozen projects, many of which are succeeding against the odds in challenging climates and difficult environments.
The book features Nuetras Raices, a farming co-op created by Puerto Rican Americans in Holyoke, Massachusetts, who channeled their agricultural heritage into a project that could feed their families and sustain their community. It explores the Janus Youth Urban Agriculture program, which gives poor and homeless kids in Portland the chance to grow their own food and profit from it. And it touches on efforts to encourage sustainable farming from the Arizona desert to southern Wisconsin.
Denckla Cobb said that against her expectations, she found a common thread.
“People are coming at local food projects for a host of different reasons,” she said, “but they’re being used everywhere as a catalyst for healing our land and healing our communities, and helping build neighborhoods where there weren’t any.”
At a time when the national discussion about the way Americans eat is so often bleak—hunger, obesity, food safety fears—Denckla Cobb’s book is packed with good news about real people whose efforts to farm locally aren’t just succeeding, they’re thriving.
But her hope is that the book is more than a feel-good read. She aimed to offer up a practical guide to kickstart similar projects in all corners of the country.
“Everyone needs to eat, and everyone relates to food,” she said. “How people spend their time and how they choose to eat is a way that they can reclaim power in their lives. I really do think it’s democracy in action.”—Graelyn Brashear
Efficiency comes forward
Years ago when I ran a green construction company in a resort town in Idaho, most of the customers we worked with wanted a home that had character and taste. They wanted hardwood floors, exposed beams, and high ceilings. Aside from the givens of separate bedrooms and bathrooms for the kids, they preferred tile that was or resembled stone, granite countertops, black or stainless appliances, big windows to take in the views, and real wood siding.
Energy efficiency was an afterthought, although they did think about it. Five solid months of winter will have you giving some consideration not only to where you store your snow toys, but also what those utility bills are going to look like—especially if your vacation home will be mostly sitting empty.
Still, we did not sell our custom homes or remodels by touting energy efficiency. Sustainability and green, yes, but no one really cared about efficiency. Today, things are a bit different.
Gas prices are on the rise again, and policymakers are worried about the recession’s impact on people’s budgets. Homebuyers are beginning to have conversations around the operating costs of the home—as in, how much extra per month will this home cost to live in over that home.
Seriously, who wants to live in an inefficient home? Um, sign me up for the draftier-in-winter and stuffier-in-summer property, please. I prefer noisy too, and I really like mild to major indoor air quality issues; sneezing and coughing are a major pastime of mine.
No thanks! If you knew you had a choice (and many don’t know), wouldn’t you just say at the outset, I want a nice kitchen AND an energy efficient home?
Here in Charlottesville, LEAP and the Charlottesville Area Association of Realtors recently held a stakeholder luncheon on valuing energy efficiency in the real estate market. Attendance was cut off at 75 because every seat was taken. This is a hot topic for real estate agents in our area. We have already had one LEAP customer who believes her home sold quicker because of energy improvements, and others who will be uploading their Home Performance with ENERGY STAR certificate onto their MLS record for potential buyers to see. It’s something to consider for both sides of the real estate equation: investing in a home’s energy performance pays off.—Cynthia Adams, executive director, LEAP.