Green Cities Sustainability Corps 2011

Two main projects that Loralyn worked on in the month of July include the green roof bus shelter project, funded by the Sprout Fund in partnership with the Pittsburgh Foundation, and rain gardens that are funded by the Heinz Endowments. The bigger steps for the green roof bus shelter project this month were to find a new installation site in the commercial core of East Liberty, and to write-up the RFP for a graphic design firm to do the educational shelter signage. A new (and quite possibly better) site was approved for the shelter, and graphic design firms were interviewed. With the rain gardens, Loralyn worked alongside SEEDS ecological engineering to do site assessments for the various rain garden locations. Installations for the rain gardens are set for October.

(http://www.city.pittsburgh.pa.us/)

The City of Pittsburgh is partnering with the SCA to take on a Sustainablility Fellow with the City's Urban Forester. The Urban Forester leads tree plantings and tree care for Pittsburgh's street trees in partnership with Tree Pittsburgh (www.treepittsburgh.org) through the TreeVitalize program (http://www.paconserve.org/216/treevitalize). The TreeVitalize program is a program partnership with the City of Pittsburgh, Tree Pittsburgh, Allegheny County, Western PA Conservancy, and DCNR.

The Sustainable City Fellow is responsible for assisting with:

- Assessing neighborhood tree planting sites

- Planting street trees with neighborhood partners

- Assessing the potential impact of street trees for reducing asthma rates in key neighborhoods.

- Pursuing continued funding for projects and partnerships.

Matthew Henderson has been very busy travelling to 19 boroughs between Beaver and Allegheny county signing up business owners to become certified sustainable. Also, Matthew has signed many business owners and local resident to the Downtown First Program and contiues to work in these communities trying to push for a more sustainble business districts. In addition to the certification program, Matthew has been helping facilitate meetings with sustainability coordinators on goals and principles to be implemented into a Sustainable Business Compact. Matthew is working hard and enjoying every moment.

In July, the SCA’s summer youth crew started their six week program working along the SPARC corridor. I am responsible for establishing the daily schedule and making sure everything runs smoothy. I meet with the crew leaders, contractors and partners organizations to ensure expectations are being met and all requirements fulfilled. I have also been working in the field laying out plant material and overseeing installations. The crew has been building spilt rail fence, sheet mulching, planting perennials and picking up trash along Larimer Avenue.

I had a nice, shortened July thanks to an awesome San Francisco and Mt. Shasta, CA vacation. It has been reaffirmed – I love mountains! Despite 10 days out of the office, a lot of great things happened with the City’s Urban Forester and ACTION-Housing.

With the City, I was able to coordinate a meeting with Dr. Jane Clougherty, a University of Pittsburgh researcher who focuses on the relationship between air pollution and environmental and human health. She is the leading air pollution researcher in Pittsburgh and she was excited at the opportunity to expand her current research to accommodate trees. I will be working with her and Danielle Crumrine from Tree Pittsburgh to acquire more information that can be used in conjunction with our LIDAR tree canopy assessment. Teaming up with Dr. Clougherty is an awesome opportunity for us, and we look to take full advantage of it. Associated with this, I have begun a PowerPoint presentation highlighting all of the research I have done thus far on trees and air pollution.

The Homewood busway tree project is also chugging along smoothly. I received the soil sample results, which indicate a heavy amount of salt, but nothing so bad that trees won’t grow (according to Matt Erb). I met with Shaina Madden to discuss next steps, which includes contracting out the removal of knotweed this summer and fall in anticipation of planting trees next spring. I spent another day using GASP’s air monitoring equipment to test air quality. This time, instead of sitting very close to the busway, I monitored from the Homewood pool/baseball fields at a spot 85 yards from the road. Upon analyzing the data, however, because I was sitting relatively far away from the busway, I wasn’t able to correlate any spikes in particulate matter or any other air pollutant with bus travel.

My month with ACTION-Housing was highlighted by our first meeting with contractors at the Pittsburgh Green House. Now that we have the property, demolition (which I get to participate in!) is getting under way. We were able to do some light work at the end of the month, with the majority of the demo work coming next month.

We have also finalized the logo design, which is awesome. We’re now working with Paul Schifino, our graphic designer, to design the layout of our infographic signs, which will be sprinkled throughout the house. These signs will orient visitors and give them textual and graphic information about various aspects of weatherization. I spent a few days this month editing the infographic text and compiling a list of information we need to gather in order to complete the graphics.

The August newsletter – farmers markets – turned out really well. I needed to do some major editing work in order to combine two article submissions and six pages of text into the one-page feature article. Both authors were happy with the result, which will hopefully attract some fresh faces to all of the wonderful farmers markets around Pittsburgh. We increased distribution of the August newsletter by 36 (2 online, 34 print) over July’s numbers. Along with the rest of the Green Team, I am currently devising a system to measure the readership of our newsletter. We currently send it out to 912 people and it will help us write a more effective newsletter if we know who reads it and what they want to hear more about. We will be sending our readership assessment test with the September issue.

This month I have worked on Recycling and secured 365 small recycling bins from the City of Pittsburgh. I have attended building committee meetings and they are working to convince the union to agree to our recycling program. They did approve our request to start recycling lightbulbs. I went to The Foundation Center to search for grant opportunities for a district energy feasibility study as well as attended the working group meetins on district energy possibilities. I have continued administrative duties for the URA Green Team including scheduling meetings, taking minutes, providing an environmental calendar, as well scheduling tours of greenroofs and green buildings. The large project that I have been working on are developer resource guides for the URA. These will provide case studies and basic information on sustainable principles as well as information on local organizations and economic incentives. I have also registered for the LEED Green Associate exam and plan to take it in a couple of months.

My main focus in the month of June was leading groups in macro-sorting incoming medical supplies. In addition to my normal Thursday volunteer groups, I also lead groups from Duquesne, Literacy Corps and Del Monte. In June I lead 52 volunteers for a total of 142 volunteer hours. From the combined efforts of macro-sorting with volunteers and the medical supply assistants sorting items to the floor, our back log at the warehouse has been decreased from 135 pallets to 109 pallets. Other projects of note from the month of June include attending a PRC’s Hard to Recycle collection event at the Mall at Robinson where I collected 31 repurposable medical supplies and continued progress on the creation of three part high school curriculum.

I have taken responsibility for the URA's Green Team. This involves tracking progress of members and assisting in any way as well as organizing agendas, meetings, and other logistics.

My first month at the URA was spent on updating the Recycling program in the building as well as quantifying the amount of material recycled for the past 2 years.

My trainings this month included an SCA training on sustainable agriculture as well as a full day grant writing workshop at the Carnegie Library.

The Black and Gold City Goes Green is starting on some brand new projects this summer that will be engaging some new audiences. A college blitz and a business blitz are on the table and would mean a step towards some new groups around the city. The focus of this month’s outreach is the blitz model, which could mean more neighborhood blitzes in the future.

This summer, we’re also planning to host mini screenings of Carbon Nation at Community Partner locations. Pairing these screenings with a competition to kill energy vampires, we hope to spark more involvement with our Community Partners and their constituents.

Outside of the campaign, our service group sent a request for proposals to community groups around the city, I’ve been almost living at Free Ride (bike co-op), and I’ve been becoming more involved in community gardens around the city.