Community Wind or Mountaintop Removal?

Where does this story start? —with mountain top removal? —with investment tax-credits? —with our growing need for energy? How do we balance ecological security with appropriate technology? How do we live within the scale of our environment?

We think of mountain top removal in Appalachia, but it has come home to Vermont in the form of the Kingdom Community Wind project. This project includes removal and leveling of 40ft of mountain ridge for turbine generators similar in size to those installed at Wolfe Island, Ontario and double the size of those in Searsburg, Vermont.

The rotors on Wolfe Island in the St Lawrence began spinning last June after more than decade of dreaming, negotiating, public and private meetings, planning and building. The wind farm is the Kingston, Ontario’s largest-ever construction project with each tower at 80m (263ft), a school-bus size nacelle, and three 45m (148ft) blades. According to the organization Wind Concerns Ontario, the Wolfe Island Turbines installed by Ontario Hydro crank out enough electricity to power 75,000 homes per year. What started as a 24-turbine, 36-MW wind farm became a 86-turbines at a cost of approximately $450 million after the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) awarded Canadian Hydro a 20-year contract to supply 200 MW of power to the provincial grid.

The Kingdom Community Wind (KCW) project in Lowell, VT is based on an overall height of 410-443 ft (80m tower with 90-100m blades) with flashing red lights (FAA regulations for structures over 200ft) and according to the website a “worse-case” scenario of 21 turbines along the 3.2 mile ridge of the Lowell Mountain range.

We read that the project is “a grid-connected wind energy project proposal on 3 miles of ridgeline on a portion of Lowell Mountain in southwestern Orleans County, Vermont. The project could consist of 16 to 24 wind turbines, each capable of generating between 1.5 to 3.0 megawatts of power for a total of 63MW. The wind farm holds the potential to meet the annual electrical needs of approximately 20,000 average households, that’s about 48,000 Vermonters!”

But who are those Vermonters? 48,000 people do not live in Orleans County. In a presentation by the GMP on Oct 18, 2010 we heard that the project is designed for RECs or Renewable Energy Credits that will be sold to investors in Massachusetts. While I am a proponent of wind generation for power, I am also a proponent of transparency in decision-making and corporate finance. Who are the beneficiaries of a project this scale?

Over ten years ago, Jeanne Vissering, Landscape Architect, surveyed Vermonters about their reactions to cell towers and wind generators—and we overwhelmingly preferred the working landscape of kinetic wind towers to that of cell towers. But, we also continue to prefer sensitive and scale-driven choices over mega-projects and that continues to be the conflict—whether big box stores, large-scale farming, or wind projects. In the case of the projects in Chateaugay, NY and Wolfe Island, Ontario the wind farms, despite their size, are contained within a working landscape. The towers are scaled by the topography and one never sees the whole series as the viewshed is continually framed by farms, trees, and rolling hills.

How do we make decisions for the common good? How do we determine appropriate scale of both investment and of intervention in the landscape? Why is it so hard to base our human interventions on appropriate scale design and local environmental conditions? I ask this not just for the Lowell Mountain range, but for the estuaries in Korea which are being filled in, for the tundra in Alaska which under threat, for the tidal flats in the Emirates, the list is long…

And I answer that it is easy to colonize someone else’s landscape. As long as global economic conditions drive decision-making, local communities (natural and human) will suffer.

Diane Elliott Gayer, AIA

Burlington's Moran Plant

I have been in love with the Moran Plant ever since I moved here in 1988. 1988 was a time when the waterfront was at its most derelict, when the Coast Guard building was still a blue box built on heavy piers sunk into the lake, when the gas tanks were just starting to disappear, and when the community boathouse was but a mirage. It was the waterfront’s post-industrial time.

Walking there late one February night during a snowstorm that fell thick and quiet over Burlington the waterfront was a moment in stillness—a moment of black silhouettes in a white landscape—an emptiness before the romance of possibilities, before the dream of reclaimed buildings, before the land began to breathe and take life. The imminence of change was not yet felt.

Change can be welcomed or feared. It depends on where one stands, one’s attachment to and knowledge of existing conditions, and even one’s perception of the possible. The art of becoming, of transforming possibilities, of changing existing realities is the art of development.

In the case of the Moran Plant the dream of possibilities looms large—it is a dream that could be transformative. The raw space inside the concrete and brick walls is larger than life, the opportunity is of something greater than self.

Having been an architect through the 1980s and 90s when every square inch of space had to be cost accounted I understand the effort of allocating every inch, but when something is inherited from the past and offers a volume of space such as we would never build—wow, what a gift. The Moran Plant is big open unmitigated space that no one would build today. We are not comfortable with an empty vessel of unclaimed space and no obvious “purpose.”

So to fill this void of imagination and play with the romance of the possible, I offer a handful of ideas from places that could inspire the regeneration of our Moran Plant. Examples of reclaimed industrial places, at this scale and larger, range from parklands such as Seattle’s Gas Works Plant and Germany’s reclaimed industrial zone in the Ruhr Valley to art museums (London’s Tate Modern and MassMoca, North Adams, MA); farmer’s markets (Ottawa, Quebec City, etc.); and community theater venues (Chicoutimi, Quebec).

To take just one example: the Seattle Gas Works in Washington is on a promontory of land facing south into Puget Sound with a view of Seattle, the mountains and the San Juan Islands. It was once covered by gas tanks and a large refinery. Today it is a cleaned-up environmental site with open grasslands, 30 ft. diameter sundial made by artists and children, AND the “Gas Works” buildings and equipment left as history lesson, shelter, destination point, and playground. The equipment was made-safe, painted in bright reds, blues, yellows and purples, and left for people to explore and climb on.

My personal hope for the Moran building is that once again generates energy—that it becomes a demonstration site for wind and solar, becomes part of the lake clean-up effort, and sports a greenhouse on the south roof for productive gardens. There are so many ways this building can contribute to Burlington as a sustainable city that to do otherwise than make it glow with energy and life again would be to deny all the work that has happened to date.

In 1994 Burlington passed a Resolution Relating to Sustainable Economy that included among other things a directive to maximize conservation efforts and to help develop and use renewable resources. This building is a place where these dreams can come together. It is big enough to handle the Community Sailing Center, offices for Parks and Recreation, innovative efforts for lake clean-up efforts using the old water intake and outtake in the lower level, growing trees and micro-climates within the main part of the building, energy monitors and equipment for photovoltaic solar arrays (on the south roof) and wind generators (on the ground), sod or “green” roof on the tower building, super-graphics on the outside walls, greenhouse gardens, and a cafe serving locally-grown food.

The gas tank pads and dog park become an arboretum with wild lands—leaving the North 40 “undeveloped for future generations.” In this regeneration of the building—there is no destruction of a public resource, no removal of history, no decisions based on short-term socio-political gain, and no costly landing-filling all the acres and acres of concrete, brick, and steel from Burlington’s lack of imagination.

Reprinted from Burlington free Press "It's My Turn" by Diane Elliott Gayer

November 2005

Perennial Thinking

LECTURE:
Dr. Wes Jackson, The Land Institute
February 8-9, 2010
The University of Vermont, sponsored by Plant and Soils Science Dept and Gund Institute for Ecological Economics

Dr. Wes Jackson began his address to the University of Vermont by linking his home state of Kansas to New England through the telling of a formative story about Kansas and the civil war—this was the 1852 battle between Yankees and Missourians which determined Kansas as a free-state.

But the real question addressed by Dr. Jackson was: "What will the ecosphere ask of us?"and his answer: "Nothing. The ecosphere will be fine without us. It is us we worry about."

He goes on to illustrate many ways and practices of us on the planet, of our caring about the future and about becoming conscious of who we are, and suggesting that we are matter and energy’s way of becoming visible and tangible. The Laws of Integrative Levels speak of contiguous volume and the sequence from molecule and tissue to ecosystem and ecosphere. The ecosphere is "a slab of space-time."

The ecosystem is alive just as a molecule is alive—it has energetic parts and crystalline parts and we exist as a sub-set to that whole. When artists pull down inspiration from the larger whole they render the invisible "slab of space-time" visible for the rest of us.

Wes described Marty Bender’s 10-year study of the Sunshine Farm at the Land Institute and what it takes for a farm to live by sunshine as the means of measuring energy, food, work, etc. The work of the Sunshine Farm asked what is important about what we know and don’t know, how we determine what we measure, and what is our fundamental understanding of nature. This resulted in the question: Can we do better than nature? "Apparently some of us say ‘yes,’ others ‘no,’ and still others say both ‘yes and no.’"

I ask: "Why we would want to?" Wes’ answer is: "We can never."

Life as we know it is based on carbon. We are facing the 3.5 billion year imperative. The Petri dish bacteria grow when we give them sugar, the Drusilla flies take off with bananas; deer populations expand without predators; and so the human population has expanded to occupy the given planetary space… It will take 120 years for the next doubling of our human population. But what does this say for system balance? How does the ecosystem evolve within the ecosphere? And what is important for us to know?

The ecosystem has properties of its own, it’s not a finite box; it’s a system of land and ocean management; it’s a system of unfathomable things that we cannot believe because we have no knowledge of those things—we tend to only believe what we already have knowledge of.

So what of nature? Nature before agriculture was made up of perennials, not annuals. And soil is the root of all growth…more important than oil… What loses have we sustained over time by changing our focus from soil and sun to oil and gas? What knowledge of ecosystems have we lost in focusing our knowledge on the parts at the exclusion of the whole? Agriculture has created dead zones from30º north and from 30º south. We have plowed up the earth and with that releases megatons of carbon into the atmosphere. We have moved from the sacred to the profane, from conservation to production.

So what are we to do? Learn from place. Consult the genius of place. Genius loci.

Wes Jackson has developed a 50- year Farm Bill which is based on restoring the soils, conserving and replenishing our waters, eliminating dependence on fossil fuels, revitalizing our plant communities, renovating our food strategies, and working with the sun. The natural systems agriculture will be isomorphic. He shows an agriculture based on perennials not annuals, one which replenishes the soils rather than depleting them, and argues for thinking and acting for long-term.

This 50-year Farm Bill moves us in 5-year increments from a dominance of annuals with minor mix of other annuals/vegetables to expanded mix of vines and nut crops and hay/forage, a dominance of perennials, and a minor increase other annuals/vegetables. Why? Because we need to confront extractive growth; we need a sunshine future. We need to develop resilience in our thinking. We need a flourishing of the arts. We need to stop tilling up our soil and begin to protect it, revive it, replenish it, and heal it.

If you ask me the soils covering our planet are like our own skin covering our body… mostly ignored, often abused, but critical to holding in moisture, protecting us harm, closing over when scarred.

The following day Wes Jackson continued to talk of the reductionist world in which we live and ignorance with which we proceed. He described our worldview (one which looks at the parts in isolation from the whole and which prioritizes knowledge of the part over understanding of the whole) as our first problem. The second problem was the assumption that we have adequate knowledge to run the world, to replicate nature, and to harness all the mysteries of existence. He proposed that we should hold an ignorant view of the world instead. By being ignorant we keep our selves open for alternate solutions and understandings, we keep our exits open for new practices, and our humility within us.

The third problem identified was the ancient problem of the losing control of the metaphor. Wes argued that when we use a metaphor from another realm we fall prey to having to conform to that worldview. By way of example he uses James Stewart’s New Yorker article about the financial meltdown in 2009. The article takes us step by step through the eight days of America’s financial crash, but none of the larger global crises. The financial markets are not set in context of population explosion, soil erosion, chemical contamination, global pollutants, changing climatic conditions, the 6-fold increase in the economy, or the green revolution. He suggests that if planetary health is immaterial and the crisis really a bookkeeping error, then we should be able to simply write it off.

And he worries about using ecosystems services as a solution since money is a metrical device and monetizing nature may not in the long run get us to where we need to go. Flattening the complexity of nature into the accounting measures of ecosystems services may not change the global understanding of nature but rather play the other way… not only are we not in control of the metaphor, but we are not in control of the balance sheet.

So how are we to change our view? Quoting Ian Forester on education “It turns on affection don’t you know” Wes reflects on what it takes. Proffering that we don’t shift our views based on the pragmatics of economics, but rather through affection—that it takes heart to shift loyalties and perceptions. In concluding he quotes from Kenneth Clark’s Civilization using the description of the David sculpture by Michelangelo to inspire the metaphor for our future—one which speaks of heroic sacrifice before us if we are to overcome the current forces of fate.

"…it is only when we come to the head that we are aware of a spiritual force that the ancient world never knew. I suppose that this quality, which I call heroic, is not part of most people’s idea of civilization. It involves contempt for convenience and a sacrifice of all those pleasures that contribute to what we call civilized life. It is the enemy of happiness. And yet we recognize that to despise material obstacles, and even to defy the blind forces of fate, is man’s supreme achievement; and since, in the end, civilization depends on man extending his powers of mind and spirit to the utmost, we must reckon the emergence of Michelangelo as one of the great events in the history of western man."

Notes produced by Diane Elliott Gayer, AIA, FWIA

Why is my fish eating plastic?

An eye-popping 46,000 pieces of plastic float on every square mile of ocean!

http://www.beachconnection.net/news/plast040609_244.php

A snapping turtle was caught in a piece of plastic while young - and grew around it.
(photo Zan Dubin)

“We live in a plastic convenience culture; every human being on this planet uses plastic materials directly and indirectly every single day,” Watson said. “Our babies begin life on Earth by using some 210 million pounds of plastic diaper liners each year; we give them plastic milk bottles, plastic toys, and buy their food in plastic jars.

“Every year we eat and drink from some thirty-four billion newly manufactured bottles and containers. We patronize fast food restaurants and buy products that consume another fourteen billion pounds of plastic. In total, our societies produce an estimated sixty billion tons of plastic material every year.

“Each of us on average uses 190 pounds of plastic annually: bottled water, fast food packaging, furniture, syringes, computers and computer diskettes, packing materials, garbage bags and so much more. When you consider that this plastic does not biodegrade and remains in our ecosystems permanently, we are looking at an incredibly high volume of accumulated plastic trash that has been built up since the mid-twentieth century.”

http://www.aspenpost.net/2008/03/25/10-million-tons-floating-the-plastic-ocean/

As designers we need to be on the front line of the pre-cycle movement, in other words redesigning our packaging, our products, our practices.

http://open.salon.com/blog/planetpals/2009/03/22/recycle_precycle_which_cycle_is_best_for_you

I heard that South Africa for example they banned all plastic bags at the grocery stores because of the pollution and proliferation of plastic trash across the landscape. Now if you don't take a bag in with you, you carry your groceries out in your arms--there is no "paper or plastic" option.

If Vermont could ban billboards, put in place a bottle recycling law, we can have a Plastics Awareness Campaign. We can start now and begin to eliminate plastics in Vermont. It needs to start somewhere so why not with us?

Blog by Jane Petrillo for the Vermont Design Institute

July 2009

Vertical Farming for Burlington

For a moment in time we thought Dickson Despommier of The Vertical Farm fame would be joining us in Burlington for Earth Week at UVM. We were going to dream of a sustainable world, close the loop on energy and water and waste systems and talk of growing healthy food. The follow-up panel with John Todd, Ocean Arks International; Melinda Moulton, MainStreet Landing; and Ben Falk, Whole Systems Design was going to test these ideas for Vermont and beyond.

Dr. Despommier had to cancel, but the conversation I wanted to host is still relevant. Currently we import most of our energy (even though we have wind and solar available locally); we send all our stormwater either directly into the lake or via a waste treatment plant; our durable goods are buried; and even in Vermont our food travels great distances to get to us (80% of seafood in America is imported; the average food distance is 15,000 miles).

Change doesn’t happen without a vision. And while we might argue with Despommier’s vision of a Vertical Farm in a 40+ story glass-skyscraper because it takes the farmer off the land, I wonder. Haven’t we already done that? Land conservation and open space planning isn’t about farming as much as it is about protecting natural resources and viewsheds. Our ongoing image of Vermont is not a working landscape, but one from Vermont Life.

Anyway back to The Vertical Farm—these farms are about bringing food production into the cities where the majority of people live, eliminating the transport dependency, solving the global shortage of arable land, reducing the water consumption and agricultural wastes, and freeing up our land mass for ecosystem restoration including giving carbon credits for letting farms go back to hardwood forest and rewarding farmers for ecosystems restoration. The permaculturalists I know will argue that this vision is just another example industrial agriculture… This could be, but I suspect that the offense is contained within graphics done by architectural and engineering geeks. An infusion of aggie knowledge might be just the thing—adding bio-dynamic gardening and chinampa technology to the hydroponics and aeroponics.

But we need our own model to test and what could be better than my much loved Moran Plant. I have used this building as a case study in various design classes. We have shown how it can host solar panels, horizontal wind turbines, farmer’s market, and greenhouse on the lower roof deck. The building also provides a perfect location for stormwater mitigation through constructed wetlands as a demonstration project, and, with the addition of vertical farming in the tower, becomes our own experiment with Vertical Farming and building a close-looped system. None of this takes away from current plans of ice-climbing and recreation; rather it adds a layer of function to the reclamation of the building and becomes an urban prototype for energy and food production.

As Dickson Despommier reminds us “farming is not a natural thing, it is a human intervention” … so why not a Third Green Revolution? Why not make buildings more than passive structures that house human activity? Why not use all that embodied energy to a higher and more sustainable of use? Why not grow food in our urban centers?

April 20th 2009