Photo: Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects

From “A Design that Celebrates the People”: Normal, IL Traffic Circle Wins Smart Growth Award as New Civic Space” by Colleen Gentles:

[In December last year], EPA announced the winners of the 2011 National Award for Smart Growth Achievement. We are excited to report that Normal, Illinois is the recipient of the award in the Civic Places category for their traffic roundabout.

We’ve written before about how the town’s new traffic circle has successfully managed traffic flow at a busy five-way intersection, diverted thousands of gallons of untreated stormwater away from the nearby creek, and become the town center by bringing residents together in an attractive public space. The more recent news is how the traffic roundabout is spurring local economic development with the construction of a multimodal transportation station adjacent to the circle, courtesy of a U.S. Department of Transportation grant. Both the transportation hub, which will eventually have high-speed rail service and create an estimated 400-500 new jobs, and the circle take advantage of the town’s existing infrastructure, bus service, and the historic central business district to attract even more residents to the new town center.

“The one-third-acre roundabout does much more than move cars. It invites pedestrians with shade trees, benches, lighting, bike parking, green space, and a water feature. People have lunch, read, and play music, and the open space invites community gatherings such as a holiday caroling event. It is the anchor for a community-wide revitalization and is part of Uptown Normal’s LEED-ND Silver recognition.

A popular rails-to-trails conversion, the Constitution Trail, leads to and around the roundabout, helping both to revitalize Normal and to bring people from surrounding areas to Normal’s central district. A new Children’s Discovery Museum on the edge of the roundabout already receives over 140,000 visitors per year, and a hotel and conference enter have recently opened nearby. One indication of the success of the redevelopment is that property values in the district have increased by about 30 percent since 2004.” _{Smart Growth Awards}

According to the short video, this traffic circle was almost banned to pedestrians. It’s a good thing town officials fought back. [Watching the video, it looks like there are weekly farmers markets held on the roundabout too.  KA]

Read more about the project here, as well as the other winners from the 2011 National Award for Smart Growth Achievement.

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The roundabout was designed by Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects.  Check out their site for more photos and project details.

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Photo: Hoerr Schaudt Landscape Architects

From “A Success Story in Parched India” by Kamaria Greenfield:

Wankute, a tiny village located high in the Sahyadri mountain range of the Maharashtra state of India, was dry and near-barren in the 1990s. Agriculture was limited to crops that could withstand hot temperate and little water, such as millet and certain legumes. The men worked outside of the village to bring in enough income for their families. Women sometimes walked for a kilometer and a half to obtain the day’s water. During the three months of annual, inevitable drought, the villagers would pay to have water tankers come in.

[...]

In 2003, the residents heard about the success of watershed development in similar nearby villages and wanted to try it for themselves. The main problem in Wankute was not that there was no rainfall, but that the limited 450 millimeters that fell every year did so during a short period of time, usually for less than three weeks. To transform their community, the village partnered with the Watershed Organization Trust (WOTR), a not-for-profit NGO that works in several Indian states, to bring much-needed water and prosperity to Wankute.

Since 1996, WOTR has conducted 747 watershed projects in India. The first of its eleven developmental sectors is a commitment to Integrated Water Resources Management. Efforts were at first met with some skepticism and resistance. Villagers were especially uneasy when WOTR mandated a ban on tree felling and the free grazing of cattle. But this was necessary for the planting of new trees and grasses, which would hold the soil and moisture in place. The main idea of the watershed development in Wankute was to build a water treatment structure composed of bunds (ridges and ditches in the soil) and check dams.

Today, the results are clear. The water tables have risen significantly and the villagers have not imported tankers for water since the project was finished. The vegetation planted eight years ago continues to thrive on the hillsides. And overall employment has increased because farmers can work with their crops for eight months out of the year instead of a meager three. A wide variety of more water-intensive crops now flourish, including wheat, tomato, onion, and potato. Because of this bounty, the export of foodstuffs and the import of agricultural labor have both increased. In addition to agricultural benefits, the watershed development has also had health and social benefits for the village. There is now no shortage of potable water, reducing the risk of waterborne illnesses such as cholera and dysentery. With their greater total income, the villagers built a new community hall, two new schools, a public health center, 150 latrines, and more roads for better transportation of goods. The women of Wankute have formed nine different self-help groups and invested in alternative energy methods such as solar lampsbecause they can no longer cut down trees for fuel. Furthermore, because labor and resources are now both readily available in the village, men can work locally and families are more physically intact. The introduction of watershed development has had far-reaching effects that, ten or fifteen years ago, neither the people of Wankute nor the world at large could have imagined.

Read the full article by Kamaria Greenfield for Nourishing the Planet.

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The new development by Aspect Studios at Darling Quarter in Sydney recently featured on the InDesignLive website.  At the heart of the site is a children’s playground with heaps of things for kids to play on, climb up or mess around with.  At ground level there are stepping stones of various heights, looking much like tidal pools along a beach, and there’s an enormous rope climbing frame.  Site-harvested rainwater irrigates the playground and the surrounding public parkland, and is also used in the industrial-looking water features from Germany.  Low-energy lighting is used for night lighting.

The harvesting systems and related quality controls for the use of rainwater on this public site must be quite highly resolved – does anyone know of other examples (especially in Australia) where rainwater is used for play as well as for irrigation?  _KA

Read the article on the InDesignLive site.

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Photo by danielbradberry via flickr CC

From “Yorkshire’s revived river Aire is a lesson in people power” by Peter Lazenby:

News that Britain’s once foully polluted rivers are achieving levels of cleanliness and wildlife occupation not seen since the industrial revolution is to be welcomed. But credit for this cannot be claimed only by the government’s environment agency and anti-pollution legislation. Behind many of the improvements lies people power – the mobilisation of individuals and organisations to force polluters to clean up their act. In the 1980s and 90s, that is exactly what happened in my part of the world, industrial west Yorkshire.

The river Aire starts out as a healthy river in the Yorkshire dales, springing from beneath a limestone cliff known as Malham Cove, where falcons nest. By the time it wound its way through Bradford and Leeds, some 50 miles downstream, it had received the industrial waste of textile, chemical and engineering industries, plus the domestic waste of more than a million people. The pollutants killed off the river’s oxygen supply.

[...]

In the 1980s, a group was formed called Eye on the Aire. Its volunteers brought together more than 30 organisations with an interest in the river. They included community groups representing people living near its banks, conservation and environmental organisations, sporting groups such as rowing clubs, local councils and companies such as Tetley’s brewery, which had a riverside location. For a decade the group campaigned to press Yorkshire Water to install an extra level of filtration at its sewage works – tertiary treatment. The system involves the filtering of already treated sewage effluent through pebbles and increasingly fine layers of sand.  It took a decade to win the campaign, which included the harnessing of government influence and action by the environment department.

Yorkshire Water installed the tertiary treatment at a cost of millions of pounds. The effluent it produced was often as clean as the fresh river water into which it passed. The effect was near miraculous.In the late 1990s, more than a decade ahead of much of the rest of Britain, otters, heron and other wildlife began to return to the river Aire in the heart of industrial Leeds. Salmon appeared in the lower reaches, blocked only by weirs and other obstacles. Water passes will eventually allow them to reach spawning grounds in the Yorkshire dales where they have not been seen in more than two centuries.

There was an economic spin-off. The Aire in Leeds had been part of a comprehensive canal and river transport network in the days before rail. Its city riverside was littered with semi-derelict warehouses and factories not used in decades. No one wanted to invest in and develop buildings adjacent to a stinking open sewer. The restoration of the river to life changed all that. Today the Leeds waterfront thrives with homes, restaurants, bars and markets. The Aire hosts an annual water festival.

The driving force behind the return to life of the river was Eye on the Aire, an organisation made up of ordinary people with determination and a belief in their cause. We should remember their example in the face of future struggles.

Read the full article by Peter Lazenby for the Guardian

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From “Innovation of the Week: Harnessing the Sun’s Power to Make the Water Flow” by Janeen Madan:

Nearly 2 billion people around the world live off the electricity grid. Lack of access to energy can take a huge toll, especially on food security. Without energy for irrigation, for example, small-scale farmers must rely on unpredictable rainfall to grow the crops they depend on for food and income.

In the Kalalé district of northern Benin, agriculture is a source of livelihood for 95 percent of the population. But small-scale farmers lack access to effective irrigation systems. Women and young girls spend long hours walking to nearby wells to fetch water to irrigate their fields by hand. The Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF), a U.S. nonprofit, has introduced an innovative solar-powered drip irrigation system that is helping farmers—especially women—irrigate their fields. The pilot project launched in partnership with Dr. Dov Pasternak of the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRASAT), has installed solar panels in Bessassi and Dunkassa villages.  This cost-effective and environmentally sustainable project is improving food security and raising incomes by providing access to irrigation for small-scale farmers, especially during the six-month dry season.

Read the full article by Janeen Madan for Nourishing the Planet.

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From In India, mobile water tracking system updates local residents:

The reliability of water supply is a major issue for millions of households in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Although water is meant to be delivered to communities via a piped supply on a rotational schedule, the water often isn’t being piped when it should be — leaving families waiting indefinitely for supplies. Hoping to provide a solution, we recently came across NextDrop.

The NextDrop system, designed and set up by a team of Stanford and Berkeley graduate students, began operations in Hubli, India last year, having won a grant from the Gates Foundation, according to a report on MobileActive.org. In order to communicate with residents when the water is available, valvemen call the NextDrop interactive voice response system upon opening their neighborhood valves. NextDrop then texts the inhabitants of the area the news that water is being piped 30 – 60 minutes before it arrives, as well as texting the engineers at the utility live data on the water delivery. Residents are then contacted randomly to verify the accuracy of the data supplied by the valvemen.If there is any conflict between the data supplied by the valvemen and the residents, the engineers are alerted. These engineers are also able to step in if the valves are not initially reported open when they should be.

According to mobileactive.org, the Hubli pilot initially launched with 180 participating families across five water valve districts in Hubli, and NextDrop now plan to go on and expand to encompass 1000 households covering 25 valve areas over the next year. Crowdsourcing may be one of the simplest ways of solving social problems we know of; relying on the participation of those it benefits. What other social problem could you apply the model to?

Read the full article on Springwise for related articles. or visit NextDrop to find out more

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From “Columbia researchers find green roof is a cost-effective way to keep water out of sewers“:

Green roofs like the one atop a Con Edison building in Long Island City, Queens can be a cost-effective way to keep water from running into sewer systems and causing overflows, Columbia University researchers have found. The Con Edison Green Roof, which is home to 21,000 plants on a quarter acre of The Learning Center, retains 30 percent of the rainwater that falls on it. The plants then release the water as vapor, the researchers said in the study (http://www.coned.com/greenroofcolumbia).

If New York City’s 1 billion square feet of roofs were transformed into green roofs, it would be possible to keep more than 10 billion gallons of water a year out of the city sewer system, according to the study led by Stuart Gaffin, research scientist at Columbia’s Center for Climate Systems Research. New York City, like other older urban centers, has a combined sewer system that carries storm water and wastewater. The system often reaches capacity during rains and must discharge a mix of storm water and sewage into New York Harbor, the Hudson River, the East River and other waterways. Con Edison built the green roof and formed its research partnership with Columbia in 2008. The partners saw the green roof and an adjoining white roof as an outdoor laboratory for environmental research. Gaffin’s team found last year that the green roof and white roof save energy and reduce urban air temperatures. Under its “cool roofs” program, Con Edison has turned many roofs on company facilities white to save energy and protect the environment.

“The information we are collecting from Con Edison’s roofs is invaluable in helping us determine the costs and benefits of green infrastructure projects,” Gaffin said. “Without solid data from experiments like this, it is impossible for us to know which projects are the best options for protecting the environment.” “When we built our green roof we were confident that researchers from Columbia would gain important knowledge about protecting the environment,” said Saddie Smith, vice president for Facilities for Con Edison. “Three years later, it’s clear that our project has helped us understand how roofs can save energy, cool the atmosphere and prevent storm water runoff.”

The researchers used instrumentation to measure sunlight, and other forms of energy entering and leaving the green roof. That data allowed them to calculate the amount of energy leaving the roof in the form of water vapor. The study concluded that based on the cost of building and maintaining a green roof it costs as little as 2 cents a year to capture each gallon of water.

This article is from Columbia University via Environmental Research Web.

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Image: katerha via flickr CC

From the University of Canberra:

21 January 2011: The University of Canberra will discontinue the sale of bottled water on campus, the Vice-Chancellor announced today.

The University is the first in the country to go bottled water free and will immediately begin phasing out on-campus sales. Covering a campus population of almost 13,000 students and staff, the move is the largest of its kind in Australia. It was initiated by students and assisted by action group Do Something!, represented at the launch by founder Jon Dee.

New water bubblers and bottle refill stations, installed with funding from the ACT Chief Minister’s Department, will significantly increase the supply of fresh, healthy, free drinking water on campus.

Students and staff will also be offered a chilled water alternative to bottled water in the form of the Australia’s first WaterVend machines. WaterVend machines dispense filtered, ‘flash-chilled’ still, sparkling or flavoured tap water into the customer’s own refillable container. The WaterVend provides a cheaper alternative to bottled water in campus food outlets and provides those outlets with a commercial income to offset the income lost from bottled water sales.

Read the full press release.

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Aakash Ganga, River from Sky, is a domestic rainwater harvesting system [in Rajasthan]. It channels rooftop rainwater from every house in a community, through gutters and pipes, to a network of multi-tier underground reservoirs as shown below.

Aakash Ganga’s strategy is to form public-private-community partnership or social enterprise to provide drinking water to the people. It rents roofs from home owners or acquires rights to harvest their rooftop rainwater. The local government or Panchayati Raj Institution (PRI) leases, at no cost, about 10,000 M2 land next to the shared community reservoir. A social takes care of the post-implementation upkeep and holistic sustainability ? social, cultural, economic, institutional, political, operational, and ecological. One half of the harvested rooftop rainwater is stored in the reservoir attached to the house for the exclusive use of the home owner. The other half flows to the shared community reservoir. People who live under thatched roofs or who cannot afford to have their own reservoirs take water from the shared reservoir.

Read about the Social, Engineering and Place-making innovations associated with this project on the Sustainable Innovations website http://si-usa.org/projects/rainwater-harvesting/

Check out some great photos from the project on flickr: Life Post Aakash Ganga Implementation (all copyright or I’d put some up here).

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From ““Hotspots” and “Hopespots” for Africa’s Water Challenges Outlined in New Water Atlas” by Matt Styslinger:

Africa faces growing challenges to its water resources. Many of these challenges have been laid out in the new Africa Water Atlas from United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The Atlas uses over 224 maps and 104 satellite images from 53 countries to detail threats to Africa’s water supplies—such as the drying of Lake Chad in the Sahel and the erosion of the Nile Delta in Egypt—as well as increasing water scarcity as a result of climate change. According to the Atlas, the amount of available water per person in Africa is well below the global average and declining. A majority of Africans are dependent on rainfed agriculture, and scientists are predicting that by 2020 between 75 and 250 million people in Africa will live in conditions of increased water stress from climate change.

[...]

“The dramatic changes sweeping Africa linked with both positive and negative management of this continent’s vital water resources is graphically brought home in this Atlas,” says United Nation’s Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner. Steiner also notes that the Atlas brings “into sharp relief” the way in which infrastructure development and environmental degradation are impacting African livelihoods. “But so too are the many attempts towards sustainable management of freshwaters,” he says.

Agriculture is the biggest user of water in Africa and only 4 percent of cultivated land in sub-Saharan Africa is irrigated. The Atlas maps out new solutions and water management success stories from across the continent in what the UNEP calls “hopespots.”

[...]

Read the full article by Matt Styslinger

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