Rain Gardens
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SJC BLOG
Rebuilding: One Year After Sandy
/Urban planner and the founder of Outside New York, Carter Craft, spoke on Sunday night at Grace Van Vorst Church about rebuilding the areas affected by water damage from Sandy. The essence of his message, as far as I understood, was that water needs to move and flow and it needs access to places where it can do that harmlessly. Inlets, wetlands, canals, etc. Humans have tried to restrict water's natural inclinations and it's not working. He also stressed the need for interaction between people and the water. Boating, fishing, swimming, paddle boarding, etc. A lot of this touches on the notion of who has access to the water's edge, what socio-economic groups "own" the water's edge and restrict "non-owners" from accessing it. https://outsidenewyork.wordpress.com/
http://www.waterfrontalliance.org/
Rebuild by Design is a competition between some of the brightest minds in the design world. They have attempted to come up with solutions to rebuilding the Sandy affected regions in a sustainable way. I went to the presentation at NYU by the ten design groups who have been chosen as finalists. What excited me most about their plans were the strategies that involved the factors Carter Craft talked about....accessibility of water into the water's edges and the interaction of people and water.
Go to Rebuild by Design's website to see updates on their public forums in and around Jersey City.
http://www.rebuildbydesign.org/
EPA Releases New Green Infrastructure Strategy, Focuses on Making Green Infrastructure a Part of Business as Usual for Communities
/EPA Releases New Green Infrastructure Strategy, Focuses on Making Green Infrastructure a Part of Business as Usual for Communities EPA has launched a new strategy to expand the use of green infrastructure, with the goal of making green infrastructure a part of business as usual for local communities. The Agency’s 2013 Green Infrastructure Strategy builds on its previous 2008 and 2011 green infrastructure strategies. The new strategy maintains a focus on information exchange and community engagement, while focusing on improving federal coordination, Clean Water Act regulatory support, research and information exchange, funding and financing, and capacity building.
More information: http://water.epa.gov/
Jamie Piziali
US EPA - Office of Wastewater Management
Green Infrastructure Program
Feel like being inspired ? Check out this year's Solar Decathlon !!
/For those of you who don't know about it, and for those of us who do, the Solar Decathlon is always worth checking out and is always inspiring. California comrad Mary Hunt, the smart touch behind the Ecolutionary Selling blog site, writes about her experience http://www.ecolutionaryselling.com/ Photo Gallery here http://www.flickr.com/photos/solar_decathlon
