Outreach Efforts Underway in Tornado Ravaged Rural Midwestern and Southern Communities

Tornado damage in Tuscaloosa, Ala. Photo courtesy of America Continental 2000.

An outreach effort is underway to assess the damage and assist rural Midwestern and Southern communities in the wake of the recent deadly tornados, said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack this week.

The current count of confirmed tornados from the March 2nd outbreak stands at 42, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), with damage reports coming from: Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.

To get an idea of the power of the storms, in Jefferson County, Ind. wind speeds ranged from 60 mph to 174 mph, where the National Weather Service reported that a large factory was “cleared to its foundation slab with anchoring bolts bent in the direction of the storm.”

Hundreds of people have been displaced from their homes and officials from USDA Rural Development are now looking for ways to help. In rural communities, the agency is working to provide FEMA with regular information about vacancies in multifamily housing complexes for people that have been displaced by the disasters.

This will be government-funded housing complexes. In cases of disaster, displaced residents can receive priority placement in vacant units.

Other USDA divisions are also involved in the recovery effort. The agency’s food and nutrition service has approved Indiana’s request to operate a ‘disaster supplemental nutrition assistance program’ for six presidentially-declared disaster counties.

The USDA gave one example of how the food is being distributed, saying that in Indiana, approximately 11,000 pounds of USDA food has been provided to the Henryville Community Church in Clarke County to help feed people displaced by the tornadoes. The same assistance program has also been approved for Kentucky, providing hot meals across the state.

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New Electric Taxi Fleet Expected to Save Energy Costs and Lower Emissions of Colombia’s Capital

Colombia’s capital city of Bogotá has decided to introduce a starting pilot fleet of 50 fully electric taxi cabs to be used in the city’s center. 

The BYD e6 all-electric sedan will be used as part of Bogotá’s electric taxi pilot project. Photo courtesy of BYD.

Officials are anticipating a number of benefits to come from the pilot project, including reducing operating costs for the city, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as well as creating exposure and spurring demand for electric vehicles in the residential sector.

“Bogotá’s 50 new electric taxis will not only diminish noise and air pollution, but reduce operating costs and greenhouse gas emissions by more than 80 percent and 70 percent respectively when compared to traditional vehicles,” said the city’s collaborating partner, the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group.

“The pilot project is very important countrywide, and an example for the world because it sets a path to transform vehicle fleets to low carbon technologies, fosters green vehicle markets by increasing consumer confidence, and opens a wide window for public and private transportation that moves away from pollution and greenhouse gas emissions,” said a statement from Felipe Targa, Colombian vice minister of transportation.

Besides being the capital of Colombia, Bogotá is also the country’s largest city with a population of about 7 million. In terms of land area, the city is also among the largest in Latin America, and is among the top 30 largest cities in the world.

The first taxis are expected to be operational in Bogotá within the next few months. In an effort to make electric vehicles in the city a more viable option, the government on both the national and local level has enacted laws and policies to make electric vehicles more accessible for consumers.

Last December, Bogotá enacted a local decree (No. 677) to support the electric taxi project over a three-year period. Supported by an existing national government policy that removes the import duty on electric vehicles, this local decree removes circulation restrictions and permit requirements for electric taxis. The local government says that privately-owned electric vehicles will receive the same incentives.

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Borough Proposal For NYC Public Schools To Use Rooftop Solar Power To Lower Energy Costs

Public school rooftops in New York City are a vast untapped resource for generating solar power that could be used to lower yearly city energy costs by millions of dollars, according to a new report by Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer.                  

Tom’s River, N.J. regional school powered by solar energy. New Jersey government policies have created renewable energy credits that have spurred public-private partnerships for solar projects. These policies are being looked at by New York State legislators as possible models for similar future initiatives. Photo courtesy of Mathew Engle, Science and Technology Advocate.

Under the current system – using fossil fuel – the New York Department of City Administrative Services is expected to allocate $240 million, or 27.5 percent of the city’s municipal electricity budget to meet the electricity demands of buildings within the Department of Education for fiscal year 2012, said the report.

The borough president’s report estimates that with about 21 million square feet of usable public school rooftop space for solar panels, “the city could increase its solar energy by an estimated 2,507 percent.”

Using information from the City University of New York’s NYC Solar Map, the report also showed that even the solar installation on a partial number school rooftops in the city (1,094 public school buildings) could “host 169.46 megawatts of clean, renewable electricity and eliminate 76,696 tons of carbon from the air each year – the equivalent of planting over 400,000 trees.”

The NYC Solar Map is an interactive online tool that allows users to estimate the solar energy potential for every building in the city’s five boroughs by putting in an address.

The map also highlights existing solar installations; displays real-time solar energy production citywide; and allows users to estimate the costs, incentives, and payback period for an investment in solar power.

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Texas School for the Deaf Wins Grand Prize in Competition for Green School Makeover

Photo courtesy of DTK Austin.

The Texas School for the Deaf is the grand prize winner in the Global Green USA Green School Makeover Competition.

As part of the grand prize, the school will receive a ‘green makeover’ worth $130,000, according to the non-profit Global Green, which educates and raises funds for environmental initiatives.

The grand prize winner and four runners-up were selected by a panel of judges out of a pool of more than 200 public, private, and charter K-12 schools that submitted proposals for green renovations.

In announcing the results of the competition, Matt Petersen, president and CEO of Global Green, said, “Green schools improve student performance, increase average daily attendance, and reduce operating costs, energy, and water consumption.

“We are deeply excited to be able to bring those benefits to the students and teachers at the extraordinary Texas School for the Deaf.”

The school is the oldest continually operating, publicly funded school in Texas. Since 1857, over 10,000 students from grades K-12 have walked its halls.

Claire Bugen, the school’s superintendent said, “Unlike other public schools, we live on this campus 24 hours a day and we generate a lot of waste. This prize will help use take our fledgling recycling efforts to the next level and install some important tools – like automatic faucets – to help us become more sustainable.”

Actually, the school will do a lot more than just revamp its recycling and faucets. The school plans to make energy efficiency upgrades, implement large-scale water conservation initiatives, reduce paper waste, and provide education for the school community on recycling.

As part of its energy upgrades, the school plans to retrofit light fixtures to allow for energy efficient bulbs, as well as to install motion-activated lights to conserve energy.

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Sumatran Elephants Status Now At Critically Endangered On List Of Threatened Species

The Sumatran elephant has just moved up in status from ‘endangered’ to ‘critically endangered’ on the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) Red List of Threatened Species.

Sumatran Elephant. Photo from World Wildlife Fund-Indonesia/Samsul Komar.

“Nearly 70 percent of its habitat and half of its population have been lost in one generation,” said the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), adding that a major contributing factor has been “the clearing of forests for conversion to plantations.”

The elephant is an Asian subspecies called Elephas maximux and is only found in Sumatra, Indonesia. The WWF estimates that there are currently about 2,600 elephants left in the wild, which is about have the population of 30 years ago.

On an even more localized scale, the WWF said that in the province of Riau – located in the center of Sumatra, along the Strait of Malacca – “elephant numbers have declined by a staggering 80 percent in less than 25 year, confining some of the herds to small forest patches.”

The conservation group attributes much of the blame for the habitat destruction on the pulp and paper industries that make their fortunes by clear-cutting forests and replacing them with pulpwood plantations.

These plantations are composed of trees such as aspen, hemlock, pine, or spruce which are used in making pulp for paper.

The WWF is calling on the Indonesian government to “prohibit all forest conversion in elephant habitats until there is a conservation strategy to save the species.”

Also under threat to deforestation are the Sumatran tigers, which currently number about 400 in the wild.

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