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Spotlight - Can Aluminum Bottles Replace Throwaway Plastic? - NYTimes.com
Can Aluminum Bottles Replace Throwaway Plastic?
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By SONIA KOLESNIKOV-JESSOP
Published: July 24, 2009
SINGAPORE — Steve Wasik demonstrates that he is on message with his company’s philosophy by always carrying one of its colorful — and reusable — aluminum bottles.
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Steve Wasik, the chief executive of the Swiss manufacturer SIGG, is driving the sale of reuseable water bottles by promoting them as an eco-chic accessory.
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During a recent interview here, the one he drank from stated in bold pink letters, “Make Love not Landfill.”
When Mr. Wasik joined Sigg in 2005 as head of a newly set-up American subsidiary, the Swiss manufacturer had roughly $20 million in global sales and limited distribution outside Europe. Mr. Wasik, who became the company’s first foreign chief executive in 2008, has helped more than triple sales and expand its presence in the United States and Asia.
With his marketing background in the beverage and fashion industries, the 47-year-old executive repositioned Sigg by placing less emphasis on the water containers’ Swiss quality standards to promote them as an eco-chic accessory. He got lucky when the actress Julia Roberts told millions of Oprah Winfrey viewers last year “everybody just needs to get a Sigg,” providing the spontaneous type of word-of-mouth endorsement he could have only dreamed about.
Are Sigg bottles actually eco-friendly? Bob Lilienfeld, editor of Use-less-stuff.com, points out that reusable bottles are much less wasteful than disposable bottles, but metal water bottles are not necessarily better than reusable plastic ones. “The key for all reusable containers is to figure out how to ensure that people keep using them. You coul
In Chatham, an austere utopia yields to a relentless tide - The Boston Globe
In Chatham, an austere utopia yields to a relentless tide
By Brian MacQuarrie, Globe Staff | June 25, 2009
CHATHAM - The end rolled into view yesterday for the last survivors of First Village, in the form of moody waters propelled by an unusually high tide stirred by a storm more suited for winter than summer.
As the ocean licked at the cluster of five storied and spartan cottages, celebrated by their owners as much for what they’re not as for what they are, one of the last enclaves of its kind began collapsing into the sea.
“We lost 40 feet of beachfront over the last few days,’’ said Bill Hammatt, an owner who had hoped to savor a farewell season at his beloved cottage. “Unfortunately, it has terminally damaged all five of the remaining buildings.’’
The slow death by millions of cuts of Atlantic surf began in 2007, when an April storm sliced a breach through this ever-changing finger of Nauset Beach. Since then, the break has been carved into a wide new inlet to Chatham Harbor, made an island of Second Village to the south, and reduced First Village from 12 cottages to five.
“I have to tell you, it’s a very sad feeling,’’ said Todd Thayer, whose family has enjoyed one of the barrier-beach cottages, or “camps,’’ for 50 years.
Like the Thayers, the rest of the First Village colony has cherished this simple Cape Cod paradise for generations. Now, their hopes for a farewell summer have been dashed near the place where author Henry David Thoreau said a man could “put all of America behind him.’’
“They realize it really is past the point of no return,’’ Keon said.
Two of the camps had tilted over by yesterday morning, waves were lapping at the cottages, and a persistent storm had chewed up whatever small buffer of sand remained.
As a result, four of the owners yesterday asked for permission to demolish what’s left of their camps, said Ted Keon, the town’s director of coastal resources.
Only a week ago, Hammatt foresaw the grim but inexorable finish.
“All we need is one big storm, and we’re gone,’’ Hamma
In Chatham, an austere utopia yields to a relentless tide - The Boston Globe
CHATHAM - The end rolled into view yesterday for the last survivors of First Village, in the form of moody waters propelled by an unusually high tide stirred by a storm more suited for winter than summer.
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* 4/20/07 Breach has Chatham riding a tide of uncertainty
* 6/04/07 Gap in Chatham beach widens
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Camps succumb to nature in Chatham
Camps succumb to nature in Chatham
* Graphic Nature wins out
As the ocean licked at the cluster of five storied and spartan cottages, celebrated by their owners as much for what they’re not as for what they are, one of the last enclaves of its kind began collapsing into the sea.
“We lost 40 feet of beachfront over the last few days,’’ said Bill Hammatt, an owner who had hoped to savor a farewell season at his beloved cottage. “Unfortunately, it has terminally damaged all five of the remaining buildings.’’
The slow death by millions of cuts of Atlantic surf began in 2007, when an April storm sliced a breach through this ever-changing finger of Nauset Beach. Since then, the break has been carved into a wide new inlet to Chatham Harbor, made an island of Second Village to the south, and reduced First Village from 12 cottages to five.
“I have to tell you, it’s a very sad feeling,’’ said Todd Thayer, whose family has enjoyed one of the barrier-beach cottages, or “camps,’’ for 50 years.
Like the Thayers, the rest of the First Village colony has cherished this simple Cape Cod paradise for generations. Now, their hopes for a farewell summer have been dashed near the place where author Henry David Thoreau said a man could “put all of America behind him.’’
“They realize it really is past the point of no return,’’ Keon said.
Two of the camps had tilted over by yesterday morning, waves were lapping at the cottages, and a persistent storm had chewed up whatever small buffer of sand remained.
As a result, four of the owners yesterday asked for permission to demolish what’s left of their camps, said Ted Keon, the town’s director
The race for clean-energy innovation - The Boston Globe
The race for clean-energy innovation
By Edward J. Markey | June 6, 2009
ON A RECENT congressional delegation to Hong Kong, I toured a factory that is developing a thin solar cell that can be put on windows to generate electricity from the sun with zero carbon emissions. I thought of 1366 Technologies, a company in Lexington that is also racing to get advanced solar technologies to market.
It may seem like your typical competition between two companies, but this race is about much more than the solar market. It is about the race for trillions of dollars in clean-energy investments. As President Obama says, "the nation that leads in 21st-century clean energy is the nation that will lead the 21st-century global economy."
And if we win the race, it could bring 150,000 new jobs and billions of dollars to Massachusetts.
American companies would get an edge with passage of the Waxman-Markey bill, the most sweeping energy legislation Congress has considered in a generation. The plan would end America's dangerous dependence on foreign oil, increase the amount of clean energy we produce, make our buildings, homes, cars, and trucks more efficient, and cut the harmful carbon pollution causing global warming.
The bill requires that 20 percent of our electricity in 2020 come from clean-energy sources like solar or wind, or from energy efficiency. It establishes "clean-energy innovation hubs" around the country to help researchers and inventors move their ideas from the lab to the market.
It also reduces carbon emissions from major US sources 83 percent by 2050 compared with 2005 levels, and saves consumers money at the pump by investing $20 billion to retool America's auto manufacturers to produce electric cars that don't use any gasoline.
The Waxman-Markey bill would invest more than $190 billion in clean-energy technologies that will go to the companies, research institutions, and entrepreneurs smart enough, agile enough, and innovative enough to devise the next great clean-energy technology.
Many of these cutting
Melting Greenland ice could amplify sea-level rise in Boston - The Boston Globe
Melting Greenland ice could amplify sea-level rise in Boston
By Beth Daley | June 1, 2009
Excerpts from the Globe's environmental blog.
It's been a debate among climate scientists for years: How much will sea levels rise from climate change?
A new study led by the Colorado-based National Center for Atmospheric Research shows the melting of the Greenland ice sheet this century may result in far higher sea levels in Boston and other Northeastern cities in the United States and Canada.
The study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, says that if the Greenland ice sheet melts at moderate to high rates, ocean circulation patterns may shift and cause sea levels off the Northeast United States to rise about 12 to 20 inches more than in other coastal areas.
"If the Greenland melt continues to accelerate, we could see significant impacts this century on the northeast US coast from the resulting sea level rise," says NCAR scientist Aixue Hu, the lead author. "Major northeastern cities are directly in the path of the greatest rise."
Scientists need public's help to stop the lily beetle
Take a look at your garden lilies. If you see a gorgeous red beetle on them, worry.
The beetle, an invasive visitor, has cut a deadly swath through the region's lilies over the past 17 years. The bugs can be found on the stalks of Asiatic, Oriental, Easter, tiger, and Turk's-cap lilies. (Day lilies, which are not true lilies, are safe.)
Thousands of gardeners from Maine to Connecticut have stopped trying to grow lilies since the bugs were discovered in Cambridge in 1992. The adults, about a quarter of an inch long, look like a skinny lady bug. If you squeeze them, they squeak - a defense mechanism to deter predators. Today, they are in every New England state.
University of Rhode Island researchers have found a possible solution in a European wasp that is a natural enemy to the lily leaf beetle, and about 10 years ago began releasing them in isolated pockets throughout New England. The wasp lays its eggs in beetle larvae, ki
What we're missing - The Boston Globe
AS I JOGGED across the downtown bridge over a section of the Fox River, I was blinded by scores of massive, shimmering American white pelicans perched on rocks and zooming above with wingspans of up to 9 feet. Some packs paddled around the froth of cascading dam water, creating perfect circles around schools of fish to gobble them up.
At the end of the bridge, I continued down to the bank, onto the Fox River Trail, a paved bike and pedestrian trail that stretches north to Green Bay. The swirling congregations of pelicans gave way to the solo soaring of bald eagles. As beautiful as that was, I noted the substantial homes abutting the trail and a couple of people waving graciously from them. It made me think of the anti-trail, not-in-my-backyard arguments in some suburbs in Massachusetts, as if the dregs of Guantanamo Bay were to be unleashed upon them.
"I have mixed emotions," Tom Erdman, 60, curator of the Richter Museum of Natural History at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, later said over the telephone. "There used to be nice cattail marshes, before any developments, condos, or yacht clubs at all. But I'm big on the bike trail because people see things they might not otherwise see. They can see peregrine falcons and other things that make them say, 'That's cool,' and it gets around what we have here."
It would also be cool if the Patrick administration and Massachusetts towns found more efficient ways to build bike trails. The Globe reported last month that the Commonwealth is last in the nation for accessing available federal funds for transportation enhancements such as rail trails and bike lanes. Massachusetts uses only about a third of funds, while my home state Wisconsin and the rest of New England use nearly all of theirs. Though Massachusetts has several great trails, such as the Minuteman Bikeway from Cambridge to Bedford and the Cape Cod Rail Trail, the state has left about $84 million on the table because of NIMBY squabbling and a process that makes it so expensive and time-consuming for town
Drowning in stupidity - The Boston Globe
Drowning in stupidity
By Yvonne Abraham, Globe Columnist | May 20, 2009
LOWELL - A gentle rain is falling on a gray spring morning as a couple walks hand in hand along the Merrimack River. This should be the perfect place for a romantic stroll, what with the water and the handsome historic buildings and such.
Instead, it's a dump - a soupy, tangled monument to sloth and stupidity.
Fallen trees just below the Aiken Street Bridge have netted a shameful catch. In the shallow water are masses of plastic bottles, wood scraps, propane canisters, bits of boat, tires, and a couple of metal drums full of lord-knows-what.
Fortunately, the pair is so entranced with each other they barely notice the garbage piled up against the shore. Not so lucky, I am balancing on a log in the middle of said pile. Trying hard not to fall off, I am gobsmacked at the obscene mess all around me.
"You wouldn't know if there were bodies under there," says Rocky Morrison, a contractor who has spent so much of his own time and money clearing garbage out of the Merrimack over the last four years that he thinks his wife might dump him.
A burly guy, Rocky looks like he could break you in two, but he's as big a chicken as I am when it comes to stepping off the log. He's seen enough to know there may be hypodermic needles lurking among the trash.
Much of this stuff was deliberately dumped in the river by blockheads between here and Franklin, N.H., the river's origin.
No doubt some of these fools thought it would be killingly funny to roll tires down an embankment. Others may have thought it too taxing to dispose of their gas canisters the way a fully functioning human would.
Some might not have been capable of thinking at all as they dropped engine parts into the drink. Splosh, splosh, splosh.
It has been 37 years since the Clean Water Act. We've been chasing down polluting corporations for more than a generation. You'd have to be a hermit living in a box in a cave on another planet to be unaware of the damage this kind of dumping can do.
News Analysis - As Political Winds Shift, Detroit Charts New Course - NYTimes.com
As Political Winds Shift, Detroit Charts New Course
By JOHN M. BRODER and MICHELINE MAYNARD
WASHINGTON — Why, after decades of battling, complaining and maneuvering over fuel economy standards, did carmakers fall in line behind the tough new nationwide mileage standard President Obama announced Tuesday?
Because they had no choice. The auto industry is flat on its back, with Chrysler in bankruptcy, General Motors close to it, and both companies taking billions of dollars in federal money. Foreign automakers are getting help from their own governments. Climate change legislation is barreling down the track, and Congress showed last fall that it had no appetite to side with Detroit any more.
Simply put, Detroit and the other companies need Washington’s help, and they are powerless to block the rules Washington dictates.
“They can feel the political winds changing,” said David Doniger, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council who has faced the car companies in court many times. “They need government aid to stay in business. When you have your hand out for help, it’s hard to use the same hand to thumb your nose at the federal government.”
It is a clear victory for the president, who introduced fuel economy legislation as one of his first acts as a senator, and it is the latest blow in a four-year decline in Detroit’s influence in Washington.
In 2005, car companies were able to stop fuel economy legislation. By 2007, with the country awakened to the realization that global warming was a threat, they were forced to go along with higher standards but managed to water them down.
This time, they arrived at the table so debilitated they could extract only the barest of concessions. The primary gift carmakers received from Mr. Obama in Tuesday’s proposal was the certainty of one fuel economy standard from California to Maine, rather than the patchwork that would have resulted from two sets of regulations, one by the 18 states that wanted tighter standards, and another for everywhere else.
“We understood th
Bill would have manufacturers foot bill for TV recycling - The Boston Globe
For cities & towns, a TV horror show
Bill would shift recycling costs to makers
By Bina Venkataraman, Globe Correspondent | May 14, 2009
As more people switch to flat-screen - a trend that is expected to accelerate with the switch from analog to digital transmission next month - aging cathode-ray tube televisions are going the way of the cassette player. But discarding them is complex, creating an environmental conundrum that is costing Massachusetts cities and towns millions of dollars.
Today, state lawmakers will hear a bill that would make manufacturers, rather than municipalities, responsible for recycling unwanted televisions, computer monitors, and other electronics - items that can harm human health and the environment if not disposed of properly.
Although the Legislature has not passed similar bills in the past - manufacturers oppose such measures, warning that the costs would have to be passed on to consumers - environmental specialists and some public officials say the growing tide of electronic waste, combined with economic pressures, give the bill greater urgency.
Seventeen states, including Maine, Rhode Island, and Connecticut, already have rules, called producer responsibility laws, that require manufacturers to pay for recycling elec tronic waste. More than a dozen others are considering them.
Massachusetts cities and towns collectively spend an estimated $2 million to $4 million dollars a year on electronic waste collection and disposal, said Greg Cooper, recycling director for the state Department of Environmental Protection.
Bay State residents and businesses discard 300,000 tons of cathode-ray tube monitors and televisions a year, officials say. Each cathode-ray tube television or computer monitor contains, on average, four to five pounds of lead and trace amounts of other toxic metals that can also leach into groundwater - which is why Massachusetts banned them from landfills and incinerators in 2000.
Cities, towns, and businesses now contract with recyclers who either sell used moni
Germany Imagines Suburbs Without Cars - NYTimes.com
In German Suburb, Life Goes On Without Cars
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
VAUBAN, Germany — Residents of this upscale community are suburban pioneers, going where few soccer moms or commuting executives have ever gone before: they have given up their cars.
Street parking, driveways and home garages are generally forbidden in this experimental new district on the outskirts of Freiburg, near the French and Swiss borders. Vauban’s streets are completely “car-free” — except the main thoroughfare, where the tram to downtown Freiburg runs, and a few streets on one edge of the community. Car ownership is allowed, but there are only two places to park — large garages at the edge of the development, where a car-owner buys a space, for $40,000, along with a home.
As a result, 70 percent of Vauban’s families do not own cars, and 57 percent sold a car to move here. “When I had a car I was always tense. I’m much happier this way,” said Heidrun Walter, a media trainer and mother of two, as she walked verdant streets where the swish of bicycles and the chatter of wandering children drown out the occasional distant motor.
Vauban, completed in 2006, is an example of a growing trend in Europe, the United States and elsewhere to separate suburban life from auto use, as a component of a movement called “smart planning.”
Automobiles are the linchpin of suburbs, where middle-class families from Chicago to Shanghai tend to make their homes. And that, experts say, is a huge impediment to current efforts to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions from tailpipes, and thus to reduce global warming. Passenger cars are responsible for 12 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in Europe — a proportion that is growing, according to the European Environment Agency — and up to 50 percent in some car-intensive areas in the United States.
While there have been efforts in the past two decades to make cities denser, and better for walking, planners are now taking the concept to the suburbs and focusing specifically on environmental benefits like red
Waterfront site must open to public - The Boston Globe
Waterfront site must open to public
State fines owners of wharf building
By Milton J. Valencia, Globe Staff | May 13, 2009
It was a secret jewel along the waterfront, providing a picturesque view of Boston Harbor and the city's skyline. But according to the state Department of Environmental Protection, the historic building at 470 Atlantic Ave. and its public viewing space wasn't supposed to be a secret at all.
The department has fined the owner of the plush Independence Wharf building, at the corner of Seaport Boulevard, more than $21,000 and also issued a series of compliance orders for holding out from the public its grand view of Boston and its harbor, on the site of one the country's largest acts of civil defiance, the Boston Tea Party.
"A renewed commitment on their part is necessary to open this site up to the general public, in a way that provides a public benefit for the city, its residents and our visitors," Glenn Haas, assistant commissioner of the agency, said in a statement.
In addition to the fines, the owner of the building - Independence Wharf LLC - must open up 2,856 square feet of space on the ground floor of the building as a public accommodation. The owner must post proper signage designating the 14th floor, with its observation deck and indoor viewing area, as public space.
The company must also post proper signage outside the building along the Harborwalk encouraging public patronage of the ground floor and viewing deck.
"The current property owners recognize they have a responsibility to provide, and in fact encourage, the general public to access this historic Boston site," Haas said in a statement.
A spokesman for the building's management company, Cushman & Wakefield, said yesterday that management would not comment on the settlement. Independence Wharf LLC is based in Connecticut.
The orders were based on a 2001 license the state granted Independence Wharf LLC allowing it to operate office space at the 14-story structure, which is built on the waterfront. Under state law cove
When there's no outlet handy - The Boston Globe
When there's no outlet handy
By Beth Daley, Globe Staff | May 11, 2009
Excerpts from the Globe's environmental blog.
For all of Maine's rustic nature, most parts are never too far from an outlet to plug your computer into. But if you've been in the vast north woods, you know wildness rules.
There, the lack of electricity presented a problem for the US Geological Survey, which measures snowfall (and thus spring flood risk) by melting snow. To do that, electricity is needed.
Scientists tried, without success, to heat collection buckets with batteries and solar panels. Now, USGS scientists have a solution: A small wind turbine powers the measurements on windy and cloudy days, and solar panels are used on calm sunny days. The system will pay for itself in three to four years.
Turtles travel in style
Nine juvenile sea turtles were recently spared a long, tiring swim from Cape Cod to the warm waters off of Georgia. Instead, they were driven there.
The 9- to 75-pound animals were discovered nearly frozen over the past two winters on Cape Cod, part of a yearly winter tragedy in which young sea turtles get trapped in Cape Cod Bay. As winter moves in, their body temperatures decline and they become lethargic. If they are lucky, they are washed up on beaches, where volunteers find them each winter. Such was the case with the nine.
Two New England Aquarium biologists spent two days and 20 hours driving the turtles south to the 70 degree waters off Jekyll Island, Ga.
Pick a date
When do you think the final word will come on Cape Wind?
Since 2001, when the 130-turbine project in Nantucket Sound was proposed, there have been scores of environmental studies, tons of controversy, a book, new rules - and still, no final decision from the federal government.
Last week, 107 Massachusetts lawmakers signed a letter to US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, urging him to approve Cape Wind as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound has kept up the pressure, opposing Cape Wind.
Salazar is expected t
Off-road warriors - The Boston Globe
Off-road warriors
Cape residents blast ATV users for invading private property, but riders say they have nowhere else to go
By Jenna Russell, Globe Staff | May 9, 2009
FALMOUTH - They call themselves outlaws and pirates, and they try to stay out of sight as they crisscross the Cape, zooming through the woods and bogs on narrow paths, watching over their shoulders for police.
Mostly young and mostly male, they are the recreational riders of all-terrain vehicles - three- and four-wheel ATVs and off-road motorcycles known as dirt bikes - whose buzzing engines and slashing tire tracks unleash a seasonal torrent of complaints about noise and property damage.
Police on the Cape say they are fed up with riders who rocket illegally over public and private property, from landfills and sand pits to the ammunition-studded fringes of the Massachusetts Military Reservation. Last month, police in Bourne announced a crackdown, vowing to tow unregistered ATVs and ticket their owners. At the military base, officials have installed cameras and sensors to try to catch trespassers. Environmental officers in Falmouth helped draft proposed legislation to tighten restrictions on ATVs - and ban all riding by children under 14 - that awaits a hearing at the State House.
Critics of the pastime say safety is their priority. They complain of parents who let children ride unsupervised and riders who recklessly flee police and whose accidents require difficult rescues in remote places. When the weather warms, police say, the number of riders spikes, and accidents multiply. On April 28, as the temperature in Southeastern Massachusetts climbed into the 80s, a 6-year-old crashed an ATV in his Rockland backyard. The boy was wearing a helmet, but his arm was almost severed.
"Every spring, you know it's coming, that kids will get hurt," said Chuck Martinsen, a police officer who investigates ATV complaints for the Falmouth Department of Natural Resources. "ATVs and dirt bikes are marketed as toys, and that doesn't show the danger."
ATV rid
The Refugees of Conservation - Idea of the Day Blog - NYTimes.com
Environment | “Refugees from conservation have never been counted,” writes Mark Dowie in the Boston Globe. “In fact they’re not even officially recognized as refugees.” But from America’s Yosemite National Park to the African Serengeti, he says, millions of tribal people have been expelled from their homes and hunting grounds — protecting nature “by removing humans from the mix.”
This unpleasant reality, the historian adds in the book excerpt (another here), is sharply at odds with the “conservation mythology” put forth in the beautiful writing of early American eco-heroes like John Muir, Lafayette Bunnell and Samuel Bowles.
“The conservation establishment desperately wants the world, particularly its funders, to believe it is working hand in hand with indigenous peoples — two august and ancient forces dedicated to protecting the world against the depredations of development,” Dowie writes. “But in fact conservation and native people remain locked in a deep struggle over what it really means to ‘preserve’ something, and whether that something should be nature or culture.” [Boston Globe, Guernica]
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Foes argue BC plans hamper water system - The Boston Globe
Foes say BC plans ignore aqueduct
Buildings may hamper water system, they say
By Eric Moskowitz, Globe Staff | May 6, 2009
A group of Brighton neighbors and environmental leaders is seeking to delay Boston College's $1 billion expansion plan, raising concerns about its possible impact on aqueducts beneath the campus that carry the water supply for Boston and many surrounding communities.
With the city's zoning commission poised to weigh in on the university's plan tonight, the neighbors and environmentalists - including the Conservation Law Foundation and a former head of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority - want the panel to refrain from voting without a fuller review of how the expansion might disrupt the regional water mains.
"The public has long-range interests in the water supply in the Chestnut Hill area, and it's more than just that neighborhood," said Douglas B. MacDonald, who led the MWRA from 1992 to 2001 and later served as transportation secretary for Washington State, where he now lives.
Of particular concern is an area called Beer Can Hill, a wooded 4-acre tract that sits atop the site, where the aqueduct serving Boston and adjacent towns splits into northern and southern mains. While BC does not own the site and has no plans to develop it, the concerned groups say that construction of nearby athletic and academic facilities might damage the giant pipes and cut off the flow of water to the region.
Kairos Shen - chief planner for the Boston Redevelopment Authority, which must sign off on development plans in the city - defended the review process and dismissed environmental concerns as "crying wolf." The MWRA also does not share the concerns and does not plan to object tonight, because BC's 10-year master plan leaves Beer Can Hill untouched.
The site is officially known as Shaft 7, the access point that descends to the split in the water main. About 80 percent of the approximately 200 million gallons pumped daily by the MWRA passes through that point and branches from there to reach
Design to resurrect 'Old Man' stirs talk in N.H. - The Boston Globe
A New Age vision for the Old Man
Glass design gets a flinty reception
By Brian MacQuarrie
Globe Staff / May 3, 2009
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FRANCONIA, N.H. - Six years after the Old Man of the Mountain came tumbling down, a New Jersey architect wants to resurrect and redefine the famous jumble of granite with a fantastical glass-and-steel version of the flinty face of New Hampshire.
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Channeling more of "Star Wars" than stonework, the 45-foot-tall structure - a New Age face transplant, if you will - would feature 250 suspended glass panels, an interior skywalk, and even a waterfall created from diverted rainwater.
The design, the award-winning brainchild of architect Francis Treves, has opened eyes and stirred talk in the North Country, even if it hasn't much moved the committee charged with creating a memorial to the Old Man. It is, Treves said, "a very sophisticated, intellectual redefinition of the idea of what the Old Man was, which was really man's relationship to nature."
The Old Man, chipped into New Hampshire's identity, was deeply mourned in this state, perhaps most by those trying to make a living from North Country attractions. Some of those venues have been hurt badly since the rock formation collapsed on May 3, 2003. But that doesn't mean the locals are ready to let a flatlander replace him with a hugely costly monument to rival Mount Rushmore or St. Louis's Gateway Arch.
"Public opinion has been very strong on not putting anything back up on the cliff," said Maggie Stier, executive assistant for the Old Man of the Mountain Legacy Fund, which has its own plan for paying homage to the state's indelible symbol of self-reliance.
Instead of an on-site memorial, the Legacy Fund has approved a tribute to the craggy profile at the base of the mountain. The $5 million plan would include five large stones that, when viewed from the right angle, would recreate the famous image.
"I think everyone feels it would be
Boston slowly shedding its 'dirty water' image - The Boston Globe
Boston slowly shedding its 'dirty water' image
Nonprofit gives grant funding for beach events
By John M. Guilfoil, Globe Correspondent | May 3, 2009
With water once so filthy that solid waste regularly washed up on its shores, Boston is slowly shedding its "dirty water" image. In fact, public officials say the Boston area coastline - Nahant to Nantasket, Southie to Eastie - could have the cleanest urban beaches in the United States by 2011.
Yesterday morning, one local nonprofit behind many of these efforts gave grant funding to community groups to help local residents enjoy the fruits of this labor.
Save the Harbor/Save the Bay issued $30,500 in grants to 13 local organizations to sponsor events at beaches all over the Boston area. These events, part of the Better Beaches initiative, are all free and include concerts, bird watching, family reading nights, sporting events, and a whimsical pirate festival on Revere Beach.
"This is about more than picking up trash," said E. Bruce Berman Jr., director of strategy, communications, and programs for Save the Harbor/Save the Bay. "Events and programs could bring people together on our beachfront communities."
The grants range from $500 to $4,000, and will help launch events like a beach festival in Dorchester and an "Endless Summer Waterfront Festival" in Hull the day after Labor Day.
Last year, Better Beaches funding helped bring the popular kite festival to Revere. That event was so popular that it has become self-sustaining, with organizers selling kites and showing off their skills. Berman said it will happen again this year without the need for additional grant funding.
The East Boston YMCA this year received $2,000 for a season opening beach day June 17 and a season ending dance in August. Harold Sparrow, senior vice president of development for the YMCA of Greater Boston, said it's important to acknowledge the beaches as hubs of socialization.
"We talk about the Internet and Facebook, but the harbors were the original social networks," Sparrow said. "H
Organizers look to lessen Marathon's environmental impact - The Boston Globe
Organizers look to lessen Marathon's environmental impact
By David Abel, Globe Staff | April 19, 2009
At the marathon in Austin, Texas, organizers offer runners organic T-shirts, a finish-line farmers' market, a stage operated by solar power, and a system to recycle 15,000 pounds of trash. In Toronto, marathon officials have replaced plastic race kits with biodegradable sacks. Runners at the annual triathlon in Portland, Oregon, receive medals made out of recycled bicycle parts, and those who complete the local marathon are awarded tree seedlings.
Other races transport runners to the starting line in biodiesel buses or prod them to donate their old sneakers.
As an ever-rising number of runners arrive this weekend from every state and 60 countries to compete in tomorrow's 113th Boston Marathon, organizers for the first time are taking significant steps to cut the race's carbon footprint, recycling more of the thousands of pounds of waste created and encouraging everyone from elite athletes to those slogging for charity to make one of the nation's least environmentally friendly road races more green.
"This is a huge step forward for us," said Guy Morse, executive director of Boston Athletic Association, which oversees the race. "We felt it's an obligation of any major event to do as much as it can to offset its effect on the environment - and not just to pay lip service."
This year, the race will use more than 1,000 gallons of diesel in 525 buses to transport 26,400 runners the 26 miles from downtown Boston to the starting line in Hopkinton; some 8,000 volunteers will distribute about 1.4 million nonbiodegradable cups for water and Gatorade at every mile; organizers will serve 11,300 pounds of pasta and 3,400 pounds of vegetables at the prerace meal; and those who make it to the finish line will be greeted with 28,000 mylar blankets and 62,400 half-liter bottles of Poland Spring water that use less plastic.
To offset the emissions produced by the buses, the marathon's organizers this year are buying 22,440
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