Conscious Choice: Environmental Success Stories

October 1999 | News of the Earth

Environmental Success Stories

by Dave Aftandilian

All too often the news of the Earth seems mostly bad. This month, I’m pleased to share reports on two environmental success stories, one local and one national. Together they demonstrate that enlightened business leaders, concerned citizens, and forward-thinking government officials can work together for the greater good — both for the environment and for the humans and other creatures whose lives depend upon it.

Brownfields to Brightfields

When the city of Chicago closed the Sacramento Crushing Corporation in 1996 for violating city environmental ordinances and seized its property, the construction and demolition debris recycler left behind over 600,000 cubic yards of wood waste and construction debris, according to Jessica Rio of the city’s Department of the Environment. The city spent $9 million cleaning up the seventeen-acre site at 445 N. Sacramento Boulevard on the West Side and is still reusing some of the crushed stone in city infrastructure projects.

The Sacramento site was a prime example of a brownfield, which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines as "abandoned, idled, or underused industrial and commercial facilities where expansion or redevelopment is complicated by real or perceived environmental contamination." Often located in poorer neighborhoods near a city’s inner core, brownfields pose both environmental and logistical problems.

Many of these sites contain severe health hazards such as leaking underground storage tanks or soils contaminated by toxic chemicals spilled on the surface. Tracking down those responsible for the pollution and forcing them to pay the cleanup costs is in many cases difficult or impossible. And as the city’s experience with the Sacramento site shows, cleaning up these sites is often very expensive. Until quite recently, federal and state laws were written in such a way that anyone who bought a brownfield was held liable for cleaning it up, which meant that these sites often lay vacant for years, creating eyesores and public health risks for the communities in which they were located. Adding insult to injury, the liability problems, complicated regulations, and high cleanup costs frightened companies away from these sites. Jobs and property taxes thus flowed away from the inner city and contributed to sprawling development of pristine "greenfields" in the suburbs.

A number of governmental programs have been created in recent years to address brownfields, including the 1997 national Brownfields Tax Initiative and the U.S. EPA’s Brownfields Economic Redevelopment Initiative. Chicago has also been quite active in cleaning up and redeveloping brownfields, beginning with Mayor Daley’s 1993 Chicago Brownfields Initiative "to recycle its abandoned properties and bring jobs to its inner core." In 1996, Chicago received a $54 million Section 108 loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; the city has been using the money to purchase brownfields, clean them up, and renovate them into industrial parks with secured access and direct transportation links.

But the most innovative program to date is the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brightfields Initiative. That initiative kicked off right here in Chicago this past August with the announcement that part of the Sacramento brownfield will be redeveloped as the home of Chicago Solar, a new photovoltaic module (solar panel) assembly, installation, and service subsidiary of Massachusetts-based Spire Corporation. The company hopes the new facility will be open for business by next summer.

The goal of the Brightfields Initiative is to use renewable energy to convert contaminated sites into economically productive land. Solar technologies, especially photovoltaic arrays to turn sunlight into pollution-free electric power, are well suited for use on brownfields. They require very little maintenance, and can stand directly on the ground without penetrating contaminated soils.

The Department of Energy’s main role in this campaign, according to Joan Glickman, Deputy Director of the Federal Energy Management Program, is to "bring all three tiers of government — local, state, and federal — together to focus on how they might develop brightfields." The department will provide coordination among the many governmental agencies working on brownfields redevelopment or programs to encourage renewable energy use. It also will help link government with the private sector, suggesting renewable energy companies that might be interested in brightfields redevelopment. The department will seek out real estate developers, building contractors, and laborers open to integrating environmental technology into new buildings and renovations.

A variety of solar projects are planned for different "brightfields," ranging from using solar energy to light new recreational parks built on former brownfields in Stamford, Connecticut to eco-industrial parks in Cape Charles, Virginia and Washington, D.C. Other renewable energy technologies also hold excellent potential for brownfields redevelopment. For instance, the town of Babylon, New York, is looking into installing a utility-scale wind project on one of its former landfills.

Thanks to a forward-thinking collaboration among the city of Chicago, ComEd, the U.S. Department of Energy, and Spire Corporation, Chicago will host the first brightfields redevelopment in the nation on the Sacramento site. The former headquarters building for Sacramento Crushing Corporation will be renovated into a state-of-the art, environmentally efficient facility with the help of the Environmental Committee of the American Institute of Architecture. It will house both Chicago Solar and Greencorps Chicago, a welfare-to-work program that trains participants for jobs in the landscaping industry.

Spire is no newcomer on the solar scene; they’ve been in the photovoltaic industry since the 1970s, when they developed advanced solar cells for space satellites. To date they have worked with more than 140 facilities in forty countries. 90 percent of the photovoltaic modules on the market today were made with Spire equipment. The main focus of their solar division is designing and manufacturing equipment to assemble photovoltaic modules from solar cells; according to Steve Hogan, Vice President and General Manager of Spire Solar, this will be one of the two main tasks for Chicago Solar as well. The other will be to design, install, and service the photovoltaic energy systems it manufactures for locations within Chicago and, later, throughout Illinois. By the time the facility enters full-scale production in three to five years, it will have created fifty to sixty direct jobs in Chicago, and up to one hundred total jobs, when you include indirect jobs such as construction.

When asked why Spire chose to locate a solar manufacturing facility on a brownfield in Chicago, Hogan said that the decision was "based on the city and ComEd’s interest in making Chicago a solar town." He also acknowledges a helping hand from the Department of Energy linking Chicago and Spire. The city provided tax breaks to Spire for locating in Chicago and building on a brownfield, and they also gave the company low lease rates on space in the building on the site. Joan Glickman cited Chicago’s interest in linking solar industry with brightfields redevelopment as a key factor in the Department of Energy’s decision to choose Chicago as the site of the first brightfield. She also noted the City’s proven track record at leveraging funds for brownfields redevelopment and attracting environmentally concerned building contractors. Glickman also said that ComEd’s "responsiveness and receptiveness to solar being part of their strategic energy development in the future" gave an immense boost to the project as well.

To ensure a market for Chicago Solar’s products, the city agreed to purchase $2 million worth of photovoltaic modules for installation in city facilities such as CTA stations, schools, and parks. These modules will reduce demand on the main energy grid, helping ensure a more reliable supply of electricity during peak times such as a summer heat wave. And if the modules produce more energy than is needed by the site at which they are installed, ComEd will buy the excess electricity, according to Spire President Roger Little.

ComEd has also agreed to buy $6 million worth of the solar equipment "as a down payment on a larger renewable energy portfolio," said ComEd Chairman John Rowe. ComEd’s contribution is part of the $12 million that it promised to spend on renewable energy in a $700 million arbitration settlement agreement last spring with the City of Chicago.

But the good news about this project doesn’t stop there. Spire notes that the solar systems to be installed by Chicago Solar will produce more than 22 million kilowatts of power annually and save the region almost 25 million pounds of global warming-inducing carbon dioxide emissions over the next five years. Solar energy is also completely clean; unlike dirty coal plants, which spew out sulfur dioxide and other pollutants, or nuclear plants which produce radioactive waste that remains hazardous for millions or billions of years.

Even the building that will house Chicago Solar and Greencorps Chicago will be a model of environmental responsibility. Working together, the city’s Department of the Environment and the Environmental Committee of the American Institute of Architects will renovate the facility to make it as energy-efficient as possible. Jessica Rio highlights some of the building’s special features: solar panels on the roof to generate electricity; heat cycled into the building from the attached greenhouse (to grow native plants for the Greencorps program) in the wintertime, shade trees positioned strategically to give maximum cooling benefits in the summer, adjustable outside shutters to let more sunlight in or keep it out, rainwater collected on the roof to water plants in the greenhouse, on-street parking instead of a parking lot, bike racks, and showers to encourage biking to work.

U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson sums up the benefits of the Brightfields Initiative this way: "Incorporating solar and other renewable technologies into the reuse of industrial properties makes economic and environmental sense. This effort can serve as a national, even international model for the kind of development that promotes livable communities." The city of Chicago, the U.S. Department of Energy, ComEd, and Spire all deserve our thanks for making the Sacramento brightfields project a reality. Their vision and hard work point the way toward a brighter future of restored industrial sites bringing jobs and pride back to hard-hit urban communities — and doing it through clean and green renewable energy technology.

Home Depot Pledges to Stop Selling Wood from Endangered Forests

On August 26, as part of its 20th anniversary celebrations, the Home Depot gave the world’s old growth forests a priceless gift: Home Depot President and CEO Arthur M. Blank announced that "Home Depot will stop selling wood products from environmentally sensitive areas.... By the end of 2002, we will eliminate from our stores wood from endangered areas — including certain lauan, redwood, and cedar products — and give preference to‘certified’ wood." ("Certified" wood comes from forests designated by the Forest Stewardship Council as managed "in an ecologically sound, socially responsible, and economically viable manner," according to the group’s web page. Criteria for certification include that the wood must be harvested legally, that indigenous rights must be respected, and that biological diversity must be protected.) In addition to lumber, Home Depot currently sells a number of products made from old growth wood such as paneling, moulding and trim, tool handles, doors, dowels, shingles, shims, and garden trellises.

Because Home Depot is both the world’s largest home improvement retailer and largest single retailer of lumber, this pledge has enormous consequences throughout the world, from the old-growth forests of California and the Pacific Northwest to the rainforests of British Columbia, Southeast Asia, and Central and South America. Where Home Depot leads, loggers, suppliers, and other retailers will follow. In fact, according to a report in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Lowe’s Cos., the number two home improvement retailer, plans to announce a new certification policy similar to Home Depot’s by the end of the year.

However, as the Rainforest Action Network (RAN) has learned repeatedly in its long campaign to convince Home Depot to stop selling old growth wood products, we cannot afford to take the chain at its word. In April of 1997, Home Depot became the last of the major home improvement retailers to pledge to stop selling old growth redwood. After an independent audit discovered that Home Depot had continued to sell redwood products despite its promise, the company admitted a year later that they had never enforced their pledge.

Given the enormous negative publicity that Home Depot has received over the past two years from the RAN-led campaign, with widespread consumer boycotts, almost weekly demonstrations at stores throughout the United States and Canada, frequent high-profile protests at the company’s headquarters in Atlanta, and picketing at local city council and zoning board meetings against Home Depot’s expansion plans, it seems unlikely that they will try to sidestep their high-profile announcement. Still, we will need to keep a sharp eye out, and hold Home Depot to their promise.

In the meantime, though, we should celebrate this success, which proves that direct action linked with consumer boycotts can force even the biggest corporate behemoths to behave in an environmentally and socially responsible fashion. As Michael Brune, RAN’s Old Growth Campaign Director, put it: "Home Depot is a linchpin in the industry, and if they are truly phasing out old-growth wood, I could not possibly overstate the importance of this victory."

Resources

Brightfields Initiative

Brownfields

City of Chicago Department of the Environment

Spire Corporation

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