The Portland Cement Association (PCA) announced at Greenbuild the proposed allowance of up to 5% ground limestone in the portland cement standard ASTM C150, a change that would bring U.S. standards in line with those in Europe and Canada, where limestone has been used successfully for decades. If approved, the standards will allow a reduction in the use of raw materials and energy and a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. PCA has also created a new position, director of sustainable development, and named David D. Shepherd, AIA to fill it. Shepherd, who joined PCA in 2000 as manager of residential technology, began his new post November 1. PCA is online at www.cement.org.

With the support of EPA, the New York City nonprofit Earth Pledge has launched a new Web project to support the greening of local rooftops. GreeningGotham.org “envisions the rooftops of New York City transformed from a barren landscape into a living network of meadows and gardens.” Visit the Web site to see what that might look like! In coming months the site will include the hows and whys of green roofs, case study descriptions, and a list of recommended NYC professionals. Greening Gotham has already earned the support of Mayor Bloomberg, the National Resources Defense Council, Robert Kennedy, Jr., Jonathan Rose, and Douglas Durst, among others.

In the run-up to the Greenbuild conference, USGBC and The Pittsburgh Project, a Christian community-development organization that operates after-school and summer programs for Pittsburgh children, collaborated on a straw-bale construction clinic. Led by David Eisenberg, author of The Straw Bale House Book and executive director of the Development Center for Appropriate Technology, participants in the hands-on workshop completed a straw-bale playhouse for children in Pittsburgh’s North Side. For details, visit www.pittsburghproject.org or call The Pittsburgh Project’s director, Saleem Ghubril, at 412-321-1369.

Desert Moon Productions has begun filming the first home-improvement show with a green emphasis.  The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) will air 26 episodes of the 30-minute television show, Build it Green! Set to begin running next July.

Build it Green! will be hosted by contractor Charlie Popeck and architect Jill Burtin and will staff at least three LEED-Accredited Professionals. Although based in Desert Moon’s home state of Arizona, the show will also travel. “Green building options are intrinsically tied to climate, so we will highlight what innovative people are doing under almost all climate conditions,” explained Mick Dalrymple, Desert Moon’s executive producer. Dalrymple is also a founding board member of USGBC’s Arizona Chapter.

EPA announced in early November that it will drop investigations into 50 power plants accused of violating the Clean Air Act. Under the new policy, EPA will pursue only those investigations in which the plants are accused of violating new, more lenient standards set to take effect in December (see EBN Vol. 12, No. 10). The change could also undermine inquiries involving another 50 plants. The attorneys general of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut have already pledged to pick up where the Bush administration has left off: they plan to open a new round of litigation against the plants. Limited budgets will limit their campaign, however: “We have to focus on the worst of the worst,” said New Jersey Attorney General Peter C. Harvey.

“Action for Sustainability,” the

2005 World Sustainable Building Conference following in the footsteps of Sustainable Building 2002 in Oslo, Norway, is set to take place September 27–29, 2005 in Tokyo, Japan. The conference will be hosted by the Japanese Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport, and co-hosted by the International Council for Research and Innovation in Building and Construction (CIB) and the International Initiative for Sustainable Built Environment (iiSBE). “Action for Sustainability” will include, among other activities, presentations on the international Green Building Challenge (see

EBN

Vol. 10, No. 1, page 3). The abstract submission deadline will be in September 2004. Details are online at

www.sb05.com.

In anticipation of the Tokyo conference, Regional Sustainable Building Conferences will be held in 2004 in South Africa, Brazil, Poland, Malaysia, and China.

The National Energy Affordability and Accessibility Project (NEAAP) has developed a Web site that explains the impacts of energy restructuring and market changes on households with low and moderate incomes. It features state-by-state overviews on the status of restructuring, news and analysis on consumer-related restructuring activity, consumer protections under restructuring, and, perhaps most helpful, a database of energy-efficiency programs available to residential consumers. The database is searchable by state, utility, utility type, program type, and keyword. NEAAP is a program of the National Center for Appropriate Technology and can be found at http://neaap.ncat.org/db.

One closely watched election disappointed smart-growth advocates across the country. Loudoun County, Virginia, a national model of environmentally friendly urban planning (see EBN Vol. 9, No. 3, p. 5), voted in November to replace six of its eight left-leaning county board members with Republicans. The newly elected board members have vocally supported the county’s strict building restrictions, but, since their campaigns were fortified by hundreds of thousands of dollars from real-estate and construction interests, some question whether their actions will follow suit.

Voters in 16 states said yes to 64 conservation-related ballot measures in November, approving $1.2 billion in new public money for parks and open space. This represents an 83% success rate, despite the fact that most of the measures represented property-tax increases or general obligation bonds. More information on the votes, including a complete list of results, is available from LandVote 2003, a service of the Trust for Public Land, at www.landvote.org.

The Boston City Council unanimously passed a resolution in October establishing city purchasing guidelines that favor materials that do not produce dioxin, a potent human carcinogen and endocrine disrupter. Dioxin is released when chlorinated products, including chlorine-bleached paper and polyvinyl chloride (PVC), are manufactured and incinerated. Similar policies are in effect in the cities of Seattle, San Francisco, and Oakland, as well as the states of Washington, Oregon, and New Hampshire. The City Council is online at www.cityofboston.gov/citycouncil/.