Arlington, Massachusetts passed a new law in May requiring that construction or substantial renovation of all town-owned buildings achieves LEED™ Silver certification. According to the law, no project will be considered complete until certification has been confirmed by the U.S. Green Building Council or until an equivalent or greater rating has been achieved.

Canadian forest-products giant Tembec has completed FSC certification of its 5-million-acre (2 million ha) Gordon Cosens Boreal Forest in northeastern Ontario. This forest, certified by SmartWood, is now the largest North American forest operation to carry FSC certification. By 2005, Tembec intends to certify all 32 million acres (13 million ha) of forest land under its management—this represents more than a third of all FSC-certified land worldwide today! For more on Tembec, see

EBN

Vol. 10, No. 4, or visit

www.tembec.com.

California diverted 48% of its waste stream from landfills in 2002, according to the California Integrated Waste Management Board. A total of 34 million tons (31 million tonnes) of solid waste were diverted last year, a fourfold increase since 1990, when the Integrated Waste Management Act took effect in the state. This law requires every local jurisdiction to divert 50% of its waste from landfills beginning in the year 2000, according to an article in the April 2003 Building Industry Professionals for Environmental Responsibility online newsletter (www.biperusa.biz). More than 60% of municipalities have met or exceeded that goal, with diversion rates as high as 91% (town of Blue Lake, population 1,160). Los Angeles, with a population of 3.8 million, diverted 60% of its waste and has established a goal of 70% by 2020.

On March 5, the province of Quebec adopted North America’s most stringent restrictions on the use of pesticides. The new Pesticide Management Code immediately prohibits the use of the most harmful insecticides, fungicides, and herbicides on public, semipublic, and municipal green spaces except golf courses. By April 2006, this prohibition will extend to all private and commercial lawns, and golf courses will be required to submit triennial pesticide reduction plans to the Quebec Ministry of the Environment. The code also establishes minimum distances from watercourses for pesticide application, and by April 2004 will outlaw the sale of fertilizer-pesticide mixtures; other restrictions on the sale of pesticides go into effect in 2005 and 2006. The new code applies to the insecticides Carbaryl, Dicofol, and Malathion; the fungicides Benomyl, Captan, Chlorothalonil, Iprododione, Quintizene, and Thiophanate-methyl; and the herbicides Chlorthal-dimethyl and all forms of 2,4-D, MCPA, and Mecoprop. For more information, visit

www.menv.gouv.qc.ca and select “Pesticide Management Code.”

A chemical used in food packaging and other plastics causes miscarriages and birth defects in laboratory mice, geneticists at Case Western Reserve University have found. Bisphenol A, used to manufacture the hard, clear plastic polycarbonate and a sealant to prevent cavities in teeth, mimics the hormone estrogen, according to the researchers, and disrupts chromosomes in mice, even at exposure levels similar to those experienced by humans. Bisphenol A was linked in October 1999 to premature puberty and adolescent weight gain (see

EBN

Vol. 8, No. 11).

Environmentalists won an important victory on April 3, when the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) voted in favor of small-scale renewable-energy production. All net-metered solar and wind systems generating less than 1 MW of electricity, along with some hydrogen fuel cells, are exempt, according to CPUC’s decision, from paying a surcharge, or “exit fee,” to leave the state electricity grid. Contrary to some reports, the exemption is

not limited to systems installed before January 17, 2001, says Dan Adler of CPUC’s Division of Strategic Planning. The exemption will be capped, however, at 3,000 MW of distributed electricity. Systems larger than 1 MW will remain subject to the fee, as California struggles to pay for energy supplies employed during the state’s 2000-01 energy crisis.

Smithfield Foods, Inc.—America’s largest producer of hogs and leading processor and marketer of fresh pork and processed meats—plans to build a $20 million

facility to convert swine waste into biodiesel fuel as part of the BEST BioFuel partnership. The facility will convert manure into biomethanol, which can be used to produce biodiesel (see EBN

Vol. 12, No. 1). Construction of the facility, to be located near Milford in southwestern Utah, began in March and could be completed by October of this year. Smithfield is online at

www.smithfieldfoods.com.

The Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies, based in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, will offer a course in

International Sustainable Building and Urban Design this September. The course, intended for mid-career professionals, will include expert workshops, excursions in Germany and Belgium, and participation in the International Building Physics Conference in Leuven, Belgium. The application deadline is June 1, 2003. More information is online at

www.ihs.nl/UED/SBUD/SBUD_2003.pdf.

Both the number and the severity of droughts and storms are on the rise, according to a new report by the World Water Council. These and other manifestations of global climate change have contributed to a

tenfold increase in economic losses from weather-related catastrophes over the past five decades. The 1990s saw more significant flood disasters—26—than the past three decades combined, according to the report. Global precipitation on the whole has increased roughly 2% since 1900, but, as the report points out, this increase has not been globally uniform. The report, developed in anticipation of the 3rd World Water Forum, held last month in Kyoto, Japan, highlights the disproportionate climate change burden borne by poor countries. The 2000 flood in Mozambique, for example, resulted in a 45% decline in the country’s annual gross domestic product (GDP). For more information on the report and the conference, visit

www.worldwatercouncil.org.

Following five years of litigation, Arizona courts have upheld residents’

right to install solar water heaters and photovoltaic panels. When residents of an Avondale, Arizona master-planned community installed solar panels to heat their swimming pools, Garden Lakes Community Association retaliated by filing a lawsuit requiring removal of the panels. The panels should be hidden, the Association contended, by patios or screens—measures which would be prohibitively expensive and render the solar systems less efficient. In

Garden Lakes Community Association vs. Madigan/Speak, an appeals court upheld a lower court’s earlier decision in favor the homeowners, finding that the guidelines violated the state’s public policy as expressed in Arizona Revised Statute Section 33-439.