A dozen San Francisco Bay communities, including the most recent, Windsor, have now adopted

urban growth boundaries. According to the May/June issue of

Common Ground, three city counselors who had faced recall elections because of their support of urban growth boundaries have held their seats by a wide voter margin.

Congratulations on an overall very good article on the current state of Structural Insulated Panels (SIPs) [EBN

Vol. 7, No. 5, May 1998]. Well-researched articles on building systems are few and far between. I want to add some hopefully helpful thoughts on the subject.

The basic engineering premise of SIPs... Read more

sensible heat) and they remove moisture from air, reducing its

latent heat. In some cases the relative balance between these two functions is acceptable, but there are also many applications for which... Read more

The Last Straw, a quarterly newsletter about strawbale building, has been transferred from its founders, Matts Myhrman and Judy Knox, to Network Productions, Inc. in Kingston, New Mexico, a nonprofit organization devoted to sustainability education. The publication will be maintained on a quarterly basis through the leadership of NPI co-founder... Read more

This year’s American Solar Energy

Society (ASES) Passive Pioneer

Award is being presented to Susan

Yanda and her late husband, Bill

Yanda, whose efforts to promote

passive solar design spanned three

decades. During the 1970s the Yandas

began their community-based workshops... Read more

U.S. Department of Energy, 1997. 146 pages, softcover. Single copies available free, while supplies last, by calling 800/DOE-EREC. Copies may also be purchased by calling 800/553-NTIS.

What is perhaps most surprising about

Greening Federal Facilities is the book’s readability. We had expected this... Read more

Thanks to the tireless work of Doug Patterson here at EBN and our Product Catalog partners David Johnston, Valerie Walsh, and Dan Darnell at What’s Working in Boulder, Colorado, the catalog now includes product literature from another 35 green building products—for a total of just over 100. In addition, the Product Catalog now includes listings... Read more

For years, Clivus Multrum has been the de facto standard for composting toilets in North America. Clivus was introduced in North America from Sweden during the 1970s by Abby Rockefeller. Almost single-handedly, the Clivus established composting toilets as a viable alternative to conventional flush toilets. While Clivus remains an active player... Read more

In what is, to our knowledge, a first, the

State of Vermont has exempted the sale of donated, used building materials from sales tax. Bill number H. 771, signed into law by Governor Howard Dean on April 29, 1998, officially exempts “sales of scrap materials generated in the course of construction or demolition and diverted... Read more

Energy production and consumption data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the U.S. Department of Energy showed 1997 to be another record year.

Total U.S. energy consumption was 90.6 quads (95.6 x 10

12 MJ). While this is less than a 1% increase over 1996, it does not bode well for achieving targeted reductions in... Read more

The technical staff has been notified, and will try to correct this problem.

If you have a question or comment, please send

us feedback

In our February 1998 news story “Federal Trade Commission Sues Maker of Ozone Generator” (

Vol. 7, No. 2, p. 4) we neglected to mention that in the 1995 consent decree between Alpine Industries and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), there was no admission of wrongdoing on the part of Alpine, nor were any penalties assessed.... Read more

On May 4 President Clinton participated in launching the Partnership for Advancing Technology in Housing (PATH). PATH is a combined effort of several agencies, led by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Energy, with the goal of dramatically improving the energy efficiency,... Read more

Thanks for forwarding to me your readers’ thoughtful letters on the affordable housing component of Denver Dry. First of all, a few clarifications: although at least 80% of the units must be rented to low-income residents, there are no specific units designated as affordable. Furthermore, the affordable leases must be spread amongst the unit... Read more

The recently formed

Wisconsin Green Building Alliance (see

EBN Vol. 6, No. 8) has gotten a big boost with a $68,000 grant from the

Recycling Market Development Board. WGBA is sponsoring an impressive series of events and other initiatives, and is seeking members. Contact

WGBA director Abby Vogen at 608/280-0360... Read more

The first hydrocarbon... Read more

Recent rains have abated

Indonesian fires that razed an estimated 620,000 acres (250,000 hectares) this year. Klaus Toepher, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), says the situation could become “one of the greatest ecological disasters of the millenium.”

The

1999... Read more

Software for Windows™ by Barbara Lippiatt of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Building and Fire Research Laboratory, Build-ing Environment Division. Available for $49.95 plus $6 S&H from: U.S. Green Building Council, 90 New Montgomery Street, Suite 1001, San Francisco, CA 94105; 415/543-3001, www.usgbc.org. Also... Read more

As usual your magazine is filled with valuable and well-presented information. But there was a sleeper in [the April] issue (

Vol. 7, No. 4, p. 9) that the text does not address: interior bedrooms. It would appear from the plan that these occur in the “affordable” apartments; I presume the corner apartments are “... Read more

In March the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) released a long-overdue report on the possible health hazards of butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) from carpet cushions. The Commission attributed the delay to the fact that it had the initial study redone after it found “considerable... Read more