May 20, 2003

Environmental Watch: Herrera adds staff at Oregon office

PORTLAND -- Jerry Mitchell and Jeff Mitchem have joined the Portland office of Herrera Environmental Consultants.

Mitchell will direct the office's planning efforts. An infrastructure planner, he focuses on integrating new development with the built and natural environments. He has 30 years of experience in planning, design and construction.

Mitchem is a land-use planner and urban designer, with 20 years' experience in community revitalization and sustainability. From site-specific projects to regional efforts, he helps clients visualize, design and build.

Herrera Environmental Consultants provides interdisciplinary engineering, environmental science and planning services in the western United States and Alaska.

County offers help to boost recycling

SEATTLE -- The King County Solid Waste Division wants to help Puget Sound-area manufacturers that use recycled materials in their products.

Companies can get free, customized technical and marketing assistance through the division's LinkUp program. It is designed to expand markets for recycled materials generated in the county, and help manufacturers use more recycled materials.

Preferences will be given to manufacturers that use mixed glass, urban wood, mixed paper and food waste. Companies that incorporate other recycled materials into their processes, or that do not presently use recycled materials but want to, also are encouraged to apply.

For an application, see www.dnr.metrokc.gov/linkup or telephone Erv Sandlin at (206) 296-0233.

Rowley honored for Issaquah creek work

ISSAQUAH -- There's more work to be done the Tibbetts Greenway Project that last week won praise from the Cascade Land Conservancy.

Skip Rowley of Rowley Enterprises was among the Conservation Awards winners. The $11.5 million Tibbetts project -- designed to solve flooding in Issaquah and enhance fish and wildlife habitat -- involved redirecting 2,000 feet of creek from a ditch into a meandering channel. Rowley, a developer, paid the $1.7 million cost of the creek relocation. Bill Way, restoration ecologist and president of the Watershed Co. in Kirkland, was prime designer, and J.R. Hayes & Sons of Maple Valley was the prime contractor.

Two bridges, replacement of undersized culverts and remediation of coal mine tailings in the upper basin have also been completed.

The state Department of Transportation is planning a new bridge under Interstate 90, and the city will construct a sedimentation control structure and create more habitat enhancements. KPG Inc. designed the city projects, which will go out to bid soon and be advertised in the DJC.

When the tide's out, the table's set

NAHCOTTA, Pacific County (AP) -- A researcher is using video technology and hundreds of volunteers to show how the spread of non-native spartina grass affects a key feeding area here along the migration paths of shorebirds.

Washington State University researcher Kim Patten has only just begun his study, but expects he'll find shorebirds shun dense meadows of spartina. Government and industry are conducting a multimillion-dollar campaign to eradicate thousands of acres of spartina, an eastern native. Patten is the first to scientifically study how spartina affects birds, and he's also looking at how to restore habitat once the invasive grass is gone.

Patten recently trained binoculars on a spartina meadow for four hours and spotted no shorebird species. Nearby, volunteers working with him and the Willapa National Wildlife Refuge counted 30,000 shorebirds pecking worms, midges, nematodes and other critters from open mud flats.

Complementing these efforts are five cameras fixed to poles driven into the mud. Nearby, spruce and alder tripods hold protected VCRs and the marine batteries and solar panels that power the equipment. Peregrine falcons use the platforms to dine on dunlins and dowitchers.

Patten won't be able to review the video until after the spring migration, but he is hearing from volunteers and he measures the density of bird footprints and droppings in the mud.

$300,000 system cooks town's garbage

HAINES, Alaska -- Other small towns with trash troubles may look to an Alaskan panhandle town's new garbage composting system for answers.

The Chilkat Valley News reports Haines' facility is like a backyard compost pile only lots bigger and mechanized. It has two 40-foot-long, 15-foot-diameter rotating drums. One prepares a mixture of water, garbage and sludge from the city sewage treatment plant. The second separates material after it "cooks" in four shipping container-sized composting vessels.

The compost is screened and separated from inorganic material in the second drum. The uncomposted matter is taken to the landfill and covered under compost. Eventually, the system will produce salable compost and could reduce by 66 percent the volume of garbage and sewage sludge buried at the landfill.

Jim McNelly, a Minnesota composting expert, helped design the $300,000 system. His company has pioneered in-vessel composting in larger towns. He said the Haines project could be groundbreaking, serving as an example for other small communities.

Solar, sustainable events planned

SEATTLE -- The following events are scheduled:

• Solar Washington will meet at 7 p.m. Thursday in Arlington at the Daughters of the Pioneers Museum. Designer Jack Sturgeon will lead a tour of the energy-efficient building and discuss its solar-heating systems. The building will be on this year's National Tour of Solar Buildings. For more information, telephone (360) 435-7289.

• Seattle City Councilman Nick Licata will moderate a debate between author Michael Shuman and Seattle Times business writer and editor Bruce Ramsey on whether it's better to foster global trade or a local economy at 7 p.m. May 28 at Antioch University Seattle, 2326 Sixth Ave. For information, telephone Debra Alderman (206) 268-4906. The event is sponsored by Antioch's Center for Creative Change and the Seattle chapter of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, or BALLE.

• The Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, BALLE, will hold its first national conference May 30 - June 1 at Portland State University. Information is at www.livingeconomies.org. The conference will be in conjunction with the Sustainability Forum May 29-31 in Portland. More than 1,000 representatives from business, nonprofits and government agencies are expected. Topics include water conservation, toxic pollution and sustainable development. To register or to find out about display opportunities, see www.sustainablenorthwest.org.