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May 17, 2005

Environmental Watch: June 1 seminar on green interiors

PORTLAND — The Corporate Realty, Design & Management Institute is offering a June 1 seminar in Seattle on how to create green interiors. It will be at the Renaissance Hotel, 515 Madison St., from 7:45 a.m. to noon.

The seminar is targeted to building owners and managers, covering topics such as legal pitfalls, LEED rating systems for existing buildings and ways to distinguish between what is sustainable and what is "greenwash."

Corporate Realty's Glenn Fischer says more people are asking how to do green design for interiors. Alan Whitson, who is also with Corporate Realty and will be a speaker, writes on this and other green design topics.

Other speakers will be Zimmer Gunsul Frasca Partnership's Elaine Wine, Cathy Stieg of Stieg Design and Paul Berry, who was an owner's project manager for the city of Seattle.


Business conference on energy issues

BELLEVUE — Energy groups and utilities are offering a conference May 24 at Bellevue's Meydenbauer Center, 11100 N.E. Sixth St, that will look at ways people can operate facilities more efficiently.

The "Powerful Business Conference" topics will include energy management issues commercial facility owners and managers face, as well as ways people can partner in order to save energy and money.

Northwest Energy Efficiency Council and the Electric League of the Pacific Northwest are sponsors along with Seattle City Light, Puget Sound Energy and Snohomish County PUD. Cost is $125. For more information, call (425) 646-4727 or see http://www.electricleague.net.


State testing ferns to remove arsenic

OLYMPIA — The Department of Ecology is doing a study on an arsenic-absorbing Asian fern that could help clean contaminated soils on Vashon and Maury islands.

Ecology officials say soils in parts of the islands have high concentrations of arsenic caused by emissions from an Asarco smelter, which ran for nearly a century before it closed in 1986.

Ecology's two-year study of Chinese brake fern (Pteris vittatae) will look at how well the plants grow in this climate, how much arsenic they absorb, and if they are a risk as an invasive species.

Funds for the $30,000 project come from taxes on hazardous substances.

Test plots will be set up in Dockton Park on Maury Island and on Vashon school district property on Vashon Island. Public Health-Seattle & King County will periodically take samples of the soil and plants. Ecology is looking for volunteers to help tend plots. For more information, see http://www.ecy.wa.gov/programs/tcp/sites/tacoma_smelter/ts_hp.htm.


$400K for King County brownfields study

SEATTLE — King County Executive Ron Sims recently announced the county will get $400,000 in grant funds to study brownfield sites. Grants go to businesses, organizations and municipalities to study vacant or underused sites that could have contamination.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Solid Waste and Environmental Response awarded the county two $200,000 assessment grants, bringing the county's total for these kinds of funds from the agency to $1.3 million since 1998. King County could use the funds for studies of a former oil facility in the city of Enumclaw and a gasoline plume in the city of North Bend.

For more information, contact Lucy Auster, a senior planner at King County Solid Waste Division, at (206) 296-8476 or lucy.auster@metrokc.gov. Also see http://www.metrokc.gov/dnrp/swd/brownfields/index.asp.


Meeting set for Sultan dam relicensing

EVERETT — Snohomish County PUD and the city of Everett will hold public meetings this month and next month as part of a relicensing process for hydroelectric facilities.

The PUD operates the Jackson Hydroelectric Project in the Sultan Basin east of Everett, which it says provides energy and water for 80 percent of the people who live in Snohomish County. The PUD and the city are co-licensees, and their license from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission expires in 2011. They're looking for a new 50-year license. Public meetings to talk about the project will be:

  • Open house, May 23 at the Community Center Building, 319 Main St., Sultan, from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m.

  • Tour June 6 of Jackson Project facilities and recreation sites beginning in Sultan Park. It starts at 9 a.m and ends at 5 p.m. RSVP is required.

  • Stakeholders meeting June 7 at the PUD Building, 2320 California St. in Everett, from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. People can talk about their concerns about the relicensing process.


    SSA Marine eyes biodiesel

    SEATTLE — Increasing fuel costs are prompting Seattle-based SSA Marine to look at using biodiesel in place of traditional fuels.

    "This is something I am very interested in," company President and Chief Executive Officer Jon Hemingway told the Port of Seattle Commission last week. He added he wants to work with the port on fostering development of a biodiesel distribution system.


    Is Hawaii volcano a health risk?

    VOLCANO, Hawaii (AP) — Kilauea volcano, one of Hawaii's most popular tourist attractions, is also by far the state's worst air polluter. Researchers now are trying to determine if that also makes it one of the state's biggest health risks.

    Since it began erupting on Jan. 3, 1983, the volcano has been sending an average of 1,000 metric tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere each day, according to the Hawaii chapter of the American Lung Association.

    This is 6,000 times the amount emitted by a major industrial polluter on the mainland, making Kilauea the nation's top producer of sulfur dioxide.

    The sulfur dioxide from Kilauea reacts with other chemicals in the air to form a hazy, naturally occurring pollution known locally as "vog," or volcanic smog. When the lava enters the ocean, concentrations of hydrochloric acid are also formed.

    Although research teams have conducted a number of studies over the past two decades, definitive conclusions on vog dangers have yet to emerge.




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