Clean Energy in a Revitalized Spartanburg

Re-posted from the White House Blog

By Rohan Patel

Vulnerable communities around the country are transforming their neighborhoods through collaborative partnerships. When their voices, ideas, and visions are honored, amazing things can happen.

Almost 20 years ago, residents in Spartanburg, South Carolina, began to formulate their vision for change. It started with assistance from EPA's regional office in Atlanta, when the community discovered the sources of public health and environmental problems in their neighborhoods. As a former mill town, Spartanburg had faced disinvestment for many years. As manufacturing facilities shut down, a 30 acre dump site and a three acre site with leaking underground storage tanks was left behind, exposing residents to toxic air and water pollution.

But that wasn't the end of the story of Spartanburg; it was the beginning of the revitalization and renewal of the community. In 1997, longtime resident Harold Mitchell prompted EPA to investigate the causes of rare cancers and respiratory diseases that were affecting his family, friends, and neighbors in Spartanburg. The link to the legacy of pollution from years past became clear. Mitchell soon founded a program called ReGenisis to address these significant environmental concerns and to reverse the blight, disinvestment, and hopelessness impacting the neighborhood.

Over the last 20 years ReGenesis has led a collaborative and transformational effort to revive Spartanburg. It started with a $20,000 EPA environmental justice small grant, a program that has provided over $24 million to over 1,400 community-based organizations. Mr. Mitchell and his community members did something extraordinary – they leveraged that $20,000 into more than $300 million in public and private funding to turn things around. With investments from federal, state, and local government, as well as private foundations, ReGenisis spearheaded the effort to clean up the Superfund sites, bring in 500 affordable housing units, six health clinics, job training programs and many other amenities that sparked far-reaching positive changes in Spartanburg. This model inspired EPA to develop its Collaborative Problem Solving (CPS) Model and subsequent CPS grant program.

Today, I had the opportunity to participate in the first Clean Energy Savings for All Summit to highlight one of the crowning achievements of the revitalization effort in Spartanburg: the Arkwright Solar Farm, which is being built directly on top of one of the Superfund sites that was responsible for environmental contamination in the community. It's a powerful symbol of the transformation that has happened in these communities. What once was a source of pollution and blight, the former Arkwright landfill is now being covered with 12,000 solar panels that will bring jobs and a source of clean energy that can power almost 500 homes in the surrounding neighborhoods.

For authentic and sustainable change to happen, it must be driven by communities. The story of Spartanburg is a lesson in how government can partner with communities, empower them to find solutions to their problems, and develop innovative and collaborative strategies to make them a reality. The solar farm is the latest chapter in the story of the revitalization of Spartanburg, and we are excited to continue to raise awareness of these examples so other communities across the country can follow the path from surviving to thriving.

About the author Rohan Patel: Special Assistant to the President, Deputy Director of Intergovernmental Affairs, and Senior Advisor for Climate and Energy Policy.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle (our Water Sources): Water Conservation and Reuse Grants

By Christina Burchette

Recycling isn't just for paper and plastic-did you know that there are ways to recycle resources like water too? This practice is especially relevant and useful in places that have a long history of water scarcity.

From the Dust Bowl of the 1930s to the present, the United States has experienced significant periods of drought, so finding ways to conserve the available water supply and safely recycle it has already been a regional priority. However, the continued threat of water scarcity has consequences ranging from locally mandated water conservation and use restrictions, to increased food prices, to more severe wildfires-making new solutions and strategies all the more important to the health of local communities, ecosystems, and economies.

That's why EPA is helping drought-prone areas achieve water supply resiliency by researching new ways to recycle and conserve water while also understanding how these conservation and reuse efforts affect ecological and human health.

Recently, EPA awarded Science to Achieve Results grants to five institutions that are researching the human and ecological health impacts associated with water reuse, reclaimed water applications, and conservation practices. Each institution is investigating different aspects of water reuse and their effects on the environment and public health. Researchers will measure and evaluate the impact of water conservation strategies, such as

• direct potable reuse, which is the process of reusing treated wastewater as drinking water without an environmental buffer;


• indirect potable reuse, where recycled water is blended with a natural water source to be treated for use as drinking water;


• aquifer recharge, where sites are constructed to collect stormwater so that it can infiltrate back into the ground; and


• agricultural water reuse, which is when treated wastewater is used to fertilize and irrigate crops.

The frequency, intensity, and duration of drought events only continues to increase as we see the impacts of climate change. This pattern is expected to continue and shift outside of historical trends, making forecasting our water supply and quality more difficult.

This STAR grant research will help us better understand the potential impacts of water recycling and conservation. The results will also help inform water utilities, communities, agricultural producers, and policy makers, and others with the information and solutions they need to make informed water management decisions, thereby helping drought impacted communities create healthy and sustainable water supplies.

To learn more about these grants, see the press release and visit the grant page.

About the Author: Christina Burchette is an Oak Ridge Associated Universities contractor and writer for the science communication team in EPA's Office of Research and Development.

 

EPA Offers up to $80,000 to Communities to Develop Air Sensor Data Best Practices

SMART CITIES AIR CHALLENGE INFORMATION

Application Deadline: October 28, 2016

Announcement of Winners: Around December 1, 2016

Initial award: Up to $40,000 each to two communities to deploy air sensors, share data with the public, and develop data management best practices from sensors

Additional funding: Up to $10,000 each to the winning communities in 2017 based on  their accomplishments and collaboration.

To learn more, visit the Smart City Air Challenge website.

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I came to the EPA with a firm belief that data can make a difference in environmental protection. Since I've been here I've found that communities are leading the way by using data to understand local conditions and operate efficiently. That's why I'm excited to announce EPA's Smart City Air Challenge.

This new challenge encourages communities to install hundreds of air quality sensors and manage the resulting data. EPA is offering two communities up to $40,000 each to work with their residents to crowdsource air quality data and share it with the public online. The projects will give individuals a role in collecting the data and understanding how environmental conditions affect their health and their community.

Air quality sensors are becoming less expensive and people are beginning to use them to measure pollution levels in their neighborhoods and homes. They're developing rapidly, but most sensors aren't ready for regulatory use. However, by networking these devices, communities can better understand what is happening at the local level. Communities will figure out where to place the sensors and how to maintain the devices. It's up to each community to decide what pollutants they want to measure.

The prize funds serve as seed money, so communities will need to partner with other parties, such as sensor manufacturers, data management companies and universities. These partners can provide resources and expertise in topics where communities lack experience. In doing so, communities will learn how to use data analytics, which can be applied to other aspects of community life.

What does EPA get out of this? We'll learn how communities collect, store and manage large amounts of data. We'll also get a better understanding of the quality of data communities collect using sensors for non-regulatory purposes. We'll see how communities transfer data from sensors to databases and visualize the results. Finally, the sensors will produce as much as 150 gigabytes of open data a year -data anyone can use.

EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy often says communities are “incubators for innovation.” We're hoping the challenge will inspire communities to come up with innovative approaches for managing data so their residents and other communities can benefit. Show us how it's done.

Keep Pests Out When Serving Breakfast in the Classroom

By Marcia Anderson

Breakfast in the Classroom is a popular meal program in schools nationwide, and is widely adopted in many NYC and surrounding schools. Once in the classroom, however, food becomes a source for potential pest problems. Even if students assist in cleaning up after eating their meal, wipe their desks, recycle waste appropriately, and put the trash in garbage bags, crumbs and spills may go unnoticed.

American cockroach
Photo: Clemson University – USDA Cooperative Extension Slide Series, Bugwood.org

Pests are not picky. Ants, flies, cockroaches, and mice are drawn to the long-forgotten crumbs in the corner and juice residue left on desks by sticky fingers. It takes very little food for pests to thrive in the hidden spaces of a classroom. Pests are attracted to any place that offers food, water, and shelter – this can include classrooms, cabinets, desks, lockers, and cubbies. Remember that managing pests is important because some can carry diseases, spread food-borne illnesses, and triggers asthma attacks and allergic reactions.

Clean up after meals. Remember that food, even if left in the classroom trash can, becomes an open invitation to any cockroach or rodent in the area.  Cleaning up regularly removes the necessities that pests need to survive. Keep paper towels or moist cleansing wipes in each classroom so students and teachers can clean desks after breakfast. Classrooms serving meals may also need more frequent vacuuming or mopping.

Disposing of trash promptly, within about two hours of the meal, and proper recycling keeps classrooms clean and pest-free. Recycling and waste management programs may need to be altered to accommodate disposal of breakfast packaging.

This NYC school serves breakfast in the classroom, but also pays particular attention to recycling and Integrated Pest Management in the classroom.

Implement a comprehensive pest management program. EPA recommends that schools adopt Integrated Pest Management (IPM), a smart, sensible and sustainable approach to managing pests.  IPM emphasizes preventative strategies such as sanitation, maintenance, and exclusion.  In an IPM approach, school buildings and grounds are inspected to see where pests are finding food, water, and shelter. Steps are then taken to keep pests out and to make conditions unfavorable to pests by keeping everything clean, dry, and tightly sealed. Using IPM practices to manage pests is cost effective, and reduces exposure to pests and pesticides. The goal of a school IPM program is to provide a safe and healthy learning environment for students and staff.

Following these practical steps will help keep pests out of your school when serving Breakfast in the Classroom.

About the Author: Marcia is with EPA's Center of Expertise for School IPM in Dallas, Texas. She holds a PhD in Environmental Management from Montclair State University along with degrees in Biology, Environmental Design, Landscape Architecture, and Instruction and Curriculum. Marcia was formerly with the EPA Region 2 Pesticides Program and has been a professor of Earth and Environmental Studies, Geology, and Oceanography at several universities.

This Week in EPA Science

By Kacey Fitzpatrick

Heading back to school? Get a little science refresher by checking out some of our research! Here's the latest at EPA.

We're Gonna Need a Bigger Shore

Sengekontacket Pond-the same pond where Jaws was filmed 41 years ago-and the adjacent salt marsh habitat at Felix Neck Wildlife Sanctuary are threatened by both impaired water quality and negative environmental changes, which have eroded almost ten feet of marsh in recent years. EPA teamed up with a several other organization to build a living shoreline as a natural approach to salt marsh restoration. Find out more about living shorelines in the blog The Use of Living Shorelines.

From Grasslands to Forests, Nitrogen Impacts all Ecosystems

To date, most U.S. biodiversity studies on the effects of nitrogen deposition had been focused on individual sites, where fertilizer was applied and small plots were monitored through time. That's why EPA researcher Chris Clark and a team of scientists from EPA and collaborators are exploring the effects of nitrogen deposition in a first-of-its-kind study focused on multiple ecosystems across the nation. The study was recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Read more about it in the blog From Grasslands to Forests, Nitrogen Impacts all Ecosystems.

Researchers at Work

Research engineer Michael Tryby develops and evaluates engineering processes for EPA tools that are used to protect public health and the environment. He currently works on our Stormwater Management Model, which is a widely-used tool that supports Green Infrastructure initiatives around the Nation and the world. Meet EPA Research Engineer Michael Tryby!

EPA Water Research Paper Earns Top Rank

A journal article by EPA's Tom Sorg was ranked #1 on the Top 20 list of published papers on arsenic science in the journal Water Research. Read the journal article Arsenic species in drinking water wells in the USA with high arsenic concentrations.

Presidential Environmental Education Awards

EPA and the White House Council on Environmental Quality recognized 18 teachers and 63 students from across the country for their outstanding contributions to environmental education and stewardship. Read more about the recent awards ceremony in this press release.

Need more science? Check out some of these upcoming events at EPA.

About the Author: Kacey Fitzpatrick is a writer working with the science communication team in EPA's Office of Research and Development. She is a regular contributor to It All Starts with Science and the founding writer of “The Research Recap.”