PITTSBURGH – The next big thing in green building design might be to turn an existing idea on its side. PNC Financial Services Group Inc. recently installed a green wall the size of two tennis courts on one side of its headquarters.

Like green roofs – their perpendicular counterparts — green walls are covered in vegetation and provide the benefits of natural insulation and removal of air pollutants. PNC, which provides banking and wealth management services, estimates it will be 25 percent cooler behind the wall than the ambient summer temperatures.

Green walls also can be visually engaging.

The PNC wall features more than 15,000 ferns, sedums, brass buttons and other plants that create a swirling pattern of varying hues of green above the company’s logo. They are divided among hundreds of 2-by-2-foot aluminum panels that were anchored onto the building’s frame after part of the granite facade was removed.

"We think it’s the right thing to do for our community, for our customers and our shareholders," said Gary Saulson, head of corporate real estate for PNC. "We wanted to add greenery to an area that didn’t have any. … We really view the green wall as public art."

Steven Peck, president of Green Roofs for Healthy Cities, a Toronto industry association, said interest in green walls is growing, though the group does not keep statistics. He estimates green roof installations have increased at about 30 percent a year over five years.

Green Living Technologies LLC, of Rochester, N.Y., designed the wall at PNC. Chief Executive George Irwin said the company also has installed walls in New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Seattle.

PNC bills its green wall as the largest in North America. The wall covers nearly 2,400 square feet. PNC officials declined to give a precise estimate of its cost. Irwin said that on average green walls cost about $100 to $125 a square foot.

The structure at PNC requires only 15 minutes a week of watering during peak growing season — less in winter — provided through the building’s plumbing system. PNC has a contract with the installer to prune the plants and replace dead ones if necessary.

Joanne Westphal, a landscape architecture professor at Michigan State University and part of the school’s Green Roof Research Program, said the biggest benefit to green walls is their ability to help cool buildings through shading. They also help capture rainwater and release it more slowly into the atmosphere and stormwater systems.

Green Living says also that each of the roughly 600 panels at the PNC headquarters can offset the carbon output of one person a day.

Green Living got into the market several years ago after trying to devise a solution for a customer who wanted a green roof on a steeply pitched building. The walls can also be installed inside buildings.

Irwin said green walls aren’t exactly a new idea: The Romans planted grape vines along building walls, resulting, he said, in faster growing and sweeter grapes for wine. The structures are also prevalent in Europe, where modern-day green roofs first took off.

Near ground level of the building where PNC’s wall is located, at 1 PNC Plaza in downtown Pittsburgh, a small panel holds some of the plants and a plaque tells passers-by about the wall.

"I think they want to believe it’s real," PNC’s Saulson said, "and it is."

The following is a statement of Charles D. Connor, President and Chief Executive Officer, American Lung Association:

Today the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Lisa Jackson, announced that the Agency will embark on a formal review of the national air quality standard for ozone, a decision that offers the opportunity to finally protect the health of millions of Americans from the most widespread and one of the most dangerous air pollutants.

We at the American Lung Association applaud her decision to remedy a serious misjudgment that the EPA made in 2008. We look forward to working with the EPA to arrive at a new standard in 2010 that provides real protection for millions of people who live where the air they breathe can not only make them sick, it can kill.

Previously, the EPA ignored the advice of its expert science advisors and the consensus of the health and medical community when it set this official national limit on the amount of ozone pollution that can be in the air. The amassed scientific evidence and the expert opinions of the scientists concluded that the standard needed to be much tighter to save lives and prevent other serious health effects. Last year EPA disregarded not only the science, but the requirements of federal law–the Clean Air Act–that directs EPA to set this limit, which is called the national ambient air quality standard, at a level that protects the health of the public based solely on the scientific evidence. The American Lung Association has challenged the 2008 decision in court. Keeping to the schedule they have announced is critical. Our nation has already lost over a year in getting the standards that we need.

Ozone smog threatens the health of infants, children, seniors and people who have asthma, emphysema, chronic bronchitis and other lung diseases. For these people, breathing smog-polluted air can make them cough and wheeze, restrict their airways, worsen their diseases, force them to the hospital and even kill them. Even healthy young adults and people who exercise or work outdoors can suffer from high levels of ozone pollution.

We hope that from this review, the EPA will set a standard that protects all of us from this dangerous pollutant.

SOURCE American Lung Association

The abrupt resignation Saturday of White House "green jobs" adviser Van Jones has focused new attention on one of the Obama administration’s top priorities: the environment.

While Jones was criticized as a left-wing zealot, the Obama team’s record so far on the environment has been far from radical.

The White House’s main effort has been to undo several Bush-era policies on climate control, air pollution and the regulation of roadless forests. Those actions, combined with court decisions that have struck down other rules, have given President Obama a relatively blank canvas on which to redraw U.S. environmental policy. But the administration has been cautious, leaving key issues in limbo and questions unanswered about the way it would balance environmentalism and the economy.

"The Bush administration’s eight-year assault on the environment has built up a ton of demand, and that has led to tremendous opportunity — that has yet to be seized," said Marty Hayden, a vice president at the environmental group Earthjustice.

This week, the Obama administration will have to do more, as it faces a deadline to flesh out a promise on the Chesapeake Bay.

In May, Obama ordered an overhaul for the faltering cleanup of the estuary, which remains heavily polluted 25 years after federal and state governments first pledged to save it. On Wednesday, federal agencies will announce the first drafts of their plans to do so.

Environmentalists say it will be a crucial test: How will the Environmental Protection Agency deal with pollution from farms, septic tanks and suburban lawn fertilizer? All send downstream pollution that causes "dead zones" in the Chesapeake.

But to clamp down on them — imposing new pollution rules on farms, or vetoing new suburbs — would mean kicking political beehives.

"What the bay has got to hear, what the Chesapeake Bay Foundation has got to hear, is that the EPA is ready to take definitive, direct action," said William C. Baker, president of the nonprofit foundation. "They’ve got to show us right away that they’re willing to do something different."

On the campaign trail, Obama made more than 50 environmental promises, according to the watchdog site Politifact.com, as big as capping U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and as small as providing new habitat for the Osceola turkey.

Obama’s administration has pleased environmental groups by spending economic stimulus money on loans for clean-energy companies and by promising to cut greenhouse gases from automobiles.

It has also sought to reverse Bush administration changes to the 2001 rule protecting "roadless" forest areas and reconsidered rules limiting pollution from cement plants.

"There’s a certain thing about the continuity of government," which these moves do not respect, said Jeffrey Holmstead, an EPA official under President George W. Bush who is now with the lobbying firm Bracewell & Giuliani. He said the new administration’s moves are "fundamentally inconsistent with the rule of law."

When Obama administration officials talk about the strategy they will use to write new policies, they do not talk details. Nancy Sutley, who chairs the White House Council on Environmental Quality, said the administration’s legacy would be: "We made smart decisions based on science, based on the law, based on open and transparent processes."

One of the examples of translating these ideas into new policy has been on mountaintop coal mining, also called mountaintop removal. In March, the administration said it would reexamine dozens of pending permits for this type of mine, in which Appalachian peaks are blasted off to reach coal underneath.

Environmentalists, who said the Bush administration was too lenient with the mines, rejoiced. But weeks later, the federal government reported that 42 of the 48 permits it had examined were within the limits of environmental laws.

"We got cold-cocked," said Rob Perks of the Natural Resources Defense Council. He and other environmentalists are expecting another announcement this week, about the fate of dozens more permits. "That is really a bellwether. What happens with these . . . permits is what’s going to tell if the administration is going to really change."

An even more complicated test awaits this fall, on the subject Jones had focused on: climate change and energy.

The administration, following a campaign promise, is pushing for a bill that would limit U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, using a system of tradable pollution credits.

Battle lines are being drawn, and activists on both sides say the administration will have to make choices.

In the climate debate, said Luke Popovich of the National Mining Association, "you will be able to see how they view the relative importance of both. And you cannot have both."

City of Diamond Bar council candidate Lucy Huang, holding sign center, and other opponets, from Walnut and Diamond Bar, against an NFL stadium being built in Industry protest in front of Speaker Karen Bass' office on Wilshire Bl. in Los Angeles, Tuesday, Semptember 8, 2009.

LOS ANGELES – Lobbyists for Los Angeles County are working against state legislation that would ease environmental and planning regulations to make way for a proposed 75,000-seat professional football stadium in the city of Industry.

Supervisor Gloria Molina said Tuesday that developers might seek a change in state law to exempt the planning, construction and operation of the proposed stadium and entertainment complex from the California Environment Quality Act.

The board voted 3-1 to order its lobbyists in Sacramento to oppose any environmental waivers for the $800 million project. Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas opposed the motion and Supervisor Michael Antonovich was absent.

Billionaire Ed Roski’s Majestic Realty Co. wants to develop the 592-acre project.

No team has agreed to play at the proposed stadium yet.

The U.S. said Texas hasn't been doing enough to make sure companies don't treat major changes to their plants as minor ones.

The Environmental Protection Agency signaled Tuesday that it is serious about demanding changes in the way Texas issues air pollution permits to major industries.

Federal officials said they intend to disapprove three Texas permitting programs that deal with emissions from factories, power plants, refineries and other industrial plants. The proposal, which is open to public comment for 60 days, will trigger months of negotiations with the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.

The EPA move may be the opening of a new, less-cozy relationship between the federal agency and the state, which handles several federal environmental laws on behalf of the EPA. The EPA delegates power to the states for many federal environmental functions, but if things go poorly, the EPA can take that power away.

EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said during a visit to Dallas on June 12 that she had problems with the way Texas was handling air pollution permits. She singled out openness of the process to the public as a concern.

In targeting three Texas permitting programs on Tuesday, the EPA said the TCEQ hasn’t been doing enough to make sure companies don’t treat major changes to their plants, which trigger much more intense regulatory scrutiny, as minor ones that get less attention.

That problem, the EPA said, has made it difficult for the public to track industrial permits and take part in regulatory decisions. Larry Starfield, the EPA’s acting regional administrator in Dallas, said in a statement that some aspects of Texas’ programs don’t meet the requirements of the federal Clean Air Act.

“Texas’ air permitting program should be transparent and understandable to the communities we serve, protective of air quality, and establish clear and consistent requirements,” Starfield said. “These notices make clear our view that significant changes are necessary for compliance with the Clean Air Act.”

The TCEQ said its permits comply with federal law. Commission executive director Mark Vickery said in a statement that the programs the EPA rejected “have proven to be extremely successful in the reduction of air emissions in Texas.”

He said the TCEQ hopes the EPA will look at the programs’ achievements “and will continue to build on those successes. Our environment is too important to be a casualty of the bureaucratic process.”

The EPA rejected Texas’ flexible permits program, which streamlines reviews of complex facilities, and two systems that govern new plants or changes to existing ones. All three programs raised similar concerns about inadequate review of emissions sources, the EPA said.

Most plants with flexible permits are in the Gulf Coast petrochemical corridor near Houston, Port Arthur, Beaumont or Corpus Christi, although 12 are in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, according to the EPA. They include Forbo Adhesives, Dal-Tile and Motiva’s petroleum terminal, all in Dallas, General Aluminum in Carrollton and Sherwin-Williams’ paint factory in Garland.

The effect of the EPA announcement on any current permit holder will not be known until Texas and the EPA negotiate changes to Texas’ system. That could take months or longer.

FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. – Environmental groups have given notice that they’ll sue the federal Bureau of Land Management over its decision to allow a uranium mine to reopen near the Grand Canyon.

Canadian mining company Denison Mines Corp. says it could reopen its mine about 20 miles north of the canyon by the end of the year. Dennison received the final state permit it needed last week.

The BLM says Denison has an approved mine plan and should be allowed to resume operations after closing the site about 20 years ago.

But the Center for Biological Diversity, the Grand Canyon Trust and the Sierra Club argue that the BLM is relying on an old environmental analysis and isn’t considering potential impacts on endangered species.

The notice the groups filed Tuesday says they plan to file a lawsuit in 60 days.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the nation’s largest private employer, is eliminating paper payroll checks in the U.S., transferring workers’ earnings to a debit card if they decline direct deposit to a bank.

Wal-Mart is the biggest company yet to make the move that it said will save paper and money. It estimates the move will save 257,572 pounds of paper a year. It declined to specify the savings but said the shift will reduce its payroll costs.

Government agencies such as the Social Security Administration have recently begun using similar cards to dispense payments to benefit recipients.

Some Wal-Mart workers last month received earnings electronically in the form of credit to a MasterCard Inc. debit card. The program will roll out nationally this month, though many of Wal-Mart’s 1.4 million U.S. workers will continue to receive paper checks for months while it is fully implemented. About half of its U.S. workers now receive paper checks.

Though the debit cards save companies money by reducing payroll costs, consumer advocates have criticized some card programs, noting that workers are often charged fees to access their money or even check balances.

MasterCard, however, said First Data Corp., which will process the transactions, agreed with Wal-Mart to offer some of the lowest fees available among such cards, and noted that many workers already pay fees for cashing checks. It said employees’ first ATM transaction a pay period is free; subsequent ones cost $2 each.

Laura Kelly, senior vice president of global prepaid cards at MasterCard, said the arrangement benefits both companies and workers, who "won’t have to go to stores to pick up their paychecks anymore."

Workers will be able to use the cards wherever debit cards are accepted, including at ATMs, and will be able to withdraw cash without fees at Wal-Mart and Sam’s club registers.

In addition, Wal-Mart workers can receive checkbooks that they can use to write checks on their debit accounts to baby sitters and others who don’t accept MasterCard. The workers will still be able to access electronic pay stubs if needed.

Lady Elliot Island is a small but incredibly beautiful island at the southern tip of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. The waters around the island are a marine reserve so there’s no fishing of any kind there and that means that you can dive in the waters around the island and find that the fish will come right up to you and eat out of your hand.

On the southern end of the island is an eco-resort that attracts tourists from all over the world. Up until now power for the resort and for a research station that’s also located on the island has been supplied by a diesel generator that has consumed around 145 gallons of fuel every day and added plenty of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

But last Saturday that all changed with the commissioning of a solar power plant that produces nearly all of the island’s power needs. As well as bringing the solar plant online a new diesel generator was installed that runs on far less fuel … only 42 gallons a day and emissions have been cut by 70%

Within five years the eco-friendly resort plants on increasing the capacity of the solar plant and phasing out the diesel plant entirely.

See what can be done when people decide that it’s time to become environmentally friendly? The eco-resort received government assistance to make the change over to solar power so what power source can be changed near you?

Identify them and then start encouraging them to make the change to environmentally friendly power generation and help them look for the government grants that are out there and available for businesses that are serious about looking after the environment.

And for more information on eco-friendly power options check out Eco Friendly.

BAYTOWN, Texas—Two environmental groups are suing the Chevron-Phillips chemical company.

The lawsuit claims the company’s Cedar Bayou plant has repeatedly violated the Clean Air Act.

The facility is located off I-10 in Baytown, about 25 miles east of downtown Houston.

The Sierra Club and Environment Texas claim the plant has released more than 1 million pounds of pollutants into the air since 2003, in violation of legal limits.

An attorney representing the environmentalists said both sides plan to meet to discuss a settlement.

Fall River, MA – So what is a “green job” anyway?

Well, it’s not flipping burgers at a local fast food restaurant, according to South Coast Youth Corps coordinator Linton Harrington.

Harrington, along with six hand-picked SouthCoast teenagers, have forgone typical summer jobs in order to help the Youth Corps, part of the Trustees of Reservations, provide teens with summer jobs that supply them more than just spending money.

The teenagers — who come from Somerset, New Bedford and Fall River, among others — have painted buildings, cleared walking trails to harvested organic vegetables, tested the quality water flowing into the Fall River drinking water supply, rebuilt stone walls and planted trees. They work 40 hours a week, all summer long.

“This program offers in-depth learning and leadership opportunities for teens interested in outdoor environmental work. While there’s been a lot of talk of green jobs, the Youth Corps program is delivering them to urban youth who don’t have that many job opportunities,” said Harrington. “These students are getting a taste of what professional ecologists, land managers and environmental scientists do, getting their hands dirty and feet wet, and I mean that literally with all the rain we’ve had all summer.”

Harrington said while they have a few indoor activities like tool cleaning and repairing, most of the work — rain or shine — has been done outside.

The aim behind the Youth Corps Program is to channel the energy of youth into green projects that build leadership skills and community involvement. Harrington said many of the graduates of the program have gone on to environmental science, natural resource management and other green careers. He said while the work the students perform can be demanding, they grow an appreciation in the value of the work they do and of a steady paycheck. Students are paid $8.50 per hour for 40 hours per week, with funding coming from the Island Foundation and the United Way of Greater New Bedford.

Mathew Pimental, 20, of New Bedford, not only spent the last two years as an employee of the Youth Corps summer program, but spent additional time throughout the year at the Fall River BioReserve clearing out a 1-mile path as part of his New Bedford Regional Vocational High School junior and senior projects. Like many of the students, Pimental said his friends who chose the fast food employment realm thought his days were spent doing simple things like cutting grass.

“They think this job is easy, that I can just come home and hang out, but a lot of the things we do, it’s like lab work,” said Pimental. He and fellow Voke student Brittany Gentilucci have been part of the school’s environmental tech law program. Pimental said he plans to study environmental law in college.

“It’s kind of neat to be able to help restore these old properties back to the way they were, to see the kind of impact your work has had,” said Erin Feeney, 18, of New Bedford. “I was a lifeguard the last two years, and this is so much better in working with nature and being outside the city limits.”

“I’ve been exposed to so many different tools I had never had experience with before, starting with a lawnmower. That’s always something my dad did,” said Chelsea Sandner, 17, of Somerset. “It showed me that there are a lot of nice places out here, places few people know about, even though most of my friends felt I was just picking daisies all summer.”

Part of the program involves the students taking younger students on nature trail walks and educating them to the wonders of the outdoors and the animals that call it their home.

“I learned a lot of different things about plants and animals, a lot about vernal pools and how to build bog bridges, and not only about many types or tools but how to use them,” said Gentilucci, of tools that included chainsaws. “I found it neat to be working with little kids and teaching them about things in their own backyard. They kept telling me that they loved it out here and were going to come back.”

Chelsie LaFountain, 17, a Bristol County Agricultural High School student, said her experience at Youth Corps mirrors her course load at Aggie’s natural resource program, which that involves nature education, public relations and more.

“It’s a reward to see all the beautiful properties the trustees own and how we are helping to take care of them,” said LaFountain. “You stay in the city long enough, you forget that there are beautiful places like this that exist around us that we never see.”

Harrington said in addition to the Fall River site, which includes 14,000 acres, 500 of which are run by the trustees, students also do work at farms in Westport and Dartmouth and in other locations.

“This is a way for these students to learn so much about nature and the world around them, opportunities they don’t get flipping burgers,” said Harrington. “It helps them to see what real work is about and the commitment it takes to see things through.”