OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — The Student Environmental Alliance at Johnson County Community College will host its third annual Earth Day event from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Friday, April 22, in the Commons Plaza on the JCCC campus.

Earth Day is a campus and community educational and networking event revolving around issues of sustainability.

Participants in JCCC’s Earth Day event will be:

• BikeWalk KC: tips on bicycle safety and maintenance
• Johnson County Environmental Department: presenting information about recycling, composting and household hazardous waste
• Bike Source: bike tips, possible BMX stunt demo
• Student Environmental Alliance craft table: demonstrations on craft projects reusing home materials
• Student Senate Green Committee: table to take student suggestions
• DeLaSalle Education Center (MINDDRIVE): presenting student-built electric car
• JCCC sustainable agriculture program and campus farm
• Al Pugsley and electric cars: bringing/showing electric vehicle
• Ann Suellentrop: Physicians for Social Responsibility: presenting information regarding toxic contamination of new nuclear bomb facility being built in Kansas City
• Center for Equitable Education (CEED)
• Engineers Without Borders
• EPA ENERGY STAR: presenting information on ENERGY STAR materials related to home and business
• Habitat for Humanity Restore of Kansas City Missouri
• JCCC solar energy performance and resource management

WEEKLY ANNOUNCEMENTS
29 March 2011

SUBSCRIBER NOTICE
In order to better serve you with the latest event updates, sustainability news and S.A.N. communications, we will soon be switching over to an "auto-subscribe/auto-send" system.  This new, high quality, e-mail system will provide you with complete control over changing e-mail addresses and subscription settings.  We’re very pleased with the rapid growth of our subscriber list, and we’d hate to lose you during the transition. 
If you want to continue receiving the Sustainability Announcements, please click on this web page link – Update your subscription to the Sustainability Announcements.  Enter your name and e-mail address, and follow the instructions.  It’s simple!  Thanks! 
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SPOTLIGHT ON VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITY ¤ Earth Day Booth for S.A.N.
If you want to help staff our Earth Day booth, call our Volunteer Coordinator, Maryam Hjersted, at (913)723-3636
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THREE MILE ISLAND PARTIAL CORE MELTDOWN ¤ 32 YEARS AGO
28 March 1979

A coolant failure in reactor #2 caused the worst U.S. commercial nuclear accident, releasing 43,000 curies of radioactive Krypton-85 gas.  The reactor was designed by Babcock-Wilcox, and has been shut down ever since, though unit #1 is licensed to operate until 2034 – Three Mile Island Nuclear Generating Station – Wikipedia. 
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KKFI COMMUNITY RADIO ¤ ECOLOGICAL SHOWS THIS WEEK

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DONATIONS TO SUSTAINABILITY ACTION ARE NOW TAX DEDUCTIBLE
please donate to our Annual Giving Campaign – (contact info at bottom of page)
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THIS WEEK’S ECOLOGICAL RADIO SHOWS ¤ KKFI COMMUNITY RADIO
Listen at KKFI-FM 90.1, or web-streaming at http://www.kkfi.org/
Tuesday, 8 February, 12:00noon-1:00pm ¤ Eco-Radio KC
Host, Steve Mann, and guests Ann Suellentrop of Physicians for Social Responsibility and Maurice Copeland will discuss their work to expose the environmental contamination posed by beryllium and other poisons at the Bannister Road nuclear weapons complex (AKA: "The Kansas City Plant", "The Federal Complex", and the "GSA Offices"). 
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PEAK OIL & A CHANGING CLIMATE ¤ YOU-TUBE VIDEO SERIES
Wednesdays, up through 16 March 2011, on your computer
current video – Peak Oil Lessons From The Soviet Union with Dmitry Orlov
Peak Oil is the point at which petroleum extraction reaches its greatest rate just before going into perpetual decline. 
On Wednesday, 8 February, Noam Chomsky will appear in interview #6 of the Peak Oil and a Changing Climate | video series.  How to describe Noam Chomsky?: comprehensive thinker, prolific writer and lecturer, incisive political analyst, he is Professor of Linguistics at M.I.T. Noam Chomsky.  Chomsky urges us to anticipate the official response to peak oil based on how corporations, news organizations and other institutions have responded to global warming: obfuscation, spin and denial.  So true, but we might add that at the same time, these very government agencies and corporations are themselves preparing their internal safety nets for the peak oil collapse.
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BEYOND EYE CANDY AND FOOD FOR THOUGHT
To prepare a remedy, we must first diagnose the disease

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1 February 2011

We apologize for the delay in today’s Sustainability Announcements.  Our editor was without internet service, which was restored a short while ago. 

However, we are excited to say that we will soon upgrade our system to avoid future glitches, streamline our user interface, and make your subscription and notification abilities more convenient.  You will be notified when the changes take effect, and we hope the transition goes smoothly.  Thank you for your patience – the Editor and staff of S.A.N.

DONATIONS TO SUSTAINABILITY ACTION ARE NOW TAX DEDUCTIBLE
please donate to our Annual Giving Campaign – (contact info at bottom of page)
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THIS WEEK’S ECOLOGICAL RADIO SHOWS ¤ KKFI COMMUNITY RADIO
Listen at KKFI-FM 90.1, or web-streaming at http://www.kkfi.org/ 

Tuesday, 1 February, 12:00noon-1:00pm ¤ Eco-Radio KC
In the first half hour, host John Kurmann will interview Jo Robinson, the founder and primary researcher of Eat Wild, about pasturing chickens for eggs and poultry.  In the second half hour, he will will interview Charlotte Vallaeys, Farm and Food Policy Analyst for the Cornucopia Institute, about the US Department of Agriculture’s rules regarding animal confinement under the National Organic Program.

Wednesday, 2 February, 9:00am ¤ Alternative Radio 
An excerpt from Capitalism and the Environment: Chris Williams – "Continued exploitation of all fossil fuels on Earth threatens not only the other millions of species on the planet but also the survival of humanity itself.  The roots of the environmental crisis lie in capitalism’s relentless and rapacious expansion."

Friday, 4 February, 9:30am ¤ the Bioneers Radio Series
Bioneers presents another one of their award winning shows. ___________________________________________________

PEAK OIL & A CHANGING CLIMATE ¤ YOU-TUBE VIDEO SERIES
Wednesdays, up through 16 March 2011, on your computer
current video – Peak Oil and Our Financial Decline | #4 of 11 with James Howard Kuntsler.

Peak Oil is the point at which petroleum extraction reaches its greatest rate just before going into perpetual decline. 

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February 22-24, 2010    

 8:30am ? 4:30pm  (with field trip in afternoon of second day)

At the new Midwest Public Risk training facility

(Little Blue River and I-70)

This workshop will introduce the methodologies and procedures for initiating, planning, analyzing, and ultimately designing long-term sustainable river and stream stabilization or restoration projects.  Innovative, environmentally sensitive, and cost-effective approaches to restoration will be discussed.

Learn about innovative bank protection methods and how to choose the appropriate method or combination of techniques.

Learn how to read a stream and analyze a streambank erosion problem with an experienced practitioner.

Perform a series of in-the-field site analyses, understanding the role of project goals in the development of conceptual flow analyses, and designing stabilization plans that relate to the project performance goals.

                 All participants will receive a CD of useful handouts and visuals

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Cost for 3 day workshop including lunch and transportation to field sites:

Private Sector – $200

Reduced rates for Local, State, Federal Government employees

and non-profits – $50

(Thanks to a grant from the Missouri Conservation Heritage Foundation)

In these times of budget reductions, we are seeing more and more cities take on in house design and construction solutions to stream erosion.  Stream degradation problems in large urban areas are especially difficult and complicated to deal with because of the impervious surfaces, stormwater, and large amounts of infrastructure filling the watershed.  City engineers and public works personnel need to understand how to design and implement cost effective and watershed friendly solutions to stream problems.

Instructor: Dave Derrick, Research Hydraulic Engineer with the Corps of Engineer?s Engineering Research and Development Center?s Coastal & Hydraulics Laboratory (ERDC-CHL)

During this seminar, Mr. Derrick will introduce the methodology and procedures used in planning, analyzing, and ultimately designing long-term sustainable stream stabilization projects. Attendees will learn innovative, environmentally sensitive, and cost-effective approaches to channel restoration.  They will also develop a philosophy of bank stabilization design that emphasizes an understanding of the stream as a complex inter-related system that encompasses both local and system-wide processes and problems.

Streambank Stabilization Workshop Registration Form

Register Early! Space is limited to 60 attendees!

Name:________________________________________ 

EMail_________________________________________

Agency/Affiliation________________________________

Address:______________________________________

Phone:________________________________________

Fax:__________________________________________

Submit Registration via e-mail to:

                               info@littleblueriverwc.org 

Send check for payment to:

LBRWC

Kansas City, MO 64133

                     Questions ?  Call Larry O?Donnell @ 816-356-4040 or 816-679-7772

4 January 2011

DONATIONS TO SUSTAINABILITY ACTION NETWORK ARE NOW TAX DEDUCTIBLE
please donate to the S.A.N. Annual Capital Campaign – (contact info at bottom of page)
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ECO RADIO KC ¤ WEEKLY ECOLOGICAL ISSUES RADIO SHOW
Tuesday, 4 January 2011, 12:00noon-1:00pm ¤ on Kansas City Community Radio
Listen at KKFI-FM 90.1, or on web-streaming at http://www.kkfi.org/ 

On Eco-Radio KC this week, the show by Steve Mann is "The Indigenous Iy Iuy People of Mexico Fight for Their Land".  Joining Steve will be Teodoro Gonzales Castillo of San Luís Potosí, México, the traditional Governor of the Iy Iuy People.  Blain Snipstal and Maria Whittaker will describe the experiences they shared with Governor Castillo at the Cancun Climate Conference in December, when Via Campesina members from Asia, North America, South America, and Africa, as well as many other groups, demanded that the delegates respect the Cochabamba Declaration on the Rights of Mother Earth.  Read more at – The Road from Cancun: Steps Toward a Global Uprising. 

Also of ecological interest on KKFI this week:

• On Wednesday at 9:00am, Alternative Radio airs an encore presentation of Paul Cienfuegos talk on "Corporations vs. People".  "The presumption of corporate over citizen rights came into sharp focus this past January with the Supreme Court’s "Citizens United" decision which opens the floodgates of unrestricted corporate money into election campaigns, under the guise of free speech.  Countering this trend are citizen revolts, many in small communities, which assert the right of the people who live in a community to decide what happens to that community and to its natural environment."  More of his print and audio material is at Paul Cienfuegos: Articles, Lectures & Interviews.   
• On Friday at 9:30am, the Bioneers Radio Series presents "Jaguars, Goats and Acequeias: Cultivating the Landscape of Wild Earth".  Do you think of the wilderness as something far away?  Not in the age of climate change and human population growth.  The real wilderness is always underfoot—the complex systems underlying life on Earth that we barely understand.  It’s our inheritance, our guardianship to understand traditional and indigenous knowledge of Earth as a vast, cultivated landscape.  Land managers such as Miguel Santistevan, Lani Malmberg and Peter Warshall celebrate the fact that we are all gardeners.  They reveal brilliant innovations and ancient wisdom for how to get good at it.

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BEYOND IDEOLOGICAL WARFARE ¤ OUTCOME BASED ACTION

Setting political bias aside, and putting focus on benefits to the local community, one Kansan is making a big difference.  Can the Sustainability Movement benefit from this same approach?

Salina, KS – Residents of this deeply conservative city do not put much stock in scientific predictions of climate change.  “Don’t mention global warming,” warned Nancy Jackson, chairwoman of the Climate and Energy Project, a small nonprofit group that aims to get people to rein in the fossil fuel emissions that contribute to climate change. “And don’t mention Al Gore. People out here just hate him.”  Saving energy, though, is another matter.

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DONATIONS TO SUSTAINABILITY ACTION NETWORK ARE NOW TAX DEDUCTIBLE
Please remember S.A.N. in your year-end giving – (contact info at bottom of page)
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ECO RADIO KC ¤ WEEKLY ECOLOGICAL ISSUES RADIO SHOW
Tuesday, 7 December 2010, 12:00noon-1:00pm ¤ on Kansas City Community Radio
Listen at KKFI-FM 90.1, or on web-streaming at http://www.kkfi.org/ 

We apologize that the program info for Eco-Radio KC has not been received this week.

Also of ecological interest on KKFI this week:

• On Friday at 9:30am, the Bioneers Radio Series presents another in their award winning series on eco-justice.

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BICYCLE SIDE LANE ON IOWA STREET IN DOUBT AT LAWRENCE CITY COMMISSION
Tuesday, 7 December 2010, 6:30pm
Lawrence City Hall, 6th & Massachusetts St., Lawrence KS 66044

Following months of deliberation, a final decision is due whether or not to include a 10-foot wide bicycle side lane along a major reconstruction of Iowa Street.  The project to tear out all paving and rebuild the street to include a center auto turn lane will be done from Harvard Ave. south to the Irving Hill Rd. overpass.  As a Federal Highway receiving Federal funding, Federal policy states that “Every transportation agency has the responsibility to incorporate safe and convenient walking and bicycle facilities into transportation systems".  And although the bicycle facility has been proposed by S.A.N., City staff has recommended that the City Commission not fund anything for bicycles.  A mere 7.1% of the total $6 million budget is all it would take to add the bicycle side lane.

If people want to read further and possibly speak their opinion at the City Commission meeting, more info can be found at the City Commission Iowa St meeting agenda_7Dec10 – when there, go to agenda item #2 and click on the various attachments.
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WEEKLY ANNOUNCEMENTS
23 November 2010

DONATIONS TO SUSTAINABILITY ACTION NETWORK ARE NOW TAX DEDUCTIBLE
Please remember S.A.N. in your year-end giving – (contact info at bottom of page)
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ECO RADIO KC ¤ WEEKLY ECOLOGICAL ISSUES RADIO SHOW
Tuesday, 23 November 2010, 12:00noon-1:00pm ¤ on Kansas City Community Radio
Listen at KKFI-FM 90.1, or on web-streaming at http://www.kkfi.org/

On Eco-Radio KC this week, host John Kurmann will talk with Wendy Philleo, Executive Director of the Center for a New American Dream, about the impact of consumerism on us and the rest of the world, and how consumerism has conquered Christmas.  He will also check in with May Boeve of 350.org for a report on the 10/10/10 Global Work Party and the campaign to get us back below the safe level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Also of ecological interest on KKFI this week:

• On Friday at 9:30am, the Bioneers Radio Series presents: “A Fork in the Road: Make Friends With a Farmer”.  Local, organic food is growing in popularity by leaps and bounds.  Beyond the benefits to the growers, our health and the land, could it become a matter of survival?  Author and farmer Michael Ableman shares his cross-country journey celebrating the reverent reconnection with food and the land that is transforming how we will produce our food.

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NEIGHBORHOOD FOOD MARKETS ON THE RETURN? ¤ NOT!

The Jim Hightower Lowdown reports “You’ll be thrilled to hear that a new, local food store is coming soon to your neighborhood.  In fact, it’s even named Neighborhood Market.  Only, it’s not. It’s a Wal-Mart. Yes, the $400-billion-a-year retail behemoth, with two million employees laboring in 8,500 stores spread around the globe, now is putting on a “local” mask.  The giant is promising to buy nine percent of the produce it’ll sell from local farmers.  Big whoopie.  This means that 91 percent of the foodstuffs offered in its “Neighborhood” chain will come from Wayawayland.  But even the nine percent number is a deceit, for Wal-Mart says that it defines “local” as grown in the same state.”  Read more at Meet Your Neighborhood Food Market – NOT.  NOTE, there’s already one on South Metcalf Ave., in Overland Park KS.
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DONATIONS TO SUSTAINABILITY ACTION NETWORK ARE NOW TAX DEDUCTIBLE
Please remember S.A.N. in your year-end giving – (contact info at bottom of page)
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ECO RADIO KC ¤ WEEKLY ECOLOGICAL ISSUES RADIO SHOW
Tuesday, 16 November 2010, 12:00noon-1:00pm ¤ on Kansas City Community Radio
Listen at KKFI-FM 90.1, or on web-streaming at http://www.kkfi.org/ 

On Eco-Radio KC this week, host Steve Mann explores Food Sovereignty, Social Justice, and Environmental Justice with Maria Whittaker of the Food Sovereignty Support Group, the Kansas Chapter of Family Farm Defenders, and a member of Rural Coalition/Coalición Rural.  Joining them will be Blain Snipstal also of the Food Sovereignty Support Group and a Baker University student.  Calling in by phone will be Carlos Marentes of La Vía Campesina and the Border Workers Agricultural Project, and John Kinsman, the President of the Family Farm Defenders.  To learn more about food sovereignty, go to La Via Campesina coined the term Food Sovereignty.   

Also of ecological interest on KKFI this week:

• On Tuesday at 9:30am, the National Radio Project presents Buying Our Way Out of Climate Chaos?  >From 29 November to 10 December, the UN Climate Summit (COP-16) will be held in Cancun Mexico (see below).  Most of the solutions being offered will center market-based solutions like carbon trading or cap and trade schemes.  This show will explore approaches to the climate crisis other than the language of economics.
• On Friday at 9:30am, the Bioneers Radio Series presents "Indigenous Peace Technologies: The Ancient Art of Getting Along".  How do we create peace?  What can we learn from indigenous societies who have addressed this profound question over thousands of years?  From North America to the Kalahari, Jeannette Armstrong, Marlowe Sam, Evan Pritchard, Kxao=Oma and Megan Biesele share powerful stories of how indigenous social technologies have succeeded in resolving conflict, and still are.

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BOWERSOCK NORTH HYDROELECTRIC PLANT ¤ FINANCING IN THE WORKS
Tuesday, 16 November 2010, 6:30pm
Lawrence City Commission, 6th & Massachusetts St., Lawrence KS 66044

In the planning stage for three years, a major expansion of the hydroelectric capacity of the Bowersock Dam at Lawrence is nearing reality.  The license approval last Summer by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) opened up the possibility of $23.7 million in federal bonds to finance the project.  But most of those bonds are contingent on buyers being found before the end of the year.  The City of Lawrence will serve as a conduit for selling a majority of the bonds, but will not be financially backing any of the bonds.  At their weekly meeting, the City Commission will discuss issuance of the IRB’s for the project – Bowersock Mills IRBs request.pdf. 

The Federal bonds are also contingent on Bowersock Mills finding a purchaser for the green power.  And ten days ago it was announced that the Kansas City Board of Public Utilities signed a 25 year power purchase agreement.  The green power that BPU purchases from Bowersock is expected to be enough to supply electricity to 3,300 homes for a year and eliminate about 188 railcars of coal.  BPU will purchasing the entire production capacity of both Bowersock plants, the new one and the 132-year old South Plant.  Westar Energy had been offered a purchase option, but their business plan lacked the vision, so BPU and Wyandotte County came out winners.
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Since 1997, communities across the country have come together on November 15 to celebrate America Recycles Day. More than a celebration, America Recycles Day is the only nationally recognized day dedicated to the promotion of recycling programs in the United States. One day to inform and educate. One day to get our neighbors, friends and community leaders excited about what can be accomplished when we all work together. One day to make recycling bigger and better 365 days a year.

Don’t wait: Organize or RSVP to attend an event; spread the word via e-mail, Facebook and Twitter; and let your family, friends and neighbors know where you stand: