Hi Ben,

I guess I was trying to use the site to raise awareness for an issue (a la Google, Shaw's, etc.). I apologize as there really is no specific place to stick this marker.

If you want to remove the ticket for that reason, I understand. Also, if you want to just change the ticket title to reflect the marker's location that is fine too. I'll leave it up to you. :)

Thanks

I have been wondering the same thing myself for some time. The city should set up a program this summer for teens to paint commercial and municipal rooftops white. The businesses should supply the paint and materials and in return they get a tax rebate to reimburse the expense(s). The teens would learn about work ethics, environmental awareness, and environmental design. If I was Mayor that is what I would do. If you like these types of ideas vote for me in the next election.

Very cool idea. Unfortunately, it doesn't come cheap. Existing buildings require an expensive retrofit to make sure that a) the building can structurally support the added load and b) it's waterproof - especially if you are doing so over a library! You'll note in the article that a roof needed to be replaced anyway which gave them the opportunity to make these changes but also note the cost. With the budget troubles as they exist right now, something like this will not happen anytime soon in New Haven. However, this should be incorporated into new building design (SOM??)

Painting a roof white is easy, inexpensive, and with a tax rebate there really is no reason not to -- especially when you can teach teens about the environment and environmental design in the process.

"Next Mayor," green roof involve a lot more than painting roofs white: http://cfpub.epa.gov/npdes/stormwater/menuofbmps/index.cfm?action=factsheet_results&view=specific&bmp=114

It's mainly about stormwater runoff, which is an important issue in older cities like New Haven that have combined stormwater/sanitary sewer systems.

Cincinnati Kid:

What qualifications would you recommend for the job?

Brian Tang,

You are right, "green roof [sic] " does require a lot more than painting roofs white. But, painting roofs white is a great start for a city that doesn't even have its foot in the door regarding environmentally sustainable design and implementation. It is a great start for Anyone. Just because you can't have the best solution doesn't mean you should do nothing.

If your objective was to school me in environmentally sustainable design, you have a lot more reading to do my friend. My own home has three separate roof areas totaling approximately 900 sqft that are planted. My home and water is mostly solar heated. I generate a respectable amount of energy from a PV array on my roof. I have incorporated environmentally sustainable designs in my homes since the '80s -- long before "green" was more than a color.

BTW, the city has already separated a good portion of the storm water and sewer lines under the title of "The Storm Water and Sewer Separation Project". You can view the map of the completed areas down at engineering son. But, that doesn't mean sustainable roofs should be disregarded – they serve many more important functions than just storm water runoff.

the is a gogreen event this weekend to raise awareness on longwarf it was on mondays paper

Cincinnati Kid raises a good point. Does the Office of Sustainability have any idea what they're doing? They should be the most active part of any government body at this point in human history, yet all I've heard so far is some chatter about recycling bins. With all the brains in this town, not least of which being Yale's F&ES Dept., you'd think we could come up with a comprehensive sustainability plan for our town by now.

Here's what Richard Heinberg has to say about sustainability. (I wonder if the people in our Sustainabiliby Office even know who he is)!

"Axiom 1

Any society that continues to use critical resources unsustainably will collapse.
Exception: A society can avoid collapse by finding replacement resources.
Limit to the exception: In a finite world, the number of possible replacements is also finite.

Often, historically, collapse has meant a precipitous decline in population brought about by social chaos, warfare, disease, or famine. However, collapse can also occur more gradually over a period of many decades or even several centuries. There is also the theoretical possibility that a society could choose to "collapse" (i.e., reduce its complexity) in a controlled as well as gradual manner.

Axiom 2

Population growth and/or growth in the rates of consumption of resources cannot be sustained.

The world has seen the human population grow for many decades and therefore this growth has obviously been sustained up to the present. How can we be sure that it cannot be sustained into the indefinite future? Simple arithmetic shows that even small rates of growth, if continued, add up to absurdly large – and plainly unsupportable – population sizes and rates of consumption.

Axiom 3

To be sustainable, the use of renewable resources must proceed at a rate that is less than or equal to the rate of natural replenishment.

Renewable resources are exhaustible. Forests can be over-cut, resulting in barren landscapes and shortages of wood (as occurred in many parts of Europe in past centuries), and fish can be over-harvested, resulting in the extinction of near-extinction of many species (as is occurring today globally).

Axiom 4

To be sustainable, the use of non-renewable resources must proceed at a rate that is declining, and the rate of decline must be greater than or equal to the rate of depletion.
(The rate of depletion is defined as the amount being extracted and used during a specified time interval, usually a year, as a percentage of the amount left to extract.)

No continuous rate of use of any non-renewable resource is sustainable. However, if the rate of use is declining at a rate greater than or equal to the rate of depletion, this can be said to be a sustainable situation in that society's dependence on the resource will be reduced to insignificance before the resource is exhausted.

Axiom 5

Sustainability requires that substances introduced into the environment from human activities be minimized and rendered harmless to biosphere functions.

In cases where pollution from the extraction and consumption of non-renewable resources that have proceeded at expanding rates for some time threatens the viability of ecosystems, reduction in the rates of extraction and consumption of those resources may need to occur at a rate greater than the rate of depletion."

I agree that painting roofs white is worthwhile, “Next Mayor,” it just wasn't clear from your first post that you and “Green Roofs” were engaged in the same conversation.

In Portland (where I’m working this summer), the Bureau of Environmental Services (which is what they call their equivalent to the GNHWPCA—how cool is that‽) offers property owners $5 per square foot to build eco-roofs. They can fund this because combined sewage overflows (CSOs) got so bad in Portland (i.e. hundreds of basements flooded with raw sewage on a routine basis + it rains all the time so the river was/is always full of poo) that ten years ago the EPA ordered them to immediately begin construction on a $1.6 billion “big pipe” to add capacity to the sewage system (by that time a separated system was out of the question). Despite costing $1.6 billion, the big pipe will already be over-capacity by the time it opens next year. Aggressively investing in less expensive ways to reduce CSOs (such as green infrastructure) is Portland’s only hope to keep sewer fees (already supposedly the highest in the nation) from going even higher.

The main obstacle to investment in green infrastructure is that, unlike with “grey” infrastructure (pipes), performance data cannot be theoretically derived and instead must be experimentally obtained. Now that places like Portland are obtaining that data, however, there is no reason why GNHWPCA should not begin to shift investment to the best-performing solutions (which I am told is, beyond doubt, green infrastructure).

While Office of Sustainability might be able to help GNHWPCA with outreach, it would make most sense, in my mind, for funding for these investments to come from the funds set aside for addressing CSOs, because that is where the savings will be.

I agree that Office of Sustainability should set up a program for painting roofs white. They could apply for funding from the Connecticut Energy Efficiency Fund (http://www.ctsavesenergy.org/), which was created for exactly this type of purpose. Unfortunately, the state legislature raided the EEF in order to help balance the budget…

Green roofs are now required (mandatory) on all structures in Copenhagen.

Brian, just to fill you in on how some things work[?] in New Haven: any improvement one makes to one's property leads to a higher property tax bill. Through it's messed up tax structure, taxing buildings more than land, the city actively discourages homeowners from making any improvements to their properties. Same with commercial property owners, though to a lesser extent, which is why you'll notice the first thing to happen with the large old, waterfront, factory building, on East St., that sold in the past year, was that the building was demolished - poof! 90% tax reduction. Developers can sit on the land until the city is desperate for some kind of development on that parcel.

New Haven would benefit from a different approach to real estate property taxation, where certain kinds of improvements, e.g. reducing energy use, car dependence, water runoff, etc. would be taxed at a lower rate than un-improved or conventionally "developed", e.g. large paved areas, energy inefficient, low density conventional development.

Sounds like a good idea to me. Have you talked to your alderperson?

Thank you for your interest in the issue. We are working on incorporating green building policies as part of our sustainability plan.
http://www.cityofnewhaven.com/Sustainability

reviewed public comments and will address the issue.