epa

coastal recovery

Now approaching the three-year anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, we can truly learn a lesson of sustainability. This disaster has exemplified how with each disaster lessons can be learned for the future.[read more]

new economy movement

This February the EPA released a new report that integrates environmental justice, equitable development, and smart growth. The goal, as the title signifies, is to foster “Equitable, Healthy, and Sustainable Communities.”[read more]

With the “sequestration,” massive cuts to the Federal budget loom. Here's a blow-by-blow account of how it will impact programs landscape architects and other sustainable design professionals care about.[read more]

smart growth

The EPA released a new report that integrates environmental justice, equitable development, and smart growth. The goal is to foster “Equitable, Healthy, and Sustainable Communities.”[read more]

Three years ago, three federal agencies – the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Transportation, and the Environmental Protection Agency – announced that they were going to coordinate their community assistance programs to make them more effective in helping cities, towns and metropolitan regions position themselves for a more sustainable and resilient future.[read more]

Yesterday I told you about an informative new U.S. EPA greenhouse gas emissions database detailing the nation’s larger sources of greenhouse gas emissions. In total, the database contains information on facilities that account for about 80 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. It excludes the agricultural sector and transportation.[read more]

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.) is offering up to $1.8 million in new grants for urban green infrastructure projects that both improve water quality and support community revitalization. Projects that support the restoration of canals, rivers, lakes, wetlands, aquifers, estuaries, bays and...[read more]

   Much of the thinking among those of us concerned with how to accommodate a growing US population in a sustainable way focuses on our metropolitan regions – our bigger cities and suburbs.  Indeed, that is such a significant part of my own work and writing that my editors at The Atlantic Cities have started characterizing...[read more]

This is exactly how the federal government should be supporting sustainability: helping communities who want to do the right thing for their environments, economies, and residents. Congress in its stupidity wisdom may have just used the federal budget to zero out the sustainability assistance program of the Department of Housing and Urban Development but, in what may be its last round of major grants for a good while, HUD yesterday awarded $97 million dollars for planning and other efforts in 27 regions and 29 communities across 32 states. The residents of those communities will be the better for it, and so will the planet.[read more]

The EPA announced the winners of the 2011 National Award for Smart Growth Achievement today, and CNU's fingerprints left a heavy imprint this year. Congrats to CNU Board Chair Victor Dover and Dover-Kohl Partners for recognition of their work on Plan El Paso, and to CNU Board Member Doug Farr for his work on the Uptown Normal...[read more]

   Today’s guest post comes from Elizabeth Grossman, a gifted environmental journalist who is the author of Chasing Molecules: Poisonous Products, Human Health, and the Promise of Green Chemistry, High Tech Trash: Digital Devices, Hidden Toxics, and Human Health, and other books. Her work has appeared in Scientific American,...[read more]

D.C., Carol Browner, who was very recently climate change “czarina” at the White House and once head of the Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.); Jim Connaughton, Constellation Energy, and former head of the Council for Environmental Quality under President George W. Bush; David Hawkins, Natural Resources Defense Council; and Dave McCurdy, American Gas Association, all emphasized the need for a national renewable energy standard given no big climate change and energy legislation will be coming out of Congress in the next 18 months to 2 years.[read more]