Green Drinks in Milwaukee, September 10

by | Aug 29, 2008 | Uncategorized

Cities across the U.S. host Green Drinks events. Here’s how the Sierra Club describes Milwaukee’s:

Anyone interested in green and sustainable is welcome. No rsvp necessary and feel free to pass this notice on to others interested. What is Green Drinks? Green Drinks is a monthly event where you can meet people, network, do a business deal, learn something new or maybe even find a job! Check out www.greendrinks.org to get an idea of the scope of this movement! Join like-minded people in an informal and unstructured setting to talk about the latest sustainability happenings in Milwaukee and globally. Meet people in various green professions. Have a drink (alcoholic or not) . . .

Green Drinks is held at 5:00 pm on the second Wednesday of the month at Ardor (non-smoking Pub), 607 N. Broadway. The next gathering is Wedesday, September 10.

Coalition wants transit to Pabst Farms development

by | Aug 28, 2008 | Uncategorized

From an article by Sean Ryan in The Daily Reporter:

A Milwaukee group says the construction of an interchange to serve Oconomowoc’s Pabst Farms shouldn’t move forward unless public transit improvements are part of the plan.

American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin Foundation Inc. attorneys filed a complaint (PDF) Tuesday on behalf of the Good Jobs & Livable Neighborhoods coalition.

Coalition Director Pamela Fendt said the complaint doesn’t seek to stop the more than $23 million construction of the Interstate 94 interchange in Oconomowoc. It asks the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission to allot resources to mass transit if the interchange is built.

“It seems like what we see moving forward is the freeway work,” Fendt said, “and we are really at a standstill when it comes to making decisions on mass transit.”

The state Department of Transportation decided to expand the interchange at I-94 and County Trunk Highway P before its scheduled 2010 date because of the proposed Town Centre shopping complex at Pabst Farms. Waukesha County is contributing $1.75 million to the project, the city $400,000, and the state will pay the balance.

Representatives from SEWRPC, Pabst Farms and WisDOT did not comment on the complaint before deadline, saying they had not yet seen it.

Good Jobs & Livable Neighborhoods complained SEWRPC appointees and committees did not fairly represent Milwaukee’s minority workers when they approved changes to the regional transportation plan to include the expanded interchange.

Larry Dupuis, legal director for the ACLU of Wisconsin Foundation, said he hopes the feds will require representatives of Milwaukee’s minority communities to sign off on future additions to southeast Wisconsin’s highway project plans.

He also said state and local resources should be allotted for transit projects, including busing and rail projects such as the Kenosha-Racine-Milwaukee commuter rail line.

“Everybody talks about ‘smart growth’ and trying to diminish our dependence on foreign oil and those kinds of things,” he said. “The rule has been more roads and fewer transit resources, and we’re trying to put a halt to that.”

The complaint asks the U.S. DOT to order more planning to incorporate concerns of minority and transit-dependent residents and end its “absolute and substantial deference to local governments.” Short of that, it asks the federal government to ban SEWRPC from receiving federal money.

If new transit or bus routes are not created linking Milwaukee to Pabst Farms, unemployed Milwaukee residents will not have the chance to get jobs in the Town Centre mall, Fendt said.

Solar power is working in Wisconsin

by | Aug 27, 2008 | Uncategorized

From a story last fall on Fox 6 News:

WITI-TV, MILWAUKEE — You’d expect solar powered water heaters to be a big deal in Arizona or Texas, but now is becoming a big deal in Wisconsin. FOX 6’s Gus Gnorski shows you why it might be a good decision for your house.

The 2008 Solar Decade Conference, where the story was taped, will be October 23-24, also at the Midwest Airline Center.

The sun powers Racine Eco-Justice Center

by | Aug 25, 2008 | Uncategorized

From a story by Michael Seidel on OnMilwaukee.com:

“Now, when he has enough, he’ll stop,” Sister Janet Weyker says. She’s holding a baby robin; the bird chirp excitedly as Weyker feeds him worms out of a tin of compost and wild black raspberries from a cup. Since the robin’s mother disappeared, Weyker has taken over, tending to the fledling’s hunger at mealtimes.

This type of stewardship is precisely what motivated Weyker and several other sisters of the Racine Dominican order to found the Eco-Justice Center, a 15-acre learning center, farm and homestead located at 5635 Erie St. in Racine.

As a whole, the Racine Dominicans, a Catholic community of vowed women and lay associates, are committed to the ideas of education and justice. But back in 2000, the nuns saw a gap in their order’s efforts to extend those concepts to the environment.

“(We thought) the environment is in crisis and we should really do something,” Sister Janet says, “I didn’t want to just talk about it anymore, I really want to make that dream a reality. . . .”

“Fifty-five solar panels produce all the energy that we use in the summertime,” Weyker explains. Additionally, the house uses geothermal heating for its heating and air conditioning. “Geothermal is a system where there are pipes buried in the ground 9.5 feet deep, and there’s a constant temperature of 55 degrees. . . .”

MATC installs wind turbine at Mequon campus

by | Aug 22, 2008 | Uncategorized

From an article by Sean Ryan in The Daily Reporter:

The first wind turbine gear Milwaukee Area Technical College purchased got scorched in a California brush fire and it took months to find a replacement.

The equipment, a used Vestas Wind Systems 90 kilowatt turbine, was in storage at Halus Power Systems’ facility waiting to be refurbished for use at the MATC Mequon campus when a fire blew through in 2006. Halus had to get another set of gear, and the technical college had to pay another few thousand dollars because there was a shorter supply of the gear a year later, said Al Evinrude, director of construction services for the campus.

The Mequon turbine, envisioned to be a demonstration project and educational tool, has been in the works since 2005. But, after delays caused by the fire and a year-long delay after MATC’s original contractor dropped out of the project, PieperPower, Milwaukee, on Wednesday began to install the gear atop a turbine tower.

There were some unique challenges with the Mequon project, but all plans to build smaller-scale turbines, as opposed to wind farms, require a lot of lead time, said Mick Sagrillo, wind specialist for Focus on Energy. Focus on Energy gave grants to the MATC project in 2005.

He said before anybody hits the market to buy the gear, they need two permits — zoning approval to build the structure and permission from the local utility to connect it to the power system.

“Once you’ve got those two documents in hand, now you’ve got basically permission to build a wind turbine,” he said. “And until you have those two pieces of paper in your hand, you don’t want to put any money down.”

Lakeshore Technical College will visit the Cleveland Plan Commission on Sept. 3 to ask permission to build two 65-kilowatt wind turbines. The college built a turbine in 2005, so it already has negotiated the zoning picture, said Doug Lindsey, Lakeshore Tech dean of agriculture, apprenticeships, trade and industry.