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News from Vol. 1, No. 3 Spring 2013 Need to change your contact information? Let us know. 402.933.0080 info@sustainabledesign.org JISC joins Omaha Gives! The Joslyn Institute is proud to be participating in Omaha Gives!—a 24- hour charitable challenge organized by the Omaha Community Foundation. The online giving holiday will take place May 22 from midnight to midnight. Mark your calendars because we will need your help! We will be joining nearly 300 local nonprofits to raise money together and compete for matching funds and prize money. The more money we raise, the larger percentage of the match pool we will receive. The more donors we get to give to us, the more likely we are to win prize money. It is a community-wide event to show off Omaha’s spirit of giving, raise awareness about local nonprofits, and celebrate the collective effort it takes to make this city great. Learn more at OmahaGives24.org. Thank you for your ongoing support of JISC. We are eager to see the Omaha community band together to give. Latex Paint Exchange Do you have latex paint left over from your last project? Do you need latex paint for your next project? EcoStores Nebraska is holding a Latex Paint Exchange from 9 am to 2 pm on Saturday, May 18. EcoStores is located at 530 West P St. in Lincoln. If you have usable latex paint to exchange, follow these guidelines: • Be sure it is usable latex paint. Check the label: if it cleans up with soap and water, it is latex. • Paint cans must be at least 3/4 full. • Paint cannot have been frozen. • Paint cannot be lumpy when stirred. • Labels must be readable. • No rusty cans. • Only households can drop off paint, but anyone, including businesses, can take paint. EcoStores will dispose of unusable paint for $2/can. Call (402) 477-3606 for more information. Drought Best Practices Despite recent precipitation, much of Nebraska is still facing dry conditions. As we head into spring, farmers and ranchers are planning how to best deal with the dry conditions. Conservation agencies including the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and Nebraska’s Natural Resources Districts (NRDs) are working together with farmers and ranchers as they get ready to hit the fields. Faced with limited water resources, farmers and ranchers are turning to the NRCS and NRDs for expert advice and assistance to conserve water. Both NRCS and the NRDs encourage farmers and ranchers to visit their local NRCS or NRD office for more information on drought management tools and cost-share that may be available to assist with best management practices. For more information, visit www.ne.nrcs.usda.gov or www.nrdnet.org. Strong voices at Keystone XL Pipeline hearing in G.I. Photo by Mary Anne Andrei / Bold Nebraska Nebraska landowner Randy Thompson stands together with BOLD Nebraska’s Jane Kleeb at the State Department Hearing in Grand Island on April 18 M ore than 200 people gave testimony—most of it against—at the U.S. State Department’s hearing on the pro- posed TransCanada Keystone XL Pipelines in Grand Island on April 18. The hearing pitted the concerns of landowners and environmentalists, who oppose the 1200-mile pipeline carrying tar sand bitumen, against the interests of labor unions, oil industry lobbyists and some businessmen. “The Sandhills overlay the Ogal- lala Aquifer, the largest aquifer of its kind in the nation,” said John Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union. “It is not only the source for the majority of our state’s drinking water, it also supplies water for livestock. Running a potentially contaminating tar sands pipeline through our water supply is not only unnecessary, it is downright foolish.” A number of landowners also spoke out against the power of eminent domain being used to usurp their rights as landowners in favor of a foreign corporation. Speaking in favor of the project, Brigham McCown, former federal pipeline administrator under President George W. Bush, suggested it was a practical necessity. “Pipelines are by far the safest manner to transport energy products in this country. And ladies and gentlemen, they transport two-thirds of all the energy supplies we use,” he said. “Whether it’s that plastic fork at breakfast or that iPhone, that’s how we get what we need. And we cannot turn our back on infra- structure without understanding the logistics and how things work.” Chad Gilbert of Pipeliners Union 798 suggested opponents of the project were misdirected. “Why protest this job opportunity that my mem- bers desperately need? Could it be because of the Canadian oil sands, or possibly the fossil fuels itself?” he asked. “If that’s what you’re protest- ing, it’s not going to change by holding up a pipeline. The oil will be shipped. This hearing will not change anything to do with those issues. This issue will determine how the oil will be trans- ported.” But opponents, whose numbers exceeded 1000 at the hearing as opposed to the dozen or so speaking in favor of the pipeline, disputed the potential for meaningful jobs created by the pipeline, saying those jobs are temporary, and only 35 to 40 jobs would actually be created long-term. And, said residents of Michigan and Arkansas whose communities have been devastated by pipeline leaks of tar sands, no job is worth the serious environmental hazards that would occur in the case of a leak. The fight over this pipeline goes beyond jobs, said BOLD Nebraska Executive Director Jane Kleeb, whose group has been instrumental in real- lying opposition the pipeline. “What is really driving this fight is the basic fundamental American principle that our families have a right to own land without a foreign company coming in and taking it away.” And there are serious environ- mental concerns as well, she said. Kleeb questioned the accuracy and thoroughness of State Department studies on such things as economic risk to ranchers and others and the lack of any kind of effective emer- gency response plan, among other concerns. “The most disturbing failure of the impact statement is that it does not analyze oil spill planning for Keystone XL specifically,” said Paul Blackburn, an attorney who authored a 64-page report showing a severe lack of oil spill response equipment in Nebraska. “We’ve been given only very generic information prepared by TransCana- da’s consultant in Texas – the same group that planned the spill response for BP. A student writing a class report on how to respond to an oil spill might find it useful, but we have no assur- ance that TransCanada is actually prepared for a spill.” “TransCanada has a long history of rhetoric for theoretical quality of pipelines, as opposed to what they have built in the United States,” said Evan Vokes, a metallurgic engineer and TransCanada whistleblower. “TransCanada has not been honest about its construction quality prob- lems.” The first Keystone pipeline Trans- Canada built had 12 spills in its first year in operation in the U.S., releasing 21,000 gallons of oil. Chair of the “All Risk, No Reward” Coalition, Nebraska landowner Randy Thompson, spoke against allowing a foreign company to transfer Canadian tar sands oil through this country so it can be shipped overseas. “Families from Nebraska, Arkan- sas, and Michigan have joined with pipeline, water, and land experts to speak in unison–Keystone XL is all risk and no reward,” said Thompson. A number of those testifying spoke about the urgency of combat- ting climate change and moving to renewable sources of energy. Said one man, “It’s as simple as this: I oppose Keystone because I drink water.” Strategic Communications Design for Sustainable Development is a new initiative of the Joslyn Institute for Sustainable Communities (JISC). The project has been awarded funding from the Nebraska Environmental Trust Fund. It is one of 134 projects across the state receiving lottery proceeds in the form of grants from the Trust. The Communications Design project, a two-year endeavor, is being developed in target communities to discern best practices for communica- tion strategies that will be effective in communities across Nebraska. The final product will be an electronic handbook for all communities. “Research and practice in the development of sustainable commu- nity solutions has repeatedly dem- onstrated that sustainability requires more than the application of science,” said JISC President and CEO W. Cecil Steward. “Each problem-opportunity in the quest for sustainability is a local matter and, thus, requires a distinctive understanding of what will work in a particular place at a particular time. This capacity is built up in certain forms of deliberative and democratic communication that increases un- derstanding, facilitates democratic skills and fosters positive community attitudes.” Steward said the hand-picked team spearheading the project will work with community partners to establish a framework for fostering appropriate, targeted and local com- munication strategies to address their specific problem and opportunities. The result will be robust, innovative practices that drastically increase a Communication strategies at core of new JISC program decision-making capacity on sustain- ability issues in a given community. Success with sustainable de- velopment projects requires holistic approaches, partnerships and trans- parent community communications. Among questions for planners and civic leaders intending to guide com- munity conditions toward a path of sustainable development are: Where, how, and when is it most effective to communicate with the citizens of a community about their value and life style choices and how their choices impact the sustainability of their com- munity in the future? How do we as citizens in a democratic society come to understand and embrace the ne- cessity of balancing the requirements of the natural systems, socio-cultural values, human technology, trade and commerce, and governmental regula- tions and policies necessary for true conservation to occur?
