Who is Boston’s greenest commuting champion? Local institutions are competing in the Green Streets Initiative’s (GSI) Walk/Ride Day Corporate Challenge, a seven-month competition to encourage active, sustainable commutes.

“The great thing about Walk/Ride Days is that we set the bar very low,” said Janie Katz-Christy, GSI’s Executive Director. “It’s only one day a month and it’s multi-modal, so it’s easy for employers to encourage their staff to walk, ride a bike, carpool, or take public transportation on this basis."

Participants include: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Cambridge Health Alliance, Children's Hospital Boston, Harvard Medical School and School of Public Health, Massachusetts General Hospital, Merck Boston, Millennium Pharmaceuticals, and many others.

“Many of these once-a-month changes become daily, permanent habits,” Katz-Christy continued. “We’ve already seen things change in a great way.”

Employers wishing to register for the Challenge must do so by March 28 at http://gogreenstreets.org/sign-walkride-day-corporate-challenge.

As part of Walk/Ride Day, GSI partners with area organizations to host monthly Green Drinks events in both Cambridge and Boston. This month, Green Drinks will take place on March 28 at Freshii in Boston and Area Four in Cambridge, with co-hosts Cambridge Energy Alliance, Cambridge Local First, and the Boston Society of Architects’ Committee on the Environment. To RSVP, visit marchgreendrinks.eventbrite.com or bostonmarchgreendrinks.eventbrite.com.

The assembling of the 400-foot-tall wind turbine on Scituate’s Driftway was the culminating moment for a project that required years of study and approvals.

Take a look at the impressive and arduous process of installing a wind turbine in this photo gallery from Your Town Scituate.

The turbine will be owned and operated by Scituate Wind LLC, a company created with Solaya Energy LLC and principals of Palmer Capital Corp. in 2009. Their funding, along with a $3 million bond from MassDevelopment, enabled the project to be built on land that the town is leasing to Scituate Wind for a 15-year term. The town has the option of renewing the lease with the company for two consecutive five-year terms.

In exchange for leasing the land for $1, the town will obtain electricity for one-half its municipal needs at a discounted rate, saving an estimated $4.5 million over the next 15 years.

Read more here.

The Mystic River Watershed Association (MyRWA) is looking for volunteers to help them take stock of the number of herring in the river for their new Herring Monitoring Program. The Mystic River supports two species of herring- Alewife Herring and Blueback Herring. Herring live in the Atlantic Ocean and migrate up to the Mystic Lakes in Arlington each spring to lay their eggs.

Before the area was widely settled, it was said you could walk across the river on the backs of the herring because they were so abundant. That is not the case today. The Herring Alliance has stated that some herring runs on the Atlantic have declined by 95% in the past twenty years, mostly due to bycatch from trawlers.

MyRWA is looking for volunteer fish monitors to count herring so they can estimate the run size. Volunteers must attend a two-hour training on March 17 and commit to counting at least once from April 1-June 1 at the Mystic Lake dam.

More information: http://mysticriver.org/herring-monitoring/

After five years and a protracted court case, a dormant asphalt plant is coming back to life in Norwood despite the continued objections of town officials and neighbors who fought the project tooth and nail, and lost.

Read more of Michele Morgan Bolton's story here.

Fourth graders from Brookline launched an online petition on Change.org to get the upcoming movie, The Lorax, to have a stronger environmental message on the film's website. The petition has gotten over 57,000 signatures (at press time) and successfully convinced Universal Studios to update the website with green tips. The enterprising students not only started a petition, but they made posters, wrote a script, and shot a video.

"Even though we might be very little, we can still make a lot of change in anything we work hard at," said Georgia, a student in the class.

Like me, do you have dreams of quitting your office job and running your own farm? It has always seemed more like a fantasy than a dream, mostly because I grew up in the suburbs and have no idea how to get started. The New Entry Sustainable Farming Project is accepting applications for their spring farm business planning course, which can help teach you the basics of starting and running a farm. You can take the class in person or online, and classes start in January. The classes run for six weeks on Tuesday evenings. The course is $400 ($500 for online students), but substantial scholarships are available.

Learn more: http://www.nesfp.org/

Summer is over and the farmers' markets have closed, but you can still shop local for your Thanksgiving feast (and every meal after).

From the Cape to the Berkshires, Massachusetts has 30 winter farmers' markets (almost double the number from 2010!) that can help you keep your pantry stocked while keeping our farmers and food artisans in business.

Go to the MassGrown website for dates, times, and addresses.

• Amherst Winter Farmers' Market
• Boston/Prudential Center Winter Farmers' Market
• Boston/South End Winter Farmers' Market
• Boston/South Station/Dewey Square Winter Farmers' Market
• Cambridge Winter Farmers' Market
• Carlisle Winter Farmers' Market
• Chelmsford Agway Winter Farmers' Market
• Dorchester Winter Farmers' Market
• Fairhaven Winter Farmers' Market
• Falmouth/Green Harvest Winter Farmers' Market
• Falmouth/Mahoney's Winter Farmers' Market
• Greenfield Winter Farmers' Market
• Marshfield Winter Farmers' Market
• Milton/Thayer Nursery Winter Farmers' Market
• Natick Winter Farmers' Market
• Newburyport Winter Farmers' Market
• North Amherst Winter Farmers' Market
• North Attleboro Farmers' Market
• Northampton Winter Farmers' Market
• Plymouth Winter Farmers' Market
• Salem Winter Farmers' Market
• Sandwich Winter Farmers' Market
• Scituate/Kennedy's Country Gardens Winter Farmers' Market
• Somerville Winter Farmers' Market
• Springfield Winter Farmers' Market
• Walpole Winter Farmers' Market
• Wayland Winter Farmers' Market
• West Tisbury Winter Farmers' Market
• Westford Winter Farmers' Market
• Winchester/Mahoney's Winter Farmers' Market

One hundred and seven communities and groups in Massachusetts were awarded recycling and waste reduction grants totaling $1.4 million. Funds were awarded for a variety of activities, including:

• Pay-as-you-throw start up costs: Falmouth, Brewster, Hamilton, Harvard, Newton, Templeton, Wenham, and Weston
• Wheeled curbside collection carts: Marlborough, Pembroke, Easton, Boston, and Franklin
• Large containers for collecting materials at municipal transfer stations: 23 communities
• Funding for recycling coordinators: Arlington & Cape Cod
• Pilot and innovative waste reduction projects: 14 projects
• Small-scale initiatives such as outreach, compost bins, and public recycling bins: 62 communities

Thirteen communities received funding to buy large storage bins to collect bulky rigid plastics, such as laundry baskets, plastic lawn furniture, and crates- items that don't fit in a home recycling bin and usually don't get recycled. The demand for this type of plastic has increased, making it viable and cost-effective to increase recycling efforts to collect these items.

Habitat for Humanity of Cape Cod was awarded $50,000 to open a retail store for used and surplus building materials and home goods. Lexington received $40,000 to help develop an anaerobic digestion facility at the site of its closed landfill. Cambridge was awarded $60,000 to pilot a curbside food waste collection. Malden was given a $30,000 grant to set up a residential carpet recycling pilot program.

An alphabetical list of the city, town, or regional group that has been awarded a grant, along with a description of each grant can be found at: http://www.mass.gov/dep/recycle/recawgr.htm#awards

Bronx eco-hero, Majora Carter, will be speaking at the Museum of Science on November 2nd as part of their Celebrity Science series. Carter is known for founding Sustainable South Bronx in 2001 and working to green the impoverished neighborhood. She is now running the Majora Carter Group, a consulting company that focuses on climate adaption, urban micro-agribusiness, and development strategies. Carter has won the MacArthur "genius" grant among other awards.

The Museum of Science event will take place at 7pm on November 2nd; tickets are $15.
More information: http://www.mos.org/events_activities/events&d=5137

Photo: © James Burling Chase

American Rivers and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Restoration Center recently announced that the Massachusetts Department of Fish and Game’s Division of Ecological Restoration will receive $75,000 to help remove two dams on the Beaver Dam Brook in Plymouth. Removal of the dams should restore about 3.5 miles of stream and 250 acres of coastal wetlands to a more natural state, allowing fish to migrate from the ocean to their headwaters and stream-side forests to grow. The project received an additional $75,000 from the Massachusetts Environmental Trust, which is funded by the sales of environmental license plates.

Want to learn how to start your own CSA, become a tree whisperer, or breed perennial crops? The Northeast Organic Farming Association summer conference starts today, and the schedule is packed with over 225 workshops that will teach you everything you wanted to know about organic agriculture, sustainability, food activism, or just how to be a better backyard gardener.

This year, the Northeast Animal-Power Field Day will be holding their workshops at the conference, so attendees can learn also about using draft animals in the fields.

August 12-14, Amherst.

The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection's MASSCLEANDIESEL: Clean Air for Kids program announced that it has recently retrofitted 302 additional school buses with diesel pollution controls in 67 communities in the state. The program has retrofitted over 1,400 buses in 283 municipalities in Massachusetts. The retrofits, funded by the state with money related to the Big Dig, are done at no cost to the bus owners. The retrofits remove carbon monoxide, particulates, and hydrocarbons from the tailpipe emissions. Particulates can contribute to heart problems and cause bronchitis and asthma. Hydrocarbons are a factor in smog formation, and carbon monoxide reduces oxygen delivery in the body.

Starting today, Massachusetts residents can apply for a rebate if they purchase an Energy Star qualified refrigerator ($150) or air conditioner ($50) from an approved retailer in the state. Old appliances must be turned in for recycling.

Applications are available online or over the phone, and applicants can apply for both rebates. Two million dollars is available, which should fund about 20,000 rebates, and the program ends when the funds are depleted (the web page tracks the amount reserved in real time). 

The program expects to save about 1.8 million kilowatts hours of electricity a year, the equivalent of the power used by 250 houses a year.

The program is sponsored by Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources.

The application and more information is available at: http://www.massenergyrebates.com

New Bedford residents, like those in many cities, are at risk for high rates of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and high blood pressure, according to state and federal studies.

Now, researchers from Boston University School of Public Health, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Northstar Learning Centers are studying the reasons why, trying to unravel what they believe is a myriad of combining factors – from PCBs and prenatal tobacco exposure for ADHD, to diet and fine particulate matter exposure for high blood pressure -- that may be increasing the illness risk for residents.

The research is part of a growing effort nationally to study the cumulative health impact of human activities, including pollution, racial discrimination, malnutrition, poverty, and other factors that may disproportionately harm some communities.

The problem can be a vexing one to solve, especially in the United States where environmental policy tends to regulate individual pollutants or their sources in isolation.

Now, the Science and Environmental Health Network, a non-profit that promotes a more precautionary approach for environmental and public health policy and the Collaborative on Health and the Environment, an international partnership designed to address environmental health issues, have launched a national project to address the problem of multiple stresses on ecosystems, communities, and human health.

The project's website -- www.cumulativeimpacts.org -- assembles information on the latest science, emerging best practices, analytical tools, and legal headway and obstacles.

The US Environmental Protection Agency is beginning to examine cumulative risk and California has begun to address the health impact of cumulative stressors on communities. That state is now working on developing “precautionary approaches” – to figure out ways to reduce cumulative impacts. A 2009 National Academy of Sciences study recommended significant policy shifts to identify and assess cumulative risks to people and the environment.

Katie Silberman, associate director of Science and Environmental Health Network, says efforts are at an experimental stage - in large part because most environmental laws and governmental agency decisions are designed to examine and regulate each harmful impact separately from each other. She said challenges are great: It is difficult to measure how factors such as pollution and poverty influence each other, much less convince regulatory agencies to work together to solve them.

"It's a tricky problem, but a crucial one," said Silberman. "… Diseases linked to environmental exposures -- like asthma and birth defects -- are on the rise, and we need new policy tools to reduce harm on a broad level."

Jonathan Levy, the BU professor of environmental health leading the New Bedford study, is ultimately attempting to come up with better methods to assess cumulative risk.
"We are trying to (understand) what are the contributions of multiple chemicals and non-chemical stressors,’’ Levy said.

Activists delivered more than 630,000 comments to the US Environmental Protection Agency’s regional office in Boston today to support the agency’s draft rules to significantly curb mercury pollution from coal-fired power plants.

The agency is expected to finalize new mercury rules by mid-November that would cut emissions of the toxic metal from coal-fired plants by 91 percent, as well as cut other toxic pollution. The letters were delivered by a coalition of more than 200 health, environmental, and social justice organizations.

Mercury is considered one of the most poisonous emissions from power plants, because it can damage the developing brains of fetuses and children. Power plants discharge the metal into the air, and the pollutant can travel thousands of miles before settling to the ground and being washed into lakes and streams. In the Northeast, pregnant woman and children are urged not to eat fish from scores of lakes and ponds because mercury can build up in the animals' flesh.

Coal-fired power plants are the single largest source of mercury pollution, arsenic, and acidic gases, and account for 25 percent of all toxic metal emissions in the United States.

"This tremendous response signals that Americans know how important it is to cut down on mercury, arsenic and other dangerous pollutants in the air we breathe," said Curt Spalding, regional administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency's Region 1 office in Boston, in a statement.

Opponents say the rules will cost industry billions to comply.

More than 200 organizations have lobbied the EPA to ensure that the proposed mercury safeguards remain strong enough to protect the health of children and mothers. Some of the national organizations that organized the letter campaign are the Alliance for Climate Protection, Democracia, Inc, Environment America, Environment Defense Fund, Greenpeace, Health Care Without Harm, Interfaith Power and Light, League of Women Voters, League of Conservation Voters, National Wildlife Federation, Physicians for Social Responsibility, The Sierra Club, and U.S. Climate Action Network.

A Northbridge company will pay a $127,000 penalty and limit air pollution emissions from its manufacturing plant for violating clean air standards, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Justice.

Polyfoam, Inc. uses expandable polystyrene beads – which emit volatile organic compounds that are a main cause of smog - to create products such as insulated food-shipping containers and protective foam packaging for electronic appliances.

The federal government says that Polyfoam miscalculated and underreported its VOC emissions from at least 2002 to the present. Polyfoam’s actual VOC emissions exceeded 50 tons per year in each of these years, in violation of the company’s state air permits. Polyfoam also triggered federal Clean Air Act requirements for state-of-the-art pollution limits that the company failed to meet.

Under the settlement, which still requires court approval, Polyfoam will install a pollution control system that will ireduce VOC emissions by about 85 percent.

Smog and ground-level ozone, which is also caused by VOC, can aggravate asthma and damage lung cells and may cause permanent lung damage.

Massachusetts does not meet EPA’s national ozone standards and Polyfoam’s excess VOC emissions have contributed to Massachusetts’ failure to meet them, the U.S. EPA says.