Operation Better Block’s Junior Green Corps was honored at city hall today, receiving the Community Green Champion Award for its work to bring fresh vegetables to Homewood.

 

Jerome Jackson, executive director of Operation Better Block, said the program, which is entering its fourth year, trains youth, starting in 9th grade, in green practices that have included planting sunflowers to remediate contaminated soil and starting a series of green walls on the OBB building.

 

“During Easter break," he said, "our students attended a three day training to learn how to build and plant a green wall and they grew vegetables onthem. We picked radishes” this week. “They had never had fresh vegetables out of the ground.”

 

As an introductory course, radishes could be considered challenging. But if all you’ve ever tasted is radishes from bags at the grocery or as garnish in a salad, you might have missed the peppery tang at the height of freshness. 

 

“Last year, we planted collard greens, and they had a different taste because they were fresh,” Mr. Jackson said.  

 

This year, the students are also growing chard, beets and spring onions.

 

Seventeen teenagers are members of the Junior Green Corps. It is an after-school and summer program from which they graduate out after high school.

 

 

Since every other day of note seems to spill over its borders — goblin costumes in store windows in September, Christmas trees up into February — I’m celebrating Earth Day Week with some more relatively green news, this time from Allegheny County.

 

It has included in its fleet the first two compressed natural gas trucks. They will be used by the Department of Public Works for use Downtown on buildings, bridges and roads, said spokeswoman Amie Downs.

 

“The Silverado 2500 HD, four-wheel drive, extended cab pick-up trucks contain specially designed 6.0 litre Vortec V8 engines and have a gross vehicle weight of 9,500 pounds,” according to a statement from the county.

 

“I’m really excited about the arrival of these two vehicles and truly believe that this reinforces our commitment to using natural gas in the county,” said Allegheny County executice Rich Fitzgerald (pictured above). “Natural gas vehicles have a number of advantages — nearly 87% of natural gas [used in this country] is domestically produced.”

 

Natural gas also burns more cleanly than petroleum and emits fewer greenhouse gasses. It is also less expensive than gasoline.

 

The statement continues: “The trucks are factory-built with hardened valves and seals, which are critical for CNG vehicles. After manufacture, the CNG components are added.  

Those are at 29th and Smallman in the Strip and at the Giant Eagle distribution center off Route 60 in Crafton.

 

Meanwhile, the Port Authority operates several buses on compressed natural gas, and Giant Eagle has CNG trucks in its fleet. The Allegheny Conference is encouraging use of these vehicles. You can read its report from last year here.

 

On this 43rd Earth Day, it is fitting to report that the Bellevue corporate office of Sota Construction Services has achieved the fifth highest ranking of any LEED platinum construction in the country, ever.

 

The U.S. Green Building Council bestowed a 62 out of a possible 69 points on the building, at 80 Union Ave.

 

Ernie Sota, whose portfolio of construction and renovations include Bethlehem Haven, the Blackbird Lofts, East Liberty Place North and the Grand Hall at the Priory, said the building was built “to achieve our sustainability goals, but when we came in fifth in the country for new construction, we were pretty thrilled.”

 

"We use radiant cooling as well as radiant heating," he wrote in an email. "This offers tremendous savings and is scalable to large commercial buildings. The windows are designed to offer great day lighting.

"Another benchmark is energy – our office building has an EUI or Energy Utilization Index of 18," he wrote. The typical office building's index is 193. To see how that compares to other buildings, check out this link. 

  

"We have an 11.8 kw solar array on the roof which should produce about 50-60% of our load," he continued. "So we are over half way to net zero.

 

"The building is extremely quiet since we are using radiant heating and cooling we are not blowing a lot of air around which is noisy and can be unhealthy."

 

The building’s architects are from Studio D’Arc.

 

Its characteristics include:

 

• Natural building materials: straw bale walls with interior walls of clay/straw infill

 

 

A sandwich board outside The Corner on Robinson Street in West Oakland announced this morning that the Corner Cafe is now open for business. The plan for this cafe began with a community survey on which a place to buy coffee was at the top of most people’s wish list.

 

Mark Kramer, director of the Corner — a community center owned by the Friendship Community Presbyterian Church on the corner of Terrace and Robinson— said it is a pilot project that could expand, either on its own or with a complementary business.

 

You can read a recent Walkabout column about The Corner here. 

 

When I visited today around lunchtime, Mark was there (center in photo), as was Robinson Street resident Lynn Portnoff (left) and Eugene Perry (right), a piano and voice teacher who gives lessons at the Corner. 

 

Joshmin Ray, (below), was working at one of three small tables. A resident in one of the upstairs apartments at The Corner, he has a master’s in engineering from Pitt and is looking for work. Meanwhile, he helps Mark on the building renovation and is helping the cafe build an inventory list.

 

The cafe, which has free wi-fi, is selling three kinds of coffee, tea, juice, hot chocolate, fresh fruit, cereal and pastry items. Also everything is $1 or $1.25. The cafe’s operation’s manager, Diane Howard Coleman, made the butter cake.

 

She said the cafe “came to fruition pretty quickly” because so many people in the neighborhood volunteered, finding furnishings and painting.

 

The cafe is open from 7.30a to 1p weekdays only “so far,” she said. “We’re doing these hours until we get feedback from the community. We’re asking them to suggest the hours. When it gets warm, we’ll move some tables outside.” 

 

The people who wait on you are all volunteering, she said, adding, “so far.”

 

The cafe is an outgrowth of start-up operations support from the McAuley Ministries.