The SOLEfood Farm in East Vancouver is part of a larger project to provide locally grown food in Vancouver’s poorest neighbourhood. However, it is finding it hard to grow produce at a cost that is affordable to the people in the area.

The farm is only able to offer only six jobs to Downtown Eastside residents, and none of its first harvest will be made available to the neighbourhood. Instead, it is planning to sell its crop to high-end restaurants in order to pay the bills.

Produced by Daniel Guillemette, Michelle Ha, and Grant Burns.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Jenny Hughes has a problem with reusable shopping bags.

Hughes owns Me & You, a company that makes high quality, reusable bags in Vancouver. Her organic cotton totes hit the market at the right time: In 2004, plastic shopping bags had just become a hot-button environmental issue. She said that Me & You could barely keep up with the demand for its bags as consumers turned away from plastic.

High demand is still Hughes’ problem; unfortunately, the demand isn’t for her bags.

These bags may look like they are cloth, but they are actually made from plastic.

The reusable bag market has been taken over by bags that are flown in from China and sold for $0.99 at grocery stores. Most of these low-cost bags appear to be made from cloth, but are actually made from polypropylene, a synthetic plastic.

“I don’t think a lot of people get it when it says ‘polypropylene.’ I don’t think people actually understand it’s made from petroleum,” Hughes said.

Polypropylene bags are similar to conventional plastic bags, according to materials scientist Derek Gates. “The fact of the matter is that all of these synthetic polymers take a long time to degrade. Maybe 50 years, maybe 200 years, maybe much longer, ” he said.

Unlike plastic bags, polypropylene bags cannot be recycled anywhere in B.C., said Mairi Welman of the Recycling Council of British Columbia.

“When they bust a hole, it’s put some electrician’s tape on it or put it in the garbage,” she said.

Craig Foster, consultant for the Canadian Plastics Industry Association, explained the challenges of recycling polypropylene bags.

Jenny Hughes' bags are a little on the cheeky side. Photos courtesy of Me & You.

“You can’t grind them up in the same way you take a rigid container,” he said. “You’ve got all these strands and threads – they typically just bind up any machines they use.”

Foster questioned why Vancouver adopted synthetic reusable bags so quickly. “Nobody asked, ‘What do we do with them when they wear out?’”

“We’ve taken a product which people label as being bad, even though we had a recycling system in place that could manage it,” said Foster. “We took it out and replaced it with something we can’t reprocess which now has to go to landfill. How do we win?”

The plastic bag and pouch manufacturing industry in Canada is worth approximately $2 billion annually, according to Industry Canada. The most recent data, collected in 2007, shows a steep decline in net revenues and cut of more than 900 production jobs.

“If somebody loses a job in the plastic bag production industry, there’s no replacement job in the reusable bag industry because they all come from overseas,” said Foster.

Henry Wong, president of Solaar Portswear, has also been stung by the production of reusable bags in China.

Wong’s company manufactures a variety of textiles at a small operation in Mt Pleasant, including bags for Hughes’ company. Wong said business with Me & You has slowed since China started making reusable bags.

The tags on Hughes' bags highlight the fact that they're made locally

“You can’t compete with them. They’re bringing in those bags for under a dollar,” said Wong. “It’s all about dollars and cents now.”

It is rare for reusable bags to be produced in Canada. “We still stand apart, being made locally,” said Hughes. “When I go to Google and I type in ‘reusable bags,’ it’s shocking how many you can get for 20 cents from China,” she said.

Hughes said that the people who buy from her understand they are paying for a more sustainable product.

“I’ve heard from people who bought them six years ago who say they’re still in perfect condition,” said Hughes.

Me & You bags range from $19.99 to $29.99.

Reusable bag alternatives

Follow these links for more information on hemp, PET, organic cotton and recycled cotton.

Plastic shopping bags by the numbers

• 9-15 billion – Number of plastic shopping bags Canadians use each year
• 8.7 – Petroleum energy from this many plastic shopping bags can drive a car 1km
• 1000 years – It can take a single plastic shopping bag this long to break down
• 93% – Proportion of Canadians who reuse their plastic shopping bags two or more times, according to the Canadian Plastics Industry Association.
• 32% – The number of plastic shopping bags in B.C. that get returned to a retailer after use, according to the Recycling Council of British Columbia.
• 50% – The amount by which the Retailer Council of Canada and the Grocer’s Association of Canada have promised to reduce the number of plastic shopping bags they hand out in the next five years, according to the Recycling Council of British Columbia.

Vancouver arborists remove a diseased street tree

The high winds of the Easter weekend brought trees crashing down in Vancouver’s parks and across roadways.

In addition to appreciating the wrath of Mother Nature, you may have become more aware of our city’s trees.

This week Rod MacNeill takes a look a Vancouver’s urban forest. Listen to his report below.

Tourism Vancouver is expecting more visitors this year, one reason being the recent international exposure from the Olympic games. Though this is good news for the local economy, this influx in tourism comes with an unexpected price for the city’s natural beauty.

Jes Abeita, Rebecca Cheung and Ursula Diaz produced this report.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Nao Sims displays her worker bees on a honey super

By Katie Dangerfield, Jenna Owsianik, and Lara Howsam

In the past Nao Sims’ backyard plum tree yielded only six plums, but last fall the tree produced six one-gallon pails of plums.

The abundance of fruit is just one of many benefits Sims has noticed since she started keeping two beehives in her backyard last June.

“At the moment what the world needs to know is how important the role of the bee is for humanity,” Sims said. “We would have a very bland existence without the work of these magnificent little-winged friends.”

Sims contributes to an initiative currently underway in Vancouver that promotes the spread of pollination through urban beekeeping.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Video: Nao Sims shows one of her beehives in her East Vancouver backyard.

Pushing the green initiative forward

Vancouver legalized domesticated honey bees in 2005.

Plans were announced in March to place two beehives atop City Hall. They are scheduled to be unveiled on May 29, the National Day of the Honey Bee.

A community garden was planted on the lawn of City Hall last June as part of the Greenest City project. City Councillor Andrea Reimer,  a member of the Greenest City Action Team, said the bees are intended to stimulate growth of vegetation.

“If there are no pollinators,” Reimer said, “it’s like gardening without water.”

A variety of plant life and the lower use of pesticides, compared to that in rural areas, make the city a hospitable environment for bees.

The decline of honeybees has been widely publicized and people are becoming more aware of their impact on the ecosystem.

Allen Garr takes care of 20 public and private hives in Vancouver, including those on top of the Vancouver Convention Centre, UBC Farm and the VanDusen Botanical Gardens.

“Bees are responsible for pollinating about one-third of everything we put in our mouths,” Garr said. “So it’s an important part of our life on Earth – having pollinators.”

The honeycomb will not be ready to harvest until late summer.

He said placing hives on top of City Hall won’t make a large impact on the bee population of Vancouver, but it will send a message.

“It’s certainly a symbolic gesture,” Garr said. “It’s a political statement to say that we appreciate the value of these insects.”

Registration of hives is encouraged but not enforced; therefore, it’s difficult to determine the exact numbers of beekeepers and their managed beehives.

Reimer said that since the by-law was introduced there has been no spike in emergency visits due to allergic reactions.

“I am allergic to bees,” Reimer said, “but I am also an avid gardener, so I would learn that my interests are better if I learn to like bees.”

Bees in the city

Dr. Leonard Foster, a biochemist at the University of British Columbia, studies the immune systems and disease resistance in honey bees.

Foster said hives within the city may increase the yield of fruits and vegetables, but that it would only affect the area within a few kilometre radius.

He also said urban beekeeping is a feasible way to contain a large quantity of honey bees in small human-made hives.

An urban beehive could hold 30,000 honey bees in a half-metre by half-metre area, whereas wild bees need several hectares to generate the same population, he said.

Garr said the effort doesn’t require everyone to keep bees.

This hive is the more gentle of Sims' two backyard beehives.

“It’s a lot of work, money and time,” he said.  “The goal is to use this as an educational tool to make people more aware of what it takes to have a healthy environment.”

Urban beekeeper Nao Sims said the decline in the honey bee caused her to take action and begin beekeeping on her own. Sims’ father was a beekeeper and that fostered her passion for bees.

Sims took a course before she installed her hives. She is a member of the Richmond Beekeepers Association, which holds monthly meetings for beekeepers in the area.

“The secret for me has been talking to experienced beekeepers,” Sims said. “They know things that books can’t really teach you. That has been my saving grace.”

Sims takes care of four additional beehives in outside gardens. She said since she has become a more experienced beekeeper her time commitment is a half-hour per hive per week.

“There is a lot of unaccounted time,” Sims said. “But when you love something, who’s counting!”

Urban beekeeping around the world

Tokyo:
•    The Ginza Honey Bee Project, launched in 2006, keeps hives containing 300,000 honey bees in the upscale Ginza shopping district.
•    Honey bees become aggressive when they see black shiny objects, and are said to ward off the many crows that have been attacking people in the city.

Washington, DC:
•    The Fairmont Hotel’s rooftop in Washington, DC houses 105,000 Italian honey bees as a way to serve local honey and grow fresh food for hotel customers. In 2009 it harvested 300 pounds of honey.
•    The Obamas put beehives on the White House lawn as a way to pollinate their garden.

Paris:
•    Urban beehives are famously atop the Opéra Bastille.
•   The honey has become a popular souvenir – “Miel recolte sur les toits de l’Opera de Paris” (which translates into honey harvested on the rooftops of the Paris Opera) is sold the opera house gift shop.
•    It is said that the Parisian urban honey has a better taste because cities use less pesticides, and the bees have a variety of vegetation to chose from.

London:
•    Beehives atop the department store Fortnum & Mason’s in Piccadilly Circus, and these bees pollinate the 42-acre private garden at Buckingham Palace.

New York:
•    On March 16, 2010, New York lifted a ban on urban beekeeping.
•    Previously the honey bee was labeled as a dangerous or venomous animal along with animals such as hyenas, tarantulas, cobras and dingoes.

The small town of Cowichan Bay on Vancouver Island has made a big impression for its efforts to promote local and sustainable food production. It is the first Cittaslow, or Slow City, in North America.

Robyn Smith, Vivian Luk and Yvonne Robertson look at how one town has found an alternative to fast-paced living, and what potential it could have for surrounding towns and the city of Vancouver.

The Statkraft power plant used to be a paper mill. Photo courtesy of Statkraft.com

In 1974 a researcher at the University of Connecticut submitted a paper to the journal Science. He claimed that large amounts of energy could be extracted from the natural mixing of fresh water and salty sea water that occurs at river mouths around the world.

The author, Richard Norman, was surprised when the manuscript was positively reviewed. He had submitted it partly tongue-in-cheek in response to the journal’s apparent affinity for publishing what he described as “outlandish claims”.

However, on looking closely at the numbers, he realized that this really could be a viable source of sustainable energy.

As a biologist with an interest in biophysics, he was aware of the “enormous amount of energy” involved in the mixing of salt water with fresh water, but also of a way in which this energy could be extracted via the process of osmosis.  During osmosis, water is transported through a wall while salt and other molecules are not.

Things have come a long way since then.  On Nov. 24 2009, the world’s first power plant aimed at harnessing this energy came online.

Statkraft, Norway’s national energy producer, is behind the project. After 10 years of research and $20 million USD invested, they will be looking to this experimental plant to show that this technology is commercially viable.

Free energy?

In the 10 minutes it takes you to read this story, 82 million mega joules of energy will have been dissipated by the natural mixing of fresh water and salty water at river mouths and estuaries all over the world. That’s enough energy to power more than 2,000 BC homes for a year.

To see where the energy comes from, imagine a tank with a partition down the middle: sea water on one side, salt water on the other. Remove this partition and the two liquids will spontaneously mix. At this point a physicist might tell you that there has been a dissipation of free energy as the liquids mixed.

Free energy is a lot like the proverbial free lunch in the sense that it’s not really free. Rather, it is the energy that can be extracted from the system during a reversible process.

The mixing as described above is not reversible, but if a reversible method of allowing salt water and fresh water to mix could be found, the ‘free energy’ could be extracted.

In theory, 2.2 kilo-joules of energy could be extracted for every liter of fresh water dispersed into the sea, equivalent to what you would get from burning one gram of coal.

Extracting the energy

The first ideas on how to go about extracting this energy came soon after the publication of Norman’s paper, from a researcher who was working on desalination – the process of making fresh, potable water from sea water.

Sidney Loeb was developing semi-permeable membranes that could act as salt filters. By pressurizing sea water, which requires energy, water would pass through the membrane, leaving the salt behind. They realized that this process should run equally well in reverse, with fresh water passing through the membrane producing pressurized salt water, which produces energy. This is the process at the heart of the new Statkraft power plant.

To get a better idea of just how this power plant will work, imagine again that same tank of water, now split into two by a semipermeable membrane.

Fresh water from the river fills one side, while sea water fills the other. Fresh river water passes through the membrane on its own, thanks to osmosis, which is driven by the difference in salinity.

The fresh water dilutes the salt water, but it also increases the pressure in the salt water chamber. The pressurized water can then be released through a turbine, producing energy in the same way as a hydropower station.

The pressure buildup is the manifestation of the free energy in the system. By introducing a semipermeable membrane, this energy can be extracted from the mixing process.

The technology at the center of osmotic power is the membrane. The speed with which it can pass water through will determine how much energy is produced, and whether the process is commercially viable.

Membrane technology

Karen Gerstandt is one of the researchers who worked in collaboration with Statkraft to develop new membranes. She explains that the membranes used for desalination that had been in development since the 70s were poorly suited to the application of power generation.

New membrane technology needed to be developed from scratch, and it was not until the late 90s that this research began in earnest.

The membranes produced and tested in the lab by Gerstandt and the group at the Institute for Polymer Research in Hamburg, Germany, are right on the borderline of what is required to run a commercially viable power plant. The the energy produced by the membranes depends on how quickly they allow water to pass through, and is measured in terms of the power produced by a square meter of membrane.

Stein Erik Skilhagen, head of osmotic power at Statkraft said that five watts per square meter is the magic power density that is needed. This has been proven possible in lab trials, and one of the objectives of the Statkraft plant is to see if it’s also possible in a full commercial power station.

Both Statkraft and the scientists working on the membranes admit that the large scale, real world efficiency of the membranes could well be less than what was observed in the lab. This does not worry Skilhagen, however.

He believes better membranes are not far off, saying “it’s just a matter of finding the right material. I just hope we can do it faster than has been the case with other renewables.”

Researchers too are optimistic about improvements in membrane technology.

Gerstandt is currently looking to nature for inspiration.

“Osmosis is a natural process, and there are membranes in nature 50,000 times better than what we can make in the lab,” said Gerstandt. She points to the kidneys and cell walls as examples where hugely efficient membranes play an important role.

This optimism suggests that even if the Statkraft plant fails to meet the five watt per square meter efficiency in this first installation, the problem could be easily resolved with the next generation of membrane technology.

Potential of osmotic power

The energy produced by mixing of salt and fresh water is huge. It is the ability of power producers to harness it that leaves some uncertainty as to how significant this resource really is.

According to Statkraft, in Norway alone they could generate 12 terra-watt hours annually, equivalent to 10% of national power consumption. Europe could harness 200 tWhs, while globally there is potential to produce 1200 tWhs, enough to satisfy the entire energy consumption of China.

Government and industry will need to get involved, Skilhagen says, for this renewable energy source to really take off.

“Although there has been a lot of interest from other power generators, the interest needs to be visible. Governments need to send clear signals to power producers that they support sustainable energy,” said Skilhagen.

A Suncor bitumen processing plant complete with tailings ponds. (Courtesy of David Dodge and the Pembina Institute. www.oilsandswatch.org)

Northern Alberta is home to some of the fastest-growing bodies of water in the world. Every day roughly two billion litres of water – enough to fill 800 Olympic swimming pools – are added to these lakes, which are already over 11.5 trillion litres in volume.

The largest one, located near Mildred Lake just north of Fort MacMurray, is big enough to meet the water needs of a town of 70,000 people for 50 years.

But none of the artificial lakes are fit for human consumption – they’re filled with water that’s been diverted from the Athabasca River and used to extract bitumen, a viscous, tar-like form of petroleum found in the Athabasca oil sands.

As a result, the water is toxic to humans, fish, birds, and even bacteria. Covering an area of more than 130 square kilometres, these tailings ponds are far from scenic – but they’re the easiest, most efficient way to deal with the toxified water.

“In bitumen processing water is a big, big problem,” said Greg Dechaine, a researcher at the Centre for Oil Sands Innovation at the University of Alberta. Scientists are trying to find better ways to clean up the water and avoid using so much in the first place.

Heavy, viscous fluid

Their advances so far have been modest — water will probably remain a key environmental issue for the oil sands for the foreseeable future, along with the greenhouse gases produced by the energy-intensive extraction process. But their work holds promise for a cleaner future for an industrial project the size of England.

Alberta’s oil sands are made of bitumen — a heavy, viscous fluid that is eventually refined into fossil fuels, mixed up with sand, clay, and water in the ground.

About 20 per cent of the bitumen in the oil sands is close enough to the surface that companies such as Syncrude and Suncor get at it using giant shovels and dump trucks in open pit mines. The remainder is so far underground that it has to be pumped to the surface using steam and suction.

Once the sand is out of the ground, companies use a bitumen extraction process developed by Karl Clark at the University of Alberta in the first half of the 20th century.

Actually, calling it a process might give the wrong impression – essentially, the sand is simply blasted with hot, pressurized water. Dechaine described it as “like taking a plate and running it under the tap and you just basically blast all the bits and pieces off.”

The amount of water required to do this varies based on the origin of the sand. If it comes from an open pit, it takes between two and 4.5 barrels of water to obtain one barrel of bitumen. But if the sand is extracted from deep underground, about one barrel of water total is required.

Once separated from the sand, water, and clay, the bitumen goes on to be processed into usable fossil fuels. The water is recycled until it is saturated with so much hydrocarbons and metals from the sand that it cannot be used anymore. After that, it goes into one of the ever-growing tailings ponds.

A dirty problem

The tailings ponds’ water use “is the equivalent of the use of a city the size of Calgary,” said David Schindler, a professor of ecology at the University of Alberta and a leading water scientist. “Right now, it’s just sitting there indefinitely.”

Schindler sees the oil sands as a threat to the long-term health of the Athabasca River. Taking water from the river when it freezes over in the winter lowers oxygen levels in the water, making it more difficult for fish to respire.

He also said that the tailings ponds may leak into the river and cause health problems for communities downstream, though no reliable statistics are available. He has called for a moratorium on the development of new oil sands extraction plants until more research is done into reducing their environmental impact.

Terra Simieritsch, an oil sands policy analyst at the Pembina Institute, a non-partisan think-tank in Alberta, agrees. Simieritsch said she would like to see a halt on new project approvals “so we allow some time to figure things out a little bit better and have better environmental management in place.”

While the mining continues, some scientists have dedicated their efforts to cleaning up the contaminated waters.

Richard Johnson, a biologist at the University of Essex, has discovered a way of using microbes to breakdown some of the toxic hydrocarbons found in the end-process water — specifically napthenic acids. Johnson treated a naphthenic acid solution with a cocktail of naturally-occurring bacteria, and found that the bacteria will totally metabolize some of the acids into water and carbon dioxide. However, the more complex, branched acid molecules did not breakdown completely.

Strangely, the acids Johnson’s bacteria ate are toxic to the microbes themselves.

“We’ve found in many of our experiments that the acids are toxic to the bacteria as well,” said Johnson. “So, if we add too much of the acid, the bacteria will just all die, and then not eat any of them. So you need to kind of strike the right balance.”

Finding that balance might be a bit of a problem. The microbes exhibited symptoms of toxicity at acid concentrations as low as five milligrams per litre, and naphthenic acid concentrations in tailings ponds can be up to 24 times that. Still, Johnson remains optimistic that microbes will be used to cleanup tailings ponds eventually, though he concedes it might be decades away.

Another approach to making the oil sands more water-friendly is to develop an extraction process that doesn’t require water. Researchers all over the world are exploring different ways of doing this.

Going dry

In a paper published in 2008 in the journal Ultrasonics Sonochemistry, four chemists at the Kurnakov Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry in Moscow describe using ultrasound on oil sand to extract bitumen from oil sand.

By subjecting a sample of oil sand to sonic waves above 20,000 hertz – a sort of industrial version of the scanners used to determine the sex of a foetus – the Russians were able to shake the bitumen apart from the sand, clay and water in less than an hour.

However, the experiments were on samples of sand less than a half litre in volume, and extracted about 2.5 grams of bitumen from each sampled tested. According to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the oil sands produce over 1.3 million barrels of bitumen every day, and production is expected to nearly triple by 2025. No tests at that kind of scale have been done.

Non-aqueous extraction methods are also being explored at the University of Alberta. One is the the brainchild of environmental engineer Selma Guigard. Guigard’s method involves “supercritical” carbon dioxide – a heated, pressurized solvent that behaves somewhat like a liquid and somewhat like a gas.

Guigard’s method mixes supercritical carbon dioxide with oil sand and then de-pressurizes the slurry, forcing the bitumen to separate from the rest of the mixture. The carbon dioxide can be recycled indefinitely, and the only water involved in the process is that already naturally mixed with the bitumen, sand and clay.

Once again, though, the technique has yet to be tested at the sort of scale that would let it replace the Clark process in northern Alberta. Guigard has had difficulty obtaining the funding necessary to build a small pilot plant.

Murray Gray, the director of the University of Alberta’s Centre for Oil Sands Innovation, predicts that Guigard’s method won’t be used in industry any time soon because carbon dioxide simply doesn’t mix well enough with bitumen to be viable.

“Nothing that’s been published shows that you can get good dissolution of the bitumen in carbon dioxide,” he said. “Unless someone can lick the solubility problem, it won’t be used.”

Gray’s Centre is doing its own research into non-aqueous extraction using organic solvents like paint thinner. Currently, the Centre is trying to understand the fundamentals of how that might work.

“What we didn’t do was run into the lab with a bunch of pots and pans and start playing around with different solvents and additives,” said Gray. Instead, the Centre is focused on the basic research required to design a practical non-aqueous extraction process. Gray estimates that their method is six years away from being used by industry.

In the meantime, the tailings ponds continue to present a serious hazard to wildlife in northern Alberta. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers encourages mine operators to use “cannons, scarecrows, decoy predators and radar/laser deterrent systems,” but they don’t always work.

In April 2008 about 500 migrating ducks died when they landed on a Syncrude tailings pond, and according to the Pembina Institute about 100 wading birds mistake the ponds for mudflats every year and become covered in oil as a result.

As the tailings ponds continue to grow, environmentalists like Simieritsch and Schindler are pessimistic about the future of the Athabasca River. Schindler said he saw no new methods on the horizon that could operate at the needed scale.

“If they can go ahead with these non-aqueous bitumen extractions and they’re found to be safe, then that’s great,” said Simieritsch. “But, you know, we still see that current [mining] projects are going ahead with large volumes of water use.”

Stormwater reached knee-level at TRIUMF on Sept. 29. Photo courtesy of Jim Hanlon.

Curtis Ballard rushed to fasten plywood between parking curbs as rain cascaded down Wesbrook Mall. The water runoff streamed toward TRIUMF, the laboratory for particle and nuclear physics at UBC.

“The water outside eventually rose to our knees,” said Ballard, TRIUMF’s operations manager, who worked with personnel from the lab and the physical plant to clear catch basins and set up dewatering pumps.

Although the water from the flash flood seeped into offices and damaged flooring, the group’s work spared a nearby laser lab filled with high precision equipment. They now refer to it as the great flood of 2009.

Such temperamental tales become lore at the University of British Columbia, which sits on the outskirts of rainy Vancouver.

The project team behind Campus and Community Planning know the challenges of managing stormwater, but are also creating policy that may channel it into opportunity.

The planners are entering the final phase of drafting the UBC Vancouver Campus plan, the guiding document for the next 20 years of development on the University’s academic lands. Taping the copious amount of rainwater as a renewable resource is finally on the agenda.

Planning up a storm

The current plan commits the administration to following 12 general policies found in section 4.6.4 of the draft, which deal with stormwater management and water waste on campus.

“We think we could take a more integrated approach and think of water as a resource rather than as a waste,” said David Grigg, associate director of infrastructure and services planning. “Water is not being seen from a natural systems point of view.”

Instead, the free-flowing resource is often seen as a nuisance, evidenced by the Facebook group UBC Drainage Sucks!, where students gather to gripe and discuss specific trouble spots, such as the west entrance to the chemistry building.

“There is a patch of dryish grass to the right of the stairs,” said Nicholas Steinberg, a member of the group. “Hop there, then hop onto the railing of the stairs. From there, you can climb to safety.”

Another member, Emily Lai, called UBC “a swamp with rare dry spots”.

Effective rainwater management could help reduce the number of puddles on pathways, though the plan is more focused on managing runoff systematically.

Community members examine the campus plan on display boards in the Student Union Building

As water travels through campus and inconveniences community members, it also becomes more polluted, eventually contaminating the base of the Fraser River estuary or flowing into a system of pipes that lead to the ocean.

Grigg said UBC must move beyond approaches that simply aim to drain the water, get rid of the bottlenecks, and get it out of the way as quickly as possible.

The natural systems alternative is to see stormwater as part of an ecological cycle that the community can come to appreciate. New designs will make it possible to capture some of that water and find uses for it, like irrigating lawns and plant life on campus.

The planners also want to improve the quality of the water that returns to the ocean.

Students weigh in

Kristen Van Esch, a graduate student studying geological engineering, said she is impressed by the ideas thus far.

“When I think of stormwater management, I imagine sewers and flood mitigation,” said Van Esch. “I’ve never heard of this natural systems approach.”

Other students think the plan may be overly ambitious.

“There seem to be a lot of different goals, and I’m not sure if it’s all feasible,” said Owen Marmorek, a first-year undergraduate arts student, as he examined other priorities on the open house display boards.

Besides feasibility, other students wonder about funding.

“They’ve done investigations to see if these sorts of things are possible,” said Andrew Carne, a fifth-year undergraduate engineering student, “but at the same time, it is a wish list.”

Carne, who has attended three feedback sessions for the campus plan, said the planners seem well-intentioned. Still, he said the difficulty with long-term visioning is that planners often create comprehensive designs that do not come to fruition without funding.

But the cost of inaction may be considerable. In 1995 alone, campus-wide flooding cost the university upwards of $300,000 in damages, said Grigg.

“Could we learn to think of [water] as being a scarce commodity that deserves due respect?” he asked.

Women dressed in colourful salwar kameez in a Sikh prayer, called the Ardaas.

By Lara Howsam

Vancouver Sikhs have a long history as activists.

Rallies and events have been held at the Ross Street Temple in South Vancouver for years. Violence against women, gangs, refugee and immigration issues and political rallies are regular events.

“We have to wake the people up,” said Kashmir Dhaliwal, who is active at the temple.

Until now there has never been an event that focused on the environment.

The green message was localized within the Sikh community because of the visit of a Bollywood star.

Rahul Bose was just in Vancouver. He works with an organization called 350.

The significance of 350 is that NASA has said that any concentration of carbon in the atmosphere greater than 350 parts per million is not compatible with the planet. The levels are currently at 390ppm.

The rally was organized for the International Day of Climate Action on October 24. The aim was to have 350 people gather at the Gurudawara Sahib Khalsa Diwan Society temple at 3:50pm to be educated about the effects of climate change.

Drought, famine and floods

“I think global warming is pretty important because it is a fact of our everyday life,” student Rubin Minhas said.

“Whether we embrace it or reject it it’s still there. If we put it off it’s still going to be there.”

“And that’s why I think it is important that we embrace it.”

The event focused on the situation that is unfolding in the Punjab region of India, where most temple members have family.

Because of global warming the farmers there are being hit hard by drought, famine and floods.

There has been a significant rise in farmer suicide in the region and this is being attributed to the affects of climate change.

From global to local

The Vermas pass out pamphlets at the environmental rally.

Organizer Dr. Pradeep Kumar Verma stood in the foyer of the Ross Street temple wearing a bright green vest with the numbers 350 hand-stitched in white felt numbers.

His mother, Tripta Verma stood across from him.  “I am worried. Why isn’t every person thinking about that?” she said.

As people bowed before entering the worship hall the Vermas’ handed-out pamphlets on climate change.

In the hall, most people had their heads bowed down. Not all of them were in prayer – many were reading the pamphlets.

The Vermas’ are working through the small organization Cuddlendance.

Dr. Verma tweets as one way for getting his message across. His Twitter bio reads “As a retired physician (MD) I feel it a high moral obligation to insure I keep working to help people become healthier, happier and always smiling.”

His mother is worried about the influence that climate change will have on women, especially for those from developing nations.

“It has more effect on the ladies than men,” Tripta Verma said. “If there is no food for the child, the mother will be more upset in respect to the father. The father is going out and the mother is staying home with no water, no light, no food. So it is very hard for her. Due to the kids the mother is more and more upset.”

Prayers for climate change

Mrs. Verma sits in on the prayers.

Here at the temple, the scientific reality of climate change has been melded with spiritual practice.

Worshippers chanted a prayer, known as Ardaas. It pleas to God to support and help the devotee with whatever he or she is about to undertake.

The prayers were guided by a Sikh elder. He spoke through a microphone in Punjabi. As he spoke a baby, just learning to walk, kept toddling and staring up at him.

The attendees replied to his prayers together. They stood up and bowed down, with the woman on one side and the men on the other.

The numbers at the temple were much lower than expected. Fifty people attended. Most were there to attend regular Gurudawara.

“In the end the few who did attend did feel that it laid a founding stone for the movement,” Dr. Verma said.

“With our intended monthly meetings and weekly reminders through brief prayers we would build upon it fairly quickly. So I remain optimistic despite dismal attendance.”

This is where global meets local. People here know the impact that global warming had on their families in India.

“They’re Indians, we’re Indians,” Minhas said, “I mean it is one country, and more than that it is the human race. I mean we are all in this together, it’s not like I’m on my own, or you’re on your own – it is everyone in one bucket.”