On September 6th, living in South Waterfront will not only mean inhabiting the banks of the largest north flowing river in Oregon. Being in SWF on that day will also put you right in the heart of the action for Riverfest ‘08.

Riverfest has three goals: make the Willamette River a focus of fun and learning; actively improve river and watershed health through increased community engagement; and promote economic activity on the riverfront.

The festival, which kicks off on August 28th with The Oregon Symphony Waterfront Concert, features events throughout the city. It will be a big affair here in South Waterfront; Saturday September 6th is South Waterfront day, and the district will be pulling out all the stops.

Highlights include a SWF Neighborhood Park concert, produced by PDX Jazz with Bobby Torres, Devin Phillips Funk Band and Portland Youth Jazz Orchestra. Look for performances by Oregon Ballet Theatre, and as part of PICA’s TBA Festival, Sojourn Theatre. Countless attractions and activities will be on offer including a sailing regatta, large retail marketplace, food, wine & beer vendors featuring Salmon Safe Ponzi Vineyards and Deschutes Brewery, 85 foot hot air balloon, art exchange, children’s activity city, PdxDog ™ Town, bike tune-ups and an exciting announcement from Salmon Safe.

SWF Community Relations needs resident ambassadors for this event. Please contact communityrelations@southwaterfront.com or go to www.portlandriverfest.org. Public welcome.

Our own South Waterfront Sustainable Lifestyle and Transportation Committee, along with the folks with South Waterfront Community Relations have put together a series of talks with local gurus of sustainability. The first talk was in April with Eban Goodstein, Professor of Economics at Lewis & Clark College and author of several books about sustainability and it’s affect on the economy.

The next talk in the series is coming up next week - July 10th to be exact - and will feature Regina Hauser, the Executive Director of the Oregon Natural Step Network. Hauser will pick up where Prof. Goodstein has left off, by presenting on the Natural Step framework, which provides the principals and steps to take to lead a more sustainable lifestyle. For more information on this event, please click here.

The last event will feature Michael Armstrong, the Deputy Director of the City of Portland’s Office of Sustainable Development. The date of this event has yet to be determined - so stay tuned! I hope to see everyone at the upcoming speakers, they are particularly relevant to the culture of the South Waterfront.

Who’da thought? INTERNATIONAL / EUROPE   |  Motivated by a Tax, Irish Spurn Plastic Bags By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL The Irish have embraced the use of cloth bags to carry groceries, encouraged by a 33-cent tax on plastic ones. Maybe we need such a tax in Oregon. I was stunned by another story about the garbage dump in the Pacific that now reaches from Hawaii almost to Japan. It’s in an area that does not have much current so it just sits there, a big ugly in the ocean that consists largely of plastic in one form or another. Shopping at several grocery stores here, I have noticed that plastic is now banned in New Seasons (although there are still bags in produce) and Whole Foods, Fred Meyers is not far behind.  We got “points” with the checkout folks when we pulled out our cloth bags. And while we are at it, why do we have to have bottled water? That is another huge contribution to the Pacific dump. All that stuff we are throwing away has to go somewhere and plastic just moves to another part of the world.  Those bags can be recycled; collect them and take them to a recycle bin near you.

Not quite, we are actually 4th in the nation of total completed LEED certified projects, according to Metropolis Magazine. However that is nothing to be ashamed of, according to the article Oregon has 66 projects, behind Washington (73), Pennsylvania (81) and California (173) - there is a good visual aid in the article “Red, Blue and Green States” - however you have to be a subscriber to view it online.

November’s issue has a great article about the state of LEED certification in America called “Can LEED Survive the Carbon Neutral Era?” which addresses the challenges that the LEED certification is facing and how LEED standards are evolving. The article even highlights landmark LEED buildings in the USA - including the South Waterfront’s very own OHSU Center for Health and Healing - click on the image to the right of the article. Between those two articles and the article “Beyond the Spectacle,” which describes Dubai’s development plans, of which most will be certified by the UAE’s LEED system, it seems to me that sustainable development is becoming the standard rather than a luxury. If that is the case it still baffles me as to why the Homebuilders Association of Metropolitan Portland has a problem with Portland’s carbon tax initiative (see Oregonian article here). Seems to me that if they are already building green as many developers claim to be they should be excited about the potential tax rebates they could qualify for.

The price of oil is at an all time high. The nation’s landfills are inundated with plastic. All this while our municipal water systems are receiving high praise. So, why are we still producing and drinking bottled water?

In a recent article published by Kevin Maney in the Conde Nast Portfolio, a discussion regarding the effects of bottled water is introduced. Since water bottles consist of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), aka oil, it is estimated that 17.6 billion barrels of oil are used in their manufacturing. That roughly projects out to the use of enough fuel to power one million vehicles annually.

The EPA monitors municipal water systems and grades them accordingly. Most places in the United States succeed in producing water that is safe and some even add fluoride. The two largest producers of bottled water, Aquafina and Dasani actual do nothing spectacular in the creation of their water. Aquafina’s water comes from filtered municipal taps while Dasani’s water comes from a plant in Canada that also produces cars and paint.

As far as municipal systems go, Portland was recently rated as having the second best drinking water in the nation. The EPA was quoted as saying that the water is so pure coming from the taps that filtration was not needed. Several other cities across the United States can claim almost the same thing which leads us again to question why we are wasting the precious oil on bottling water. Let’s not just hold water responsible. Bottled sodas and juices are also at fault. Imagine how much oil could be saved to heat our homes and power our vehicles if fluids were not plasticized.

We all know that Green Buildings save energy, but why does this matter besides saving money? I think that we need to look at a deeper level to truly measure the worth of those savings. By saving energy we leave alone those sources that would be used to make that energy, whether that is fossil fuel (Coal, Oil, Natural Gas, Etc.) or water (Hydropower). By not digging or drilling for more fossil fuels we save the land they lay under and so preserve the natural world that plants and animals live in. We also provide untouched areas for ecological functions that the world needs to function correctly, such as Rain Forests, Wetlands, etc. By not burning those fossil fuels we also save the air quality that all living things need and also do not create additional heat trapping greenhouse gases which could lead to global warming.

The dams that make Hydropower impede fish runs and the reservoirs behind dams warm the water above natural temperature or in some cases release deep reservoir cold water into a normally warmer river. Both these situations harm native river ecosystems. So by reducing the need for more energy we reduce the need for dams built to supply power. Since some dams across the country are reaching the end of their physical life the opportunity to remove them becomes an option. These are serious issues that not only affect the human population of the world but also affect the rest of the world’s wildlife. Without a wide diversity of life on the planet we will have a very lonely planet.