The Alberta Emerald Foundation celebrates those walking a greener path

Aug 1, 2010  

The Emerald Awards 2010

Profiles by Geoff Morgan & Stephanie Sparks

As a society, we run roughshod over the Earth: emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, constructing factories in place of forests and encroaching on wildlife habitats. We become so preoccupied with the march of progress that we forget the world is a delicately balanced ecosystem. Fortunately, the Alberta Emerald Foundation acknowledges the people and organizations who are making the world greener. The 2010 recipients and their projects, actions, initiatives and personalities remind us that we are all responsible for protecting the planet.

Community Group
Bow River Basin Council
Water Management Plan Implementation
Having undergone four incarnations since the 1980s, the Bow River Basin Council has found its groove since developing a water-management plan. The plan consists of water quality objectives and 62 recommendations that were presented to key stakeholders in the Bow River Basin area. All 35 agreed and over the past year, half have taken steps toward implementing the recommendations. “The recommendations that we offered and the process that we’ve embarked upon is a first for Alberta,” says council executive director Mark Bennett, who adds, “We’re not a regulatory body, so we cannot nor do we wish to try to enforce any compliance with these recommendations. It’s purely a voluntary process on the part of the stakeholders.”

Education: Non-Formal
BP Canada Energy Company
A+ for Energy Education Grant Program
It’s been a rough couple of months for international energy giant BP in the Gulf of Mexico, and as the world watched, it initiated attempts in late May to stop the undersea oil leak. But despite that run of misfortune, Calgary-headquartered BP Canada Energy has at least one reason to walk proudly. Its A+ for Energy Education Grant Program is encouraging energy education in schools throughout Alberta by providing grants in sums of $5,000 to $10,000 for K-12 teachers and schools. Since 2007, the program has awarded $1.5 million and educated 30,000 students.

Education: School or Classroom
Westglen Elementary School
SEEDS Green School
Environmental leadership in school and community is the lesson of the day from Edmonton teacher and Westglen Elementary School’s environmental coordinator Linda Hut. Throughout the year, Hut’s preteen green team of five to 10 Grade 6 students works on monthly projects to promote environmental awareness, and their activities have garnered a featured location on CBC’s One Million Acts of Green and is registered as a SEEDS Green School. “Through their designation, we’ve become an Earth III School, which means we’ve completed over 3,000 projects and we were the first in Alberta and the third in Canada to reach that status,” says Hut. The students are now working toward the 4,000-project mark.

Emerald Challenge Award – Alberta’s Oil Sands
Chris Fordham
Objectives and Frameworks to Protect the Environment
Chris Fordham has one of those jobs where it pays to know people in the government and industry. As the senior sustainability strategy specialist for Suncor Energy Inc. in Calgary, Fordham sits on a number of committees (sometimes on an as-needed basis, other times in an ongoing capacity) to collaborate on objectives and frameworks to protect the environment. “That’s the thrust of all the work I do, these frameworks and guidelines are all aimed at providing environmental protection, but balancing that with social and economic objectives with a sustainable development approach.” His work over the last year has included providing input on the land use framework, particularly for the Lower Athabasca Regional Plan.

Government Institution
City of Medicine Hat
HAT Smart – A City of Medicine Hat Environmental Initiative
The City of Medicine Hat is well known as Alberta’s Gas City, given that it produces its own natural gas and is surrounded by about 4,000 wells. However, the city’s environmental sustainability department is committed to decreasing the community’s dependence on this non-renewable resource, because while there may be plenty now there could be far less in the future. “The HAT Smart brand is how we go about managing our energy conservation and renewable energy initiatives,” explains Russell Smith, the city’s manager of energy sustainability. The program raises the public’s level of awareness and includes incentives for owners of residential and commercial properties. “In Medicine Hat, our per-capita participation in the program is three times the Alberta average when it comes to provincial and federal incentives.”

Youth
Alberta Solar Decathlon Team
Alberta Solar Decathlon Project
Welcome to SolAbode, the fully functioning “bachelor pad kind of home” that Matt Beck and the Alberta Solar Decathlon Team built for the U.S. Department of Energy’s sustainable building competition in Washington D.C. Sponsored by Enmax and powered by solar energy, SolAbode can run electric appliances any other house can run, even on a rainy day.

Beck, who managed the project, says the 150-person team used “as many green building techniques as we possibly could.” The team, comprising students from four post-secondary schools in Calgary, used LEED-qualified building materials, like sustainably harvested wood, and designed the 800-square-foot house to run on just 400 watts – total. The house was shipped to Washington – where it placed sixth overall – and was reassembled for sustainably powered dinner parties and movie nights at the Solar Decathlon.

Individual Commitment
Dr. Charley Bird
Moths of the Aspen Parkland
Just as Charles Bird inherited part of his love for the ecology of the aspen parkland from his father, entomologist Ralph Bird, his work documenting moths in Alberta’s south-central parkland should foster a similar interest on the part of the next generation of conservationists. His fascination with butterflies and skippers started at the age of 10 and Dr. Bird, now 78, did his post-doctorate in Edmonton before teaching environmental sciences for years at the University of Calgary. He is now a director with the Alberta Lepidopterist’s Guild, and his work, Moths of the Aspen Parkland Ecosystem, earned him an Emerald Award for stressing the importance of natural habitat on the viability of Alberta’s moths.

Not-For-Profit
Alberta Native Plant Council
For more than two decades, the Alberta Native Plant Council has acted as a steward, a research organization and an advocate for the province’s naturally occurring plant life. This year’s Emerald Award in the Not-For-Profit category acknowledges the council’s dedication to preserving Alberta’s native plants, and its work to keep non-native plant species from destroying the province’s natural habitat. Funded primarily by memberships and grants, the council publishes a “Rogue’s Gallery” of non-native plant life and invasive weeds, as well as studies on the health of Alberta’s native plants. It also holds Botany Alberta conservation events and stewards areas like the Nisku Native Prairie Park Reserve.

Shared Footprints
This new Emerald Certified award recognizes excellence in integrated land management
Alberta Pacific Forest Industries
Don Pope of Alberta Pacific Forest Industries (ALPAC) works with companies in the oil sands, government and the public on agreements that lower the ecological footprint of industry in northeastern Alberta. Pope, formerly a forest ranger, negotiated contracts with oil companies laying seismic lines through northern Alberta’s forests. At a cost of several hundred thousand dollars to ALPAC, the company agreed not to charge companies for their seismic lines if, and only if, the forest swaths cut for the lines were 2.5 metres wide. At the time, the industry was cutting 8-metre lines. The new measure is now the regulated industry standard and saves thousands of hectares of forest per year.

Integrated Land Management & Innovative Pipelining Strategies
Looking out on forest swaths cut to install oil pipelines, Doug Kulba asks the question, “Can we find ways to reduce the amount of trees removed?” Kulba spearheaded Innovative Pipelining Strategies (IPS) in May 2007. The project brings government and the oil sands industry together in an effort to reduce the ecological footprint in pipeline installation. As a result, this Emerald Award recipient collaborated with Devon Energy to safely install six pipes in a 15-metre swath of forest, which is less than half of the industry standard, at 32 metres, used to install a single 48-inch pipe. IPS also boasts 100 per cent voluntary re-growth in the vegetation beside the pipeline.

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