City issues Sustainable St. Paul Awards for 2013

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2013 Winner of Institutional Green Building Design Award – St. Thomas, Anderson Student Center 2013 Winner of Institutional Green Building Design Award – St. Thomas, Anderson Student Center[/caption]

Ramsey County and District Energy St. Paul by Sustainable St. Paul Ramsey County and District Energy St. Paul by Sustainable St. Paul

2013 Winner of Sustainable City Staff – Department of Public Works, Hamline Midway Pervious Alley Project 2013 Winner of Sustainable City Staff – Department of Public Works, Hamline Midway Pervious Alley Project[/caption]

2013 Winner of Commercial Green Building Design – Kendall’s Ace Hardware 2013 Winner of Commercial Green Building Design – Kendall’s Ace Hardware[/caption]

2013 Winner of Environmental Education and Awareness Award – Great River School 2013 Winner of Environmental Education and Awareness Award – Great River School[/caption]

2013 Winner of Water Quality or Conservation Award – Como Lake Neighbor Network 2013 Winner of Water Quality or Conservation Award – Como Lake Neighbor Network[/caption]

By JANE MCCLURE

Celebrating environmental stewardship, energy conservation, lake pollution prevention and even a new method of alley pavement is the goal of the Sustainable St. Paul Awards. The 2013 awards, presented April 17 by Mayor Chris Coleman and the St. Paul City Council, included representatives from area neighborhoods.

This is the seventh year for the awards, said Coleman. He called the 2013 winners an “amazing group” and added, “They make St. Paul a better place.” The awards are presented as part of the city’s Earth Day celebrations. Although parts of the celebration, including parks cleanup, were snowed out, the awards presentation and other community celebrations did take place. Fourteen different awards were presented. All can be seen on the city website in the Mayor’s News Room tab.

One unusual award, for city staff sustainability efforts, recognized St. Paul’s Department of Public Works and its efforts to rebuild the alley behind Hamline-Midway Branch Library. The Hamline-Midway Pervious Alley Project involved removing roughly 12,800 square feet of impervious surface and replacing it with permeable pavement. This means less storm water runoff and more water being absorbed into the earth. The project area, a mixed-use neighborhood at the corner of Snelling and Minnehaha avenues, is ideal for the permeable pavement installation. The project was also coordinated with planned improvements to the Hamline Midway Library parking lot, minimizing disruptions to the neighborhood and improving cost efficiencies overall. The project involved a large amount of excavation but is expected to provide benefits for many years.

The Environmental Education and Awareness Award went to Great River School, which recently became the first school in the city of Saint Paul to join the Department of Natural Resources School Forest Program. The charter school’s students chose the Saint Paul’s Como Woodland Outdoor Classroom to be their school forest. Students and teachers spend many hours assisting at Como with a variety of natural resource tasks such as planting, mulching, seed collection, brush hauling, and removing of invasive species. Students also engage in long-term investigative research topics to help the outdoor classroom, and have more than 200 students help with natural resource management and park maintenance at Como Park.

The Water Quality or Conservation Award went to CLNN or Como Lake Neighbor Network. This group has worked to keep excess phosphorus out of Como Lake through a fall curbside cleanup. Neighbors work together for a week in mid-October to clean leaves from street gutters.

Fall 2012 was the largest and most successful Como Curb Cleanup to date. Nearly 200 Como households participated and removed 11,727 pounds of organics from street gutters. This translates to an estimated 12 pounds of phosphorus prevented from Como Lake and an estimated 6,000 pounds of algae prevented.

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