Plans to Turn R.I. High-School Energy Green

By TIM FAULKNER/ecoRI News staff

SMITHFIELD — High schools across Rhode Island are getting an opportunity to meet all of their energy needs thanks to a project headed by one of the state's top experts on solar and wind energy.

Bob Chew, founder of Alteris Renewables and Solar Wrights, is a familiar face among the state's alternative energy policy and development sector. His latest company, R.W. Chew LLC, will offer many of the same consulting services for solar, wind and geothermal energy, wood-chip boilers and methane digesters, as well as overall energy-efficiency assessments. 

One of his first initiatives, dubbed the Net Zero Energy project, will create plans at each high school for developing an all-encompassing alternative energy system.

A $123,244 federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act grant run through Bryant University will allow each of 53 public high schools and technology centers in Rhode Island to be evaluated for the most beneficial green-energy supply. 

Each plan will show how individual high schools can achieve net-zero energy, meaning the school will generate energy equal to or greater than its consumption.

Energy systems under consideration include photovoltaics, solar hot water and solar hot air systems, wind turbines, wood-chip boilers, methane digesters, geothermal heating and cooling systems, and micro-hydro systems.

Chew said he started the project to offer unbiased guidance for generating on-site electricity, heat and hot water. "Since most renewable energy companies are experts in just one of the renewable energy technologies and often only have one product to sell, schools might not be given all  the information that they need to make an informed decision," he said.

The project also intends to speed up the slow pace of renewable energy system installations, he said, and this study will show the state the potential size of renewable energy in Rhode Island.

It's also an economic stimulant. In past economic downturns, Chew said, the housing industry has helped end recessions. "This time, the housing industry won’t be able to rescue the economy but the green economy will, if we look at creative ways to fund the projects."

The studies are well underway. Reports for each school will provide probable costs and predicted savings. School officials will be able to discuss the reports during a seminar at Bryant University in February.

"The Net Zero Energy project can help our school buildings operate efficiently, and it will also provide an opportunity for students to learn about energy systems, renewable resources and environmental science," said Deborah Gist, commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education for Rhode Island.

School Summit Puts Environment at Head of Class

By TIM FAULKNER/ecoRI News staff

PROVIDENCE — The environment is not just another subject, but an educational imperative, was the message at this year's Sustainable School Summit.

In his introductory remarks, Ken Ward of the Apeiron Institute for Sustainable Living — the organizer of the event — noted that the urgency to address climate change puts the environment at the top of educational priorities.

"The concept of sustainable schools is much more important than we thought twenty years ago," Ward said.

Embodying this call to action was Rhode Island's 2011 Teacher of the Year, Shannon Donavon. The Scituate High School science teacher, and former Apeiron educator, delivered a compelling presentation on the importance of combining sustainability with subjects such as science and math.

"I viewed my role as a teacher as an extension of my environmental activism," she said.

The site of the event, Nathan Bisphop Middle School, served as a model of a green, sustainable school. The 1929 structure was an East Side eyesore and nearly torn down until its aesthetic and sustainable features were deemed worth saving.

Bronze doors, plaster moldings and marble floors, along with ample natural light and an optimum use of space, were restored during a five-year renovation. When the school re-opened in 2009, the $43 million upgrades included new features such as two massive heating and cooling recovery systems, recycled rubberized floors, a gray-water collection system, reflective roofing, and bike and pedestrian improvements. 

A student-friendly video kiosk in the school lobby shows the school's real-time energy use and savings. Posters remind the nearly 700 middle-schoolers of the school's green features, helping bring the environment and classwork together. As one teacher noted, "environmentalism isn't just an after-school club. Our whole school is a green team."

During a tour of the 4-story building for school representatives around the state, Dave Gaudet, facilities manager for the Providence School Department, noted that the energy saving features aren't just about saving money. "It's about how you deliver a curriculum as well," he said.

Better World Challenge 2011 Finalists and Winners

Video production courtesy of ReNewableNow.tv
Cameraman/video editor: PAUL ERICKSON
Text by DAVE FISHER/ecoRI News staff

PROVIDENCE — The fourth annual "A Better World by Design" conference was held Sept. 30-Oct. 2 on the campuses of the Rhode Island School of Design and Brown University. Overwhelming response had this year's conference bursting at the seams with designers, engineers, planners and students who, through solid design and engineering principles, are advocating for a cleaner, greener future for Rhode Island and the world.

This year's challenge was again a tall order to fill.

As sea levels rise and climates change, coastal regions must now confront the challenge of preserving their culture and community in the face of increasing threats from coastal erosion, flooding and other natural disasters. The challenge: How do you build a better coastline?

A small community in southern Rhode Island, Matunuck, boasts the best of coastal life: beauty, seafood and beaches. However, the town simultaneously faces rapid coastal erosion and the potential for catastrophic weather events.

A Better World By Design worked with Save The Bay in encouraging students to re-imagine this community and plan for long-term sustainable solutions that go beyond traditional protective structures.

In this video piece, we bring you the coordinator, finalists and winners of this year's challenge.

Brown's West House Strives for Sustainability

By DAVE FISHER/ecoRI News staff

Brown University sophomore Dan Sambor tends the garden at West House. (Dave Fisher/ecoRI News staff)PROVIDENCE — While growing up on a 6-acre farm an hour outside of Chicago, Dan Sambor was imbued with a passion for gardening that made him a bit reluctant to attend college in an urban setting. “I was so used to living in a rural environment," he said. "I really went back and forth on attending Brown.”

Finding a social niche when one begins his or her college career is difficult. For Sambor, there was no doubt in his mind where he should be in the social order at Brown University. While perusing the various extracurriculars at the campus activity fairs during his freshman year, he discovered West House, and knew immediately, “This is where I’m supposed to be.”

West House was begun by a group of Brown University students in 1985 as an exercise in sustainable living. Today, West House is home to 14 students, and 18 more participate in the house’s co-op meal and work program. The residents of West House cook all of their meals onsite, composting all of the food scraps from the house — hence removing them from the school's cafeterias’ waste stream — and share in all of the work when it comes to the upkeep and maintenance of the house.

Some of the more menial tasks around the house are assigned on a two-week rotating schedule — to prevent any one person getting stuck cleaning the bathrooms — while others are permanent positions that are assigned at the beginning of the school year. The permanent positions include coordinators for local food, living space, environmental news, archives and history, and bulk purchasing.

Sambor, now in his sophomore year as a mechanical engineering major, heads the gardening and composting at West House. Residents get about 10 percent of their food from the house's garden, and most of the other consumables are sourced through Farm Fresh Rhode Island’s Market Mobile, keeping the food local and the carbon footprint small. Sambor is able to stay ahead of his planting by starting seeds in the university’s greenhouses.

Sambor's passion for growing produce is evident as he guides an ecoRI News reporter through the small container garden at West House. As the growing season winds down, the garden is flush with peppers, swiss chard, okra, eggplant, all manner of herbs, and tomatoes grown in buckets. Sambor finds working in the garden cathartic.

“I can’t imagine not having this outlet," he said. "After sitting in class all day, I love getting out to the garden to do some real work. Manual labor is important.”

While back home on the outskirts of Chicago, Sambor helps keep the family’s farm humming.

He exhibits equal passion for math and science. He credits his future career path to finding out — at a very young age — about hydrogen fuel cells. “I actually did a fifth-grade project on hydrogen cells," Sambor said. "I really want to change the energy infrastructure. We just can’t continue to draw our energy sources from the earth using so many dangerous practices.”

No stranger to the impacts of urban sprawl, Sambor has seen increased development around his family’s farm during the past decade or so. “At one point, a developer offered my family a couple million dollars for just a portion of our land," he said.

Though the offer was tempting, Sambor eventually convinced his father not to sell. Since the economic collapse in 2008, the developer has since rescinded the offer — one benefit to the economic downturn.

So what’s on tap for Sambor and the other students residing at West House? Currently, the house is participating in the Real Food Challenge — auditing their food sources using the Real Food Calculator, seeking support from the school to possibly move West House residents for a short time to renovate the house, which was built in the 1890s — to make it more energy efficient.

Next year, Sambor is planning to grow some pumpkins and decorative gourds, installing some tiered containers to grow some flowers and screen plants and prevent erosion around the house, and a new three-bin compost system to facilitate an influx of more food scraps, which — much like another forward thinking group of Rhode Islanders — he hopes to collect at the university’s farmers’ markets.

Children's Garden Educates, Empowers R.I. Kids

By DAVE FISHER/ecoRI News staff

Dana Wolfson guides children from Bright Horizons through the farm and teaches them how to make pickles. (Dave Fisher/ecoRI News staff)PROVIDENCE — Too many kids today think fruits and vegetables originate at the supermarket. Southside Community Land Trust has been heading that notion off at the pass with its Children's Garden.

Now in its 20^th year, the program brings 200 elementary and middle school students to City Farm for an engaging, hands-on, summer-long gardening and education enrichment.

Participants learn how to grow food, learn about the importance of healthy soil, what compost is and how to make it, and why certain garden bugs are good for plants. The kids harvest salad greens, fruits and vegetables, and make healthy snacks with the foods they’ve grown.

Southside Community Land Trust partners with youth summer programs at community centers and schools for the Children’s Garden. Each partner brings groups of 15-30 kids weekly to the West Side farm to experience its sights, sounds and smells.

The smells on the farm are quite intoxicating. Following the youngsters on their touching, smelling and harvesting tour, one’s sinuses are nearly overwhelmed by the wafting fragrance of dill, oregano, mint and good compost.

A group of 4- and 5-year-olds from the corporate daycare company Bright Horizons were seemingly vibrating with enthusiasm while they explored the farm, picking cucumbers, tomatoes and dill for the pickles they were about to make.

It was rather endearing to hear them mimic the cock-a-doodle-doo of the rooster — after it was explained to them that keeping roosters in the city was against the law. It plucked the heartstrings to hear the kids fighting over whose turn it was to whisk the brine for the pickles, rather than whose turn it was to play a video game. After the brine was prepared, the kids took their handmade notebooks to draw and write about what they had seen on the farm.

The program features lessons about nutrition, the environment and gardening. Children’s Garden culminates with an end-of-summer party, City Fest, at City Farm. City Fest gives the youngsters the chance to celebrate the end of the growing season and share the fruits of their labor with parents, siblings and neighbors.

Any psychologist will tell you that most people’s behaviors are ingrained in them by the age of 5. That makes it all the more important to connect children with the food system at a young age. Southside Community Land Trust gets that, and the Children's Garden program has helped hundreds of Rhode Island children connect the dots between farms and dinner tables.

URI Sustainability Officer Wants Carbon Neutrality

By ecoRI News staff

Marsha Garcia is URI’s first sustainability officer. (Photo courtesy of URI)KINGSTON — Marsha Garcia is sending a message to University of Rhode Island students, faculty and staff to be mindful of how their lifestyle impacts the environment and to take steps to reduce their carbon footprint.

“To me, it’s a common sense approach to living,” said Garcia, URI’s first sustainability officer. She was hired in May after serving in the position for a year on an interim basis. “We all need to be more mindful of how we live on a daily basis and how that impacts the environment.”

She said the concept of sustainability is difficult to explain, especially to those for whom environmental awareness and concern aren’t a priority. But it’s a vital lesson to ensure future prosperity, Garcia said.

Issues of sustainability permeate the URI campus. Garcia works closely with faculty to infuse sustainability into the curriculum, helps campus planners design green buildings, advocates for more local produce in student dining halls and creates leadership programs to train students to be peer advisors about green living.

The job of sustainability officer at URI was created in part to manage the university’s responsibilities under the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment, a document signed by former URI President Robert Carothers in 2007, which committed the university to dramatically reduce its contribution to global climate change.

Garcia also coordinates the URI President’s Council for Sustainability, a group of faculty, staff and students appointed by President David Dooley to provide strategic guidance on campus sustainability initiatives.

“The university does a great deal to promote sustainability, but it has been somewhat disjointed and it hasn’t come across in a unified way,” Garcia said.

While URI has an international reputation for its research on environmental topics, from oceanography and climate change to natural resources and environmental engineering, Garcia said many of those concepts haven’t been translated into programs and actions that engage the entire campus.

“It’s a matter of changing the culture on campus,” she said. “A lot of other universities have focused on sustainability longer than we have, so we have some catching up to do.  And given the small size of Rhode Island, changing the culture at URI almost involves changing the mindset of the entire state.”

Despite the challenge of changing the campus culture, Garcia is enthusiastic about tackling difficult issues, the biggest of which is transportation.

“Transportation affects everyone, it’s the most obvious issue, and fixing it would make the biggest impression and have the biggest impact,” she said. “The public transportation system in Rhode Island is not used very well, and it’s certainly not ingrained in the lifestyle of our students and faculty.”

Few people take the bus or carpool to URI, despite increasing options and incentives to do so. As a result, traffic on Route 138 and through campus at peak hours is gridlocked and complaints about parking are common. Greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, especially single-occupancy vehicles, are especially high and difficult to mitigate, according to a study by URI Energy Fellows.

Garcia grew up in Pennsylvania but lived in Washington, D.C., while working for the National Wildlife Federation, the U.S. Green Building Council and the American Institute of Architects before moving to Rhode Island. She said the first thing she did when she got to Providence was figure out how to use public transportation to get to URI, which she uses at least three times a week.

“I dream of URI reaching carbon neutrality, which seems like an impossible feat,” she said. “But it’s important that we move in that direction and get everyone to believe that, together, we can get this campus to be as close to zero as possible.”

Big-Time Oceanography in Little Rhody

Editor’s note: The above headline was borrowed from longtime URI Graduate School of Oceanography Professor Ted Smayda, Ph.D., who uttered the phrase during a recent interview with ecoRI News and then immediately called it a little corny. We thought it was worth stealing.

By FRANK CARINI/ecoRI News staff

Ted Smayda has been working at the URI Graduate School of Oceanography since 1959. (Photo courtesy of URI)NARRAGANSETT — During the past five decades, Ted Smayda has watched the Narragansett Marine Laboratory change names and transform itself from a sleepy lab— his words — into a world-renowned oceanography institute.

The University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography (GSO) turned 50 this year and is hosting a weekend of open-to-the public events later this month to celebrate. Smayda’s work will be a big part of the festivities. In fact, a few days before the school’s birthday bash, current and former colleagues and students will spend two days celebrating Smayda’s contributions to the university.

His contributions, both big and small, are many. In 1967, he graduated the first woman student from the GSO — a Greek scientist named Lydia Ignatiades who went on to become a leading oceanographer; her work published in many well-respected journals.

That same year, Smayda also helped break the gender barrier on oceanographic research ships by getting a female graduate student — Brenda Boleyn — on a vessel back when captains still thought that women onboard were bad luck. The ship didn’t sink, and nothing went wrong.

“We successfully broke the no-women-at-sea barrier and I am particularly pleased with that accomplishment,” said Smayda, who turns 80 in August but doesn’t look a day older than 65.

The Jamestown resident began working for the facility when it was known as the Narragansett Marine Laboratory and still vaguely resembled the German prisoners of war camp that is was during World War II. In fact, when he was a graduate student at the university in 1953, the now 200-acre, 20-building URI Narragansett Bay Campus was no more than a field of barracks left over from the final days of Fort Kearny.

When he returned to the GSO campus in 1959 from Norway after earning a Ph.D. in marine phytoplankton from the University of Oslo, Smayda's first office was a former prison cell and it smelled of urine.

“The odor of urine was just incredible,” recalled Smayda, who returned as an assistant marine biologist and by 1961 was member of the faculty. “Things were really rustic to put it mildly.”

During his 52 years working at the then “sleepy” lab and now at one of the largest graduate schools of oceanography in the United States, Smayda has graduated 32 students from around the world, including Germany, Canada, South Africa and, of course, the United States. He has visited with scientists from Norway, Sweden and Japan.

He has been both mentee and mentor. Smayda, a leader in the study of phytoplankton, especially those that cause red tides, also helped build up the school’s library collections and he helped start the Narragansett Bay Plankton Time Series in 1959 — a weekly measurement of plankton abundance in the bay that continues today, the longest data set of its kind in the world.

“There’s lots of history here, and I was here when the place was just starting to grow,” Smayda said. “I’m thrilled I’ve been able to see it take shape.”

Impressive credentials
While Smayda is the only one still employed at the GSO when the facility didn’t even go by that name, the past 50 years has seen many memorable figures who have taught and learned at the waterfront campus that overlooks the West Passage of Narragansett Bay. 

The school’s founding dean, John Knauss, is a giant in the world of marine science, having served on the Stratton Commission, the first review of U.S. ocean policy, in 1969. He had a hand in the establishment of the URI programs in marine affairs, ocean engineering and resource economics. He brought the first research vessel to URI, the Trident — purchased for $500 — and the GSO’s current ship, the 185-foot Endeavor. He also played a key role in creating the National Sea Grant Program, which named a prestigious fellowship after him in 1988.

Physical oceanographer H. Thomas Rossby, whose career at the GSO dates to the 1970s, is an international leader in the study of ocean currents. He has invented numerous instruments used by physical oceanographers around the world, and he continues to be an innovator in this field.

Jean-Guy Schilling, who retired in 2003, is noted for his use of trace elements and isotopes to understand the composition and dynamics of the Earth’s mantle. He used the volcanic rocks on the seafloor as a window into the deep earth. He has published more research papers in the prestigious journal Nature than any other URI faculty member.

Hurricane expert Isaac Ginis, estuarine ecologist Scott Nixon and coastal ecologist Candace Oviatt – one of the first female graduates of the GSO — are other notable researchers.

Important research
The Graduate School of Oceanography's relevance also can be found in the scientific discoveries its researchers have made. Among the most important was the 1991 discovery by professors Haraldur Sigurdsson and Steven D’Hondt of impact glass in Caribbean sediment deposited at the end of the age of dinosaurs.

“This was a significant finding because it provided positive evidence that a large impact occurred at the time of the mass extinction,” D’Hondt said. “It also provided a clear fingerprint of the suspected impact crater and striking evidence that the impact was unusually damaging. A number of other people at GSO also greatly advanced understanding of the impact event, with studies by then-graduate students James Zachos and Lowell Stott and professors Michael Arthur, James Kennett and me showing that the impact had huge effects on the oceans, some of which lasted for millions of years.”

The Narragansett Bay fish trawl, which was started by Charles Fish in 1959 and which was later managed by Professor Perry Jeffries — a graduate school classmate of Smayda — and now by Professor Jeremy Collie, is another study that has global implications. The weekly trawl samples the fish community in the bay and has traced the seasonal and annual changes of marine creatures living there.

D’Hondt, David Smith and Arthur Spivack have made the GSO a world leader in the exploration for life deep beneath the seafloor. “The biomass and diversity of life in the seafloor rivals that on land,” Spivack said. “We’ve learned that life can exist with a metabolism 100,000 times lower than anyone thought before. And this research has implications for life on Mars, because the conditions in the deep biosphere are similar to that at the surface of Mars.”

Internationally known
The GSO is one of the most widely known graduate schools of oceanography in the world, with its 800 or so graduates working in academia, industry, government and environmental organizations around the globe.

Currently, about 80 students are enrolled — two-thirds in doctoral programs and a third in master’s programs.

The Rhode Island Nuclear Science Center’s 2-megawatt research reactor is situated on the cam­pus, as is the Atlantic Ecology Division of the Environ­mental Protection Agency and the Narragansett Labora­tory of NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center.

The faculty, marine research scientists and professional staff collectively generate more than $30 million annually in external funding, which accounts for nearly a third of the university’s total. In addition to government and private support for re­search and outreach programs, the GSO receives about $7 million annually in state support allocated primarily to salaries.

“Science research can often appear mysterious and complicated, so this event is intended to bring it out into the open and make it more accessible,” said David Farmer, dean of the Graduate School of Oceanography. “We will be opening the doors of the URI Narragansett Bay Campus to some of our wonderfully exciting facilities that few non-scientists ever get a chance to see."

Recycling Takes Center Stage on Manton Avenue

By JOANNA DETZ/ecoRI News staff

PROVIDENCE — It was fifteen minutes before curtain, and the young playwrights were worried about cooties.

David Obispo, 8, took a seat at the playwright's desk before Friday night's performance. (Photos by Joanna Detz/ecoRI News)Friday night, just before showtime, The Manton Avenue Project’s Executive Artistic Director Jenny Peek was patiently and firmly giving her nine elementary school playwrights instruction on the arm-in-arm group bow they would be taking at the end the performance. There was just one problem: The girls at one end of the chain didn’t want to link up with the boys on the other.

A bit of clever reshuffling, and the problem was solved. The group took its practice bow just minutes before the audience began streaming in the doors of the Met School auditorium.

The Manton Avenue Project is a direct replica of New York City’s 52nd Street Project, an arts endeavor that pairs elementary school student-playwrights with professional adult actors to create original theater. Peek served a 10-year stint as the stage manager with the 52nd Street Project before moving to Providence, where she founded the Manton Avenue Project in 2004. Friday night marked the project’s eighth season.

During each Manton Avenue Project performance, the student-playwright sits under a low spotlight while the adult actors perform his or her play, allowing the audience to witness, simultaneously, creation and creator.

Friday night’s performance, titled “Reduce! Reuse! Recycle! The environmentally REsponsible Plays,” runs through Sunday and centers around the theme of environmentalism and recycling. The show is comprised of eight short plays, each written by an elementary school student from the city’s Olneyville neighborhood.

The theme of this particular series of plays is near and dear to Peek.

Manton Avenue Project veterans Shandy Figueroa, right, and Dalia Medina helped out behind the scenes. “I was raised to be aware of the world and the environment. This theme is a reminder to kids to treat the environment with respect, and it gives them an opportunity to teach adults how to do it. Who better than kids to remind us how important it is to treat the earth well,” she said.

If Friday’s plays are any indication, the earth is in good hands with this generation. The plays, which focused on individual responsibility, featured, among other things, a reformed litterer named Old Man Bingo who takes in two endangered passenger pigeons, and a messy rat who reforms her trashy ways, thanks to an apocalyptic dream-vision of the future trashed earth. In the dream, she is informed that, “It’s your fault; you didn’t recycle. Now it’s only you and the cockroaches.”

The simple message that humans should love and care for the planet by picking up after themselves comes across without artifice and was delivered with an earnestness that was at times humorous.

During intermission, 8-year-old playwright Vianey Valdez, whose play was performed during the first act, said she had enjoyed her experience with the project because, “people can see my thinking and imagination.”

Asked what she had learned about recycling, she replied, “If you do not recycle there will not be any trees and only cockroaches.”

Middletown Schools Addicted to Reducing Energy Use

By TIM FAULKNER/ecoRI News staff

Ed Collins, the facilities manager for the Middletown Public School Department, will examine every light fixture to save money and the environment. (Tim Faulkner/ecoRI News staff)MIDDLETOWN — Ed Collins, a public building supervisor for 20 years, has long been an advocate of energy conservation and “green” initiatives.

As facilities manager for the Middletown Public School Department, he works every light fixture and utility bill to cut expenses and reduce the school district’s impact on the environment. Ongoing upgrades include the installation of weather stripping and sensor lights. Buying environmentally friendly school supplies is a must.

“We’re the first school district that went green with paper products and cleaning products,” he said. “It saves us money and reduces our dependency on fuel.”

Frequent energy audits — at least once every three years — at the town’s five public school buildings, he said, is a “no-brainer” for reducing heating and electricity costs.

“It’s a necessity,” Collins said. “In this job you are running buildings. If you’re really serious about doing a good job, you want somebody to come in a evaluate what you are doing.”

His meticulous spreadsheets prove the audits get results, delivering annual savings of 10 percent to 15 percent for the district’s half-million square feet of building space.

“We need benchmarks to go off of, without that we have nowhere to go,” Collins said. “We need accurate data, without that I don’t know how you make a decision.”

In recent years, Warwick, Providence and North Smithfield, have embraced the benefits of routine energy audits. Other municipalities, such as Newport, Portsmouth and Jamestown, have signed on to a new National Grid cost-sharing audit program.

Since 2005, National Grid has won over several municipal customers by offering to pay 70 percent of the audit’s cost, while the city or town pays the remainder — about $5,000 — over 24 months.

“I have never had anyone turn this down,” said Anita Hagspiel, LEED analyst and program manager for National Grid.

Using software and a consulting team that includes municipal managers, National Grid’s four-step, whole-building assessment provides immediate and long-term improvements to lighting, refrigeration and HVAC systems.

“It’s like a very holistic one-stop shop,” Hagspiel said. “We do want the customer to look at everything.”

Collins attests to the benefits of the National Grid audits. Electronics giant Honeywell has also done five audits for his department, including a recent review that resulted in replacing all of the halogen and halide lights with power-saving T5 light bulbs in the school district’s four gyms and cafeterias.

But Collins hasn’t stopped at audits. About seven years ago, he took cost cutting to a new level by buying energy directly on the open market. Rather than relying on the prices from Rhode Island’s sole utility, Collins expanded his options by buying electricity and natural gas for his school district through an online energy exchange.

By monitoring price trends on Web sites like futrues.com and Silent Sherpa, he manages an energy portfolio of long- and short-term gas and electricity contracts. The fuel and power are then delivered to the schools through National Grid’s transmission lines.

Big corporations and universities typically run energy portfolios, not public school departments. “Do I think anyone else is doing it?” said Collins, repeating the question. “No.”

But the savings for Middletown have been impressive. Last year, Collins paid about 5 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity, much less than the 8 cents he would have been charged had he locked everything into a single multiyear contract. By actively managing his energy budget, Collins estimated he creates a “cost avoidance” of about $150,000 annually.

The reduced expenses don’t necessarily translate into more textbooks for the school district, he said, but it helps manage a bare-bones budget. “It’s not really savings,” he said, “it’s avoiding paying more in the future. So there’s nothing in our pocket, but there is less coming out of it.”

His investment strategy puts 60 percent of his energy budget into price contracts of about two years. The remainder is parked in contracts of a year of less. Locking into anything longer is too risky, he said.

Municipalities that buy fixed prices for 10 years, Collins said, are losing money. “That’s a huge risk when you lock in long term like that,” he said. “It’s like buying a stock and can’t get it for 50 years.”

Collins also holds down costs by carefully reviewing meter readings from National Grid, and challenging bills that seem out of line with his projections.

Every city and town, he said, should be double-checking its utility bills. “The more you are involved, the more you are going to learn, and say, ‘Wow! I can save some money.’”

These energy-savings and environmental policies also have taken hold in other Middletown departments. Plans are underway to switch from chemical to organic fertilizers on all playing fields. Major upgrades have been made to the wastewater system. And the town is studying sites for wind turbines and photovoltaic installations.

“We’re constantly looking at alternative sources,” Collins said.

After squeezing all he can from existing energy programs, he hopes other incentives and funds will come along to help retrofit heating systems or offer greater subsidies for wind and solar projects.

Meanwhile, the energy audits and efficiency upgrades will continue.

Inner-City Students Put Their Green Thumbs to Work

By FRANK CARINI/ecoRI News staff

PROVIDENCE —Until last fall, the wedge of schoolyard along Reservoir Avenue, partially obstructed by a bus stop shelter, was home to an oak tree that now stands about 7 feet tall, some gritty dirt blotched with green and wind-strewn trash.

This slice of land that runs beneath several classroom windows is now home to a garden that soon will be the envy of many urban farmers.

Since October, five Reservoir Avenue Elementary School students — three third-graders, Samantha, Chantel and Diosy, and two fourth-graders, Mayra and Jamie — under the tutelage of after-school volunteer Christian Nelson, have turned the once-barren patch into a vegetable and fruit garden.

The 10 beds, built out of rocks, wood, logs and/or branches, contain the beginnings of corn, carrots, potatoes, onions, garlic, tomatoes, beans, watermelon, raspberries and strawberries. The students also helped Nelson plant two apple trees.

“These kids never cease to amaze me,” the twenty-something said. “It’s really kind of a little vacation with these kids. They teach me more than I teach them. I know that’s a cliché, but it’s true. Wednesday afternoons are the highlight of my week.”

Nelson’s weeks are hectic. On Mondays, he tends to his own garden down the street from the school. Tuesdays and Thursdays are spent working at the Barden Family Orchard in North Scituate. Fridays he volunteers at the Southside Community Land Trust (SCLT). Saturdays he works at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).

On Wednesdays, from 3-4:30 p.m., he donates his time to teach students the finer points of gardening. As a member of the After School Arts (ASA) program, Nelson has been volunteering at the school for three years. This year, however, Principal Socorro Gomez-Potter easily persuaded Nelson to start a school garden.

He was able to do it, thanks to much community generosity. Rich Pederson, SCLT’s City Farm steward, donated plants. A local company donated a fence and another delivered the compost RISD donated. College students and PTO members helped dig and build the beds. The night janitor, a native of Peru, helped the kids plant the potatoes, corn and carrots.

The students organized a penny drive and collected nearly half of the project’s $250 budget. Nelson, however, didn’t get any help when it came to counting 9,500 pennies. “Someone slipped in a five dollar bill,” he said. “That was big.”

The students also help with watering, weeding and keeping the garden free of ice cream wrappers, potato chip bags and other trash blown into their urban oasis by Mother Nature and passing cars.

The ASA program was started six years ago, and has been working with Reservoir Avenue School students for the past four. The program was “born from a desire to help inner-city youth,” said Andrew Mook, the unofficial leader of the program. The program offers at-risk students tutoring and mentoring help and organizes community renewal projects. Besides teaching kids gardening skills, the after-school program also features a hip-hop class, film class and an urban dance class. Fifty students registered for the program this soon-to-end school year.

“It’s an opportunity to serve the community,” said Mook, who shares an apartment with Nelson and another ASA volunteer, Ryan Gaumond, not far from the South Providence school. “It’s a passion.”

The program runs on an annual budget of $2,500, and, according to Mook, other public schools in the city are looking to duplicate its success.