Sustainable Philly?

by Mike Newall

The other night, the Pennsylvania Environmental Council presented its 2009 Philadelphia Sustainability Awards. The event was held in a big auditorium at the Convention Center. It was the evening of the snowstorm, but about 400 people showed up. The place was packed.

I invited my friends, Sustainable Claire and her husband, Avery, to come along. Claire is young and pretty and wears poofy knit hats. She's just finished her first semester of Philadelphia University's Sustainable Design masters program. Avery's a tall, lean dude who usually sports a thick red beard. He grew up on a farm in Woodstock, Va., and, until very recently, climbed trees as an arborist. Now he's enrolling in the masters program, too. Since they're both pursuing green careers, I thought they could provide some insight.

We took our seats as the crowd hushed.

"You got any gum?" whispered Sustainable Claire.

The evening's emcee took the podium. He had good news. Three years ago, 50 organizations, businesses, educational institutions and individuals were nominated at the first-ever Philadelphia Sustainability Awards. Which is good, of course. But at the time, he'd worried they'd quickly run out of future nominees. This year, he said, there are 70 nominees, and most of them are new.

The crowd broke into applause.

Soon, the city's director of sustainability, Mark Alan Hughes, spoke. He was taking a short break from an all-day budget-crunching meeting held in a windowless room. People may continue to curse the mayor for his handling of this budget crisis, but Nutter deserves applause for creating the sustainability cabinet position, and for appointing Hughes to it. It's a step in a new direction. Hughes' office is getting things done — creating green jobs, fostering the local green economy and working to produce a "Philadelphia sustainable framework," a plan, he says, which will be released on Earth Day, and save the city tens of millions of dollars in energy costs.

"It will be the coolest, smartest sustainable framework ever launched by an American city," he said. Then he left to go back to the budget meeting.

There were five award winners, including the Onion Flats architectural development firm (Avery's favorite nominee, coincidentally), which consists of the McDonald brothers — Tim, Patrick and Johnny — and their childhood friend Howard Steinberg. The McDonalds are young guys who grew up in working-class Havertown with a contractor father who taught them how to save a buck (the backyard firewood piles had to be 6 feet high, everyone took 2-minute showers and you got a "swat" if you left the light switch on). They now build some of the world's most energy-efficient homes, right here in Fishtown and Northern Liberties.

This is not the McDonalds' first award. That came five years ago, after Patrick developed a simple rainwater collection system to capture and reuse rainwater before it enters the city's aging, faulty sewer lines. He proposed it for a residential project in Fishtown. The city hemmed and hawed for months, then declined to give him a permit. McDonald built it anyway. Soon the Water Department started calling. He figured they wanted to fine him. Turns out they wanted to give him an award and hear more about the system as a potential model for the city.

Besides substantially upping the city's coolness factor with its state-of-the art eco-friendly homes, Onion Flats is now working with city officials on a number of projects that, all told, could save Philly millions in infrastructure costs. To help Northern Liberties deal with flooding problems, they're building a rainwater management system in Liberty Lands Park. And there are discussions of a larger underground tank at the site of the old horse stablesnear North American Street. That tank could hold 430,000 gallons of floodwater. Developers could buy into its construction in return for energy credits, and the Water Department could redirect battered sewer lines into it, protecting residents from a huge flood.

"Things are happening in Philly now," said Patrick.

After the ceremony, Sustainable Claire, Avery and I got sandwiches at the Field House sports bar. The couple told me that when they first started discussing green careers, they'd figured they'd have to move to a "green city," like Portland.But things have changed over the last few years, said Sustainable Claire.

"We don't feel like we have to go some place else anymore," she said.

Dispatch is filed from all corners of Philadelphia. E-mail mike.newall@citypaper.net.