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The 46,000 trees planted during Earth Week in 1990, the prairie grasses that have been restored and many other projects have played a part in the college’s greening.
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Joel Martin summer help at Luther uses lawn mover that uses Bio Fuel made at the college . Dick Riniker photo |
But standing on a hill in the heart of campus from where one could see both the woodlands and prairie grasses Jon Jensen pointed to something new: an anemometer tower about 150-feet tall that has been measuring wind speed for about two years. One day, the data from the measurements might be used to build a wind turbine to generate energy for the college.
“We’re trying to incorporate ideas of sustainability into everything we do into the education of our students, into the way we run our physical plant, into the way we build new buildings, into the way we run our land,” said Jensen, director of environmental studies program since 2003.
As he stood on the hill behind Dahl Centennial Union, men from facilities services arrived, loaded a barrel of waste vegetable oil from the cafeteria onto their truck and hauled it away. The next day, they’d convert it to biodiesel to run lawn equipment.
In the past several years, Luther has reduced its electricity usage by about 22 percent and built an arts center and student housing that rely on geothermal energy for heating and cooling.
In January, Luther president Richard Torgerson became a charter signer on the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment, a pledge to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions.
Jensen, Torgerson and others at Luther see the commitment and projects as central to Luther’s role as an institution of higher education and, particularly, as a Christian one.
“If you think of other major social changes whether that’s civil rights or even all the way back to slavery I think at its best, the church is taking a leadership role in helping society see a new direction,” Jensen said.
In some cases, the shift also makes sense economically. Running lawn equipment off a mix of biodiesel and regular diesel could save about $3,800 in fuel costs per year.
Jensen said the project symbolizes the shift in thinking on campus.
“One of our goals and I think in some ways it’s going to be the easiest one is to model stewardship and sustainability in all of our college operations,” Jensen said. “That’s much easier than saying, How do we take 2,600 students and roughly 500 employees and begin to shift their habits and ways of thinking? How do you do it?’ And my first response is, Damn good question. We’ll let you know.’”
Foundation work
Luther’s mission statement was revised in fall 2006 and now includes: “Founded where river, woodland, and prairie meet, we practice joyful stewardship of the resources that surround us ”
Torgerson, Luther president for eight years, recently exchanged his SUV for a Honda Accord Hybrid bought from Honda Motorwerks in La Crosse.
Four other hybrids are part of the campus fleet, and the campus facilities department purchased two electric vehicles last week that are expected to cost about $60 in electricity a year to operate.
In 2004, Torgerson signed an energy efficiency contract with Alliant Energy that had the company invest about $1.5 million to reduce campus electricity usage and heating costs.
Alliant, which is mandated by Iowa law to undertake such projects, funded an energy audit that recommended such steps as replacing the gymnasium and fieldhouse lighting, which helped cut campus energy usage by about 22 percent.
Luther is repaying the upfront costs over seven years.
Torgerson also created a sustainability task force as one of four groups on the college’s strategic planning initiative.
“You don’t wake up one morning and say Luther is going to be known for sustainability,” Torgerson said. “A lot of things happen over a long period of time, until it comes to a tipping point.”
The task force, which includes Jensen, is charged with creating a plan over the next two years to eliminate the college’s “carbon footprint,” as called for in the commitment.
It has set five tentative goals so far:
- Model stewardship and sustainability in all college operations.
- Make sustainability a part of every student’s learning experience.
- Shift campus culture toward sustainability.
- Collaborate with community partners to develop a sustainable community and region.
- Nurture connection to place in all stakeholders.
Some ongoing projects already fit these goals. A science center under construction for a fall 2008 opening has been designed to U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards.
But tension will come, Torgerson said, such as in the decision to use herbicides to maintain campus green spaces.
“This sustainability initiative is going to cause us to get into deep discussions, both philosophically and practically, about some of the things that we do,” Torgerson said. “This is going to help everyone, including our students, to understand that there aren’t black-and-white answers to many of these questions.”
Campus collaboration
Although it’s making pro-gress, Jensen said, Luther is not a leader in campus sustainability. Middlebury College in Vermont and Oberlin College in Ohio have been working on it for decades, he said. St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minn., has a strong reputation as well.
To date, 284 college and university presidents have signed the Presidents Climate Commitment, which is organized by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education, Second Nature and ecoAmerica.
This week, Torgerson will join some fellow signers at a leadership summit in Washington, D.C.
Tom Kimmerer, executive director of AASHE, said in the last year and a half, the group’s membership has increased from about 30 to more than 300.
“A lot of this is going to be colleges helping colleges, and we’ll be the conduit for information,” Kimmerer said. “This is a grand experiment. Everybody is feeling their way forward in how to do this.”
The work by the facilities services at Luther, directed by Rich Tenneson, has been crucial in accomplishing many of the projects.
Tenneson directed the planting of the trees in 1990. He grew up on a farm and always had an interest in the environment. But the Presidents Climate Commitment and although he said he hates to say it Al Gore’s documentary, “An Inconvenient Truth,” have heightened his awareness.
“A year ago, I never would have thought about taking fry oil from our kitchen and making it into biodiesel on campus,” Tenneson said.
Jim Martin-Schramm, a professor of religion, has been another major catalyst.
Martin-Schramm said God’s statement in Genesis that humans should have dominion over the earth has been abused by economic and industrial expansion. The concept of stewardship for Christians needs to be driven more by Genesis 2, he said, in which God puts humans in the garden of Eden to till and keep it.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that a God who created this world and stood back and said, It is good,’ is a world that we’re supposed to care for,” Martin-Schramm said. “The sad fact is that for much of Christian history, we’ve been very human-centered.”
Students, though, have initiated the majority of Luther’s environmental projects, Jensen said.
The first environmental studies major graduated this spring; the program was first offered last fall.
About 15 more students are enrolled in it.
Students led research that estimated Luther’s carbon footprint to be 39 million pounds of carbon dioxide a year a number that will be reexamined by others.
It was Jensen’s collaboration with a student several years ago that began the process to use vegetable oil for biodiesel.
And a petition created by students in environmental studies classes helped move the wind turbine project forward.
This summer, two students have Luther-funded internships to help local churches work on sustainability projects.
And four students are earning $6.20 an hour working in two organic gardens, where they grow vegetables to be sold in Luther’s dining halls.
“I think it’s amazing, what’s going on here, how on every level people are getting involved,” said Rachel Wobeter, 20, standing in a garden fertilized with compost from the college’s cafeteria waste.
Wobeter, an environmental studies major who will be a junior this fall, grew up on a farm in Toledo, Iowa, where everything she ate came from her mother’s garden. She wants to be a chef some day and work on ways to get local foods into the mainstream.
But for now, her attention is focused on the Luther gardens, which are fertilized with compost from Luther’s cafeteria waste, where Wobeter and the other student-workers plan to hold garden parties, and where students collaborate with teachers.
“We need hoes, Jon, badly,” Wobeter said to Jensen on Monday.
By Wednesday, the students had new hoes.
UW-La Crosse growing greener through new, old programs
The push to go green “has had a significant impact” at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, said Matt Lewis, director of campus planning and facilities management.
“It’s all sort of happening right now,” Lewis said. “We’re trying to figure out how to get the most sustainability and greenness out of our buildings.”
Some of the ways UW-L will make its new academic building and stadium more eco-friendly include: using more windows, adding glare guards so the windows provide light but not heat, and using recycled building materials, such as carpets and wall coverings, Lewis said.
In existing buildings, UW-L has switched to energy-conserving light fixtures.
Indoor temperatures are kept lower in the winter and warmer in the summer than they once were, Lewis said.
A nearly completed stormwater management plan will reduce the amount of chemicals and solids such as oil, sand and fertilizer that run into UW-L’s storm sewers and eventually the river, Lewis said.
UW-L recently improved its coal-fired steam plant as well, by adding large filtration systems the gas going up the smokestack will be much cleaner than it was before.
Green isn’t a new color for UW-L; its long-running recycling program rivals the city’s. But UW-L recycles cardboard, magazines and plastics, which the city does not.
“We do pretty well,” said landscape architect Pete Bemis, who runs the program. “We continue to work at it and improve it.”
UW-L added plastics to its list of recyclables in 2005, partly because students pushed for the change, Bemis said. “We’re getting a lot more support from students,” he said. “They’re a lot more active than they were even five years ago.”
“They’re continually contacting me,” Lewis said of students. “The students are very effective at reminding us that we need to be very vigilant about these things.”
God, humans and green at Viterbo
When Earl Madary asks his students to define “natural” at the beginning of his Environmental Spirituality course at Viterbo University, they usually define it the same way: something that isn’t human.
Madary and the class then spend some time looking at how the Franciscan, Catholic, Christian and other religious traditions teach otherwise.
“The person has to be natural,” said Madary, chairman of religious studies and philosophy at Viterbo. “You have to encounter the divine in the here-and-now as well as the then.”
The course can be taken as part of the environmental studies minor at Viterbo.
Jennifer Sadowski, assistant professor of biology, coordinates the minor, which has about 30 students in it, and said students in environmental courses discover Viterbo already is doing a lot to be sustainable.
Jay McHenry, Viterbo’s physical plant director, sent a list of 14 sustainability projects his department is working on, including:
- Replacing old light bulbs with compact fluorescent lamps, which save energy.
- Replacing old shower heads with ones that use less water.
- Updating the heating and cooling automation systems in the Mathy Center for more efficient operation.
“I’m pleased about what we’re doing now at Viterbo,” Sadowski said, “but I think the possibilities for the future are very exciting.”
Western building large rain garden
Western Technical College in La Crosse is constructing the largest rain garden in La Crosse County, said Paul Albrecht, physical plant director at Western. “It’s the wave of the future,” Albrecht said about rain gardens, which trap rain water and pollutants before they flow into the sewage system and eventually the river.
Western’s garden, at 2721 Larsen St., covers 7,200 square feet, Albrecht said, and should be completed by the end of June.
The state Department of Natural Resources is encouraging home and business owners to build the gardens, Albrecht said. “We’re hoping thousands of people drive through the industrial park and think, Hey, I can do one of those. That might be fun.’” Albrecht said.
Here’s how the gardens work: You form a shallow basin in your yard or landscaping. Rainwater floods the basin and eventually evaporates or is absorbed into the ground. “The special plants that are in the basin are semi-aquatic,” Albrecht said. “They don’t mind being flooded from time to time.” For more information, go to www.dnr.wi.gov.
Tribune reporter Jenny Dolan contributed to the reports on area schools. Joe Orso can be reached at (608) 791-8429 or jorso@lacrossetribune.com.
