41 + 1 = ?



Memphis Woodland Discovery Playground

is one of the SITES pilot participants.



Friday is Earth Day. No. 41, if you’re counting. This week is also the one-year anniversary of the country’s largest environmental disaster, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Parks in the Gulf region have recovered superficially, though much research remains to be done on the long-term impact of the spill on the shoreline ecology. One has to wonder at the coincidence of a federal government announcement one year to date following the spill that deepwater drilling can resume in the Gulf. If there’s symbolism in the timing, it’s lost on most people. And it would be irresponsible not to question claims of lessons learned by government and industry that facilitated continuing the drilling. This from an industry that listed walruses as Gulf marine life in its environmental inventories and this from the governmental agencies that accepted such disrespect.

It’s against this backdrop that I look at parks and Earth Day. Tea Party threats to dismantle our national structure of environmental protection notwithstanding, I still believe we’ve come a long way in 41 years of Earth Days and even in the one year since the Gulf oil spill.

As individuals on a micro level, we’ve learned to recycle, buy energy-efficient appliances, save water, choose green cleaning supplies, and even to turn the lights out when we leave a room.

As a society on a macro level, we’re making progress, albeit painfully slow. Think about climate-change legislation, and you get an idea of how hard it is to get broad environmental change. Still, pockets of progress have the potential to shape broader improvement across the country. Just as the commercial building industry has its LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards for design and construction, so too does the landscape world. Just over a year ago, the Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES) was launched to promote sustainable land design, construction, and maintenance practices. A joint effort of the American Society of Landscape Architects, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildlife Center in Austin, Texas, and the United States Botanical Garden in Washington, D.C., SITES is a ready-made structure for parks and recreation, and the field has embraced SITES. It’s a system that provides metrics for rating sustainably developed landscapes. A successful organization meeting the standards for a four-star rating can accrue up to 250 points in 51 credit categories.

“Landscapes have the potential to actually give back to provide a whole host of ecosystem services—such as clean air, clean water, reduction in ozone, providing carbon sequestration, and human health improvement through recreation,” Steve Windhager, SITES director, told Parks & Recreation magazine in December 2009. “There is potential to make things better than they are—not just lessen the damage.”

When it launched in 2009, SITES sought pilot projects to implement and demonstrate its concept. Today, pilot programs can be found in 34 states as well as in Canada, Iceland, and Spain. They represent corporate headquarters, botanic gardens, streetscapes, federal buildings and, of course, public parks. Parks & Recreation in its April 2011 update on SITES highlights Memphis Woodland Discovery Playground as a model of how this certification can “enhance an urban park site even while holding it to high environmental standards.”

“We wanted to model environmental leadership in the community,” says Jen Andrews of 4,500-acre Shelby Farms Park, where this SITES pilot project is located. “Not just a great playground.”

The pilot stage of SITES concludes in June 2012 and the final rating system and reference guide will be released in June 2013. If you project this initial good start into the future by factors of thousands, just as the commercial building industry is already doing with LEED, then you have the makings of significant progress. And in a world where fighting climate change, cleaning up major bodies of water, and preventing future Gulf oil spills is so difficult, this is something to be proud of.

Here’s hoping that on this Earth Day, 41 + 1 equals much more than the sum of its parts.

Phil Hayward

Editor

Parks & Recreation Magazine