By John Sutter

The Tulsa World has an interesting story this morning about an environmental group that is essentially paying people who have land along waters in the Spavinaw watershed not to do things that could pollute the water.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the city of Tulsa are in on the deal, since those waters provide drinking water for Tulsa and its suburbs.

The environmental group, a Tulsa non-profit called Land Legacy, is calling the project the Spavinaw Watershed Protection Initiative. The World reports that the first conservation easement — or payment that stops a landowner from using land in a way that pollutes — was recently paid to a cattle rancher named Ray Thompson in Jay, which is in far northeast Oklahoma, pretty close to the Missouri/Arkansas border. The story doesn’t indicate how much the rancher is being paid.

These types of payments aren’t really new, but they’re being turned to more as a way to encourage landowners to use their land in a way that is healthy for the environment. The rancher in this story, for example, is being paid not to graze cattle by a creek, so that their feces don’t end up in the water. The Nature Conservancy is exploring similar payments for ranchers in northwest Oklahoma. That environmental group wants to ensure birds like the near-endangered lesser prairie chicken have a place to live. Oklahoma is made up nearly entirely of private land, so environmental groups make a top priority of ensuring land use promotes their causes. Sometimes landowners volunteer to go along with practices that help the environment, other times payments like these are used to encourage them.

As the World reports:

Thompson is allowing some 65 acres near the creek to go back to nature, and nature has certainly gone to work with waist-high grasses, shrubs and saplings that will be a forest in no time.

Somewhere in the woodsy wilderness are deer, wild turkeys and hogs.

“In the winter and early spring, I’ve seen as many as 100 bald eagles. They’re absolutely gorgeous,” Thompson said.

And, throughout his rugged property are several natural springs, which create surprising rock formations and trickling, ice-cold water.

“It’s nice to know there are still places like this out there,” Thompson said. 

By John Sutter

A Nobel Peace Prize winner will speak at OCU on Wednesday. Wangari Maathai is the founder of a grassroots movement in East Africa to plant trees and protect the environment. Should be an interesting talk, and there’s a film screening tonight in advance of her speech. Check out this preview article in The Oklahoman.

Here’s some info from OCU’s Web site:

Oklahoma City University
Distinguished Speakers Series

2008-09 SPEAKERS

Wangari Maathai
Nobel Laureate
author of Unbowed
Henry J. Freede Wellness and Activity Center
NW 27th Street and Florida Avenue
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
7:30 p.m.

Wangari Muta Maathai, recipient of the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize, is recognized worldwide for her work for democracy, human rights, and the environment. The daughter of farmers from Mount Kenya, Maathai is the first woman in East and Central Africa to earn a doctoral degree. She has taught at universities throughout the world and founded Kenya’s Green Belt Movement, through which women’s groups have helped to conserve the environment and improve quality of life by planting more than 30 million trees. At least half a dozen African countries have started similar programs.

Maathai has chaired the National Council of Women of Kenya, served on the U.N. Commission for Global Governance and the Commission on the Future, was elected to Kenya’s Parliament, and was appointed as Assistant Minister for the Environment. She has been named a Top 100 Eco-Hero, one of the 100 Heroines of the World, and one of the 100 people who made an environmental difference. Time magazine named her as one of the 100 most influential people in the world and Forbes named her one of the 100 most powerful women in the world. In 2006, she received the Legion d’Honneur, France’s highest honor. She has received honorary degrees from many institutions, including Yale University and Williams College.

She has written two books: her autobiography, Unbowed, 2006), and The Greenbelt Movement: Sharing the Approach and the Experience (2002).

Prepare yourself for Maathai’s lecture. Don’t miss the screening of Taking Root: The Vision of Wangari Maathai, the 2008 documentary film by Lisa Merton and Alan Dater. The film will be shown in Kerr- McGee Auditorium at the Meinders School of Business, NW 27th and McKinley, 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, September 30.

Free and open to the public
Seating limited. Doors open at 6:30 p.m.
For more information, call 405.208.4956

By Micah Gamino 

One key element of the Edmond Electric Energy Efficient Home, or E4 Home, is the geothermal heat pump.

(For those of you who need a refresher: The E4 is a demo home being constructed by Edmond Electric and their partner, Edmond-based Red Rock Builders Inc., as part of their bid to convince home buyers to demand more energy efficient homes from builders. For more explination, visit http://newsok.com/article/3295312/)

So, what’s a geothermal heat pump? Well, you’re not alone. I had never heard of such a contraption before officials with Edmond’s electric utility told me of their plans to put one in the E4 Home.  A geothermal heat pump, or ground source heat pump, uses a system of pipes containing water or a water and antifreeze mixture to circulate the Earth’s constant temperature from the ground into your home. The system is said to heat and cool a home much more efficiently — using less electricity — than a conventional heat pump. A conventional heat pump works very hard to heat or cool outside air before injecting it into your home to provide a desired temperature.

But does geothermal really work better? The federal government may be able to shed some light. http://www1.eere.energy.gov/geothermal/heatpumps.html

One interesting note exclusive to Go Green blog readers: Edmond Electric’s Energy Service Manager Bob Corff, who is the brainchild behind the E4 Home, long ago installed a geothermal system at his home in Edmond.

National Geographic has a wonderful cover story this week on soil conservation. My favorite part is a photo (the last one in this gallery) that shows Kansas prairie grasses with roots that stretch a whopping 10 feet into the ground. It’s kind of that whole iceberg theory — much of nature is unseen on the surface.

PS: I’ve noticed that National Geographic has taken to referring to itself as “Nat Geo” on television … I mean, I’m all for abbreviations, but really? — J. Sut