Water Conservation @ The Annex

Laura Blaylock, has been a Hydrologist for the Tarrant Regional Water District for 13 years. The building was completed in 2009 and was the first LEED Gold certified building in Tarrant County. It garnered a great deal of attention due to its certification and the fact that it had the largest roof mounted solar array in Texas. The TRWD is a large non-profit well water facility that serves 11 counties, which is a majority of North Texas. After 1950 the TRWD received permits to expand its water rights to bring in more water to North Texas. 

It is Laura's job to make the operations as efficient as possible since most of the water used in Tarrant county is 78 miles away and downhill. They focus on optimizing their facilities before constructing new reservoirs; however, a new 140 mile pipeline is underway to connect the current reservoirs to the Dallas Water Supply and Lake Palestine for redundancy. Since the metroplex is expanding at a fast pace this pipeline will be a necessity for future water resources. By 2015 the population is expected to double to 14 million, putting great pressure on the water system. At the TRWD, water conservation actually provides the largest return on investment. For ever $1 spent on water conservation gives a $6 return. The current drought in Texas is making it really difficult on the water system which drives the need for even more water conservation efforts. 

As for the building's LEED initiatives, the flooring is made of cork or unfinished concrete, the paints are all no or low volatile organic compound (VOC) paints, the furniture and steel is partially recycled product, and there is energy efficient lighting, heating and cooling. All of the materials used to construct the building were brought in from within a 500 mile radius. The employees participate in recycling and waste reducing initiatives as well. Also, there is a housekeeping firm that has been hired to keep the building running as efficiently as possible and there are people who come inspect the building to ensure that it is maintaining sustainable practices. 

The solar panels on the roof are self cleaning, which occurs when it rains, and cover most of the roof. The rainwater runoff from the roof is funneled down into 2500 gallon water tanks at the end of each of the three building wings for a total of 7500 gallons. Since the roof is about 27,000 sq ft, an inch of rain can actually fill all 3 of the tanks for the building. The water from these tanks is used in the drip irrigation systems that are used to water the shrubs. The landscaping itself is either native or locally adapted plants and grasses that survive well in low water areas. Also, the outdoor lighting is hooded and pointed downwards to reduce light pollution for the building. In the office area floors are carpeted with a recycled soda bottle material and the water fixtures are low flow. 

The building itself is very beautiful and the design of the interior is very modern and clean. Laura was extremely knowledgeable about the building and how the TRWD is focused on sustainability efforts across North Texas. It was a fantastic visit and a perfect wrap up of our course. I'm thankful to have had this opportunity to learn so much about the sweeping efforts for sustainable and renewable architecture in Texas that, quite honestly, I didn't believe existed. It has opened my eyes to the varying green projects in my community and I plan on joining up with a few of the local organizations to further educate myself and participate in furthering the sustainability culture in the area.

If you'd like to see more photos of The Annex, please visit my photo page.

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Reorganization - How to Make Existing Spaces More "Green"

Our fourth presentation of the day was Jerry Burbridge. He has taught at the University of Texas at Arlington in the Real Estate program and is currently a Project Manager for the Cherokee Nation assigned to the Department of Homeland Security - Customs and Border Protection Division. Mostly he assists in building ports and border patrol stations under the Facilities and Management organization and works with the US General Services Administration (GSA) and the Army Corps of Engineers.

Mr. Burbridge has invented a formula for evaluating and reorganizing a space, called a site assessment, and named it 6666. It comes from the belief that every piece of land, every building, room and piece of furniture has 6 sides. These six sides are made up of what we would think of as the four sides of an object and also includes the top and bottom of an area. This is really important when you think about a piece of land. Most people usually just think of the layout and square footage but don't realize that there are building restrictions on how high something can be constructed due to regulations on air space. It is also important to research what is under the land itself. If you end up buying or building on a piece of land that is found to be contaminated you will have to help pay to clean up contamination which is very expensive.

For Federal buildings, Mr. Burbridge is using this site assessment to drive more efficient reorganization of office space. From this point on an individual's usable space will be determined by their job title. For example, an executive is now allowed only 300 usable square feet and no more. This formally regulates exactly how many people can fit into a building. He also interviews the employees in every building to see exactly what they do every day, how many times they have to walk to the file cabinet, where are they located, how often do they meet with others.

What Mr. Burbridge found was that many of the employees could telecommute (work from home), a great amount of space could be saved, and productivity actually increases. Since the GSA has reached their maximum footprint allowable, his assessments are allowing them to expand their workforce and coverage while keeping them from expanding past their current footprint. It also helps them reduce operating and administrative costs which can go back into funding necessary projects, as well as reducing pollution from employees commuting to work and waste from the buildings.

I greatly appreciate Mr. Burbridge's visit to our class. His insight into how the Federal government is expanding its sustainability program to include restructuring of current working space is very interesting. I am also very proud to know that the GSA is using innovation, customer relations, and operational expertise to develop green technologies, reduce greenhouse gases, and eliminate waste from all government facilities to meet the needs of present and future generations. I truly hope that this agency continues in its efforts to increase sustainability within government facilities.

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The Growth of a City

Our second on-site visit of the day was to the Fire Station No. 1 Museum in downtown Fort Worth. Geoff Reiner and Bill Peterson from Jacobs Engineering met us on location to give us an overview of how Fort Worth became the city that it is now. Fire Station No. 1 is a museum that traces the city's development from its beginning as a frontier outpost, through its youth as a cattle town, to the current city it is now. The museum was created by the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History and is housed in the historic Fire Station building which was built in 1907 at the corner of Second and Commerce streets. The exhibit was originally opened in 1984 as part of the Texas Sesquicentennial Celebration and has been updated twice since. The Fire Station #1 building is also a valuable piece of Fort Worth's history on its own. It was the site of the original city hall which held the mayor's office and other city offices on the second floor.

As seen in the photo, Fort Worth first began as an outpost, grew into a small cattle town, then into a fully developed city and economic hub of Texas. When settlers first came to the area there was nothing here but dust and very hot weather but they were very smart about building to the area's natural limitations. The first buildings were very tall to allow heat to rise, they had large overhangs to shield people from the sun, they were built facing away from the Western sun when it would be the hottest, and they had large windows on the shaded sides of the structures to assist in ventilation. This style of construction shows that, even in the beginning, people were thinking about easy, cheap, and effective ways to live in new areas. However, 150 years ago the only building materials available were wood. This isn't a very sustainable method of building but at the time, the people really had no choice. Yet, as the forests started getting further and further way it became harder to use wood alone. 

Thankfully, in the late 1800's railways had made their way into Texas. With the arrival of rail there were new opportunities to obtain goods that were previously not available to small towns. It also made it possible for areas to focus on what they were best at, such as making glass, brick, cast iron, and terra cotta, and being able to sell better made goods at cheaper prices. By changing these materials they were able to build different structures. For the first time they could build vertically and construct longer lasting and more efficient buildings. The photo to the left shows how the landscape of the city changed from the original settlement to a vastly more populated area. Yet something you would still see in many of these new buildings was the amount of windows. It was still very necessary to have access to ventilation and proper air flow for every room which limited the ability of people to enjoy their living spaces or for areas to be too populated. 

The final step that drove Fort Worth to be the city that it is was a more reliable infrastructure, better building materials, and the invention of air conditioning. In downtown Fort Worth you will see a varying mix of all glass high-rises that you can find in every major city and historical buildings that are a sense of city pride. Fort Worth has restored or adaptively reused many of its buildings in order to keep the historical feel of the city in place. This is something very unique to Fort Worth and isn't found in many places. The focus of the city today is to move away from the giant glass structures made in the 1980's and becoming more sustainable by reusing the buildings already in place or, if new structures have to be built, focusing on renewable materials. My hope is that the city continues on this path and finds new and better ways to adapt the historic structures already available to keep the historical feel intact while improving the overall quality of life in downtown.

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Trinity River Vision Authority

Our second presentation was from Shanna Cate who is the Planning and Development Director at the Trinity River Vision Authority. The TRA has numerous partner agencies that are assisting in funding and developing the waterways of Fort Worth. The Trinity River Vision Authority was created to handle the development of areas around the Trinity River. The TRA is focused on creating a more safe and clean river for the city of Fort Worth to enjoy. Every day, they are finding new ways to improve water quality in the Trinity River and are employing new technologies to reduce cost and increase efficiency. There are three main development projects they are currently working on:

• Trinity Uptown - Riverwalk with stores and living spaces
• Gateway Park Improvement Plan - Massive ecosystem and recreation project to create one of the largest urban programmed parks in the nation 
• TRV Experience - Walking trails and parties on the river

The Trinity River Project got started when the citizens said they wanted a waterfront with better access to the river and recreation like the Riverwalk in San Antonio. We have a river that runs straight through downtown Fort Worth but due to the levee systems there isn't much access directly to the waterway. The trails surrounding the river are actually becoming too congested due to the amount of people running on a daily basis. The current three story federal levees were built by the Army Corps of Engineers after the flood of 1949 that occurred because the city only had a local levee system.

Currently, the amount of concrete in areas surrounding the Trinity River is causing rain water to fill the river very quickly which threatens flooding in the area. The Corps of Engineers worked with the city and wanted to find a better solution to this problem so instead of just making the levees taller, the city decided to create an alternative solution that would reduce flooding and give the community a more interactive area with access to shopping, food, and living spaces. At this point the area has a great deal of abandoned commercial buildings and environmental contamination that needs some infrastructure improvements. Like the riverwalk created in San Antonio, Fort Worth will be creating an alternative river route by installing a new man made bypass channel with a gating system. This eliminates the need for the current levees and the city will be able to build right up to the waterway. New construction will include the bypass channel, three new bridges at Main Street, Henderson, and White Settlement, as well as three gates and a dam to control water flow. This way, the area will come out of the flood plane and makes the entire area developable.

The project will not be complete until 2021 but construction of the three bridges and various infrastructure changes are currently underway (including a new drive in theater!). In order to get the community excited about the Trinity River Vision, the TRA is hosting a free concert series called "Rockin the River" where people are invited to come out and tube on the river while listening to live music. They are also hosting 4th of July parties that have received an overwhelming amount of attention from the community. Both of these initiatives have been extremely popular and the city is expecting a large increase in participation this summer.

The entire area is being set up as "mixed use" so that people can live, work, shop, and eat in the various buildings that will be constructed. It is estimated that 16,000 permanent jobs will be created, 600 construction jobs will be available per year, there will be over 10,000 new affordable living spaces, and miles of privately developeable water ways. Personally I can't wait until this area is complete! It is going to be a game changer for Fort Worth and will undoubtedly make us the envy of every other city in Texas. The plans look amazing and the TRA's adaptive reuse of the buildings in the area is and their plans to make the new construction sustainable is inspiring. Fort Worth has just recently started to show great promise in the area of sustainability and this project will definitely show the community that the city is changing for the better.

For more photos of the TRA and the Trinity River Vision please visit my photo page.

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Tactical Urbanism

Our first presentation of day 3 was over an interesting and growing sustainability effort known as Tactical Urbanism. Our first presenter was Rik Adamanski from Team Better Block. Team Better Block works with cities, developers, and stakeholders to create inexpensive and positive changes that improve and revitalize underused properties. Team Better Block creates a series of “quick win” projects that bring attention to developments prior to creation. Their team works with developers to identify and test improvements to provide higher ROI by increasing the project’s overall benefit to the community. Team Better Block also works with city governments to identify underperforming properties in order to generate interest and reinvestment through community outreach. For their efforts they have been recognized by the New York Times, the Washington Post, and GOOD Magazine.

To make a city work you need people walking and interacting with their community. There is a big drive towards an urban walkable lifestyle which you can see in the areas of 7th Street and Magnolia in Fort Worth. The real issue is regulations made by the cities that mandate how everything is built, and if you don't want to build to their regulations then you can't be there. To some it's the American Dream; to others a bureaucratic mess that is unfriendly and impersonal. To change the way cities work you have to start with small strategies. Create areas of street art or fix issues with drainage or buildings. One of the more creative solutions is called parking day. This is when a group of people take over a designated parking spot to do something fun for the day. You can have a library, cook on a grill, or do some yoga. Another solution is known as Walk Rally. People will put up signs tailored to the city that tell others how far of a walk it is to an interesting part of the city to help get people out of their cars and walking.



 One really interesting concept is "Guerrilla Bike Lanes" where the people have started painting in bike lanes in areas where the city was either taking too long or did not have the money to invest. The problematic situation here is that many cities end up spending money to go cover the self-made lanes up. Cities are starting to realize that leaving these self-made lanes is more efficient for the city and saves them time and money. The city of Fort Worth is also starting to learn more about "pop-up retail". It's a new concept where someone can take over an empty rental space for a day and sell their goods. This introduces a way to make money for the renters and have a new business in the area every day or week which keeps consumer's interest. Currently there are issues with insurance that are keeping the city from fully realizing this concept but Fort Worth is trying to find the best solution to implement better policies.



Now there is a fine line between legal and officially sanctioned efforts and illegal vandalism. Since it is becoming more commonplace and is taking place worldwide, cities are becoming more responsive and assisting groups in community development. For example, in New York there was a movement to shut down Time Square to car traffic and make it more of a community center where people walked, shopped, and ate. It would have taken New York years and millions of dollars to do a study of how shutting down Broadway would effect traffic and walking traffic. Instead, the city set up an experiment where they put out chairs and shut down two blocks of Manhattan to see how people would react. At a cost of only $5112 for the chairs, the city was able to conclude that the experiment was a success in every way possible and has now

Another very public effort was the Volkswagon experiment called "The Fun Theory". At a subway station in Stockholm, the company noticed that most individuals are taking the escalator and avoiding the stairs so they wanted to see if making the stairs more fun would change people's behavior. They replaced the staircase with electronic boards that made musical notes. They found that 66% more people than before were taking the stairs. The video below shows the process and the effect the experiment had on the station.

To close out the class, Debby Stein who was involved in Better Block's embRACE the Street project, gave us some information on the growing Riverside area of Fort Worth and how to participate in urban projects. She has lived in Fort Worth for 25 years and has lived in Boston, LA, and New York. She is active in real estate, the arts, and city government. The embRACE the Street project took place on September 8th and 9th on the 2800 and 2900 blocks of Race street in the Riverside area. Multiple businesses have signed on and more are taking part every day. There are streetscape improvements, art galleries, cultural food ventures, and tactical do-it-yourself (DIY) urbanism development projects. The area continues to need development and she encouraged us all to take part in generating ideas and contacting her for ways we could assist.

I highly encourage my readers to look into ways that Tactical Urbanism can be used to better their communities in a safe and beneficial way. Having participated in these types of projects in the past I can assure you it is an extremely fun and rewarding way to assist your community. In the end, these are our living spaces and we are responsible for making the areas in which we live a fun, safe, and enjoyable environment with or without the assistance of the city. All I can say is believe in yourself, believe in your community, and you won't believe how easily you can get a group together to better the areas you all share.

To see more videos and photos of Tactical Urbanism please visit my other pages.

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Green Ox Energy

Our last presenter of day 2 was Mark Thompson from Green Ox Energy which is a commercial, residential, and renewable energy solutions provider based out of Dallas, Texas that makes solar energy more accessible and affordable to the public. The company takes a full service approach to the renewable energy process using multiple products, financial advice, installation services, and assistance throughout the process.


Deregulation is a fact of Texas electric companies in many areas. If you live in one of these areas you can choose your energy provider. In the past TXU used to be the only provider and the owned the entire process so they sent the energy and billed customers. During the deregulation, TXU was divided up into generation, distribution (Oncor), and retail. Now anyone can create an electric distribution or retail company but Oncor is still regulated by the government. 


In Texas, most of the power is generated from Coal, Nuclear, and some Natural Gas. Since Natural Gas is so easy to switch on and off it is used mostly as "quick fire" power when extra electricity is needed (such as early morning spikes in need). The issue with electricity is that currently, we can't store it, so it has to be deliver on demand. Another issue in Texas is that electricity is very dependent on water. Natural Gas and Nuclear plants use an immense amount of water for fracking and cooling; however, Texas has been in a drought since the late 90's which makes this process more difficult and expensive.

To assist in energy production in a more efficient and "green" way, Texas has implemented very large wind farms out West that pipe energy back into the populated areas. Due to these farms, Texas is now the largest wind energy producer in the nation. Another renewable power supply being used often in Texas is geothermal technology which runs fluid through pipes buried underground to regulate temperatures. This helps regulate the temperature of buildings and lower the need for heating and cooling.

After our tour at the BRIT, the class was very interested in solar energy. The electricity produced from a photovoltaic (PV) system is direct current so a converter is necessary. You do lose some of the electricity produced but it is a necessity. There are various grades of cells (A, B, C, etc) which function at various levels of efficiency, energy production, and cost. What we are seeing now is a focus on the quality of panels and the top quality companies are providing guarantees or insurance policies to assure people that their products are worth purchasing.


According to Mark, the life span of a panel is usually 25 years. After that it begins to degradate by 20% each year (depending on the quality of the cells). However can you imagine what the new solar panels will look like 25 years from now? If you use computer technology as a benchmark you can see how much cheaper, smaller, and efficient these solar panels will be in 25 years. By the time the current solar panels no longer work it may be easy to replace them with much more efficient and inexpensive panels. 

Panels can either be ground or roof mounting systems that are fixed or tracking models. The tracking models are unique in the way that they actually rotate to track with the sun and provide more energy. Residential systems are most often fixed units whereas the industrial or commercial systems use tracking more often. There are also new cells being used that look like roof tiles but at this point they are still very expensive. 

Green Ox works with customers to assess what they really want in terms of energy savings. Some people just want to cover 20% of their electricity costs but others are interested in being able to get "off the grid". These are very separate goals that will require a different investment and installation strategy. From a financing standpoint there are many state, federal, and company specific programs that provide rebates or grants that assist in paying for solar systems. However, if a company or person want this incentive money they will have to follow strict guidelines set forth by those groups. 

As Mark stated, there are no moral, religious, or ethical reasons why solar energy should not be a form of electricity production. The only setback is price. In order to reduce price the government and private companies will have to start providing more incentives and producing more systems to influence the market. I really hope that Texas begins focusing more on solar energy. It seems like a perfect fit for our state due to the amount of time we have clear skies with very direct sunlight. This would assist in reducing non-green forms of energy production and water usage by our nuclear and natural gas plants.

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The BRIT - An Icon of Sustainability

Our first on-site tour for day 2 was to The Botanical Research Institute of Texas (BRIT). The BRIT is a scientific research center and education endeavor that takes botanical specimens and attempts to understand the interaction between people and plants. The Institute  performs research throughout state of Texas and Internationally in areas such as the Amazon. The sustainability project currently under way, Andes to Amazon is "an international, multidisciplinary team of scientists, students, and local residents dedicated to studying organisms and their interactions with the environment" that focuses on work in the Andes-Amazon region of southeastern Peru. The focus is on how can we can allow people to live in the Amazon without destroying it.

The original BRIT was founded in 1987. Around 2002, Southern Methodist University (SMU) had a dried plant collection (aka, "Herbarium") of 350,000 plants. When the college fell on hard times they looked for a place to relocate their collection. With the help of multiple benefactors the BRIT was able to take on SMU's collection and set up a headquarters on the east side of Fort Worth, TX in an old abandoned plant. In 2010, they had amassed such a large collection (over 1 million specimens) they realized a new building would have to be obtained. Since the BRIT is a research institute devoted to the education of sustainability, they knew a sustainable building was the only logical course of action. The BRIT wanted a benchmark on which they could construct a truly sustainable building and decided the new headquarters would have to be certified LEED platinum. In July 2011 they received their certification.

Instead of building from the ground up, the founders were able to purchase another building. They worked with the city to purchase the Public Health Center off of University St in near the Botanic Gardens. The BRIT was able to re-purpose 97.6% of the materials from the original building and in the remaining lot behind the building they have set up a native prairie established by Dr. Tony Burgess (lead ecologist on the Biosphere in Arizona). 

The re-purposed building took only 11 months to construct and is separated into two separate wings; a library and offices/education. The lighting for the BRIT is LED or compact florescent and the floor of the library is recycled from tires and tennis shoes. The stairwell of the building is made up of recycled Cyprus tree lumber, the ceiling is bamboo, the floor is ash (fast growing), metal railing in recycled steel, and the carpet is wool. All of these materials are highly sustainable materials. The top of the building is outfitted with a living roof and solar panels which generate 15-20% of energy and is equipped with an advanced geothermal system. Scattered around the building there are 160 wells dug 250 ft in the ground to circulate fluid to heat and cool the building. It is always 55 degrees at that depth which, when the liquid is circulated through, heats or cools the liquid to regulate the building's temperature. The BRIT estimates that the system will obtain a return on investment within 5 years, which is well below the necessary ROI for LEED platinum certification. 

It's common knowledge that, up front, sustainability costs money; however, in the end it is very worth it. The living roof alone saves a great deal of money and helps with the heating costs by naturally absorbing the heat from the sun. It has many layers of insulation, gravel, and baskets of soil with native plants. The BRIT worked with biologists from Texas Christian University to create 5,700 native plant baskets which were planted on top of the building. 

Our first stop was the pressing room where the guide showed us how the scientists do pressings of botanical collections obtained from all over the world. The collection had presses that were from 1948, 1880, and various other times taken from Texas, Michigan, and even China. Although many of the older pressings only state a general geographic location, the scientists now carry mobile GPS units to pin down the real time location of where specimens are found. Scientists visit herbaria all over the world to benchmark what usually grows naturally in various areas. Next the guide took our group into the library where rolling shelves hold their large specimen collections. They use these rolling shelves to increase the amount of specimens that can be housed in a smaller area. The specimens are organized by family, genus, species, and location of origin. Grad students and other researchers can take samples of plant DNA to do analysis and the BRIT is looking to create a full online collection of high res photos of all 1M+ specimens for students and other collectors can review what is contained in the collection. 

They BRIT extends its sustainability efforts to the community by using as little public water and conserving as much run off as possible. To illustrate this, and many of the external conservation efforts, the guide led us on an external tour of the facility. He showed us one of the underground cisterns where rain runoff is housed. The parking lot is sloped exactly to capture the runoff and if the cisterns are full the leftover runoff is naturally led into a private pond. Another great feature of the BRIT is an outside public seating area for events. It is a multi-leved structure where each level is made of a different type of natural rock from Texas. Where we were standing used to be an ocean so those rock represent the layers of rock underneath Fort Worth. 

On the outside of the BRIT there are trellises to help increase heat absorption and, to further reduce incoming heat, the building was constructed to face the northeast. While touring the grounds we also noticed that in the parking lot there are "low emission vehicle parking" signs closest to the building. This is to show that the BRIT really appreciates those that strive to protect the environment. The BRIT is also looking into putting in alternative fuel stations around the facility. At the time it was built alternative cars hadn't yet been released so there was no need; however, there is currently a large demand for these fuel stations in the area. 

Overall, the tour of the BRIT was very eye opening. I had never seen a LEED platinum building first hand and I was amazed by the level of sustainable materials that were employed. The owner and operator of the research institute were obviously passionate about the success of the building and of the work that they do. I'm excited to learn more about the BRIT's research, especially regarding the work they are doing in the Amazon, and plan to become a member to attend future events. To see more photos of our tour of the BRIT visit my photo page here.

Q&A with Our Guide

Did the building have to be specially framed due to roof weight and root systems?

• Yes, architects helped build a structure to support the roof and there are root barriers built into the baskets.  Oddly enough, in Arizona these roofs are common but not in Texas.

Do you replace dead plants in the living roof?

• Scientific staff actually monitors pop. They monitor what changes over time. What grows due to seeds in soil, blown in by wind, birds, etc. They don't have to replace it because it naturally replaces itself. Also, the scientists are looking at the difference between insects on the grounds and compare them to the insects on the roof.

If something grows on the roof that the BRIT doesn't want, what do you do?

• Johnson grass is infecting the surrounding prairie. It's native to Africa and it's destroying the area. Bermuda grass is doing the same. If necessary they will have to control it in inventive ways.

What is growing in the prairie?

• Mostly 4 or 5 types of tall native grasses. 

What type of paper is used to store the specimens in the library?

• Acid free archival paper. Specimens go into a -80 degree freezers to kill insects and prevent any beetles from later infecting the library.

Do you maintain a protected seed bank?

• We don't. We have seeds and some specimens have them archived. We collaborate with long term seed storage but we don't do it.

When specimens are obtained (especially Internationally) do you have issues getting them into the US?

• Yes, you always have to have USDA permission to bring specimens into the US in order to keep out pests and diseases. BRIT has a project in New Guinea and Peru so we have to do that quite often.

Do you do genetic conservation of species?

• No, not particularly. You can find them here though. Scientists often ignore common things and focus on the interesting things. Problem is, without paying attention to the common species we don't really know what has changed in those locations over time. No one is going to come in here and catalog another bluebonnet. But we know we should really be looking at that. We now see things growing in Kansas that scientists know used to only grow in Texas. There is climate change, definitely. We need to track better indicator plants.

Last summer with the hail storm, how did it effect the living roof?

• The plants in North Texas have survived hail storms forever. It didn't damage the roof due to the plants and plants are so tough that they dealt with it just fine. 

Do you have special air filtration systems?

• The air is filtered. Not medical or sterile grade but particulates are taken out of the air. It is high enough quality to meet LEED platinum standards which is different depending on the type of building. Plus the building was constructed with materials that make it much easier to have much higher air quality naturally. 

Does the ivy growing on the outside of the building eat through the walls? 

• These species were selected specifically because they wouldn't do that.

Do you have to mow the roof?

• We actually get that question alot! Ideally you would bring in Bison to do that but no, we don't mow it. We are really waiting for it to get that high and looking for alternative solutions to keep the plants at the best height.

Why is the prairie having trouble growing?

• There was a building on top of that location (the Public Health Center) so it is basically sterile. The scientists are looking for ways to restore the microorganisms and help grow the plants.

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