Hurricane Katrina passed over the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf Coast approximately 10 to 15 miles from New Orleans on August 29, 2005, and the challenges facing everyone, including environmental professionals, escalated to levels seldom encountered. New Orleans ceased to exist as a functioning city and the coastline for miles lay devastated.

Hurricane Katrina passed over the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf Coast approximately 10 to 15 miles from New Orleans on August 29, 2005, and the challenges facing everyone, including environmental professionals, escalated to levels seldom encountered. New Orleans ceased to exist as a functioning city and the coastline for miles lay devastated.

Hurricane Katrina passed over the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf Coast approximately 10 to 15 miles from New Orleans on August 29, 2005, and the challenges facing everyone, including environmental professionals, escalated to levels seldom encountered. New Orleans ceased to exist as a functioning city and the coastline for miles lay devastated.

In a recent issue of Orion magazine, Mary O'Brien wrote an article emphasizing that the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) requires considering “all reasonable alternatives to the proposed action,” and that this consideration within the context of NEPA “has become the heart of an EIS [Environmental Impact Statement].” When I first read this statement, my immediate reaction was that the environmental consequence (the impact a proposed action has on the natural and human environment) is the “heart” of an EIS, not the more “heady” or reasoned development and deliberation of alternatives. The Impressionist painter Georges Seurat, most famous for his breakthrough painting, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte—1884 (see cover of this issue of Environmental Practice), pushed art to the edge with his pointillist technique (creating images by painting dots of color) and his profound ability to infuse the canvas with light. In this commentary, I describe or “paint” the images of NEPA as embodied not only in the elements of the EIS but also in the images of our being. I also draw similarities between Seurat's artistry in the creation of his masterpiece and the “art” of NEPA practice. This personal view of NEPA is based on 22 years of NEPA practice as well as a lifetime appreciation for the arts.

In the 1925 “monkey trial,” attorney and three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, the “silver-tongued orator,” prosecuted John T. Scopes in Dayton, Tennessee, for violating that state's Butler Act. Jennings, who was also a fundamentalist preacher, “created” a controversy that remains relevant to environmental professionals. Most, however, seem unaware of its relevance. Under the Butler Act.

The technology of living roofs—also known as green roofs, eco-roofs, vegetated roofs, or roof gardens—encompasses a range of products, from intensive rooftop gardens to extensive, highly engineered roofing systems. Living roofs have recently received a lot of attention in North America but have not yet been widely adopted. Prior to their widespread adoption, their benefits need to be proven, weighed against other alternatives, and translated into incentives for construction.

The joint meeting of the 2nd International Conference on Green and Sustainable Chemistry and the 9th Annual Green Chemistry and Engineering Conference convened in Washington, DC, from June 20 to 24. The conference brought together attendees from over 25 countries. The attendees and speakers discussed current research from throughout the world; academic researchers, industrial representatives, and government agencies were represented, as well as over 100 students.

Books & resources. To inquire about reviewing one of these books, contact the editorial office at SEM 3127, The Evergreen State College, 2700 Evergreen Pkwy NW, Olympia, WA 98505 (phone) 360-867-5955 (fax) 360-867-5430 (e-mail) [email protected]).

Co-management is an innovative approach for managing the natural environment and providing opportunities for outdoor recreation. It combines the efforts of government agencies legally responsible for environmental quality with those of citizens and interest groups using such resources. This article documents the experiences gained from a co-management process involving the Tine River (a pseudonym) corridor in Ontario. The analysis focuses on revealing factors that fostered opportunities and presented barriers to the voluntary nature of the process. Sharing common objectives, the presence and characteristics of a network, and willingness to share information appear to create opportunities for continued involvement. Different perceptions of intent, particularly between nongovernment and government participants, and failure to fulfill commitments, appear to destroy opportunities for involvement by citizens. Implications from this study are particularly relevant to government agencies, which are identified in this particular case as being responsible for creating significant barriers to this new mode of operation through both past and current actions. Recommendations are made for environmental professionals to foster opportunities and limit barriers to working with volunteers in pursuing co-management.

Environmental Practice 7:221–234 (2005)

Since Executive Order 12898 in 1994, environmental justice analyses are required in the draft environmental impact statements (DEISs) prepared under the National Environmental Policy Act. Of a total of 2,062 DEISs produced from 1994 to 2001, approximately 994 documents had some form of environmental justice analysis. These 994 DEISs were evaluated to determine the methodology utilized in the analyses. Most analyses are conducted by the United States Navy, Department of Energy, Federal Highway Administration, and Army Corps of Engineers. Only about half (49.3%) of the analyses focused on low income as the sole variable. Most documents (93%) concluded that there was no impact to environmental justice communities. Results show that the analyses included some level of empirical information in only about half of the analyses (49.3%). A small percentage (4.4%) of analyses relied upon a qualitative history. Less than half (46.3%) of the analyses merely stated that there was no impact and did not contain substantial qualitative or empirical information. Thus, the findings suggest that there is a potential for environmental justice concerns to be overlooked due to deficient methodology by the DEIS preparers and the large number of DEISs claiming that there is no impact to communities. For instance, a little more than half (57.2%) of the analyses did not include a geographical unit, necessary to the identification of environmental justice communities. Recommendations are made for practitioners and policy makers to rely more on geospatial tools like geographical information systems and to build more sophisticated methods for environmental justice analyses, including statistical analyses using empirical data.

Data were derived through a cross-sectional survey involving 288 respondents selected from three ecological zones of Nigeria to assess the role of wild plants in rural households' socio-economic security. The study revealed that wild plants were recognized by rural communities as common property and were managed through common property regimes. Wild plant products used by rural communities met a wide variety of uses and were available for sale in marketplaces within the rural areas. The study demonstrated that when compared across the three ecological zones, the volume of plant products was inversely related to the income they generated. For example, the volume of wild plant products harvested from natural forests was highest in the guinea savannah, followed by the derived savannah, and least in the rainforest; however, the annual household income generated from wild plants was highest in the rainforest and least in the guinea savannah. The wild plant products supported 11 occupations, including production of oils, soap making, gathering (of leaves, fruits, nuts, and seeds), carving, and production of chewing sticks (for oral hygiene). The most promising occupations were vegetable oil production, production of chewing sticks, soap making, production of wines, gathering, and fuel wood and charcoal production. The average annual value of harvested wild plant products from the forest (including items consumed, sold, given out to neighbors, and damaged after harvest) per household was 1,614,133 naira (N1,614,133), or US$11,956.54; the annual net income generated from the harvest of wild plant products per household was N910,252 (US$6,742.61). The sustainability of the forests for the supply of wild plant products is precarious. In plant conservation programs, priority attention should be given first to species threatened with extinction and then to plants of limited distribution in natural forests.

This research considers acculturation by Mexican and Chinese groups in the United States and how participation in five nature-based outdoor recreation activities may be an indicator of acculturation to American society. We argue that the greater incidence of professional human capital among Chinese immigrants helps this group acculturate more quickly than Mexicans, who are more likely to be labor immigrants and that as a result, Chinese immigrants will be more likely than Mexican immigrants to participate in nature-based outdoor recreation activities. We also posit that US-born Chinese have a greater likelihood of participation compared to US-born Mexicans. Results show Chinese immigrant participation is distinguished only slightly from Mexican immigrant participation; no differences were found between US-born Chinese and US-born Mexicans. Within-group comparisons show immigrant Chinese participation to be more aligned with US-born Chinese participation than immigrant Mexican participation to US-born Mexican participation. Results from this study are intended to help raise awareness among environmental professionals of the different ways nature may be perceived by various cultural groups and also to alert managers of the important role natural resources can play in acculturating immigrants to US society.

An Unnatural Metropolis: Wresting New Orleans from Nature. Craig E. Colten. 2005. Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge, LA. 245 pp. $39.95 hardcover.

The history and geography of New Orleans, perhaps more than any other American city, is inextricably entwined with the challenges presented by the city's natural setting. In his unexpectedly timely book, An Unnatural Metropolis, author Craig E. Colten recounts this intricate relationship and the human attempt to, in effect, hold nature at bay at the mouth of the Mississippi. Although Colten covers a wide range of the dilemmas faced by New Orleans' residents over the past 300 years (many of which, such as sanitation and water delivery, were by no means unique to New Orleans among nineteenth-century cities), in light of recent events, most readers probably will be most interested in his account of New Orleans' levee and drainage systems, and the shaping of the city's modern-day racial and social geography.

Modern Groundwater Exploration: Discovering New Water Resources in Consolidated Rocks Using Innovative Hydrogeologic Concepts, Exploration, Drilling, Aquifer Testing, and Management Methods. R. A. Bisson and J. H. Lehr, eds. 2004. John Wiley and Sons, New York. 309 pp. $74.95 cloth.

Worldwide, a myriad of reasons prevent adequate water supplies: lack of exploration or employment of modern techniques, bureaucratic and political dysfunctions, poverty, and war. Over one billion people currently lack access to clean water. What will happen as the population increases by adding two billion people over the next forty years (based on current projections)? Locating sustainable reserves of potable groundwater is essential to the survival of all life on earth. Although many books are available that discuss the plight and consequences of water shortages, it's refreshing to find a technically optimistic book that describes success stories for greatly increasing water supplies.

Contributors.

Volume 7 index.