WELL Newsletter – April 25, 2006

WELL Calendar

Monday, May 1: General Meeting focused on PROJECTS

6:30 – 8:30pm, Willits Community Center – 111 East Commercial St. Willits

Join us for our monthly plenary meeting. If you have a project happening in the area, or are gearing up for one, please join us to tell everyone about what you’re up to, next steps, and how people can get involved. Now that spring time is finally here, everyone seems ready to get outside – let’s make some good things happen!

Monday, May 15: Speaker Event – WATER – “Your Pond in the Country” and the implications for our County

6:30 – 8:30pm, Willits Community Center – 111 East Commercial St. Willits

Join Park Steiner of Trout Unlimited and the Peregrine Audubon Society and Roland Sanford of Mendocino County water agency to hear about how private water use and county regulations are affecting overall water availability and health in our county.

May 29: Memorial Day picnic Mid-day at the City Park – across from the Community Center.

Bring your kids and family and a picnic for a laid back gathering in the park.

Other Events

TWO CLASSES IN NATURAL BUILDING - MAY 13 - 17 INTRODUCTION TO NATURAL BUILDING

Cob is an ancient earth-building technique time-tested in many climates, from England to Arabia. It is simple to learn, cheap to build, durable and highly sculptural. Straw bale building is sweeping the world due to it's low environmental cost, high insulation value, and speed of construction. Learn the basics of cob and straw bale building.

In this intensive weekend you will learn the basics of both techniques, including materials selection and testing, mixing methods, and wall construction. . Tour beautiful examples of natural straw and earth construction, and watch a slide show of inspirational examples from around the world. MAY 13 - 14 $200.00 includes instruction, meals, and camping (local discount)

Past Events

Regional Localization Networking Conference – RLNC

In early April, after tremendous effort by our planning committee, WELL hosted 120 participants at a highly successful event at the Brooktrails Lodge.

This is what the write up in the Post Carbon Institute’s April newsletter had to say:

     "Willits Economic LocaLization (WELL) , one of the most active and influential groups in the RelocalizationNetwork, held a regional localization network conference on April 07-09, 2006. The goal of the conference was to provide a meeting place for groups in the same region working on different aspects of the Relocalization strategy to share information, best practices and develop group problem solving skills. The event was a tremendous success, with over 120 attendees from 30 groups participating in presentations, brainstorming and networking sessions. Led by Post Carbon Institute research fellow, Jason Bradford and WELL member Brian Weller, the two day conference provided group members with information, resources, support and incredible inspiration. Post Carbon Institute was honored to be part of this extraordinary event, and looks forward to continuing to work closely with WELL. The caliber of the attention, wisdom, experience, and future visioning of the participants bodes well for Relocalization in the Northern California region."

WELL is already planning another conference to be held in the fall or early next spring.

A DVD of RLNC will be available from WELL soon.

Read Claudia Reed’s article, from the Wednesday, April 12, 2006 edition of “The Willits News” here: http://www.willitsnews.com/Stories/0,1413,253%257E26908%257E3288747,00.html

I am still working on follow up from this spectacular event. Participants will be receiving contact lists soon. Many power point presentations from the weekend will be posted to our website in the next few weeks, along with lists from brainstorming and breakout groups, links to buy a DVD of the event or a CD of over 60, high quality photos from WELL’s own photographer extraordinaire – Ree Slocum. Please stay tuned for these ongoing details and we appreciate your patience.

Many thanks to all of the participants who made this event successful, our volunteers and work traders, to the Willits Environmental Center for helping us with insurance for this event, to the City of Willits and Post Carbon Institute for their generous underwriting and support, and most especially to our hardworking RLNC committee: Kristin Bradford, Annie Weller, Brian Weller, Jason Bradford, Lanny Cotler and to Maria Brooks for her outstanding volunteer contribution.

Presentation to WELL by Linda Helland on the Built Environment

On Monday, April 3, Linda Helland, Public Health Educator for Mendocino County Public Health came to Willits to deliver her first rate work that talks about how our built environment affects our health and the health of communities. You can check our her presentation here: http://www.willitseconomiclocalization.org/Presentations/BuildingHealthyCommunitiesNPHW040306.pdf

In the Works

Joint Statement

So far, about 14 local organizations have signed on to the Joint Statement. You can see whom and read the statement here: http://www.willitseconomiclocalization.org/JointStatement.pdf

Our next step is to enroll many more organizations and to have everyone who has already signed on write up a brief description of how their group is going to work towards the goals of the statement. In this way, we can grow the support for these ideas and also start taking steps towards realizing them. Please help spread the word!

The Future of WELL

The three committees formed at our weekend workshop in early March of 2006 continue to meet regularly.

The Governance Committee has a detailed draft that was presented at our last Plenary session on April 17. They are working on refining and simplifying this document based on feedback they have gotten.

The Strategic Plan Committee has done a tremendous amount of work in identifying and defining WELL’s focal areas. We are now working on specific goals and projects to meet goals within each focal area.

The Membership Committee has a draft for a membership structure that includes enrollment of local businesses.

Stay tuned for drafts as they are updated and you can anticipate a meeting in the next few months to get some of these new ideas into practice.  If you are interested in joining any of these working committees, please contact me.

Grants

WELL is actively looking for funding from many sources, an important one being grants. Any help from experienced grant writers is much appreciated, as we are not staffed to effectively write grants at this point. Nonetheless, we have managed to pull together two hopeful prospects, with help from our allies.

USDA  - Jason was involved recently in applying for a grant from the United States Department of Agriculture. This grant would fund the development of a local food system, focusing on farm and markets development and long term planning. We expect to hear back from them in July of 2006.

The Levinson Foundation -  Eco-City Builders (recent visitors to Willits) and the Renewable Energy Development Institute both applied for this years funding cycle from the Levinson Foundation. Eco-City Builders specifically requested funding for Willits, which would assist in the Community Mapping that is currently underway as collaboration between REDI, WELL, WEC, One-Town One-Vision and the City of Willits. Funds are awarded in July for use in the fall.

Notable Website Updates

If you haven’t ever taken the time, it is well worth it to look through our website which has been diligently maintained by Brian Corzilius. There is a wealth of information there about WELL, Economic Localization and from many guests and presenters who have come to speak to WELL.

Food Security Report -  Jason has done a thorough revamping of this report, which can be viewed in its entirety on our website: http://www.willitseconomiclocalization.org/Papers/FoodSecurityReport.pdf

I have included the summary here:

     "Summary of Findings The population of greater Willits (95490) of ca. 13,500 people requires approximately 12 billion calories per year for their sustenance. This figure can be placed into several different contexts:

1. Currently, Willits is almost entirely dependent upon food transported by truck to a few major grocery stores. There is little storage of food in town or production of food within Little Lake Valley. The food supply of the town is estimated to be a less than a week since stores have daily deliveries and a high turnover rate of their stock.

2. The average amount expended per person per year in the U.S. on food is about $2300. Almost half of these expenses are for food prepared outside of the home.

3. A year’s supply of basic food rations would weight about 500 lbs, take up 75 gallons of volume and cost about $400 at today’s wholesale prices. Community-scale storage systems are lacking.

4. Mendocino County, historically, had a diverse, local food system that included staples such as grains, potatoes, vegetables, dairy, and eggs. We have historic production data for many of these crops.

5. Current agriculture is export dominated in the areas of wine grapes, livestock and some fruits.

6. Much of the knowledge, market practices, farm, storage and processing equipment used to create a diverse, local food supply has been lost. Regaining these are new business opportunities.

7. To grow a diverse supply of food for Willits would require placing about 4000 acres of prime agricultural land into intensive production, rather than keeping it as pasture. This is about equal to the remaining prime ag land in Little Lake Valley."

Recommended Energy Projects - Brian Corzilius has written a detailed document as a follow up to the committee work that produced the Energy Report, which was instrumental in helping the City of Willits take real steps towards energy independence. This new document details two projects that Willits could undertake. I highly recommend reading at least the executive summary, to get an idea of what Brian is proposing. You can read the whole document here and I have excerpted it briefly below: http://www.willitseconomiclocalization.org/Papers/2EnergyProjects.pdf

"1. Executive Summary Energy costs have risen dramatically over the past year and analysts are forecasting additional increases in the near future due to instability in various parts of the world. As energy costs escalate, those that are impacted first are those of low or fixed income. We, as the community of Willits, must work to plan for this potential crisis to ensure a strong community in times of need.

This paper proposes 3 steps the City of Willits can undertake, potentially with substantial grants, to address the looming crisis as well as to decrease the vulnerability of the City itself (and thus the pockets of the taxpayers). These include

1) A renewable energy mix at the water treatment plant to ensure continued operation in the event of a power grid failure,

2) The production of methane, a replacement for propane and natural gas, at the sewage treatment plant to ensure fuel for heating, and

3) the reinvestment of a small percentage of the realized energy savings (from these and similar projects) into a community energy conservation center to provide assistance in reducing energy costs to those most in need.

………… In a nutshell, the two parts of the proposal are as follows:

1) At the Water Treatment Plant, we propose situating a solar array of sufficient size to keep one pump running during part of each day (if the power grid fails) to ensure potable water to the primary storage tank for the City. This would ensure the hospital and much of the valley floor community has water in times of disaster. In conjunction with the solar array would be a small hydroelectric generator to provide electricity to the water treatment maintenance facility. This would provide power for at least minimal system monitoring and maintenance operations through the crisis.

2) At the Sewage Treatment Plant, we propose modifying the ‘headworks’ to divert a significant portion of the incoming solids into a ‘biodigester’. The purpose of this biodigester would be the production of methane gas – a natural byproduct of sewage treatment and an equivalent of natural gas and propane. This methane would be fed directly into a gas turbine generator to produce electricity to offset the sewage treatment’s energy needs. Excess gas could then be compressed and distributed to the City and community in times of need. Such gas, in compressed form, could be used interchangeably with propane for home heating as well as to power City and emergency vehicles."

In the news

San Francisco Board of Supervisors passes Peak Oil Resolution

From the Post Carbon Institute’s Newsletter:

     "Members of San Francisco Oil Awareness, a Local Post Carbon Group, successfully lobbied the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to unanimously pass a peak oil resolution. The resolution, passed on April 11, 2006, acknowledges the threats posed by peak oil and calls for the establishment of a city-wide study to assess San Francisco's vulnerability to peak oil. Due to the persistence and dedication of the members of this Local Post Carbon Group, San Francisco has become the first city in the United Sates to formally address this issue. The results of the study will indicate possible policies the city may adopt to reduce the impacts of energy supply disruptions and price shocks on San Francisco."

The Resolution is available online at http://www.sfbayoil.org/sfoa/media/resolution_to_board.pdf.

Interviews on this resolution with members of San Francisco Oil Awareness are available online at http://www.globalpublicmedia.com.

WELL volunteer of the month

Letter from Brian Corzilius: Dear fellow WELLies; I wanted to express my sincere appreciation for the Volunteer Award presented at the March 20th meeting. I am somewhat embarrassed by this award, first because there are so many of my fellow WELLies that deserve the award just as much (if not more), and secondly because I was not present to receive the award and to personally acknowledge all of those involved.

Regardless of anything that has been said, the work I have done within WELL is the result of all of us working together towards a common goal -- that of ensuring a sustainable community. Without a group of wonderful people, as each of you are, the opportunity would not have existed to have participated at the level I have. So it is a sincere thank you I extend to each of you, not only for the award, but for the opportunity to work together as a community, towards a better future; and I hope you'll accept my apologies for not being present to accept the award in person...

Sincerely, with great appreciation to all of you Brian Corzilius

Volunteer Opportunity

Now that spring time is here, we need some help in the WELL/REDI front yard. We’re looking for someone with some gardening experience who can come in for a few hours to do some weeding, pruning and a few other light jobs to get our office looking good and ready for new growth. Please let me know if you can help.

Thank yous

My deep appreciation to three fine and talented men: Michael Hackelman, Howard Letovsky and Liam UiCearbhail for their generous and extensive help in getting this new computer up and running – their knowledge far exceeds mine and they stepped in at a time when my frustration was deafening.

Whew – that’s all folks.

Enjoy the sunny weather.

It has been a slightly rocky transition to this new computer, if you were put on this list mistakenly, I apologize. If you’d like to be taken off this list for any reason, please just let me know.

Spring Senerchia, Office Manager

Renewable Energy Development Institute (REDI)

Willits Economic Localization (WELL)

spring@redinet.org

707.459.1256

75 N. Main Street PMB 234 Willits, CA 95490