How Kayakers Saved a River and Started a Movement

While most mines in the eastern region of the Appalachian Mountains are no longer in operation, they are far from inactive.
In lightly populated places such as Albright, West Virginia, water with heavy metals seeps from mines into tributaries — the small streams that flow into rivers — finally pooling in reservoirs near the Chesapeake Bay. It’s also here where a group of kayakers made it their mission over 20 years ago to clean up one of the most polluted rivers in America: the Cheat River, a 78.3-mile tributary that runs through eastern West Virginia and southwestern Pennsylvania. And they’re still at it today.
Jim Snyder, a 64-year-old thrill-seeker who lives on the banks of the Cheat River near Albright, was one of those initial kayakers.
“The pollution there would burn your eyes,” Snyder says, recalling the condition of the river in the mid- to late-’90s, when a series of underground coal mine blowouts released orange-tinged water thick with heavy metals into the river.  
The first blowout, in 1994, lowered the pH of the water to dangerous levels, killing off fish as far away as 16 miles downstream. Another blowout a year later eventually devastated the area’s tourism industry, known for its whitewater recreation. The Cheat River soon after became ranked as one the nation’s most endangered.
To reckon with the pollution and damage to the river’s ecosystem, Snyder and other kayakers in the community formed Friends of the Cheat to clean up the dirty streams and creeks that fed into the Cheat River. Their efforts helped the river recover and, with it, a tourism industry centered around its rapids.
“I’d never done much work on committees at that time so it was an awkward fit for me, but we kept making it work,” Snyder tells NationSwell. “We were rookies, but we endured.”

Kayakers River 2
Eastern Pennsylvania Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation works to counteract the damage done to rivers by mining.

After the mine blowouts, the whitewater industry suffered from more than a 50 percent drop in business, while whitewater participation increased nationally by 33 percent during the same time period.
“Twenty-thousand people were going down the canyon annually in the ’80s and ’90s,” says Owen Mulkeen, associate director of Friends of the Cheat. “Albright [became] a ghost town compared to what it was like at the height of rafting.”
Friends of the Cheat led an effort with the Environmental Protection Agency to use various methods of water treatment, such as limestone filtration, to clean up the tributaries in the area. The success Snyder and the others had with bringing back the Cheat River became widely considered one of the most successful conservation stories.
“[Kayakers] have a passion and that usually keeps them in West Virginia,” says Mulkeen. “We are blessed with the natural beauty and recreation here.”
And that has helped keep the organization’s ranks filled — a necessity, given that mine pollution is still a very real problem in the waters around the Cheat.  
Over 7,500 miles of streams in Appalachia are still polluted by heavy metals from abandoned mines, according to data collected by Friends of the Cheat. Before the passage of the Surface Mining and Reclamation Control Act in 1977, mining companies could seal their operations in whatever way they liked, with little or no oversight. And over the decades many of those seals have busted open.
“Mining had a huge impact on the industrial revolution, and allowed us to win or at least participate in two wars,” says Gavin Pellitteri, a recreational kayaker and outreach specialist for the nonprofit Eastern Pennsylvania Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation. “There’s a lot of that culture and pride left in the area.”
Pellitteri’s coalition works to correct for acid mine drainage, known as AMD. Similar to Friends of the Cheat, EPCAMR’s treatment strategy is to find an empty piece of land that can be filled with mine water into a pondlike basin. Limestone is used to neutralize the water’s acidity, and exposure to oxygen removes iron and drives off  sulfates. Once done, the clean water is put back into a river.
“If you look at where these impacts are, it’s the spine of Appalachia — Northern Georgia, Tennessee, West Virginia, up to Pennsylvania,” says Pellitteri, who estimates that there are over 400 billion gallons of mine water in the Scranton, Pennsylvania, area alone.
As water conservationists like Snyder and Pellitteri continue to clean up the area’s waterways, where a virtually endless flow of polluted water streams from abandoned mines, there’s a fear that they’ll fail to attract a younger generation of outdoor activists to the mission.
“Unfortunately, there’s a brain-drain out of West Virginia,” Mulkeen says. “But we’re born and bred by paddlers, and we hope to continue that relationship. That’s our base.”
Because unlike a tree falling in the forest, a blown-out mine will matter, even if no one is around to witness it.

The Beer-Fueled Project That’s Prettifying Pittsburgh

What’s better at bringing people together than shared mugs of beer? In one Pennsylvania city, two drinking buddies think they might have an answer: hops.

At two sites in Pittsburgh — an unseemly roadside retaining wall in Stanton Heights and a recently shuttered YMCA in Hazelwood — hop plants are adding some much-needed greenery on their crawl up 10-foot-high trellis systems. Used to add a bitter, zesty flavor to beer, the leafy hop cones are being donated to three local craft breweries, who will then donate the proceeds from each batch of beer brewed back to community projects.

The seeds for Hops on Lots Pittsburgh (HOLP) were planted in Pete Bell’s mind during a community gardening class. A part-time trade-show coordinator, Bell loved the idea that those without backyards could share a plot with their neighbors. But he wondered if there was a better way for all the produce and herbs he was learning to grow to benefit the entire community, not, he says, just the people who are able to garden. One night, over drinks with friend Joe Chmielewski, an operational support assistant at the University of Pittsburgh library, the conversation turned to how the two men could find a project they’d enjoy that would, in turn, benefit others. The pals, who Bell confesses enjoy “a lot of beer,” decided on growing hops. They believed the urban agriculture could support the red-hot craft-brew scene while prettifying some of the city’s 27,000 vacant lots.

“There are so many little breweries everywhere. They’re popping up, it seems, by the month,” Bell says. And yet, “nobody in the area was growing any hops.” Microbreweries around town jumped at the offer of locally harvested hops. “They like the idea that they’re fresh, right off the vine,” says Bell. “They don’t have to get hops shipped in from the other side of the country.”

Bell waters the hops two or three times a week, with five-liter jugs he keeps in the back of his car. The plants at both sites have grown to full size, pleasing the guys who nurtured them from seedlings. Now, says Bell, he’s watering the Stanton Heights crop in a narrow two-foot space between the retaining wall and a busy road.

Seeing HOLP’s success, Bell’s already scoping out sites to grow more hops next season, and as ale aficionados contact him from other cities, he’s helping to spread the idea nationwide. He warns them to be patient in waiting for other people to get on board, but he promises the idea is a sure-fire win: “Throw them in the corner of a community garden, and you have a cash crop there,” he advises. Bell says he’s willing to take calls from any aspiring gardeners.

That is, after he recovers from yesterday’s party. On September 18th, HOLP held its first annual celebration to raise money for the Stanton Heights community. (The funds have yet to be allocated, but Bell says money will go to fixing playgrounds, renovating the firehouse, installing rain barrels, or whatever else residents want to see.) Revelers poured into Roundabout Brewery to try to the pale ale brewed from the local hops, eat pizza and dance to the strains of a bluegrass band. Amid the carousing, a toast was in order: Here’s to more beer next year!

How Coral Reefs Might Resist Climate Change, America’s Coolest Mayor Runs for Senate and More

 
Unnatural Selection, The New Yorker
The ocean holds many wonders, but perhaps none are more precious and more fragile than its tropical coral reefs. Coral, at first sight, appears to be a lifeless rock, but it’s actually a miniature animal that houses an even smaller plant inside its cells — a symbiotic relationship developed over millennia. Ruth Gates, a University of Hawaii marine biologist, is attempting to speed up that evolutionary process and create a “super coral” by exposing it to the harsher conditions expected by next century: warmer, more acidic water caused by climate change. It’s a new take on conservation — call it “assisted evolution” — that’s also being tested on forests in Syracuse, N.Y., where a professor is genetically engineering a fungus-resistant chestnut tree. Can these scientists do what Mother Nature couldn’t?
This Mayor Wants To Give Struggling Cities a Front-Row Seat in D.C., Next City
Standing at 6’8” with a shaved head and tattoos on his arms, the mayor of Braddock, a Pittsburgh suburb hammered by industrial decline, doesn’t look like your typical public official. Dubbed America’s coolest mayor, John Fetterman has implemented some of the brightest ideas for urban renewal, as he replaced a moribund steel industry with public art, urban agriculture, craft beer and other hipster fare. Now, Fetterman is competing in the Democratic primary for Pennsylvania’s Senate seat (currently held by a Republican). If he wins, he’s promised a new Marshall Plan (like the billions invested in Europe after WWII) for America’s forgotten cities. In most election cycles, Fetterman would be written off as an outsider without a chance, but in this unpredictable year, this fresh candidate may just have a shot.
The Resurrection of St. Benedict’s, 60 Minutes
Up until 1967, St. Benedict’s Prep was your run-of-the-mill Catholic boy’s school, serving upper-middle class, white families in Newark, N.J. But when racial tensions exploded into bloody riots that summer, whites fled the city en masse. The school nearly collapsed (it closed for one year), but faculty member Edwin Leahy, then 26, quickly got it back on its feet. It reopened with one big change: students would run the school themselves, keeping each other out of gangs and competing for top marks. Of its 550 students today, nearly all from poor neighborhoods, only two percent don’t finish high school — in a city with a 30 percent dropout rate. Intellect isn’t the major problem in American education, Leahy, a Benedictine monk, argues; it’s all about making students’ realizing their own potential and see “the fact that they are a gift to somebody else.”

Why Youthful Indiscretions Shouldn’t Result in Jail Sentences, How to Save Babies Born with Opioid Addictions and More

 
A Prosecutor’s Vision For A Better Justice System, TED
Adam Foss, a prosecutor with the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office in Boston, recently asked a group of TED participants how many had ever drank underage, tried an illegal drug, shoplifted or gotten into a physical fight. While viewed by most as youthful indiscretions, these same offenses often land black and brown youth in criminal court, viewed as being dangerous to society. Which is why Foss is using prosecutorial discretion to dismiss minor cases that aren’t worthy of a criminal record.
Tiny Opioid Patients Need Help Easing Into Life, Kaiser Health News and NPR
In this country, addiction to heroin and prescription painkillers like hydrocodone, oxycodone or morphine continues to rise, even afflicting new moms. During pregnancy, these mothers must decide between getting clean and risking a miscarriage or delivering a baby that’s likely to experience drug withdrawal. With about 21,000 infants suffering from withdrawal each year, doctors in Rhode Island, nurses in Connecticut, researchers in Pennsylvania and public health officials in Ohio are all working on solutions to help these new families.

Website Seeks to Make Government Data Easier to Sift Through, New York Times
Just because the government releases endless pages of data to the public doesn’t mean it’s easy to turn those statistics into something that you can actually comprehend and use. DataUSA, an open source brainchild coming from the M.I.T. Media Lab, organizes and visualizes the information, presenting it in charts, graphs and written synopses. Thanks to this project, instead of just hearing a statistic of how many people in Flint, Mich., live in poverty, for example,  you can see it visually represented on a map.

Meet the Doctors Building an Innovative, Holistic Bridge to Healthy Living

What if you were able to cure a disease before someone even caught it? Now imagine doing that on a larger scale — for an entire community of people who lack access to medical resources, including basic supplies like bandages for even the most minor of injuries. What would health care look like if you could eliminate the problem at its source?
Dr. Steve Larson, co-founder of the nonprofit medical clinic Puentes de Salud, or “Bridges of Health,” believes he has the answer. For the past decade, he’s been using a holistic approach that includes medical care, education classes and social services to solve the healthcare woes of Philadelphia’s rapidly growing Latino immigrant population. “The answer is not waiting for the next trauma,” says Larson. “The answer is to keep it from ever happening.”
Watch the video above to see how Puentes de Salud partners with local health organizations, medical schools and private donors to provide its patients comprehensive treatment.
 

The Future of Housing Is Now. What Sustainable Homes Look Like

Every time your air conditioner or furnace rumbles on, greenhouses gases spew into the air. All those volts —about 10,900 kilowatt-hours per person — used to charge laptops and phones, light rooms, and keep the refrigerator running don’t come without an environmental cost. American electricity generation contributed 2.04 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2014, clouding the earth’s atmosphere with emissions and worsening climate change.
A hot new trend in architecture may offer one of our best hopes for significantly diminishing that pollution. “Passive house” construction — usually built without central heating or cooling systems — can reduce energy usage to net-zero or even net-positive, meaning a building generates more energy than it consumes. Applicable to both commercial and residential properties, passive construction centers on five key design elements: heavily insulated walls (sometimes up to 15 inches thick), an extremely tight envelope, triple-paned windows and doors that are outfitted with high-performance locks, high-tech ventilation and moisture-recovery systems filter the air and solar panels on rooftops.
“There are no drafts in the winter. And in the summer, it stays cool without strong air conditioning blowing on you,” Jane Sanders, a Brooklyn architect, tells the New York Post about her home. “This morning, there was jackhammering two doors down from me, but I could barely hear it. It’s so quiet that I feel like I live in the country.”
Some homeowners will take objection with the boxy design; others will balk at the price tag. But as more passive homes are built, architects are experimenting with chic design and developing cheaper construction methods. NationSwell looked into five of the most interesting passive houses in America today.

Cheap land helped determine the location of the Smith House.

The Smith House, Urbana, Ill.

American designers first pioneered passive construction — then known as “superinsulation” in the early 1970s — after the oil embargo caused wild swings in energy prices. When conservation fell out of fashion during the Reagan years, the idea caught on among Germans in 1988, but it took until 2002, for the idea to return across the Atlantic. Katrin Klingenberg, a young German architect, and her now-deceased husband Nic Smith broke ground on the first American passive house prototype in Urbana, in part, because they could test the house against the harsh Midwestern climate. “I believe that climate crisis is real and that buildings need to do their part of reducing carbon emissions. The good news is that buildings have a lot of potential to do just that,” Klingenberg tells the Chicago Tribune. “We have to work a bit harder to get those reductions and invest a bit more upfront. But the reward is huge with long-lasting payback.”

Window detail, Kiln Apartments.

Kiln Apartments, Portland, Ore.

Portland is undeniably at the center of the American passive house movement, with more than 100 certified buildings in its metro area, according to some counts. The Kiln Apartments, in North Portland, are one of the largest mixed-use buildings — 19 apartments above ground-floor retail — to meet passive house standards.
The Oregon city already has one of the strictest building codes in the nation, but these units save up to 75 percent more energy than equivalent ones. With many south-facing windows, the buildings is heated largely by the sun during the winter. Thick metal sunshades that look like modernist awnings block the sunlight during hotter months, when the summer sun rises higher in the sky. The four-story building does have an elevator, but because everything is about energy efficiency, residents are encouraged to take the stairs.

Dedication ceremony for the Empowerment House, a 2-unit townhouse.

Habitat for Humanity Townhomes, Washington, D.C.

Demonstrating that passive house principles can be readily implemented, volunteers in the nation’s capital are building six townhouses for poor homeowners. Located in Ivy City, a portion of the structure was originally designed for the U.S. Solar Decathlon, a competition for college students to build the most energy-efficient home. Students from The New School and Stevens Institute of Technology put the one-bedroom together on the National Mall for under $230,000. After being moved northeast in 2012, a second story was added and Habitat for Humanity built a copy next door. Now, as the neighborhood gentrifies, the families in the six brick rowhouses have affordable rent and a a minimal utility bill. “I just remember thinking, we did it: a non-profit, affordable house developer can do this, even using volunteers with no construction experience,” Orlando Velez, manager of housing services at Habitat for Humanity’s D.C. chapter, tells ThinkProgress. “I started thinking, what’s everyone else waiting for?”

The north building of the Uptown Lofts.

Uptown Lofts, Pittsburgh, Penn.

This 47-unit housing affordable project, provides greener living spaces to those who can’t afford a market-rate home. Split into two buildings across the street from each other, 18- to 23-year-olds who aged out of the foster care system live in the northern building’s 24 one-bedroom apartments; to the south, 23 affordable units go to people who make less than 60 percent of Pittsburgh’s median income. The $12 million project was also notable for being the first time any state subsidized a passive house with tax benefits.
At the ribbon-cutting ceremony this February, the project was praised for realizing its ambitious goals with limited dollars. “How proud we are to help bring these buildings to reality,” said Stan Salwocki, manager at the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “This project shows how cutting-edge, state-of-the-art, energy-efficient affordable housing can be done.”

The central utility plant at Cornell Tech is currently under construction.

Cornell Tech, Roosevelt Island, N.Y.

Still in the works, the world’s tallest and largest passive house began construction this June. Rising 26 stories above Roosevelt Island, a sliver of land between the boroughs of Manhattan and Queens, the apartment tower will house about 530 grad students, professors and staff for Cornell University’s new 12-acre applied sciences campus. Since nearly three quarters of the carbon emissions in New York City’s come from heating and cooling its skyscrapers, school administrators hope this project will set a new standard for energy efficiency and gain the attention of engineers and designers across the Queensboro Bridge in midtown.
The construction “is a clear signal that in today’s era of climate change, it’s not enough to simply build tallest. To lead the market, your tall building will need to be a passive house,” Ken Levenson, president of NY Passive House, an advocacy group, tells The New York Times. The $115 million project is expected to open in 2017 and will save 882 tons of carbon dioxide annually — the equivalent of planting 5,300 trees, according to the university.

When Terror Strikes at Home, Empathy Helps Teens Move Forward

In the early morning hours of a September Tuesday, Joseph Pycior, Jr., arrived at work. Headquartered for nearly three years at what his father called “the safest place in the world” — the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. — Pycior compiled raw data into digestible tidbits for press releases.
The desk work may not have been as exhilarating as his previous position, serving as a member of the navy in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, but it gave the 39-year-old a chance to see his kids more often, taking them camping or fishing on occasion. Plus, he’d just put in his papers for retirement. He was four months from his golden years, a new job as a middle-school history teacher and a move back home to New Jersey.
Around 9:15 a.m. Pycior heard a report about a plane flying into the World Trade Center. He phoned his wife to see if she knew. Then he called his mother in Jersey and told her to look outside at the billowing smoke. Fifteen minutes later, at 9:37 a.m., another plane, a Boeing 757, slammed into the massive five-sided building, which houses the U.S. Department of Defense.
His son Robert Pycior, who goes by Robbie, was only eight years old as firefighters dug up the victims from the rubble and as news anchors confirmed that 184 people died at the Pentagon alone. For Robbie and each of the 3,050 children who lost a parent on Sept. 11, the experience of a parent’s death could feel isolating. The struggle to heal continues to single out victims of terrorism, 15 years after the attacks.
“For these teenagers, the sudden, violent and public nature of their loss becomes an overwhelming and defining characteristic of their lives,” says Terry Sears, executive director of Tuesday’s Children, a nonprofit that promotes healing for 9/11 victims. “Their experience is not something that’s easily shared with others.”
Every summer, Tuesday’s Children provides a welcoming place to share that experience in a tranquil setting. During a weeklong session, the organization’s Project COMMON BOND brings together several dozen teenagers, ages 15 to 20, at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. American teenagers affected by 9/11 wanted an international community who’d suffered similar loss inspired the program, which is now in its eighth year. Half the group of 60 are Americans who lost a parent in 9/11 or in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; the remaining are international teens (from countries like France, Spain, India, Pakistan, Israel, Palestine, Kenya, Indonesia, Macedonia and Northern Ireland) who lost a family member to terrorism.
“The most important thing is just recognizing that the pain will be there. There will always be that hole in your heart, as the saying goes. You can fill that hole by sharing your story, by using your story to help others, by having a positive impact in somebody’s life … but it will never be completely filled,” Robbie Pycior, who returned to the camp for a second time as a counselor this year, tells NationSwell in an interview. “Twenty years from now, I still realize, ’Wait, I can’t tell my father about something’. As opposed to moving on from your loss, it’s moving on with your loss, with your loved one, with their memory.”
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Pycior, a volunteer firefighter in his hometown of East Windsor, N.J., not far from Trenton, the state capital, just graduated from college, where he majored in psychology and history. He’s going back to school this September at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J., to obtain his masters in social work. Even the second time around, Project COMMON BOND was a “roller coaster” of emotions. It left him feeling “sort of exhausted,” but in a good way, “like you’ve accomplished something.” He was amazed that people from so many different cultural backgrounds — often from conflict-torn countries — could find commonality.
“People who come to COMMON BOND could have lost someone at a very young age or lost them three years ago, as a 17 year old. They have very different perspectives than someone who experienced that at three months old,” Pycior says. “It’s hard to explain other than that we get each other. There’s an unspoken understanding that we know what it’s like to be in each others’ shoes. We understand what grief is and having that with people from 12 or 13 different countries is extremely powerful.”
Project COMMON BOND isn’t just a chance to unload a heavy emotional burden. Like Seeds of Peace (a youth peacebuilding organization), the curriculum is meticulously designed — in this case, by experts from Harvard Law School’s Negotiation and Mediation Clinical Program. The model involves intensive group therapy as well as leadership training, conflict resolution and peace-building exercises.
The initiative uses the “dignity model” (designed by Donna Hicks, an associate at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs), which teaches ways to respect every person’s inborn and inalienable dignity, says Monica Meehan McNamara, the program’s curriculum director. By talking through stereotypes and preconceived judgments, the kids get closer to removing the “blinders” we have about other cultures and “building empathy for other people,” she adds. It’s a lesson whose importance seems to grow daily, as tensions deepen domestically between African-Americans and police officers and abroad with ISIS recruiting extremists across the globe.
[ph]
“The whole week people talk about the loss that they had, but they’re also thinking about what produces terrorism and violence,” Meehan McNamara says. “One young woman from France spoke about having witnessed her father, best friends and cousin being killed by terrorists in Saudi Arabia and how devastating that was. About four or five years later, [the murderers] were caught and brought to trial. People said to her, ‘Aren’t you glad about being able to get revenge? To put them away?’ Looking at [the attackers], she realized they were children once. She wondered, How did they come to this other place, this extreme? … Throughout the week, they’re offering their story about the way it impacted their family and the trauma that some still carry. They want to understand how such a thing can happen, but they also want work on the side of counteracting that.”
The afternoons, in contrast, are all centered around lighthearted, creative play, through drama, art, music or sports. It’s a chance to sublimate the morning’s raw emotion, to unwind and just be a kid. Some days, you’re playing soccer with a talented club player from Algeria who always lets someone else score or teaching foreigners ultimate frisbee; other days you’re acting silly, improvising throwing an invisible ball around a circle.
The final day at Project COMMON BOND looks like any other summer camp. Many are scribbling down email addresses and phone numbers to stay in touch. Tears dampen several eyes. “You’ve formed such a close, tight bond with people. Someone 9,000 miles away are some of your best friends,” Robbie Pycior says. He asks the instructors if he can help clean up the place afterward. He doesn’t want to go just yet. Eventually, Robbie gets into his car, counts to 10 to calm himself down and hits the road back home.
 

Which U.S. City Is Close to Eliminating Its Food Desert?

Food deserts — areas without access to nutritious food — dot urban areas. As we previously pointed out, attracting a big-box supermarket isn’t the only solution. San Francisco is proving this by adding fresh produce to bodegas that once relied solely on peddling booze and smokes to the community.
The City by the Bay’s comprehensive approach can be traced back to an initiative started nearly 25 years ago. The Food Trust of Philadelphia, one of the most ambitious programs of its kind in one of America’s poorest and most unhealthy big cities, began in a public housing development in South Philly, with volunteers piling mounds of fruits and veggies on one long table outside the project each week. Since 1992, they’ve taken their work beyond that first farmer’s market, improving access to healthy food and nutritional information for nearly 220,000 residents in poor neighborhoods — making Philadelphia one of the first cities to meet the First Lady’s “Let’s Move” challenge to eliminate food deserts entirely by 2017.
“We started to see that farmer’s markets provide seasonal access to fresh fruits and vegetables, not a long-term solution — or the only solution. They really only can open in summer on the East Coast. We realized it was really important to look at the longer term and more comprehensive approaches to food access,” says Candace Young, The Food Trust’s associate director of research and evaluation. Around 2004, “the first thing we did was we mapped out areas of the city that had low access to supermarkets and high-diet related deaths — the pockets of the city that needed better access. We sent that report to policy makers and practitioners, the health community and its advocates, the food retail community. What was built from there was this multi-million dollar public-private initiative to build new or even just renovate supermarkets around the whole state.”
Just how much of a difference can access to fruits and vegetables in a neighborhood actually make? Research shows that living in a food desert isn’t simply an inconvenience for locals or a matter of how long the bus ride will be; it’s linked to serious health problems like obesity, hypertension, heart disease and diabetes. But The Food Trust’s work appears to be making a dent. Between 2006 and 2010, obesity among kids in Philly decreased by five percent — the first downward trend since 1976.
A key aspect of The Food Trust’s work in Pennsylvania involved renovating bodegas — corner stores where the average elementary school student in Philadelphia buys 350 calories worth of food on each visit, according to a 2008 study. More than one quarter — 29 percent — stop in twice a day, five days a week. That means they’re consuming roughly an additional pound of food from this retailer every week.
In response, The Food Trust convinced corner store owners to sell more fruits, vegetables, low-fat dairy and whole grains and offered money for renovations. Since the Healthy Corner Store Initiative launched in 2004, it’s established a network of 650 stores. With $30 million in public financing and $90 million in private financing, it can pay for upgrades that are as easy as buying new refrigeration for $500 and as tough as building a whole new mega-mart for several million, Young says. In total, the organization funded 1.67 million square feet of retail development and created 5,000 jobs.
“Corner store owners are a very different business than large supermarkets. They’re a convenience model: you want to get in and out. Oftentimes, you go in to buy chips and a drink, a pack of cigarettes or a lottery ticket,” Young says. “Partly what we’re trying to do is shift to a culture of health around corner stores, where they’re seen again as small grocery venues. Instead of packaged foods, I may need to grab eggs, some milk, some bread and a couple of fruits for me and for my family.”
There’s still some debate about whether these interventions are the best way to deal with food deserts. Some critics point to a lack of causal evidence and say the theory’s “intuitive” underpinnings don’t check out. “If you live next to a Mercedes dealership, that doesn’t mean you’ll buy a Mercedes,” Adam Drewnowski, an epidemiology professor at the University of Washington, tells the Washington Post. “And it’s the same with living next to a grocery store: That doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll start eating salads.”
After the first pilot at a handful of stores, The Food Trust documented a 35 percent increase in the sale of healthy items and an even bigger boost — 60 percent — in produce sales. That means $100 in extra profits every week for sellers.
Anecdotally, too, customers seem to be buying. “Now, when I’m talking to people who come into the store, they are asking: What do you have fresh today? And I can say I have apples. I have oranges. I have all kinds of stuff,” says Catalina Morrell-Hunter, one storeowner in North Philadelphia who joined the network after 15 years in business. “We have a refrigerator in the store that we didn’t have before. It has yogurt and fresh fruit and fresh vegetables. And I try to get other products that are better for you, healthier and lower calorie. I’m more conscious of that now.”
The Food Trust’s supporters point to a drop in obesity as evidence something’s clearly working, but they’ll also readily admit fresh food at corner stores isn’t the only explanation. In the City of Brotherly Love, access to fresh and affordable food, amenities for exercise and information to make healthy decisions all go hand-in-hand. Philly’s also added nearly 30 miles of bike lanes, launched a media campaign about sugary drinks that was seen 40 million times and established parent-driven “wellness councils” in 170 public schools.
“We believe that supermarket access is one piece of a comprehensive approach,” says Yael Lehmann, The Food Trust’s executive director. “While bringing in healthy food stores into neighborhoods, we also want to be teaching kids how to eat healthy in schools, we want to be having cooking demonstrations at recreation centers, running farmers’ markets in neighborhoods. All of these things combined is what can improve the health of people and their neighborhoods.”

This Man Walked Away From Wall Street. Now His Pizza Parlor Is Feeding Philadelphia’s Homeless

You can’t buy much for two dollars these days, but in Philadelphia, you can feed yourself and a homeless neighbor with just a couple of bucks.
After leaving a successful Wall St. career because he found it unfulfilling, owner Mason Wartman opened Rosa’s Fresh Pizza in late 2013. He had witnessed the popularity of the one-dollar pizza joints in New York City and decided that a the concept might work in his native Philadelphia.
“I knew that we would be feeding homeless people because we’d be providing affordable food,” says Wartman. “About three months into operation, a paying customer asked if he could pre-purchase a slice for a homeless person. And so I ran out, got a stack of Post-it Notes to remind myself and the employees that we could help someone out when they came in short.”
Before long, the walls of Rosa’s became covered in Post-it Notes. Each one signifies someone who has given a dollar so that that a homeless or hungry person can enjoy a meal at no-cost. The messages on some are simple; others have drawings or a friendly letter.
Each day, a few dozen homeless people file into Rosa’s to enjoy the kindness of their neighbors. In the last year, Wartman reports that this system has provided more than 14,000 free slices for Philadelphians in need.
“This is way more rewarding than what I used to do on Wall Street,” says Wartman. “I learn a ton everyday, I meet really cool people — homeless and not homeless. I get to see a positive difference being made in a city that I really love. So, what more could I ask for, right?”

The Top 5: America’s Best New Buildings

Undoubtedly, we associate cities with their iconic structures: New York City’s Empire State Building, San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge and the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, to name a few. But these edifices — so forward-thinking for their time that we’re still in awe of them today — are at least half a century old, making it seem like the era of erecting statement-making civic structures has passed.
Proving that designers are still as innovative as ever, however, are this year’s recipients of the prestigious Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects (AIA). The winners, which will be formally recognized at AIA’s National Convention in Atlanta this May, are diverse “in scale, expense, concept, use, in virtually every aspect,” says Waller McGuire, executive director of St. Louis Public Library and the only non-architect on AIA’s nine-member jury. “The strongest connection between the award winners is that we looked for architecture that respects and elevates the people using it: the people who will ultimately judge it for themselves.”
With that in mind, here’s a selection of five outstanding buildings, all of whose architects paid particular attention to their social responsibilities, impact and energy usage.
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