Cool Mac Meeting Notes

Notes for Saturday, March 15, 2008, 9:30 am / New News to Date

I. In Attendance:

Steering Committee Meeting 8:30:
John Mead, Duane Bond, Sam Sharfeddin, Liz Marlia-Stein, Christa Brandenburg, Linda Grove.
Guest – Chipo Dendere from Greenfield

Riverbend Landfill Presentation and Tour 9:30

Bonnie Laux, Doug Barsotti, Duncan Reid, Ryan Abbott, Dan Hinmon, Duane Bond, Sam Sharfeddin, Christa Brandenburg, Linda Grove
Guest – George Duvendack

II. Steering Committee (SC) Agenda and Notes

A. Membership and Focus

SC Members (List of Cool Mac’ers who have expressed interest in being involved with the SC to date):Christa Brandenburg, Duane & Mary Bond, Wendy Stassen, John Mead, Liz Marlia-Stein, Kathleen O’Brien Blair, Sam Sharfeddin, Lucy Falcy, Linda Grove(I apologize if I have left someone off the list who wishes to be there.)

Focus:

Duane started us out by offering that Cool Mac should perhaps focus on projects than can be done rather than those that should be done. Agreement among members present.

Lively discussion regarding which segment of our community we should reach out to. Conclusion: Draw together for support those like-minded individuals who are willing to put some energy into the community, but reach out and try to help educate those who may not be as interested or as aware of the need for education about sustainability and global warming. In summary, we decided we needed to start having conversations with the community as a whole.

B. Nonprofit status

It was decided to table this right now. We felt Cool Mac does not need nonprofit status as we are not a money-making organization at this time. We will appeal to business contributions to help us with our projects or ask for funding within our ranks.

Too long a process and involves too much paperwork, filing fees, and energy to focus on this at this time.

C. Turkeyrama booth and booth for Farmer’s Market (latter not discussed)

We have been asked if we would like a booth at Turkeyrama in the Green Zone on Ford Street which is sponsored by McMinnville Water and Light.

Greenfield students would like to help out here.

We have been contacted by the future Slow Food USA group to possibly share a booth with them. ($300 booth cost).

D. Brochure – Tabled for next meeting

E. Booklet of local businesses

Chipo volunteered to organize their 60 Greenfield(?) members to help work on this project. Linda will e-mail Linda Hays’ e-mail to Chipo so they can work together in creating a pamphlet/booklet detailing locally owned businesses.

F. Website management/populating

Sam announced that he will be putting our website on a new server. Once this is up and running, Linda will be sending an e-mail requesting Cool Mac members to google coolmac.org. The more hits, the higher up the search engine list we go!

Sam will be putting a calendar on our website. This is up and working now. Very cool!

Sam will send log-ins for the steering committee members to allow any of us to post on the website. It was agreed that anything posted should be approved by SC.

What will we post?

Minutes, Calendar of upcoming events with descriptions, Pertinent city government events, Cool Mac Pledge (Sam is checking on this now.)

Funding the website

Funding will be by “passing the hat” at Cool Mac meetings. To date we accumulated $53.

G. Participation in local government We will try to post on our website any government event concerning sustainability or global warming.

Linda and Duane will follow up with the Design Ordinances proposed by the Planning Department Staff. (Update – The Planning Commission passed the Ordinances with the Cool Mac recommendations intact! Next step is McMinnville City Council. Linda will keep you posted as to when and where the Ordinance will be on their agenda for public hearing.)

H. National Student Day of Action April 3-5, 2008 In Chipo Dendere’s own words:

A group of Linfield Students will join about 150 students Washington DC from April3-5 , 2008 for the National Day of Student Action. The goal is to meet with 45 senators to discuss climate policies in their states, the impact on global warming and the role that student can play to change things. We currently have four meetings set up with both Oregon Senators, Senators from New York, Vermont, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

The cool aspect about this trip is that we are taking both students who care about the issues and ones who would like to learn about the issue. As a result we need to do a lot of fundraising to cover travel costs. Our goal is to raise an extra $500 before April 1, 2008. If you would like to make a donation, cheques can be written to: ASLC Linfield College- DC Trip And mailed to:

Chipo Dendere- Student Body President, 900 Se Baker St A480, McMinnville, OR 97128-6894

III. Tour of Riverbend Landfill – George Duvendack

http://www.riverbendlandfill.com/ (lots of information at the website)

I will try to summarize some of what George informed us about the landfill both from his talk and from the tour.

Riverbend Landfill is part of Waste Management, Inc. based in Houston, TX. The McMinnville site encompasses 160 acres currently with plans to expand to another 85 acres to extend local use for another 20-30 years.

Currently Oregon citizens generate 8.5 pounds of waste per day per person. Of that amount, 3.7 pounds are recycled and 4.8 pounds go into the landfill. The process works as follows (with help from Waste Management, Inc. brochure):

Residential and commercial waste is collected (WOW and private individuals and business from as far away as Tualatin).

Much of the waste is organic. Anaerobic bacteria digest the organic waste and produce methane gas and carbon dioxide as natural by-products. George explained that the liner buried deep in the soil is made of a barrier 2-feet thick made up of plastic and expandable biodegradable products which act as a 30-year barrier.

Methane gas is recovered via a series of wells drilled into the landfill. These wells are connected by a common pipe system that collects the gas and transports it to a nearby compression tank.

At the compression tank, the landfill gas is de-watered, filtered, and pressurized.

At McMinnville, the gas is piped to a furnace where the methane is burned at 1600 degrees F. The end result is a combination of CO2 and CO. (See below for future plans for the methane.) The water collected with the compression pumps is gathered into a pool which is aerated. The water is then pumped to groves of alder trees which will eventually be cut by a contracted service to turn into paper products.

Plans for the Future –

A goal for the not-to-distant future converting the methane gas into electricity, thereby reducing the load on McMinnville Water & Light (MW&L) demands and powering up to 1000 homes. Riverbend is currently working with MW&L to obtain permits and figure out the logistics of the process, but once the permits are obtained (long process), the facility should be producing electricity within a year.

There are plans for a riparian zone along the Yamhill River to help slow the river to a more natural pace to the benefit of wildlife and the river.

Riverbend is currently in the process of making their residential trash and recycling center more consumer friendly by having a sheltered facility closer to the highway so consumers won’t have to travel the gravel roads with their vehicles.

IV. Next MeetingSaturday, April 19, 9:30 First Federal Board Room on 3rd Street(across the street from the bank)(8:30 Steering Committee Meeting)

Rebekah Shrader, Greenfield representative (Linfield’s environment club), emailed Cool Mac to let us know that they are hosting events throughout the week of Earth Day and are kicking it off the previous Friday with a “Conservation through Community Walk.” They think it would be great if groups such as Cool Mac could let the community know about this event taking place on Friday, April 18. They will be meeting in front of Linfield’s Melrose Hall at 3:00. The walk will then go through the community with signs to help inform the public of the good impacts that come with conservation. They are hoping maybe some of us could help them make contact with the high schools and invite the students to join this march.

If you have any ideas to help them out at all, please contact Rebekah Shrader at rshrade@linfield.edu or Linda Grove at lgrove@onlinenw.com. Sounds like a great event to be a part of!

At the McMinnville Chamber of Commerce luncheon today, Jody Christensen of the McMinnville Economic Development Partnership (MEDP), Ron Pomeroy of Planning Department, and Steve Wells of TrammellCrowCompany gave talks about the coming of new development.

MEDP did a study that showed that there is a need for and room for 800,000 sq ft of new development for Yamhill County to account for “retail leakage”, i.e., people traveling to other cities for goods and services. She has secured Governor’s Site Certification for an area behind Cascade Steel that will look very attractive to potential industrial businesses.

Ron Pomeroy gave a slide presentation showing the new ordinances for stores over 25,000 sq ft. The ordinance manuals he handed out highlighted the suggestions by Cool Mac.

Steve Wells spoke of how they have contacted “anchor stores” for the new development coming in by Linfield. When asked whether the new ordinances were prohibitive in contracting some of these anchor stores, he mentioned that he hoped to work with the planning commission in this regard.

The next McMinnville Planning Commission meeting is this Thursday, March 20, 6:30 at McMinnville School District offices, 1500 N Baker Street.

Trammel Corporation (75-acre Linfield development area) will be giving their input/opinions about the new Large Commercial Structure Ordinance. If you want to have your input/opinion heard, please join Duane and I in making a statement for yourselves and/or Cool Mac.

This may be the last public hearing on this matter before it goes before City Council.

See you there!

Please see email below from Chipo Dendere, student body president of Linfield. They are asking for “talking point” ideas from us to carry to Washington, DC.
Dear Linda,
We met today at the cool Mac meeting and I wanted to give you more information about our DC trip. A group of Linfield Students will join about 150 students Washington DC from April 3-5 , 2008 for the National Day of Student Action. The goal is to meet with 45 senators to discuss climate policies in their states, the impact on global warming and the role that student can play to change things. We currently have four meetings set up with both Oregon Senators, Senators from New York, Vermont, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

We feel that the presence of Oregon students will be very powerful because sometimes Oregon is the forgotten state and we would like to change that. We know that our state is way ahead of most states in environmental sustainability but a lot still needs to be done and we would like to play an active part in the change.

The cool aspect about this trip is that we are taking both students who care about the issues and ones who would like to learn about the issue. As a result we need to do a lot of fundraising to cover travel costs. Our goal is to raise an extra $500 before April 1, 2008.

If you would like to make a donation cheques can be written to “ASLC Linfield College- DC Trip” and mailed to:
Chipo Dendere- Student Body President
900 Se Baker St A480
McMinnville or 97128-6894

Before our tour of the Riverbend Landfill, there will be a meeting at 8:30 at the same facility. Suggested topics:

1) Steering Committee formation - if you have any interest in actively participating in the organizational aspects of Cool Mac, please come with your ideas!

2) Nonprofit status

3) Turkeyrama booth and booth for Farmer’s Market

4) Brochure

5) Booklet of local businesses

6) Website management/populating

7) Participation in local government (including new ordinances for Big Box stores)

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Hope to see you Saturday. See previous blog for pertinent information about the Riverbend Landfill tour.