Earth's economics
Anna Isaacs
Issue date: 7/9/09 Section: News from the DIAMONDBACK
See Steny Hoyer Press Release
Less than week after the House of Representatives passed landmark climate change legislation, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer got the green grand tour of a more local sustainability effort.
Hoyer (D - Md.) paid a visit last Thursday to Riverdale's Green Enterprise Incubator, a string of university-affiliated businesses meant to offer an example of how the average neighborhood can adopt environmentally-friendly jobs.
The two-year-old venture consists of a community-run farm, a refurbished bike shop and a biodiesel fueling station. Margaret Morgan-Hubbard, director of the Engaged University, the university program that gave birth to the project, said Hoyer requested to see the incubator after hearing about it on his May 11 trip to the university.
Morgan-Hubbard said she hoped the tour would lend more exposure to the businesses, which are all aiming to expand.
"We want our work better known," she said. "We'd like to show people who are policy-makers that some of this is happening in their own backyard."
The first stop on Hoyer's tour was the Master Peace Community Farm, a half-acre garden divided into four segments: family-run plots, a youth garden overseen by local middle schoolers, an urban farm, and a communal area for picnicking, perennial fruit and outdoor learning.
"The major point of our farm is to demonstrate urban agriculture and to show how important it is to have locally grown produce," Morgan-Hubbard said. "Locally grown produce is actually a green job strategy because of the amount of fuel that's spent on conveying food across the country and across the world."
Observing the greenery, which is enclosed in a wire fence bearing larger-than-life painted cutouts of turnips, eggplants, pumpkins and peppers, Hoyer seemed impressed.
"In a suburban community, there's no reason why people can't do it in their own yards," Hoyer said.
The Engaged University, which has several programs that merge university and community sustainability efforts, is looking to expand their farm to an adjacent one-acre plot of land currently owned by the Prince George's County Board of Education.
Stop number two was the Renaissance Youth Bike Shop, which refurbishes abandoned bikes from the campus and community. The shop runs bike safety and mechanics classes for youths, the Earn-a-Bike program in which participants do volunteer work to earn their own bicycle, and the Safe Riding Helmet Campaign.
The shop also boasts its own pedal-powered electricity generator, a stationary bike with six light bulbs perched on the back, which Hoyer hopped up on, declaring himself "fired up and ready to go."
The tour's last stop was the biodiesel fueling station, a lurid green shed topped with a wind turbine and solar panel to power it. The station, whose biodiesels is produced from used vegetable oil, currently serves about 30 people in the community.
Morgan-Hubbard presented Hoyer with packets detailing each project as well as proposals for their expansion, including a proposal for a "solar community farm" to be built on their building's rooftop as a replicable model.
"We're hoping that those collectors can provide the electrical needs not just to the building but some of the community as well," Morgan-Hubbard said.
While Hoyer said he was impressed by the projects and the dedication of the university students and community youth, he only hinted at supporting their enterprises in the future.
"What they need is obviously support - financial support - and we'll see what programs are available to help them," he said. "In many of the things that are really confronting our communities, this Engaged University is helping people become more knowledgeable about what the problems are and where the solutions are."
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