Planning sustainable boulevards The city of Milwaukee has 120 miles of irrigated and landscaped boulevards, representing a long-term investment in public infrastructure dating back to the 1920s with the construction of the first irrigated and landscaped boulevard at West McKinley Avenue. District 14 Alderman Tony Zielinski is hosting a meeting on the city’s Department of Public Works forestry division’s “Sustainable Boulevards,” Milwaukee’s Strategic Boulevard Plan, Tuesday, July 24 at 6pm in the Bay View Library, 2566 S. Kinnickinnic Ave. The forestry division is the steward of the boulevard system. But facing fiscal constraints, its long-term management is a challenge. Sustainable Boulevards calls for removal of low-impact flower and shrub beds (to be replaced with grass and trees), installation of highly visual “signature landscape beds,” increasing tree canopy in connecting boulevard segments, and conversion to an automated irrigation system. Implementation of Sustainable Boulevards will require significant capital investment, anticipated to be offset by a reduction in seasonal staffing with an expected payback period of less than 10 years. Additional funding and partnerships are also sought.
Group home renovated
Volunteers from Honeywell corporation and Rebuilding Together Greater Milwaukee renovated “Logan House,” St. Ann Center’s group home at 3800 S. Logan Ave., June 9. Honeywell donated $20,000 in materials and nearly 40 Honeywell employees to rehab the master bedrooms, create easier mobility and privacy, build a deck, install a new fence, add landscaping, and make the house more handicap accessible. Logan House allows its residents to live independently as adults in the community. Prior to living at Logan House, residents lived with their parents. The St. Ann Center for Intergenerational Care, 2801 E. Morgan Ave., is a nonprofit organization providing day services for children, the disabled, and the frail elderly.
National Day Out Aug. 4 The South Shore Park Watch sponsors the National Day Out during the South Shore Farmers Market Saturday, Aug. 4. Organizations are invited to promote themselves at a table. To learn more, contact Kathy Mulvey at (414) 744-0408 or housamulvey@yahoo.com.
Julie Barker of Roger Williams University in Rhode Island examines zooplankton in a sample jar filled with water from Lake Michigan. Barker is one of nine undergraduates which an NSF grant has enabled to study at the UWM WATER Institute this summer. ~photo Carmen Aguilar
Lake Michigan poster presentations Research projects on invasive species, aquaculture, fisheries, coastal studies, and other topics will be presented Friday, Aug. 10 at 2:30pm at the Great Lakes WATER Institute, 600 E. Greenfield Ave. The talks and poster presentations focus on Lake Michigan and are open to the public. Nine undergraduates from universities in Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, South Carolina, and Wisconsin will present their findings. For more than 10 years, Bay View residents Carmen Aguilar and Russell Cuhel, scientists at the WATER Institute, have been hosting college students for summer environmental studies projects. The Research Experience for Undergraduates program is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and has been housed at UWM Center for Great Lakes Studies and the WATER Institute since 1987. The nine students accepted in the 10-week program work individually with scientists on topics related to Great Lakes science, technology, engineering and mathematical applications. For more info: glwi.uwm.edu.
This giant wind turbine blade blocked traffic on KK July 3.
~photo Ken Reibel
Wind turbines move through Bay View By Michael Timm Colossal metal blades half a city block long made their way down Kinnickinnic Avenue in early July, shipped from the world’s largest supplier of wind power systems through Milwaukee, destined for two Midwest wind farms. The first of eight ships bearing parts for 34 wind turbines arrived in the Port of Milwaukee June 28, said Betty Nowak, the port’s marketing manager. The BBC Mississippi, on its first journey to Milwaukee, replaced its mechanical imports with exports of grain before it departed July 3. The turbines were manufactured by Denmark’s Vestas corporation and were headed for wind farms in Twin Groves, Ill. (396 megawatts) and Prairie Star, Minn. (100.65 megawatts), both Horizon Wind Energy projects. In the first shipment, 73 blades (maximum: two per truck), 34 hubs, and 34 generators were transported by truck from the port. The hubs and generators were moved by 40-foot flatbeds but the blades were transported as oversized loads, Nowak said, and these trucks were not allowed on the interstate within Milwaukee County. Bay View resident Ken Reibel got stuck in traffic around noon, July 3 as a result of the blades. “I was just going north on KK and they wouldn’t let me through past Lincoln,” he said. When he followed the detour he saw three trucks, each with a giant turbine blade. Reibel subsequently shot video of the blades, which he said looked like “giant canoes.” The video is posted on YouTube. The port has received shipments of wind turbines before, five ships in 2003 from Spain’s Gamesa Eólica, another leading wind turbine manufacturer, and also in 2001 when Milwaukee handled domestically-produced turbines trucked from West Fargo, N.D.’s DMI Industries to the port, then shipped via the Great Lakes to the port at Oswego, N.Y. for export, Nowak said. The second ship bearing the turbines for the two Horizon Wind Energy farms is expected July 14, with another ship every second or third week after that through December, Nowak said. Vestas announced June 29 it will ship 41 of its V82-1.65 wind turbine units to Wisconsin in 2008. The 68-megawatt order was placed by Wisconsin Power and Light Company, a subsidiary of Alliant Energy Corporation based in Madison, Wis. The turbines will populate the new Cedar Ridge Wind Farm in the Townships of Eden and Empire in Fond du Lac County, according to the Vestas website. View Ken Reibel’s video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFNDNj6zqqI
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Volume 4 • Issue 7
T H E B AY V I E W C O M P A S S
July 2007
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