By John DeFore
Green Right Now
This June may have given New Yorkers an unseasonably rainy stretch crummy enough to keep them inside whenever possible, but it has also delivered a novel way to exploit the rare sunny day: A new park built upon industrial ruins, sustained by both citizens and government, and (to judge from its opening week) enjoyed by all.

Known as The High Line, the park sits upon a long stretch of elevated train track running down the west side of the city’s lower end. The nearly 80 year-old tracks once carried freight through industrial areas, running straight through some warehouses to allow for easy loading and unloading of goods.
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Chestnuts for a roasting planet
By Barbara Kessler
Green Right Now
As summer sets in, many of us are looking to shade those windows any way we can, and one of the greenest solutions is to add greenery. Outside the window, that is.
A shade tree can mitigate the heat gain on a west or south-facing window and truly cut down on [...]
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Tags: · American Chesnut Foundation, American chesnut tree, Carbon sequestration, Douglas Jacobs, Native Plants, native trees, Purdue University, reforestation, shade trees
Tour de Faux Pas: Lance Armstrong Becomes Austin’s Top HH Water Consumer
By Barbara Kessler
Lance Armstrong may have to take his own advice and “dare to change” his life after being outed as the city’s biggest water guzzler, using a whopping 222,900 gallons of water in June, according to an AP report that appeared in the Austin American-Statesman late last week.
In July, consumption jumped to 330,000 gallons, putting him way out in front of the competition at about 38 times what the average household uses, according to the New York Times, which jumped onto the story.
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Tags: · Barbara_Kessler, Lance Armstrong, Native Plants, water