Welcome to Sustainable Quad Cities.
This website is a resource for people living in Rock Island, Moline, Davenport and Bettendorf and surrounding areas who are seeking ways to reduce our collective impact upon the earth.
It is also hoped that area teachers interested in incorporating school gardens into the classroom will find the information valuable.
We have the great fortune to live along the banks of the Great Mississippi River. Sixty percent of migratory birds use the Mississippi valley corridor to travel north and south. In the Mississippi watershed there are thirteen aquifers. The largest of these, the Oglala aquifer, is the largest underground ocean of fresh water on the planet. The Quad Cities is included in the Upper Mississippi valley region.
The Mississippi valley is as bio diverse as it gets in the Midwest. All around us is the rich heritage of life. It is up to us to make sure that our children inherit a world as full of life as the one we inherited.
Recently many people have been thinking "green" in the Quad Cities. We need to continue that trend into all aspects of our life here. Below there are listed various issues that we will have as we move forward into a future that requires for many reasons that we rethink the way we do things. Particularly where our food comes from and how we use energy.
Transforming The Quad Cities into a model sustainable community won't be easy but it's not impossible. There are many places such as New York City or Chicago that will be more difficult to redesign. There are some aspects of big city life that do get it right however such as mass transit. To varying degrees, all large metro area's have reasonably functional mass transit systems.
Therefore transportation is one of the biggest problems we will face in the future as a community. The need for transportation that is affordable, convenient, and is able to meet the requirement that we reduce our carbon emissions by 80% within a very short timeframe is essential. There is still obviously some uncertainty among scientists concerning what will be enough and how soon we must have the necessary changes in place. However there is no doubt that the largest consensus in scientific history has taken place and that voice is clearly saying that global climiate change is caused by human activity.
To secure a sustianable future for us and our children we will need to preserve the surrounding lands of the Quad Cities and encourage young people to become involved in agriculture. Only a shift toward a more agrarian society will ensure regional food security. A significant portion of this website is dedicated to providing information to teachers which can aid them in creating a school garden program. We call it "farming the future".
Another major hurdle we face is heating and cooling. There is plenty of technology out there, we just need to put it into place. Geothermal technology is probably the most cost effective and could easily be adapted to using the municipal potable water system to heat all our homes.
Without going into it too deeply here, geothermal works by pulling water out of the ground which around here is always 57 degrees below the frost line winter and summer. Inside the geothermal unit is what they call a heat pump which transfers and concentrates the heat in the ground water and then blows it out through a blower into the standard duct system of your house.
This arrangement could be adapted to using the potable water of the city. Physical modifications would be required such as the placing of substations that would add the thermal energy back into the potable water system as needed based upon loading of various areas throughout the city. In other words, while there is energy in your tap water, there's not enough without digging some wells around the city to pull the heat out of that ground water and add it into the city system in order to meet the needs of outlying neighborhoods.
One of the things standing in the way of this idea is that it would require taking potable water into your home and then putting it back out into the potable water system. This is currently not legal to do because of (very sensible) regulations gaurding us against pollution of our city water supply.
A possible requirement would (of course) be that anyone who was to do maintenance of geothermal units would be required to be licensed by the city to do such work and limit the homeowners right to work on everything in their home. Current law says that a homeowner may perform repairs on furnaces, hot water heaters, etc. but that anyone doing this as a business be licensed and bonded. I'm sure that the regulations concerning homeowner repairs would have to be changed in order for this idea to be accepted among residents.
Currently in Rock Island there is an opportunity to start a curbside recycling program. Most residents think this would be great and we hope it happens. To help things along however you have to call the City of Rock Island and let them know that you would like to subscribe. Cost is going to be $36.00 per year. Click the link below to go to the Rock Island City website and sign up.
Rock Island Curbside Recycling Program
