For those who many not have the opportunity, or the ability to surf the big waves, there is an EPA website that allows you to do a slightly different type of surfing.  The website gives you the tools you need to easily Surf Your Watershed!

Find your nearby watershed by using the simple form located on the page.  Once you locate your watershed, there are many links filled with information for you to search.  For example, I searched the Wissahickon Creek that I bike and hike near on the weekends. Then I followed the first link, “Citizen-based Groups at Work in this Watershed,” and found out that there were 36 different organizations that are working to protect its water quality.  Now I can contact one of these groups to find out about cleanups, monitoring activities, restoration projects and other activities!  This was only one example of the thousands of surfable watersheds in the country.  You can surf until your legs…well, hand… gets tired!  And there’s no risk of getting water up your nose or embarrassing yourself in front of a beach full of people.

Tell us what you find when you Surf YOUR Watershed!

Do you have a blog, website, wiki, social media profile, or other form of a web page? EPA has something that you might be interested in to jazz up your site! They’re called widgets (sometimes referred to as gadgets), and they are an easy way to keep your viewers interactive and entertained on your page.

“What’s a widget?”, you might be wondering.  A widget is small piece of Web programming code that makes something interesting appear on your blog or Web page. Widgets can feature updated information (like a clock, countdown, or news ticker) or let the reader perform an action (like use a search box). EPA’s widgets allow users to see or search for environmental concepts.

Some cool water widgets offered by EPA are:

• WaterSense Tip – Get a new tip on water efficiency each month and get more information from the WaterSense Web site.
• Natural Lakeshores – This widget provides a series of ten tips for improved lakeshore stewardship, focusing on natural lakeshores – lakeshores with plenty of native trees, shrubs, and overhanging vegetation. Native vegetation along lakeshores provides food, shelter, habitat and shade for fish and protects the lake from the damaging effects of erosion and polluted stormwater runoff. This contributes to improved water quality, which can in turn help increase the value of lakefront property.
• Find Your Watershed – Enter your ZIP code to get information about the watershed(s) in that area.

If you’re interested in EPA’s widgets, check out the widget page containing more fun environmental widgets for everyone!

Do you have any environmental widgets on your blog or page that are not from EPA?  What other kinds of widgets have you seen around the web that you’d like to see EPA create?  Let us know about your experience with them!

Longwood Gardens in southeast Pennsylvania has established the largest green wall in all North America.  Located in Kennett Square about 30 miles from Philadelphia, Longwood Gardens is an oasis of landscaped beauty.  Built by Pierre du Pont between 1907 and the 1930’s, the gardens were turned over to a foundation in the 1940’s to ensure that the general public would be able to enjoy them for years to come.

The idea for the green wall started as a sketch on a cocktail napkin. Longwood desired a grand new entrance to the East Conservatory Plaza.  And, because they handle almost one million visitors a year, there was also a need for more restrooms. The result is a curving structure with 17 restroom pods strung together. The walls consist of 3,590 modular panels mounted on a steel framework. Each panel houses a carefully selected variety of plants, about 47,000 plugs in total. The plants are fed by drip irrigation of water enhanced with liquid fertilizer.

The living walls – which have multiple water benefits – help connect visitors with plants, dampen noise in the area, provide moisture and oxygen to the air, and moderate the temperature of the microenvironment in that area. Green walls are one of the tools used by architects and planners to create more sustainable communities. Depending on the design and whether they are indoors or outdoors, green walls can enhance the water environment by slowing down a significant amount of stormwater runoff, resulting in healthier streams. Green walls can also be a way to reuse grey water, such as wastewater collected from washing and runoff from roofs. The plants can purify the water and the system can reduce overall water consumption.

For more information on the green wall at Longwood Gardens, go to:  http://www.longwoodgardens.org/GreenWall.html.

EPA is helping local drinking water and wastewater utilities bring down one of their biggest controllable costs – energy.

In a series of free webcasts and other outreach activities this year, the Water Protection Division in EPA’s mid-Atlantic region is offering tips and tools for more efficient energy use at your local treatment plant.

 To get a sense for how your local water sector utility can reduce its energy costs, tune in to the latest EPA webcast being offered to plant operators and the public on Thursday, December 1 at 1 p.m.   This one will focus on reducing operating costs through energy use assessments and auditing.

 Improving energy efficiency is an ongoing challenge for drinking water and wastewater utilities.  Energy costs often represent 25 to 30 percent of a treatment plant’s total budget.

 The December 1 webcast will help plants focus on two key elements of energy management – determining how much energy the utility is using in each part of its operation, and conducting an energy audit to identify opportunities for greater efficiency and cost savings.

Join us on December 1 to learn more.

Maybe it is the calming sound of water moving, whether down a waterfall or crashing onto a beach.  Any real estate agent knows that property near water, whether an ocean, lake, river, or stream, commands a higher price. But, with rising sea levels and stronger, more frequent storms, those prime water side properties may now be in danger of flooding, not just once every 100 years, but once every few years.

What is a homeowner to do after a flood? Sell (if they can) or stay? Many choose to stay put, figuring the benefits outweigh the costs of shoveling mucky mud out of their basement and maybe even the first floor, as well as other personal and financial tolls..

Did you know there are even contractors now who deal with renovating flood- susceptible buildings? Their floodproofing techniques include:

• Replacing gypsum and plasterboard walls with concrete
• Covering floors with stone, concrete or ceramics, not carpeting
• Rearranging rooms — putting the kitchen, laundry room, and electric box on the second floor (known as an “upside down house”)
• Running electrical lines not near the floor, but higher up on the wall

Homeowners are advised to use only lightweight, easy-to-move furniture in the basement and on the first floor. It’s a case of adaptation — minimizing the damage that might occur during the next flood.

These techniques are being applied in many areas of the Northeast where this fall we had the double whammy of Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee. In Pennsylvania, an emergency declaration was issued for more than half of its counties and parts of Wilkes-Barre and Harrisburg and other areas close to rivers were evacuated. The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency and its federal counterpart, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), provided assistance.

 FEMA has developed a Homeowner’s Guide to Retrofitting if you would like to learn more about floodproofing techniques.  And EPA has a variety of information and links on what to do before, during and after a flood.  http://www.epa.gov/naturalevents/flooding.html

The most ‘app’ealing entries in EPA’s Apps for the Environment challenge have been announced.

We gave you a heads up about the challenge in a blog post earlier this year. Click here to read it.

The challenge encouraged new and innovative uses of EPA’s data to create apps that address environmental and public health issues.  Developers from across the country created apps with information on a variety of topics, including water protection.   A few even developed games to help people learn environmental facts.

Click this link for information about the winning entries and other submissions. http://appsfortheenvironment.challenge.gov/submissions

Are you a mobile apps developer? Do you know one? Well now is your chance to show us what you can do with EPA data on a mobile device!

EPA’s Apps for the Environment Challenge is a contest that puts your tech-savvy to the test.  EPA challenges you to find new ways to combine and deliver environmental data in a mobile app.  You can use EPA data by itself, or combine it with other environmental and health data to make a useful resource for individuals or communities.  Besides addressing one of EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson’s Seven Priorities, the only limit to what you can create is your own imagination!  You have until September 16, 2011 to submit your application, and you can get all the details here.

Not a coder but think you might have the next big idea for an environmental app?  There’s a place for your input.  Visit EPA’s Data and Developer Forum to submit your idea for an app, as well as submit comments or questions about EPA’s existing apps, data resources, and data sets.  The brainstorming has already started, so check out the ideas for apps that others have had to get inspired! 

We’d like to challenge you one step further and encourage you to come up with an app that uses water data about the Mid Atlantic region.  That’s right, we’re talking about a Healthy Waters App!  There are lots of places to find data about the waters of our region.  EPA and state websites have loads of interesting data that includes water quality monitoring and assessment, Total Maximum Daily Loads (TMDLs), permitted facilities, non-point source projects, drinking water sources and facilities, beach sampling, and clean water grants….just to name a few!  You might also find interesting water data from other federal agencies, like the USGS, Forest Service, National Park Service, or CDC.  What other sources of water data can you think of?

We’d love to hear from you in our own comments section… how would your Healthy Waters App use Mid Atlantic data?  I’m no computer scientist, but if I could make a Healthy Waters App, I think I would make one where I could type in my address (or let my cell phone GPS determine my location) and have it tell me where my drinking water comes from, any consumer confidence reports the facility has issued, what watershed I’m currently in, any impairments nearby waterbodies have, all shown on a map of course.  Or maybe I would want it to tell me where the nearest EPA-funded water project is.  Or maybe I would want to have mobile beach advisory alerts, so I knew when and where it was safe to go for a swim.  Or maybe…

Well that’s enough from me!  Tell us about the Healthy Waters app that you would make, and get cracking on your code to submit your app to the challenge!

Yes, you may be up to date with most new chat and instant message shorthand or acronyms used today, like “LOL” (laugh out loud), “BRB” (be right back), and “GTG” (got to go).  But no matter how much of an expert you may think you are, I’ll bet that you haven’t heard of the newest acronym on the block, “RTK!” What “RTK” stands for is, the “right to know.”  Have you ever walked or driven by an industrial factory or plant and wondered if what you see or don’t see being emitted and disposed is threatening to your community?  Do you feel as if you have the “RTK?”  The answer is yes, you do have the right, and with EPA’s newest mobile app “MyRTK,” you now have it right in your hands.

This mobile app can be found on the EPA mobile page under apps.  What “MyRTK” does is allow you to search a specific location for potentially toxic facilities surrounding it.  Say you are in an area near the Chesapeake Bay; with this app you can type in “Chesapeake Bay” or “Chesapeake Bay, MD.”  Once selected, a map will appear with all facilities in the vicinity represented by a pin.  When you select a facility, you’ll be provided with information on the chemicals they handle, what is in their releases, the potential health effects of those chemicals, and a history of the facility’s compliance with releasing the chemicals. 

Want the right to know?  There’s an app for that!  So download it now.  Also click here to check out other mobile apps offered by EPA mobile.  Think this app is a good idea, or maybe you have an idea for another app to help people know more about potential water pollutants around them, then let us know.