1. Circle of Life: From The Garden To The Kitchen To The Garden. Don’t toss your kitchen scraps in the trash can. Feed your garden plants/lawn from your kitchen.
- Coffee Grounds. Rich in Nitrogen that enhances the soil, and improves soil texture and drainage. Sprinkle a half inch of coffee grounds in your garden and work into the soil and watch your plants perk right up. Asparagus ferns and geraniums don’t like coffee ground at all. Coffee grounds will also repel pests like snails, slugs, squirrels and rabbits.
- Cooking Water: Just finished boiling water for eggs, pasta, potatoes or spinach? Don’t pour the water down the drain. Allow the water to cool and all it to your compost pile or into your garden. Nutrients such as starch, iron, calcium, and potassium are left in suspension in the water. WARNING: When cooking these products, DO NOT add salt to the water.
- Banana Peels: Are aphids chewing on your roses? Just cut your banana peels into pieces and incorporate them ½ inch into the ground. Your roses will also love the potassium.
- Whole Grain Cereal and Bread Crumbs: Whole grains, buried in a garden row, will provide a tasty treat for earthworms and keep harmful pests at bay.
- Crushed Shells: This long lasting mulch adds calcium and other nutrients to your flower bed, vegetable garden or flower pots. Wash and boil shells to remove excess salt before crushing the shells into a fine consistency.
- Sour Milk : A rich source of calcium for your plants or compost. Dilute sour milk with water and pour it at the base of your rose bushes or tomato plants. If deer are a problem, the smell of sour milk will chase nibbling deer away.
- Tea Leaves: Add to the ground for acid-loving plants like rose bushes, blueberries. Tea leaves keep slugs away and contain nutrients and tannins. You can also make some sun tea and water you plants with the cooled tea.
- Citrus peels: Lemon and Orange peels juice up your plants by adding nitrogen, calcium, magnesium and sulfur to the soil. Let the peels dry, grind them up a bit and mix into the garden or the compost. Source: “The Kitchen Table Book 2”
2. 2019 AAEE Conference: Arizona We Are EE!
September 12-14, 2019
Prescott College
220 Grove Ave
Prescott, AZ 86301
www.prescott.edu
Cost: $150 to $425
Arizona Green Chamber is partnering with Arizona Association for Environmental Education to bring you the 2019 AAEE Conference: Arizona We Are EE!. Green businesses can connect with a variety of environmental educators that share your passion for a sustainable Arizona. All Arizona Green Chamber members receive the AAEE member rate for conference registration.
3. Join us on Sept 17th 2019 at 5:00 for Arizona Green Chamber’s Drinks and Dialogue, at
Goodman’s Interior Structures, a commercial furniture distributor, with a vision to change our community.
Location: 1400 E Indian School Rd, Phoenix, AZ 85014
Cost $10 for members or first time guests
Cost $20 for non members
For more information, go to azgreenchamber.org
Our September 17th Green Drinks and Dialogue event will be hosted by Adam Goodman, President and CEO of Goodmans Interior Structures in Phoenix. Join fellow AZ Green Chamber members for a of tour the Goodmans LEED building and learn about their business model. As Arizona’s first BCorp, Goodmans believes that by considering all stakeholders, Goodmans can be a catalyst for change in our community. Be inspired on how you can use your own assets, resources, and talent to evolve into a more conscious business.
4. Solid and Hazardous Waste and Pollution Prevention Workshop in Flagstaff
Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) Waste Programs Division invites interested community members and business and government personnel to participate in our free workshop. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn about the latest requirements and best practices and to earn Professional Development Hours.
Wednesday, Sep. 25 Solid Waste, Hazardous Waste and Pollution Prevention 9 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Coconino County Community Services and Health Services District, Ponderosa Conference Room – 2625 N King St, Flagstaff Learn more and register at azdeq.gov
5. WRRC Brown Bag – The Ecology of Water Harvesting
September 10, 2019
Speaker: Vanessa Buzzard, Senior Research Specialist, UA School of Natural Resources and Environment
Time/Location: 12:00 p.m. – 1:15 p.m. WRRC Sol Resnick Conference Rm. (350 N. Campbell Ave., Tucson)
Water harvest systems are common in residences throughout Tucson, but little work has been done to explore how these systems impact ecological processes. We therefore set out to characterize changes in ecosystem processes relating to soil health after installation of various water harvesting systems.
LIVE ONLY, NO WEBINAR
6. State § 404 Proposed Program Roadmap Available for Review
ADEQ has drafted a proposed Roadmap outlining the pathway to Arizona’s assumption of the CWA § 404 permitting program from the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE). This Roadmap also serves as our vision for a State-administered § 404 program.
This Roadmap was developed after more than a year of meetings, research, and collaboration with stakeholders, including federal and state agencies, and is located on ADEQ’s website at static.azdeq.gov/wqd/404/404rm.pdf. The Roadmap addresses many of the questions asked by stakeholders, bu there is still work to be done.
We Value Your Feedback
After you have reviewed the Roadmap, please complete a short, voluntary online survey to provide feedback. A link to the survey is on page 66 of the Roadmap. The deadline to complete the survey is Oct. 4, 2019.
Stakeholder Meetings
In addition to the survey, ADEQ will hold three stakeholder meetings in September. Tribal Listening Sessions will also be held in the afternoons on the same days in the same stakeholder meeting locations. Please RSVP for each meeting at the email links below.
Flagstaff
Date/Time: Tues., Sept. 17, 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.
Location:
Coconino Community College
Board Room
2800 S Lone Tree Rd., Flagstaff, AX 86005 RSVP E-MAIL
Phoenix
Date/Time: Thurs., Sept. 19, 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.
Location:
Arizona Department of Transportation Human Resource Development Center Grand Canyon Rooms 1-3
1130 North 22nd Ave. Phoenix AZ 85009 RSVP E-MAIL
Tucson
Date/Time: Fri., Sept. 20, 9 a.m. to 12 p.m.
Location:
Tucson Convention Center, Maricopa-Mohave Meeting Rooms
260 S Church Ave. Tucson, AZ 85701 RSVP E-MAIL
Join Remotely:
Click to Join Online via WebEx | Meeting number (access code) 802 336 620 | Password JXTkcD2F
By Phone | (415) 655-0003 | Access code 802 336 620 WebEx Help
Path Forward
ADEQ will review comments on the Roadmap to determine if the proposed State § 404 program adds value to the regulated community. If state assumption adds value to the regulated community, ADEQ will begin drafting program rules in fall 2019. It is anticipated the draft rules will be distributed late in the fall with formal rulemaking to begin in early 2020 to support submitting an assumption package to EPA by end of June 2020. A more detailed schedule is included in the Roadmap.
Again, ADEQ thanks all the dedicated stakeholders for sharing their expertise and experiences with the ADEQ 404 team. For more information on state assumption of the CWA § 404 program visit azdeq.gov/cwa-404.
7. Climas Monthly Precipitation and Temperature: July precipitation was mostly below average to much below average in Arizona, July temperatures were mostly above average to much above average in Arizona. The daily average temperature anomalies for Jul 1 – Aug 15 highlight the fluctuations at select stations around the region.
Seasonal Precipitation and Temperature: Total precipitation for the last three months (May-July) was below normal or much below normal for most of Arizona and limited early season tropical storms and a late monsoon onset are part of this story.
Drought: Despite the recent below average precipitation, the impact of longer-term above average precipitation in much of the Southwest is reflected in the Aug 6 U.S. Drought Monitor (USDM), which continues to document relatively low levels of drought designation in Arizona. The past three months of mostly below average precipitation, and the late onset of the monsoon, however, will lead drought experts to closely monitor these conditions.
8. Not You Again: Dealing with unwanted guests. We’ve all had an unwanted guest that we can’t seem to get rid of. The mother-in-law who stays too long or the neighbor who won’t stop talking when you’re trying to walk into the house. And we know the tactics to get rid of them. But what do you do when your unwanted guest is a pest?
Some Arizona residents whose homes back up to the CAP canal face these unwanted guests twice a year when caddisflies hatch. Caddisflies are a small, moth-like insect that live in water as larvae and on land as an adult. They are harmless to humans and pets; however, they can be quite a nuisance when they emerge from the water in spring and fall. Because of the impact to neighbors, CAP has invested significant time, labor, and financial resources into researching control mechanisms that will help to reduce the caddisflies. Unfortunately, our findings are no different from what scientists have concluded for the past 100 years; there is no effective, responsible method to significantly reduce or eliminate caddisfly populations. But CAP hasn’t given up. We know that catfish will eat caddisfly larvae in the canal. The fish won’t eliminate the caddisflies, but they will reduce the population and provide some relief. Since 2011, CAP has stocked over 55,000 channel catfish in various canal locations to eat caddisflies. Source: CAP
