SFR grad creates green office certification program on campus – UW Today

How green is your office? Now there’s a way to find out and even quantify your office’s efforts at environmental responsibility. The Environmental Stewardship and Sustainability (ESS) office, housed within Finance & Facilities has created a Green Office Certification Program which consists of an informal audit of office practices, accomplished through a short survey. The effort to create an office certification program was initiated by Jennifer Perkins, now a UW graduate of the School of Forest Resources with a specialty in environmental science & resource management and a minor in quantitative science, who was an intern with ESS. 

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Dams in the news

Below the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River.

We in Washington have been hearing plenty about the Elwha dam removal. While ecological effects of such a giant project will take years to assess, the removal itself might be a hallmark of shifting perceptions about the costs and benefits of damming rivers. This shift might have begun around 1978 with Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill, a 1978 ruling in which the Supreme Court ruled that a project to build the Tellico Dam on the Little Tennessee River had to be halted because it would likely lead to the extinction of the snail darter. 

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