Sustainable Peralta

The Laney College Garden will be one of the many sites served by EBMUD's recycled water.

LANEY COLLEGE – The East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) will soon provide the entire Laney College campus and the Peralta District Offices sites with recycled water for use in all irrigation. Sergio Angel, Head Groundskeeper for the Peralta, expects EBMUD engineers to begin inspections this week to make sure no irrigation water will find its way into drinking water.

When completed, the retrofit will save Laney College approximately $6000, since recycled water is 25% less expensive than fresh water. The College currently uses 3.7 Million gallons of fresh water for irrigation each year.

“I thought it was crazy [to use recycled sewage water]. I heard that the water smelled, so I didn’t want it,” remembers Sergio. “Then [in 2006] we went for a tour [at their test sites] and the grasses and flowers EBMUD’s test plots looks good. They looked healthy, so we decided to try it.”
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An official negotiation meeting at the Copenhagen climate talks. Photo from Johannes Jansson/norden.org

Many people from the Oakland/East Bay traveled to Copenhagen including Laney College’s Green Jobs Program Coordinator, Emily Courtney, who travelled to observe the proceedings and atmosphere.

“It was amazing just how many dedicated people there were,” described Emily. “I met people on the bus ride to the conference center. You wait in the registration line and meet somebody else. Then you met the person you sat next to, and another person a lunch, and another new person on bus ride out. And it was like that everyday.”
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The film makers chomp on corn never meant to be eaten by humans.

On Wednesday night at Laney College, the Sustainability Committee hosts a screening of the film King Corn, telling the story of America’s biggest agriculture product. Approximately 40 people, mainly students, attended the screening.

“Students showed up for the extra-credit, but they got a lot more out of it than that,” said Amy Bohorquez, a Biology instructor at Laney College who helped produced the film series this semester. The series also screened other important documentaries such as The Waterfront and The Power of Community. Each of these films is available in the Laney library for instructors to use in their classes or community events.

In King Corn, two friends from college on the East Coast, move to the Heartland to learn where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America’s most productive, most-subsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. They try to follow their pile of corn into the food system, and find some uses for corn only a industry can imagine.