Live Green

TeTon Valley news Go Green 20111


208.354.8816


3 Affordably organic

4 Going blue essential to going green

5 Green Grasses

6 Saving Green

7 Conservation easements

8 Becoming eco-sensitive

10 Teton Valley gets RAD

12 Share a ride

Lisa Nyren/Live Green staff

Eating a diet of organic foods doesn’t have to be expensive as far as

Kathleen Egan, owner of Barrels and Bins in Driggs is concerned.

While she has owned and operated her community market on the corner of Main Street for almost two decades, Egan is always looking for new, quality, affordable products to offer her customers.

Recently she’s added a product line called Cadia, whose motto is “abundance of simplicity.” Cadia® offers mostly food products that are free of genetically modified organisms (gmos).

The best part, especially in today’s economy, is that these products are signifi-cantly easier on your wallet than some other organic brands.

“It’s going to be quite a bit more afford-able. We just really wanted to bring it to the community,” Egan said. “People have

this general idea that organic is more expensive … that’s not necessarily true,” she said.

While the store will continue to carry trusted brands already on its shelves, Barrels and Bins will be the only carrier of Cadia® products in Teton Valley.

“We just really try to be a community place,” Egan said.

In addition to Cadia® products, Barrels and Bins offers bulk foods, gluten-free foods, prepared foods (such as homemade soups, wraps and fresh carrot juice) as well as paper products and organic body care products.

Don’t worry if you’re thinking maybe the Cadia® line is a gimmick to get people into the store. Egan says she investigates all the companies and products she puts in her store. In addition to Cadia®, Egan is

also bringing in more eco-friendly house-hold products.

“We really research the companies we put on the shelf,” she said.

For more information about Cadia® products visit mycadia.com. To contact Barrels and Bins call (208) 354-2307. •

Affordably organic

Table of contents

Barrels and Bins stocks new line

Photo by Lisa Nyren


Ken Levy/Live Green Staff

You can’t go green without going blue. But going green with blue

can save you some green.The lifeblood of every living

organism, water, is becoming a more and more precious commodity throughout the world. Yet we often take our most valuable resource for granted, especially here in Idaho, where we lead the nation in per-capita water use, accord-ing to Lyn

Benjamin, former executive director of the Friends of Teton

River.The University of Idaho confirms

her statistics. “Idaho’s Water Resource,” by Robert L. Mahler and Mark M. Van Steeter, indicates Idahoans use 22,000 gallons per day on a per-capita basis. Overall, Idaho is second only to California in overall water use. About 97 percent of it is used for agriculture.

“Our community depends on clean, plentiful water for a strong agricul-tural economy,” Benjamin said. “Flowing streams support the abundant fish and wildlife that attract recreational visitors from around the world.”

Valley residents have access to some of the cleanest drinking water anywhere, coupled with some of the lowest rates for that water in the nation, said Benjamin.

But don’t assume that this is an unlim-ited resource.

“Although the region receives abundant snowfall, Teton Valley is a semi-arid region, where evaporation rates far exceed precipitation for many months of the year,” she said.

FTR works with the community to educate residents about conserv-ing and protecting the region’s water resources. They offer the following water-saving tips that will save you some gren while you save the blue:

• In the landscape, fix leaking sprinklers and only water your lawn when needed. Watering between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m., when temperatures are cooler, will provide more efficient watering.

• Use drip irrigation wherever possible on trees and shrubs, and set your mower to the highest setting.

• Consider using xeriscaping, which means choosing plants with low-water needs. You can get ideas about water-thrifty landscaping from FTR’s Teton Valley demonstration garden at the entrance to the city of Victor’s transpor-tation center at the south end of Pioneer Park, according to Amy Verbeten, education and outreach coordinator for FTR.

Funded by One Percent for the Tetons and the city of Victor, the garden was designed by MD Nursery and demon-strates how beautiful landscaping can be done with minimal needs for water, maintenance and other resources, she said.

Inside the home, you can save on water use by repairing leaky faucets and toilets and running the dishwasher and washing machines only when full. Use water-saving aerators on all faucets and look for Energy Star and Water Sense logos when consid-ering new appliances.

FTR also recommends using water-efficient showerheads and using the garbage disposal sparingly.

“By working together to conserve, we will ensure a safe and secure water supply for Teton Valley and its citizens,” Benjamin said. •

Going blue essential to going green

The Friends of the Teton River Watersmart demonstration garden at the entrance to the city of Victor’s transportation center at the south end of Pioneer Park.

Photo courtesy Amy Verbeten


Green Grasses

Rachael Horne/ Live Green Staff

Five years ago Sarah Ewing

rented a house for a ski vacation in Teton Valley with her family. She began looking at property, but it wasn’t until the summer that she realized she could make the Tetons her home year-round. It may have been a ski vacation that drew her here, but a place to have horses and grass waving in the summer breeze is what led her to stay.

Now Ewing has started a business to restore native grasses the Valley has lost over the years to agriculture

and developments. When Ewing went back home to Maryland to finish her Masters in Environmental Science at Johns Hopkins it was in the back of her mind to use that degree in some form in Teton

Valley. That’s how Steppe Grasses, her business got started.

“Over the last 100 years, they’ve been lost to the plow and the cow,” said Ewing. Her goal is to restore grasses for landowners that want to attract wildlife, or just have less of an impact on the environment.

Wildlife such as deer and

Grasses continued on page 15

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TVN Staff

Congress has renewed a tax incentive for private

landowners who protect their land with a voluntary conserva-tion agreement.

The incentive, which had expired at the end of 2009, helped the Teton Regional Land Trust work with willing landowners in the community to conserve more than 6,000 acres of productive agricul-tural lands and natural areas between 2006 and 2009.

Conservation-minded landowners now have until Dec. 31, 2011 to take advan-tage of a significant tax deduc-tion for donating a voluntary conservation agreement, which permanently protects important natural or historic resources on their land.

When landowners donate a conservation easement to the TRLT, they maintain owner-ship and management of their land and can sell or pass the land on to their heir.

The enhanced incentive applies to a landowner’s federal income tax. It raises the deduction a donor can take for donating a voluntary conservation agreement from 30 percent of their income in any year to 50 percent; allows farmers and ranchers to deduct up to 100 percent of

their income, and Increases the number of years over which a donor can take deductions from six to 16 years.

“Our whole community benefits when landowners conserve their land this way, protecting our water quality, fish and wildlife habitat, scenic landscapes, recreational spaces, and productive agricul-tural lands,” said Chet Work, TRLT executive director. Conservation agreements have become an important tool nationally for protecting our watersheds, farms and forests, increasing the pace of private land conservation to over a million acres a year.”

In 2011, TRLT hopes to work with up to 10 landown-ers on conservation easements. These landowners will be eligible to take advantage of the enhanced tax incentives.

According to the Land Trust Alliance, the national organi-zation that provides a voice for land trusts in Washington, D.C., bills to make this incen-tive permanent have 274 House and 41 Senate co-sponsors from all 50 states, including majorities of Democrats and Republicans in the House. This legislation is supported by more than 60 national agricul-tural, sportsmen’s, and conser-vation organizations. •

Congress renews Conservation Tax Incentive


Saving Green

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Sometimes the best way to go green is to keep what is already green intact.

That’s been the goal of the Teton Regional Land Trust for more than 20 years, as it continues to find and preserve critical habitat and agricultural ground through conservation easements.

A conservation easement is a permanent legal agreement that protects a habitat from development, while ensuring that traditional ownership and land uses like ranching continue, said Emily Nichols, outreach coordinator for TRLT.

Key among its priorities when seeking land to preserve are wildlife corridors and

the connectivity they provide, said Chet Work, TRLT’s executive director.

“A lot of people don’t understand the value of private lands in eastern Idaho and the west side of the Greater Yellowstone as winter range or migration range,” said Work. “We all attribute our great wildlife to Yellowstone, but nobody recognizes that it doesn’t stay in Yellowstone.”

Wildlife needs access to winter ranges through wildlife corridors, or “hallways” that give them that access. While some animals, such as elk, are resilient enough to walk around obstacles, “mule deer have been known to stare at a fence, and starve,” he said.

Animals heading toward winter range,

and back, tend to follow rivers and cover. With the exception of pronghorn, not many want to be out in the open, Work said.

In the valley, these corridors include Fox, Darby, Teton and South Leigh creeks. Badger, Bitch, North Leigh and Spring creeks are also favored.

“They’re all walking along those tree lines,” he said. “Losing one of these little bottlenecks could really throw a wrench in the system.”

TRLT is using scientific research to refine which are the most important corri-dors and have the most animals moving

Wildlife continued on page 14

Conservation easements

keeping wildlife corridors openA bull moose forages for food.


Saving Green



Across the board, Grand Targhee Resort’s efforts at environmental protection and stewardship read like a lengthy laundry list of eco-sensitivity.

From waste diversion efforts to energy conservation, carbon-footprint mitiga-tion to transportation-reduction strategies, the resort takes its role as green stewards seriously, said Christina Thomure, environ-mental consultant and former sustainability director for Grand Targhee Ski Resort.

Grand Targhee diverts 48 percent of its trash annually through recycling and composting, she said. Their goal is to exceed 50 percent in 2011.

“We also reduced our electricity use [last] winter season by 10 percent over our five-year average through behavior change alone,” said Thomure.

“Our next big initia-tive will be to completely eliminate the sale of bottled water at the resort and provide our guests with affordable alterna-tives,” she said. “Targhee has some of the nation’s best-tasting water and we want our guests to enjoy it while at the same time reducing their environmental impacts.”

To that end, the resort installed water refill stations to reduce use of single-use plastic bottles. Its glass-reduction initiative trimmed its overall waste stream by 16

percent. Glass-bottled beverag-es were replaced by those in aluminum cans and draft beers, “due to the energy inten-sive process of recycling glass in a remote location,” she said.

The resort is committed to using 100 percent post-con-

sumer recycled copier paper and, in 2010, reached a 15 percent reduction in electric-ity use, based on a five-year average. They reached this milestone through lighting retrofits, building weatheriza-tion, equipment upgrades and behavior modification, among other policies.

Targhee, she said, imple-mented a resort-wide energy conservation initiative focused on behavior change. It tracked daily usage compared to five-year average, conducted spot energy audits, and gave employees and guests incen-tives for reducing usage.

As the first business in North America to register — and third-party verify — greenhouse gas inventory through The Climate Registry, the resort’s energy-conservation initiatives reduced its carbon

footprint by 620 metric tons of CO2.Targhee was the first ski resort to

partner with Protect Our Winters, a nonprofit dedicated to uniting the winter sports community in actively addressing climate change, Thomure said.

On the transportation front, Targhee’s off-road vehicles averaged 12 percent biodiesel blend over the past five years. They’re looking to reduce fuel use by 8 percent over the five-year average for 2011.

To further reduction in trips and fuel usage at the resort, it offers an employee and guest shuttle Thursdays-Sundays. Carpool incentive programs have reduced average daily trips by 10 percent over the past two years.

The resort facilitated creation and implementation of the regional Teton Valley Mobility and Pathways commit-tee that is working to link the region with mass transportation. Grand Targhee is a founding stockholder in the LINX transit co-op, which will soon serve the greater Yellowstone region.

Becoming eco-sensitive

Grand Targhee sets green standard for ski resorts

“Baby” developer Seth Warren prepares to answer questions from youngsters visiting the Elements Tour during the Targhee Fest last July. The Baby, in this case, is a former Japanese fire truck converted to run on used fryer oil, wind and solar energy. Baby, a 1987 Toyota, has been traveling much of the country with the Elements Tour, and was on display as part of an environmental-awarness program at the Targhee Music Fest.


Our next big initiative will be to

completely eliminate the sale of bottled

water ... Targhee has some of the nation’s

best-tasting water and we want our guests to enjoy it while at the same time reducing their environmental

impacts.____________________

Christina Thomure, environmental

consultant


Becoming eco-sensitive

Grand Targhee also partners with the U.S. Forest Service to manage vegeta-tion within its permit boundaries through environmentally-sound treatments and applications.

Targhee established its sustainability charter in 2006.

“Sustainability, defined as meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to thrive, is a concept that has captured the attention of communities and businesses throughout the world,” Thomure said. “While techno-logical developments have helped increase

life expectancy and raised the standard of living for millions of people worldwide, those very same developments have added stresses to critical social, economic, and environmental systems.” •

“Baby,” which can sleep six in pop-out tents and is totally petroleum-fuel independent, is packed up and ready to continue the Elements Tour after a stint at the Targhee Music Fest last July.


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Teton Valley has finally realized what residents have long desired and deserved … no, not a tunnel under Teton Pass. Yet,

in a close second we finally have the choice to get curbside recycling pickup!

By conveniently recycling, sending less waste to the landfill, saving money and reducing carbon emissions, Teton Valley, Idaho, is getting RAD.

RAD, or Recycling Alternative Distribution, is our valley’s first and only curbside recycling pickup service.

Beginning in the fall of 2010, RAD offers curbside pickup service to all residents and businesses of Teton County, Idaho, and Alta, Wyo.

Local companystarts curbside recycling program

Teton Valley gets RAD

Dave Huducsko and Aaron Hambly.



RAD will decrease the volume of waste going to the landfill,

divert costs by reducing the tonnage hauled to the landfill

and decrease the valley residents’ overall carbon

footprint. ____________________

David HudacskoRAD co-owner

It doesn’t matter if you are up in Leigh Creek, in the Alta foothills or near Pine Creek Pass, RAD makes recycling easy by providing once per month, twice per month or weekly pickup.

RAD accepts No. 1 and No. 2 plastic bottles, plastic grocery bags, glass, corrugated cardboard, aluminum cans, tin and steel cans, office paper, magazines, newspaper and more. Currently, all plastics and paper commodities are taken to the recycling center in Jackson, Wyo.

“RAD’s goals are fundamental,” said co-owner David Hudacsko, “RAD will decrease the volume of waste going to the landfill, divert costs by reducing the tonnage hauled to the landfill and decrease the valley residents’ overall carbon

footprint. What’s more, the vision of RAD is to improve the convenience of recycling, publicize recycling’s finan-cial and environmental impacts on our local commu-nity and educate everyone on the impacts recycling has on our future.”

“While RAD believes that reducing each individual’s consumption is paramount, if you cannot do without an item, the benefits of recycling it are undeniable and we feel it should be high on everyone’s priority list,”

said co-owner Aaron Hamby. The time and effort it takes to load your

recycling in your car and drive it over Teton Pass or to Driggs can be undesirable. However, rather than not recycle or let it sit and grow in the corner of your garage, you now have the convenient choice to put it at the end of your driveway and have RAD

pickup your recycling. Keep an eye out for the silver truck

with the big wood box, towing the eight- compartment trailer. If you don’t see it on the road, just ask a student at any of the valley’s elementary schools to point it out, as RAD currently provides complimentary service to each institution.

Looking forward to the summer? RAD is set to provide recycling service at each Teton Valley Foundation “Music on Main” concert. Join us and see the operation while enjoying some great outdoor enter-tainment.

For information on how to sign up to get RAD, go to TheRadRecyclers.com or call (208) 220-7721.

RAD would like to thank its partners who support recycling in Teton Valley, Idaho: Silver Star Communications, Allstate Insurance, Teton Valley News, Mountain 102.9, Music on Main and All American Tire. •

— Submitted by David Hudacsko and Aaron Hamby

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Wildlife

Share a ride, help the earth and save money

Rachael Horne/ Live Green Staff

As parking at the top of Teton Pass becomes harder and harder to come by on busy powder days,

and with commuter numbers continually increasing, one man has come up with a proactive solution. Ben Morley started backcountryride.com this winter with the idea of eliminating traffic congestion on the Pass by providing an outlet for people to connect and share rides.

It’s not just for skiers going to and from the top of the Pass to ski. There are meeting places in both Victor and Driggs to get people to and from Targhee, Jackson, Teton Village, Wilson, Jackson Hole Airport and Grand Teton National Park.

It’s a bit like public transportation, but with the ability to create your own schedule. The website is a community-

driven network that connects people with other users who are either looking for rides or offering rides.

Morley said the idea started last summer when he was thinking about how to do a shuttle service on Teton Pass. Backcountry.com had tried to put together a shuttle service but was shot down by the Wyoming Department of Transportation for various safety reasons. The parking lot on top of the pass isn’t considered a pull-out parking zone, and having a commercial shuttle wasn’t in WyDOT’s best interest.

Morley said he began to think of differ-ent ways to provide some service and researched other areas that already had established ridesharing networks. He found the software and decided it would work for Jackson and Teton Valley.

“There are already so many commuters

and backcountry users so it’s just trying to hook up those two parties and eliminate some traffic congestion and parking issues to make everyone happy,” said Morley.

The website also includes a unique text message application for on-the-fly rideshare matches. The creators have desig-nated certain codes that the database will recognize. For example, if you want a ride from Driggs to Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, you can text the code “r Drig Vill 1” to (307) 200-8008. That means you are requesting a ride from Driggs to the Village for one person. All the text messaging codes are available at backcountryride.com.


Throughout the entire process of connecting members, no phone numbers are transferred. If there is a ride match, the website will automatically place a call to the matched member and give them the rideshare details, including the location, number of passengers and the rideshare member’s name. Then they members choose to accept the ride, and the website will automatically connect both members with no phone number exchange.

Morley said the response so far has been good and he’s gotten a lot of positive feedback. He said a few people from Victor and Driggs have used it the most already. So far Morley said they’ve had a lot of posts but not tons of matches. He expects that will change once there are more users.

“If you’re already going somewhere, you might as well say where you’re going,” he said. “Once the numbers are up it will be easier to request a ride and make a ride match.”

After developing the idea, Morley said they knew people liked to drive on their own and have the freedom to take off whenever it suits their schedules. They knew it would take some incentive for people to give up a piece of their freedom and start thinking about the bigger picture.

Consequently backcoun-tryride.com partnered up with backcountry.com to create a reward structure for people that

use the network the most. They developed a way of calculating every individual’s pounds of CO2 emissions reduced, their number of trips reduced, their vehicle miles traveled reduced, the amount of gas saved, and money saved. In keeping track of every individual’s pounds of CO2 emissions reduced,

they created a competition. The backcoun-tryride.com users who reduce the

most pounds of CO2 emissions in one season will win a gear reward from backcountry.com.

In order to make people more accountable so that other users can count on their ride and so that the reward system is not abused, several initiatives were taken. First, once someone registers to be a member of the backcoun-tryride.com network, he or she has to create a profile much like on Facebook, so other members can identify you as a legit person. Information such as her name, birthday, sex, profile picture, organization/company affiliation, number of typical open seats, car type, and her typical car pool route will be displayed in your profile. Two other key elements that other users can view in a profile are other members’ car pool statistics and a five-star rating scheme. Every member will have the ability to rate their experience on a five-star scale with other members when a car pool has taken place. Through this they aim at keeping members accountable within the network. •

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Wildlife continued from page 7_________________________________________________________________________________________________

through them. Idaho Fish and Game researchers place collars on small samples of these animals, Work said, to get an idea of where the majority of the animals are going.

“The corridors are probably what we know the least about and what could potentially be the most threatened,” Work said. “You don’t need just winter or summer range. Without either one of those you don’t have a population.”

Mule deer that spend their summers in Grand Teton National Park come up and over the Tetons to winter here in the Teton River Canyon, he said.

“That’s a pretty good migra-tion, 40-50 miles,” Work said, “and now we’re seeing those routes, and that helps us priori-tize one private property over another for conservation.”

Work said TRLT is working with landowners on three properties in the Teton Valley. all associated with the Teton River corridor.

“These properties could in essence be helping big-game winter range if we can ensure they stay undeveloped,” he said.

Three high-priority proper-ties along the South Fork of the Snake River closed with TRLT at the end of 2010. He anticipates 3-4 more this year. One is near the Lorenzo interchange at Highway 20, crossing over the South Fork, with others in the canyon reach.

Once a property is identified, the next step is to work with the landowner to understand the importance of protect-ing their land. Negotiations then begin to create an easement that would limit uses that would hinder wildlife movement or range.

Tax incentives help provide motivation for some landown-ers to protect their land. More than 6,000 acres have been preserved through the use of these incentives, said Work.

“A good portion of the work we do is with people who can’t

make use of the tax deduc-tion. When we work with a big farmer or rancher, they don’t have any use for that, and we end up compensating

them fully for their property, or they give of themselves.”

Work said the wildlife attribut-ed to the valley and Yellowstone evolved using agricultural lands as its winter and transitional range.

“It’s not agriculture that’s causing

these populations to decline,” he said. “It’s the conversion of agricultural lands to something that’s less viable to wildlife that’s going to make a change in our populations.”

TRLT often serves as an advocate for the landowner. In some cases where easement lands have weed problems, TRLT will help the landowner find grants or discounts on supplies to help eradicate the weeds.

When stream restoration or water quality issues arise, often eliminating the causes of damage helps alleviate the problems. Work calls this passive restoration, where taking away the problem lets the land heal on its own.

In cases where active restoration is needed, TRLT can help identify funding sources or consulting firms to build fences or otherwise help mitigate these issues. Sometimes, volunteers will help plant streamside willows or otherwise roll up their sleeves.

“We tend to leverage our energy on behalf of the landowner, putting in a lot of time, using a lot of contacts and writing grants,” he said.

Conservation easements aren’t about creating parks, locking up the land and keeping people out.

“We’re doing this for people, for the hunters and fishermen to keep populations abundant,” Work said. “We’re doing this for people who want to see wildlife in Yellowstone and outside.”

For more information about TRLT visit tetonlandtrust.org. •

We’re doing this for people, for the hunters and

fishermen to keep populations abundant. We’re

doing this for people who want to see wildlife in Yellowstone and

outside.____________________

Chet WorkTeton Regional Land

Trust executive director


Grasses continued from page 5_______________________________

elk need the native grasses, Ewing said, because the agricultural land they often munch on doesn’t hold the same nutritional value. She said the wildlife turn to native grasses in the winter, where other plants don’t hold the nutrients they need in the winter.

Native grasses also don’t need irrigation like other plants. They do need a decent water year, she said. Especially to get started. She said it take s a few years to develop, but it may be another 100 years before some of the land is restored to it’s native ways. A steppe is a plain mostly without trees, dominated by short grasses. Ewing’s business

is aimed at seeding and over-seeding grasses, establishing, maintaining and improving grass and rangeland.

Ewing said the grasses also help keep away noxious weeds. Part of her business is helping rid the land of the invasive species. Ewing doesn’t use chemicals, but said she doesn’t care if landowners do, so long as they are getting rid of weeds.

Ewing will be gearing up for her second season soon. She expects the business to expand a bit this year as she’s more established. Anyone interested in restoring his or her land to native grassland can contact Ewing at (208) 456-8606. •

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