Energy, Environment and Resources Center

Jack Barkenbus, Executive Director

Center for Clean Products and Clean Technologies
Jack Geibig, Acting Director

Office of Communications
David Brill, Director

Community Partnership Center
Tim Ezzell, Director

Center for Geography and Environmental Education Rosalyn McKeown, Director

Oak Ridge Technology Research and Development Program Sheila Webster, Director

Southeast Water Policy Initiative David Feldman, Director

Water Resources Research Center Tim Gangaware, Assistant Director

Waste Management Research and Education Institute Policy Research

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Highlights and Initiatives is written and edited by David Brill <dbrill1@utk.edu>.

For more information call Gail Farris at 865-974-4251 or write to EERC, 311 Conference Center Building, Knoxville, TN 37996-4134.

Visit our Web site at: http://eerc.ra.utk.edu/

SPECIAL PROJECTS. Research Leader Mary English is under contract with the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) to conduct a study of local involvement in developing "context-sensitive solutions" to transportation issues facing the state. According to TDOT, this approach "involves all stakeholders in developing a transportation facility that fits its physical setting." As an outgrowth of this work, English has been asked to facilitate the upcoming meetings of the Knoxville Regional Parkway Design Resource Team-a citizen group that is preparing recommendations for the commissioner of TDOT on the alignment and other features of the proposed Knoxville Regional Parkway (formerly called the Orange Route), which will divert I-75 thru traffic away from congested interstates in Knoxville.

COMMITTEES. In March, Jack Geibig, acting director of EERC's Center for Clean Products and Clean Technologies, participated in an advisory committee meeting of the Healthy Building Network, a non-profit organization dedicated to the support and advancement of green building strategies. The meeting explored application of green building concepts in affordable housing and establishment of coalitions that would develop green building standards founded on humanhealth criteria and rooted in faith-based traditions. Advisory committee participants also discussed development of a tool for rating various building materials in terms of human-health impacts.

PUBLICATIONS. Don Huisingh, EERC senior scientist in sustainable development, is founder and editor in chief of the Journal of Cleaner Production www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro. Under Huisingh's leadership, the journal has grown from four to 15 issues per year and continues to serve as an interdisciplinary international forum for the exchange of information on technologies, tools, educational innovations, and policies designed to support sustainable development. Huisingh's research, teaching, and consulting on sustainability have led him to more than 90 countries. As an illustration of his on-going international efforts to support cleaner production and sustainability, Huisingh and S. Ghazinoory, of the Department of Industrial Engineering at BU-Ali Sina University in Hamedan, Iran, will publish "National Program for Cleaner Production in Iran: A Framework and Draft" in an upcoming edition of the Journal of Cleaner Production.

Research Leader Jean Peretz; Sujit Das, a researcher with Oak Ridge National Laboratory; and Bruce E. Tonn, professor in the Department of Political Science, published "Benefit-Cost Analysis of Three U.S. Department of Energy Automotive Lightweighting Material Projects" in the International Journal of Energy and Technology, Volume 2, No.4, 2004.

EERC Faculty Associate Mary Rogge, associate professor in the College of Social Work; Senior Research Associate Kimberly Davis; Deborah N. Maddox, executive director of the Alton Park Development Corporation, Chattanooga; and Milton Jackson, president of Stop Toxic Pollution (STOP), Chattanooga, will publish "Leveraging Environmental, Social, and Economic Justice at Chattanooga Creek: A Case Study" in a forthcoming [13(3)] edition of the Journal of Community Practice. The article describes neighborhood-based action among African American residents in promoting environmental cleanup and reversing economic oppression in a neighborhood bordering Chattanoooga Creek, one of the most polluted waterways in the southeastern United States.

SYNERGY, ENVIRONMENT, and RESOURCES

In the realm of multidisciplinary environmental research, EERC's Faculty Associates Program is forging new alliances across the campus and beyond. BY Elise LeQuire

The EERC's Faculty Associates Program was established in 2002 to encourage closer interactions among the Center's own researchers and faculty members pursuing environmental agendas that cross traditional departmental lines, from forestry to sociology, from agricultural economics to political science.

Faculty Associates represent a select group of UT faculty members chosen from a wide diversity of disciplines from the campus at large, says Jack Barkenbus, EERC's executive director. "The Faculty Associates Program is an advisory body that gets together on an ad hoc basis to help give EERC insight and direction," he says. The Faculty Associates also help spread awareness of EERC's activities to the larger research community. "These are our ambassadors across campus," Barkenbus says.

Mary E. Rogge, associate professor in the College of Social Work and one of the eight current associates, has collaborated with a group of researchers that spans several departments and includes Kimberly L. Davis, EERC senior research associate and assistant director of the Waste Management Research and Education Institute (WMREI).

The multidisciplinary project aims to promote community awareness, neighborhood empowerment, and environmental health and justice in neighborhoods in Chattanooga affected by industrial and commercial pollution of Chattanooga Creek.

Associate William M. Park, a professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics at UTŐs Institute of Agriculture, has a long record of joint research efforts with EERC. Park's current research interests also mesh with longterm EERC projects, including the effects of land-use change on the rural-urban fringe, open-space preservation, and resource conflicts on the Cumberland Plateau.

David L. Feldman brings to the program a focus on environmental ethics and the decision- making process. Before assuming his current position as head of UTŐs Department of Political Science, Feldman served as a senior research scientist at EERC.

An associate professor in the Department of Sociology, Robert Emmet Jones, who has more than a decade of collaboration with EERC, is a pioneer in the new, interdisciplinary field of environmental sociology. He has worked on joint projects with EERC staff to explore the future of the Oak Ridge Reservation and on water issues in Cumberland County, Tennessee.

Bruce Tonn, a professor in UTŐs Department of Political Science with a background in urban and regional planning, is currently working with EERC and Oak Ridge National Laboratory to assess an economic development plan for Cocke County.

Robert A. Bohm, professor and head of the Department of Economics, has been affiliated with EERC since its founding in 1973. His research interests have focused on the role of economic incentives in shaping environmental policy in the United States and abroad.

Donald G. Hodges, a professor in the Department of Forestry, Wildlife, and Fisheries, came to UT in 1999 and has been a Faculty Associate since 2002. Hodges' research focus includes land-use change and public and private land management.

For Richard J. Jendrucko, a professor in Mechanical, Aerospace, and Biomedical Engineering, the Faculty Associates Program extends his research perspective beyond his own area of expertise, industrial environmental engineering.

"EERC presents me with projects I would not have done on my own. Two of those took us to Beijing and Hong Kong on international technology-transfer missions," he says. In fact, EERC has a long track record of fostering international synergistic collaboration among researchers, from Sweden to Southeast Asia.

Barkenbus, EERC's executive director, is currently on a three-month Fulbright Fellowship to Greece and Turkey, trying to connect scientists working in both countries on issues of sustainable development.

For more information:
Visit http://eerc.ra.utk.edu/staff.html.