The first day was spent with our host at El Paso Marty Howell - Sustainability Manager. After an introduction to the council and seeing marty present the Sustainability report card we watched and listened to an online info sharing session with other sustainability managers from around the country.

Several of of the cities involved have started experimenting with different methods to show how ghg gas emissions are attributed to a community. The cities had shown what their cities emissions profile looked like when you look at consumption rather than the traditional usage mehtodology. This really shows how people consumer choces have a big emissions footprint.

In the afternoon we visited the ASARCO copper smelter which is being deconstructed. It is a huge site and is also very close to the centre of the city. Two of the councillors came with us on the site visit. The city has started to do some visioning and development scenarios for what the site could be like when it is ready for redevelopment. El Paso is big on the New Urbanism and engage the services of one of the well known pracitictioners in this area as well as providing training for their staff. It is intended that the LEED-ND standard will be used for this area.

More info about the project can be found here http://www.recastingthesmelter.com

The smelter site cannot be used for residential development so it is proposed to be reused for mixed use,  and sports arenas. It should be available for development in about 2016.

There were also some great historic industrial buildings on site which will be retained and reused. The old power station was fantastic and still had all the old equipment inside. The site has some huge challenges tho with copper slag having been dumped into a huge gully and also lead tailings piled on site. It was fascinating to learn how they were carefullly deconstructing and marketing some parts for reuse to further increase the funds for rehabilitation. The scrap metal also has huge value and the materials on site are carefully sorted and sold to maximise their return.

E Paso has some interesting issues about water and we are looking forward to finding out more later in the week. Hope everyone is settled in their host communities!!!