Week 3 In Rewind! June 7, 2009

Hallo,

Ok-We're off to our fourth and last :( family so its time for a Netherlands update!

Monday we were hosted by the local rotaract club, or the rotary affiliate of 18-30 year olds. They took us on about a 10 mile bike tour that you can do around the city to view the city. It was a very clear sunny day (every where we go they assure us that this is not their normal cold rainy weather during this time, but we have only had rain the first day we came and one half a day-its fantastic because I heard its really hot in Florida...). They made us sandwiches of fresh cheese, ham or salami. We got to visit one of their apartments in a new development and it was really nice. Being able to bike in a complete circle around a city would be a fantastic thing to bring to a city like Gainesville or other smaller cities, or downtown Jax to create tourism, exercise opportunities, and lovely family outings. It was a holiday when we did it and everyone was out biking from 5 year olds next to their parents to 80 year olds with special bikes that have small motors and that are easy to climb onto. Have I mentioned that their trail systems are fantastic?

Tuesday we went into Eindhoven, the local large city. Karrin Bakker, who came on the Netherlands exchange team, planned the day for us. She works for a group that helps organize all of the municipalities in a province, like the North Florida regional planning council. They are trying to create a green cooridor for recreation, ecology, water, and wildlife. They will buy land from the local farmers. This is similar to what Robert and the District are trying to do except they are on the back end trying to get back natural areas. We can learn from their post planning and try to really push for clustered developments and wildlife corridors before it is too late and too expensive to go back. We also visited a local business park called a Brainport, or area with lots of businesses that invent or do research. The city is reworking the local highway to make the area more appealing to businesses to relocate to the business park. This is the A2 highway that runs from Amsterdam to the South of France. We asked why they are allowing each city to plan different things for this highway (actually Sean had a meltdown when he asked this and died laughing as we all pictured an I-95 route planed by individual Florida cities...). We drove around the highway after lunch, which is always a mistake to put us in a car after we eat for obvious reasons...

Wednesday we went into Helmond, where three of us are living and where my host dad is the city manager. A water engineer and an urban planner took us on a tour of various housing developments as Helmond was declared a growing city so they have been allowed to build homes. The first area was a flood control project. In a low part of the city water tends to collect on an agriculture area. They have paid this farmer to compensate for allowing his farm to flood in the past as a kind of drainage easement. The local waterschapp is planning to purchase the area for the city and dig a reservoir, similar to the C-1 rediversion project-but on a Dutch scale-smaller. We went to a development that is considered sustainable. They oriented the houses north south to get the most sun, many of the roofs have gardens on the roofs, many have solar panels, and there is an "ecological area" (when they pointed this out I was looking for it-they only have a small amount of space so they just dug a small stream and the banks have grown in and there are ducks....no 46,000 acre Three Forks...). We went to a new development modeled after Amsterdam that is just like the St. Johns Town Center-except it has a town center, there are houses on the stores, everything is in walking distance, and everyone bikes.

Thursday we visited the family owned and family maintained Bavaria Brewery and had a presentation about water conservation efforts. They treat their own water and use the biogas from the bacteria cleaning the water to create steam for their own energy-so they are actually making money from treating their own water as most cities make all water go into the local water treatment plant. They have one of only 21 well water withdrawl permits in the Netherlands (the farmers don't have to get permits until they use a certain amount per day). They pay E600,000 for water taxes per year. They use 3.8 Liters of water to make 1 liter of beer, which is top 10 in the world for breweries in low water use. Needless to say we, especially our sustainability program manager Sean, were really impressed with their system-especially after we got to try the La'trappe-or tripple beer with the 9% alcohol! We then went into Eindhoven and learned about an inner city soil remediation project in a park. The soil has heavy metals and they are covering it up. We shared our soil flipping project and Inlet Groves' project.

Friday we went to Sarah's host dad's company and had an amazing presentation about energy efficiency. These cities are REALLY DOING carbon neutral projects no matter the cost up front. Europe is WAY ahead of the states on energy efficiency as this is their everyday language. He builds geothermal heating and cooling systems and partners with a man who helps cities work towards becoming energy neutral. The city of Eindhoven has the goal of becoming energy neutral by 2035. They are doing things like heating the olympic training pool with biofuel-cow slaughter house fat remains and another pool with wood leftovers, installing geothermal hvac systems, renovating their buildings, multifuel gas stations, and providing energy savings low interest loans to residents. We were really impressed and again Sean was especially in awe with renewed motivation and ideas for Gainesville. We later went to an area called De Peel where they had been drying many acres of peat bogs, taking out the peat, and selling it for biofuel for hundreds of years. They stopped the harvesting and it has been flooded and put into a conservation area since 1997. They must keep the water at a certain level to promote plant growth to regrow the bog as the entire area-the one we saw was 6,000 acres, is 4 meters too low. They utilize goats and cattle leases to keep shrubs from growing back and they cut trees as there were historically no trees (they deal with the public on their land management choices as they like the trees, but don't understand bog ecosystems). We demanded to know why they are not utilizing prescribed burning, but they can not put too much nutrients into this acidic system as the plants must have a certain acidic level water. They have nice recreation trails with the infamous slanted gates that will always slam shut when the public goes through them.

One last thing! On Saturday after the District conference (I'm sure it was a great conference, but is was in Dutch!) the GSE team from the Netherlands took us Boerengolfing! In english this is farmer golfing. Still don't know what this is? We didn't either. This is an ingenious agrotourism game some farmers have in their fields similar to frisbee golf, but with a stick with a wooden shoe on the bottom and a very small soccer type ball. You take one stick and one ball with a small group and you all take turns hitting the ball to the flag in the fields. We "golfed" through cow dung, cows and horses, and corn fields! It was really fun, especially as we hit the ball right in front of the cows who just stared at us as we stared back at them. Luckily Sean hooked it and after one cow tried to kick it with his back legs and they all ran, they quickly ran back to the ball and they all tried to smell it at the same time. We shooed them away and proceeded to hit the next shot into the canal and you get the picture. To get through the canals they have wooden bridges, to get to the next field they have wooden steps over the barbed wire fences. The barn is a renovated cafe. Really cool and innovative!

One more week! Our Rotary coordinator this week said that we have a full week and that Sunday we rest and then we must WORK (with the typical Dutch emphasis on the last english word of the sentance-I'll do it for you when I get back)! I am REALLY glad to have him and his energy to round out our trip and hope we can keep up with him.

Tot ziens!
Terri