We’re very pleased with the way in which African organizations have accepted the ideas of Sustainability and Project Management.  Very pleased.

We wonder why Africa “gets it” so well and the other continents lag so much further behind.  Any ideas or thoughts?

We’ve been invited to, and accepted, the opportunity to address the Project Management South Africa “Good in Green” conference as well as their National Conference in Johannesburg.  We’ve been featured in several issues of the very classy magazine PM Foresight, endorsed by PMI Lagos, Nigeria and produced for all of Africa by visionary publisher Lambert Ofoegbu.

Sites like AllAfrica-Environment show how many projects are already launched and about to be launched which focus on sustainability.  But what impresses us most is that for some reason, African enterprises have done a better job of listening to our message and have better understood the connection between PM and sustainability.

Europe, Asia, North America, South America…where are you?

Dave with striper on Great Bay

While Rich and I have a lot of passion around sustainability, project management, and sustainable project management, occasionally we diverge a little and talk about our obsessive side, our personal crusades.  Back in September, there was an EarthPM post about Omega 3 and menhaden.  By the way, that campaign was successful as the Atlantic Marine States Fisheries Commission (AMSFC) voted to reduce the catch of menhaden.

While related, this is different, and I thought we were done with this issue.  Apparently we are not.  In the 1970′s we almost lost one of our major fisheries resource, the striped bass.  I remember when there were a few really big fish being caught, and no small fish.  The years following those were the worst on record for striped bass fishing.  For all intents and purposes, striped bass disappeared.  Intensive fisheries management saved the striped bass fishery then,  Look out, deja vu, it is happening again, for some of the same reasons it happened before, over fishing.  In their infinite wisdom, some states refuse to acknowledge the striped bass as a gamefish.  That acknowledgement would go a long way to protecting this resources.  I am very proud of my adopted state, Maine, and the State of New Hampshire where I lived prior to moving to Maine.  Those states have adopted gamefish status for the stripers.  Massachusetts has not and I don’t understand why.

Southwick Associates, a company that compiles statistics for fish and wildlife issues, concludes that wild striped bass are worth 20-times more per pound as a gamefish as opposed to its commercial value in the market.  Doesn’t it make sense to declare the striper a gamefish and keep collecting that kind of revenue?  While I was on Cape Cod recently, I stopped at an outfitter whose business is based around the influx of striper fishermen.  Cape Cod has always been an ideal fishery for the stripers.  There is plenty of squid and other baits for the stripers to feed on and endless flats for the stripers to patrol for food.  Last year was one of the worst on record for stripers.  Fishing the usually productive flats was virtually non-existent.  A few fisher were caught offshore, but there was a marked decline in the stripers available along the shoreline.

I just can’t get my head around the commercial interests who are so short term oriented that they can’t see the forest for the trees.  This fishery is not sustainable abused this way!  Of course commercial interests put those short term gains in their pocket, but it certainly is not allowing future generations or for that matter, our generation, to continue to enjoy walking the beaches, fishing the rock piles, or searching the estuaries and oceans for stripers from boats or kayaks.  Isn’t that what sustainability is all about.  Oh, by the way, it makes “cents”, too.

As I said, this struggle is well documented.  For further reading, see George Reiger’s Striper Chronicles and Dick Russell’s Striper Wars.  Here is an important video that also helps to put the issue in perspective.  Seveeal of my friends an aquaintances appear on this video like Lou Tabory, who I’ve know for about 20 years and Coop Gilkes.  A quick story about Coop.  I had the opportunity to fish Martha’s Vineyard (almost cost me my marriage, but that’s how the fishing obseesion can affect your life, another story).  The stripers were keying on a particular fly that Coop ties.  I stopped at his shop and he was out of that fly.  He went in the back and tied two for me.  This was the first time I had stopped in his shop so I wasn’t a regular.  But he did it anyway.  That’s just the way most members of this fly fishing faternity are.  The head cement was still wet when he gave me the flies.  Those produced most of the fish I caught during that time on the Vineyard.

Anyway, here is the video.  I hope it inspires you to contact ASMFC or the Massachusetts congressional representatives to voice your opinion on making the striper a gamefish.  We certainly won’t lose a food sources as stripers are particularly suited for aquaculture.  Unlike salmon who have to re raised in saltwater pens, therefore have a chance to compete with wild stock, stripers are raised in freshwater.  In addition, when pond raised, there is little change of the heavy metal concentrations that affect wild stock.  Please do your part.

Stripers as Gamefish

We need you.

Please help us out by lending us just a moment of your time and going to this site, and signing our petition which would ask that PMI consider sustainability thinking in the rework of the upcoming 5th Edition of the PMBOK(R) Guide and any changes to the PMI Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.

That’s it.  Just go here, fill out a few fields, keep it anonymous if you’d like.  We won’t bother you with email, you’re just lending your voice to the effort for putting sustainability (economic, ecological and social) into our discipline, in an integrated way, where it belongs.

We’ve tend to stay neutral when it comes to the global climate change debate, although we have tried to arm you with the information we believed you, as project managers, need to make sure you can take advantage of any projects that may arise as a result of any mitigation strategies.  Today, we heard about a couple of disturbing reports due out over the next several months.  Their titles were pretty ominous so we decided to dig a little deeper.

Take a look at some of these headlines and reports to be released and see if you don’t agree that they are unnerving;

NOAA: Past Decade Warmest on Record According to Scientists in 48 Countries 

Earth has been growing warmer for more than 50 years.

And this one a report that is indicative of what is to come.

The Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation.

The title says that those extreme events we have been experiencing, a major snow storm in the northeast in October 2011 for instance, are going to continue and we need a risk mitigation process to address them.  Further, we will need to “adapt” to these changes.

Another report coming from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC);

Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation

And finally, an interview from a scientist who has not only been one of the questioners of global climate change, but also his study was partially funded by an organization made up of climate change skeptics.  Dr. Richard Muller, professor of physics from the University of California, Berkeley, and founder of the Berkley Earth Surface Temperature Foundation, undertook an independent two year study of global climate change.

It was not that he himself was a sceptic, he just didn’t believe the likes of Tom Friedman and Al Gore because Dr. Muller believes their contentions were not truly science based.  Here is part of the interview between Dr. Muller and Eleanor Hall with Bronwyn Herbert from the Australian Broadcast Network (ABC).  You can hear the entire interview here.

BRONWYN HERBERT: Richard Muller says he wasn’t convinced the earth was warming, and set out two years ago to find out if mainstream climate scientists were wrong.

RICHARD MULLER: Sceptics had raised legitimate questions. Many of the thermometers were of very poor quality and poorly placed. There were  djustments being made to discontinuities in the data. There was perhaps undue influence from warming of cities, which was warm, but that’s not global warming.

BRONWYN HERBERT: He says he was particularly surprised that his results so closely correlated with previously published data from other teams in the US and the UK.

RICHARD MULLER: Somewhat to my amazement, none of the effects changed the answer. We wound up getting the same answer that the other groups had previously gotten for the amount of warming. It’s about 0.9 degrees Celsius over the last 50 years. The poor temperature quality data, even though it was at bad locations, the change in temperature I recorded was accurate. The urban heat island, just not that much area of the earth is urban. The temperature adjustments that people made, well those adjustments were made with more care than we could know, and in the end the adjustments didn’t bias the data. We picked five times as many stations as they did. Their selection of stations was sufficiently representative that it didn’t change the answer. So, in the end, the amount of global warming is what they said it was.

BRONWYN HERBERT: So do you now believe that global warming on earth is occurring?

RICHARD MULLER: Oh yes. I certainly believe that now.

And finally, from a report Agence France-Presse (AFP) states that a draft UN report three years in the making concludes that man-made climate change has boosted the frequency or intensity of heat waves, wildfires, floods and cyclones and that such disasters are likely to increase in the future.

“The document being discussed by the world’s Nobel-winning panel of climate scientists says the severity of the impacts vary, and some regions are more vulnerable than others. Hundreds of scientists working under the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) will vet the phonebook-sized draft at a meeting in Kampala of the 194-nation body later this month.

“This is the largest effort that has even been made to assess how extremes are changing,” said Neville Nicholls, a professor at Monash University in  Melbourne, Australia, and a coordinating lead author of one of the review’s key chapters. Mindful of an outcry by climate skeptics over flaws in an earlier IPCC text, those working on the document stress that the level of “confidence” in the findings depends on the quantity and quality of data available.

But the overall picture that emerges is one of enhanced volatility and frequency of dangerous weather, leading in turn to a sharply increased risk for large swathes of humanity in coming decades.”

“Its publication coincides with a series of natural catastrophes around the world that have boosted the need to determine whether such events are freaks of the weather or part of a long-term shift in climate. In 2010, record temperatures fuelled devastating forest fires across Siberia, while parts of Pakistan and India reeled from unprecedented flooding. This year, the United States has suffered from a record number of billion-dollar disasters ranging from flooding in the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers to Hurricane Irene to the ongoing Texas drought. Large swathes of China are suffering from intense drought as well, even as central America and Thailand count their dead from recent diluvian rains.

Most of these events match predicted impacts of manmade global warming, which has raised temperatures, increased the amount of water in the atmosphere and warmed ocean surface temperatures — all drivers of extreme weather.

- It is “virtually certain” — 99-100% sure — that the frequency and magnitude of warm daily temperature extremes will increase over the 21st century on a global scale;

- It is “very likely” (90-100% certainty) that the length, frequency and/or intensity of warm spells, including heat waves, will continue to increase over most land areas;

- Peak temperatures are “likely” (66-100% certainty) to increase — compared to the late 20th century — up to 3.0 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2050, and 5.0 C (9.0 F) by 2100;

- Heavy rain and snowfall is likely to increase over the next century over many regions, especially in the tropics and at high latitudes;

- At the same time, droughts will likely intensify in other areas, notably the Mediterranean region, central Europe, North America, northeastern Brazil and southern Africa.” © 2011 AFP

Sometimes we need to remind ourselves that there is more to life than just work, work, work.  In 1890, Yosemite National Park was created.  It’s not that a beautiful place did not exist prior to 1890, it did as shown in the 1878 watercolor of the Digger Indians by Constance Frederica Gordon-Cumming en, Indian Life at Mirror Lake.  National parks are great stress relievers.  No matter what your preference, camping, fishing, hiking, birding, photography and more, you can do any or all of it in the myriad of state and national parks scattered across our country.

Although, we certainly can’t get away from projects no matter where we go.  Not only is the designating of a state, local or national park a project, especially for those directly involved in a project like Yosemite, like Galen Clark and John Muir, or the president at the time Benjamin Harrison, but it will create more projects.  Fast forward to present day and the jobs initiative.  While we have not read all of the text of the proposed jobs initiatives, we haven’t seen anything on improving the infrastructure of our national parks.  While it may be that it is buried in there someplace, it probably isn’t.  Maybe it is because it only affects a specific, and small, group of people who use the parks.  We have a feeling that the number may be larger than we think.  According to the latest (2010) figures, more than 281,300,000 people visited our national parks.  Just like this website, however, they may not be all “unique” visits.  But still, 281+ million people per year is nothing to sneeze at, since the total population of the US in 2009 was approximately 307 million people.

But let’s not lose sight of the real issue here.  The question is, if there were infrastructure projects instituted as part of a jobs initiative, what is the economic, social and environmental ripple effects.  Just to give one example:  how many people would be employed during the infrastructure improvement?  If there are improvements, how many additional people would use the facilities?  How many people depend on the visitors themselves; e.g. restaurants, camping/rv suppliers and hotels surrounding the parks?  What are the effects on the environment?  Most importantly to us, these projects will need to be managed.  The different projects will lie along the green spectrum, from green by definition to green in general.

Let’s keep an eye on any jobs initiatives.  They will create projects! 

Rarely do we use this forum for political discussions, and even more rarely do we use this forum for personal campaigns, but in this case, it is both and directly related to sustainability.  So I’m (Dave) going to go out on my own limb and declare that this post is from me, not EarthPM.  The sustainability issue is one that is personally meaningful to me, fishing.  Sometime around 2005 – 2006, I penned an article about the Great Bay, New Hampshire fishery.  It was  published in the Fly Fisherman, September 2009 issue, and is titled “Granite State Stripers – A blueprint for catching striped bass in New Hampshire’s Great Bay Estuary.”  During the time I was doing the “research” (fishing) for this article, big menhaden and herring inhabited the bay in good numbers.  I used to go to the falls in Exeter and watch the lobsterman throw their wire baskets into the falls to collect herring for bait for their lobster traps.

Unfortunately, I don’t see the number of herring or menhaden that I did in the past.  According to research, the menhaden population is down to between 8-12% of historic highs.  I am going to try to be as politically correct as I can be here, but point out that there is a difference of opinion between those of us who are trying to protect striped bass and other species we get so much pleasure fishing for, and Omega Protein (OP), Inc.  According to their website, OP “is a nutrition and wellness company dedicated to delivering healthy products to the animal, human and plant nutrition industries. Omega Protein’s marine product lines are sourced from menhaden, an Omega-3 rich fish harvested along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts.”  The key word there is menhaden.  OP supplies “a custom line of omega-3 fish oil, protein-rich specialty fishmeal and organic fish solubles for aquaculture, companion animal, livestock and equine feed manufacturers. We produce ultra-refined, molecularly distilled omega-3 ingredients for human food manufacturers, and we market branded fish solubles
as agronomic plant food.”  They need huge quantities of menhaden.

The menhaden is also key to the survival of many of the fish species I alluded to above, striped bass and big bluefish for sure, as well as weakfish and maybe even sharks.  All of the species have seen serious declines in their population over the same periods as the aggressive efforts of OP.  I don’t feel it is overfishing the striped bass or others that is causing the decline, but rather a drastic reduction in the natural foods those fish feed on, particularly the menhaden.  I remember the years I spent on the Jersey coast.  Huge schools of menhaden travelled up and down the shoreline.  It was very exciting to see the gamefish tearing into those schools.  The frenzy was a site to see.  Little did I know that I may have been witnessing that for the last time.

Politically, Omega Foods is a juggernaut.  They possess both the political clout and money to overwhelm any and all opposition to their agenda.  Their agenda right now is to move their operations inshore because they have virtually wiped out the larger, offshore menhaden.  The next thing they will do is go after the “peanuts” that have provided much of the inshore forage for the stripers and blues of late.  The peanuts certainly aren’t enough to maintain the fishery, just to slow its decline a little.  Evidence shows that the stripers from the Chesapeake are not faring well and probably stems from being undernourished.  The fishery cannot be sustained much longer without some protective measures.  The omega-3 contained in the very oily menhaden is also good for the striper.  Without it, they probably won’t survive.

To be fair, Omega Foods has a sustainability tab on their website and accepted a “friend of the sea” recognition in 2009 for their marine conservation efforts.  To me, however, there seems to be some contradiction here.  It’s a “they said they said” argument.  Who is right needs to be decided.  So if you are interested in the marine environment, because we don’t know how this will affect the entire ecosystem, do some research, and take a stand.  If you find what I found, you need to let The Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) know how you feel.   They are the body that regulates this fishery,.  At its summer meeting in Arlington, Virginia, ASMFC approved public hearings for Addendum 5 to Amendment 1 of the Atlantic Menhaden Fishery Management Plan. That addendum would establish a new interim fishing mortality threshold and target (based on maximum spawning potential — MSP) with the goal of increasing abundance, spawning stock biomass, and menhaden availability as a forage species. The MSP approach was recommended by the 2009 peer review panel that determined menhaden weren’t being overfished at that time – but were in 2008. Indeed, scientific documentation indicates that menhaden have been overfished in 32 of the last 54 years.

The Menhaden Defenders aim to push the ASMFC to establish the first-ever coastwide catch limits for the 2012 fishing season with a conservative target of 30 percent MSP, and a threshold of 15 percent -leaving 30 percent of mature fish free to maintain the stock. The ASMFC would also be urged to quickly begin management of the species on an ecosystem basis, taking into account its importance as a forage fish. Then there must be appropriate monitoring, management tools, and additional enforcement in order to achieve the goals.

That decision needs to be made on a level playing field.  Unfortunately, it is a David and Goliath effort. But remember, David did win!

Since this post is titled “Banking on it”, we thought we’d start by telling you where we found a treasure trove of great sustainability knowledge for project managers – and others.

That treasure trove was found at the Network for Business Sustainability. There we’ve found a wealth of resources, amongst which was this very short interview with the Chief Sustainability Officer of TD BankNorth.

Have a look and join us after you spend a moment with Karen Clarke-Whistler.

So you can see that there are a whole slew of project management concerns that are implied by this interview.

• How are the 2,500 facilities made into more sustainable facilities?
• How do the younger employees get a louder “voice” at TD BankNorth?
• How do policies for loans get created and deployed – repeatably?

The answer to those and many other questions you can imagine is all the same, one-word answer.

Projects.

Lots of projects.  Needing lots of “you-know-who”.  Us.  Project Managers.
And this is a bank.  Not a solar-cell manufacturer, nor an environmental company, nor an energy concern, nor a wildlife preserve, nor an effort to bring water to a poverty-stricken, parched region of the world.  This is a financial institution.  And they are integrating sustainability thinking at all levels of the organization.

Businesses of all kinds are doing this.  It behooves us as project managers to ‘get on board’.  Or we will be very, very bored.

You can read more about this intersection of banking and sustainability here:

http://www.iisd.org/business/banking/sus_banking.aspx

And here is a case study of yet another financial institution:

http://www.iisd.org/business/viewcasestudy.aspx?id=117

And here is an old (2001) paper which picked up this topic way back then and covers it pretty well:

http://www.greenleaf-publishing.com/content/pdfs/vied.pdf

And finally, to bring us up to current times, here is an announcement for a conference in Germany on the very topic – and it has significant content (the announcement itself, that is):

http://www.etechgermany.com/GreeningFinancialInstitutions.pdf

So back to this treasure trove.  We suggest you visit http://nbs.net, but in the meantime,  here’s a brief view on the NBS by Professor Tima Bansal:

Moo.

Here’s an interesting story about how a farm – as a business – and in a non-trivial way – embraced sustainability.  The story comes from Northshore Magazine.

It regards America’s oldest continually run farm, Appleton Farms in Ipswich, Massachusetts, USA.

Here’s a teaser:

The Trustees’ organization-wide, carbon-neutrality goal, along with development efforts, has lead to Appleton Farms’ centuries-old operations, such as the dairy, to undergo a complete sustainability lift. The strategy has put the largest farm in the Greater Boston region on track to eliminate emissions—earning Appleton the gilded title Net Zero—in August 2011. The crowning achievement of this incredible undertaking came in August when the Green Business Council awarded the Old House rebuild LEED Platinum certification.

Agriculture is one of the most resource-consumptive industries and largest emitters of greenhouse gases, and scant farms can make Net Zero claims about their carbon footprints. The Old House, now The Trustees’ offices and Appleton Farms Center for Agriculture and the Environment, is also the first renovated building on the East Coast to boast the green building movement’s platinum achievement.

Note that the organization behaves in a way in which they believe that they will be in business forever.  This is a very fundamental definition of the word sustainability itself.  We will post shortly featuring this relationship and this definition.

For now, though, sit back, relax, and read this interesting story about an interesting place doing interesting things.

Read the whole story here.

Project Managers: May the Force be with you.

Take a look at this document. (Click here).  Then come back here when you’re done.  We’ll wait…

Dum de dah….dee dee dum…dum…. OH, you’re back.  Good.

Okay, we know that many of you (you know who you are)  have not actually read the document, even though we told you it was short.  So (alas…) we’ll summarize it for you.  The “it” is a fine summary of how Sustainability is tied to innovation, and it’s provided well-respected consulting firm called Deloitte.  Perhaps you’ve heard of them.

“Sustainability helps drive innovation through design constraints – the need or desire to reduce or substitute resources used, such as energy, carbon, water, materials, and waste. This focus on reduction or substitution can create a powerful driver for developing  innovative products and operating models.

Examples of how Sustainability Strategy 2.0 thinking drives innovation include:

• Commodity and raw material availability and use. Can we procure all inputs for our production operations? How are environmental events affecting biological stocks? Is consumption depleting nonrenewable resources?

• Energy consumption and cost. Are significant fluctuations in the price of carbon-based fuels likely to continue? Can we reduce our energy intensity to maintain or increase production but use less energy?

• Emissions and waste. Will legislation cause us to account for the cost of greenhouse gas emission? How would the rollout of packaging or waste disposal taxes affect our business?

• Water availability and quality. Will increasing water scarcity affect our ability to use water in production and manufacturing? Will stricter regulations require us to rethink production?

• Demand for sustainable products. How much do consumers and our extended value chain care about the sustainability attributes of our products? Are they willing to pay more for “greener” offerings?”

The report ends with this – in gigantic font:

Conclusion: A broader view of sustainability leads to value creation.

We like this report.  It echos what a lot of leaders are saying.  We just blogged about Ford’s leadership, and prior to that we have quoted Marvin Odom of Shell, in an excellent report from Sloan MIT, in which the Shell Oil President says that sustainability is a major engine of innovation for his company.

And here’s where the Force comes in.

Think about it.  If you’re in electronics, as a project manager, what did the transistor, the chip, the processor do for your career?  How many tens of thousands of projects were launched only because of those innovations?  If you’re in IT, think about the microprocessor.  Or Agile software development.  You know that these innovations have either launched or facilitated millions of projects.  And on and on, with the laser, new developments in pharmaceuticals, materials… the list is nearly infinite.

So if you buy into the idea that we, as project managers, count on innovation as our lifeblood, you should look forward to new innovations coming from – you guessed it – sustainability thinking in organizations.  We preach that project managers need to pick up this form of thinking for the pure value it brings us as PMs.  But with this post we want you to recognize that it is also a driving force for the very projects that keep us employed in the first place.

Maybe it’s no coincidence that Yoda is green….

It is hard to stay objective and talk about cradle-to-cradle thinking and considering long term effects, “the end of the end”, and other assertions from our book, when there is a major effect on one of our national treasures, The Yellowstone River, the longest undammed river in the US.  We have a personal affinity toward the river since one of our EarthPM principles spent 11 days in the area doing what is affectionately called “combat fly fishing.”  In other words, 11 days were spent fly fishing as many rivers and streams in Montana, Idaho , and Wyoming that is humanly possible fishing from dawn to dark, while passing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches from the back seat to the front during the breaks between fishing and fishing called “racing to a new spot.”  A few hours sleep and  right back at it.  But of all the waters fished, the Yellowstone was one of the most incredible fisheries, to say nothing of the beauty.

Of course, the river was nothing like it is right now (see picture above of how it was when we fished it), with gigantic flows spilling over the banks, running between 25,000 and 35,000 cubic feet per second.  The normal rate is around 8,000 cfs.  That’s good news and bad news.  The good news is that there is lots of water to dilute the oil.  And, while this oil spill is relatively small compared to some of the oil spills of the past, 42,000 gallons, or approximately 1000 barrels, is enough.  What is disconcerting is not the short-term effects, but rather the long term-effects on both wildlife and property.  Sound familiar.  We assert that we can no longer take the short term view.  We were not involved in Exxon Mobil’s decision making process when someone thought it was a good idea to bury a pipeline under one of the premier trout waters in America, we can only hope that they did consider what would happen not only if there should be a breach in the pipe, but also the life cycle assessment of that oil should it be unleashed on the ecosystem.

The bad news is that the long term effects of a spill of this nature are virtually unknown.  Add to that, the high water has pushed the oil up onto surrounding properties where it is pooling.  It is likely that the pooled oil will seep into the ground possible contaminating area water wells.  While Yellowstone National Park and the areas where we fished are not threatened, because the spill is approximately 110 miles downstream, it still affects a “fly fishing and bird watching” area.   “Montana Audubon — a nonprofit that specializes in wildlife conservation, especially birds — fears for the health of the American white pelican, a top-of-the-food chain species that dines on critters in the river. “We may get lucky with the short-term effects” because birds weren’t using their normal river habitat due to the high water, said Darcie Vallant, director of the Audubon Conservation Education Center in Billings, which is just 10 miles from the spill. “But the concern is long-term effects,” especially with the pelicans, she added. Montana had some 7,000 breeding pairs in 2010, and that was a decline from the previous year, she said.”

The high water has also made it impossible to assess what’s happening to that ecosystem.  How the bug population that the trout rely upon for food is affected is another unknown.  There is also a concern about the back channels that hold fish eggs and recently hatched fish being contaminated.

Montana State University researchers will be among those monitoring the river, but it could take months before they have a sense of the recovery’s pace. “In the weeks and months ahead, we will be looking for any unusual changes in the river’s natural environment and any impacts on the species of fish we would expect to find at this time of year,” said MSU ecology professor Al Zale. “Some species or ages of fish may be more susceptible to this type of pollution than others.”

Cathy Williams, who raises livestock, wheat, alfalfa and hay with her husband near Laurel, said high water washed oil across much of their 800 acres. “It was the night the river peaked, so the river water was flooded all over the place, and that brought oil all over both ranches,” she said. “All of our grasslands have just thick, black crude stuck to all the grass, trees, low lands.”  Williams said their spring wheat crop and alfalfa are both in need of irrigation, but farmers in the area were advised not to take water from the river for the time being. Drinking supplies also are in limbo, she said. “We get all our drinking water from our wells and for our animals,” Williams said. “All the groundwater, I assume, is probably contaminated. We just don’t know.”

With 20/20 hindsight, and a request for consideration for future planning, there are several places in the project life cycle that greenality issues can be considered:

• Project Charter – connecting enterprise sustainability with project
• Requirements Gathering – again, connecting the enterprise’s environmental management plan(EMP) with the project’s EMP
• Stakeholder Consideration – is there a communications plan in place to notify the stakeholders if this type of issue should occur
• Risk Management – considering environmental risks
• Cost of Greenality – failure costs versus auditing costs for instance

I am sure you can think of more areas where sustainability should be considered.  All in all, we are hoping for a good outcome, here.  The river has an incredible beauty about it.  Let’s not forget that the trout fishing in Montana is a major contributor to the $300 million in revenues from the recreation industry in the state. And, the Yellowstone is also historically very significant.  In late June/early July of 1876, the Far West, a specially designed river vessel, transported the wounded from the campaign against the Indians which included Custer’s Last Stand, down the Yellowstone to the Missouri River and to Bismarck in the Dakota Territories.  Let’s hope for the best here and for long-term, sustainability thinking to prevail for future projects, including those that involve our rare and fragile natural resources.

(Thanks to Msnbc.com’s Miguel Llanos, Reuters and The Associated Press for information included in this blog.)