Green Friendly California

If you are a baseball fan, you are surely aware of the New Yankee Stadium. Did you know That a FiberTite Roofing Systems protects the new Parking Garage for the stadium? Did you know they built a complete park on top of the garage?

The New York Yankees have a new home. It would be difficult to find anyone, at least in the U.S., who is unaware of this. The idea was decades in the making, endured much debate and controversy and resulted in a stadium grandiose enough to earn it second place in a contest for the costliest stadium projects in the world. The Yankees, together with the New York City and State taxpayers, have invested $1.5 billion dollars to create a venue “suitable” for hosting the team’s impassioned followers.

The new stadium is not hard to find. It sits just across the street from the original Yankee Stadium built in 1923 in the Bronx. Perhaps the most notable about this project is a public recreation space that is being built atop a new parking garage located in the shadows of the old and new Yankee Stadiums. This unique garage rooftop park spans a full city block (nearly seven acres), and features a regulation,
multi-purpose field for soccer and football, a 400-meter running track with bleachers overlooking it, eight handball courts, four basketball courts, fitness equipment, a comfort station, viewing mounds, water fountains, trees and other horticulture.

In case you missed that . . “being built atop a new parking garage” . . . The design of the roof that protects this facility is equally unique. It has to perform two functions: protecting the garage beneath it and supporting the parkland above it, which is intended to endure heavy use and last a long time. I am not going to bore you with full details here, you can read them on the Fiber Tite website, but here it is in a nut shell;

A rubberized asphalt system, commonly used for garden and plaza roofs, creates a waterproof seal over the concrete deck. Layers of polystyrene insulation, in some places nearly three feet deep, are installed above it and serve as the foundation for the park’s landscaping and recreation fields. A thermoplastic single ply membrane system protects the insulation and functions as the primary barrier to puncture from garden roots, hardscape, and park traffic.

The New York Yankees opened the 2009 baseball season playing ball in their new home. Outdoor enthusiasts in the Bronx can plan to enjoy the new rooftop park when it opens to the public in the spring of 2010.

The House of Representatives recently passed new climate legislation. That’s what they do, pass laws, be damn the consequences. What started out as an attempt to reduce carbon emissions has morphed into the perfect storm of bureaucratic fund raising BS renowned in Washington D.C., We will just sell them carbon dioxide emission allowances, yea that will work, and don’t forget to keep promoting “renewable” energy. While they aren’t looking we will just pick their pockets of a few hundred billion more dollars.

Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar has announced plans to cover 1,000 square miles of land in Nevada, Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah with solar collector to generate electricity. Stop and think People! Who owns all that land? It is doubtful that all 1,000 square miles of land targeted is currently owned by the government. He also wants to put up 186,000 wind turbines but that another story. Let’s just stick with the rape of the environment for now.

Salazar’s bill requires that electric utility companies get 20% of their power mostly from wind and solar by 2020. Oh, they are going to receive HUGE subsidies from the Government (read you & me) to supposedly create JOBS and get us to the place President Obama speech writers dreamed up for his Inaugural Address, “an America running on wind and sunshine”. (more…)