Speaking of depressing shopping experiences, I finally made it to a trader Joe's. I don't know what all the fuss is about. Many, many rows of prepared/frozen foods. The produce? Dismal. I swear it was all packaged. Huh? Not much to get excited about.

Or maybe they should have just not attempted to build a green building at all. It seems that even with all the costs and expenses that this company has assumed by building this "eco-fabulous" store, it's just not enough to meet your high standards. Given that they are never going to make you happy, even with all that they have done, it would probably be best that they revisit the ROI on this project and build nothing but their standard brown buildings in the future.

Support truly local and sustainable farming- Shop the the Crozet Farmers Market - Open every Saturday morning from 8:00 a.m. till noon.
http://www.crozetgazette.com/2009/04/crozet-farmers-market-starts-saturday-may-2/

I've watched the tentacles of liberalism since the mid- 1950. The do-gooders have always been out there deciding how others should live their lives. The sort of butter on your popcorn thing mandating theaters from using butter/salt on popcorn started a long time ago. These sick nuts have always been around to intrude in peoples lives and it's definitely is a mental illness. I feel I have about a 90 percent success rate in spotting them from their queer looks, what they drive, [PT Cruisers with styro-form fitted wheel chair holders in the trunks provided free 'well at tax payers expense' and an exclusive blue wheel-chair card hanging from rear view mirrow that have become in some cases status symbols]. Many that do need them are too proud to ask for one and many that have them find it a neat way to always get a great parking spot and appear happy as a lark knowing their vote for Obama really counted as more benefits than just food stamps are flowing. People from countries afar are coming to get a piece and it will continue until the two x four lands where it hurts and our youth who've been fortunate to travel the world over on their mom's and dad's credits cards to lounge in the beautiful parks of Paris, Oslo and Copenhaven but failed to take the time to look beneath the veneer wake up one day to discover the boot on their chest is making it more and more impossible for them to breath. While the green and the parks are nice there will be no one to use them as liberalism will have sucked the country dry. Long hours of work in jobs they have been placed are required to purchase food at an HT and big brother no longer provides food stamps and no one can afford a high maintenance electric car. The word common sense will have long ago disappeared from our dictionaries. We can no longer even be politically correct as you will be unable to voice any opinion. The polar areas will have become tropics and sub-tropics, as they would have anyway, and references to the PT cruser will have long been forgotten. The seeking of a free wheel chair will bring a smile to an otherwise gray face Hopefully , liberalism will be in it final stages of extinction having lasted as long as it did because of stimulas monies directed toward a medical cure for the sickness of the desease.

How about we just eliminate all stores, products, goods and services and grow our own food, hunt and kill our own food. Maybe that would be green enough for you.

that would be green enough for me, "Realist."

Sounds to me like the author is giving the company credit for a good number of the building choices. So why should she give them credit for going hard the other way on their product choices? The two are independent of each other. Just because they built in a minimally responsible fashion doesn't excuse them from stocking their shelves irresponsibly.

Richard says, "I feel I have about a 90 percent success rate in spotting them from their queer looks, what they drive"

well Richard, I have about an equally high success rate in spotting lonely, self-loathing drones like you based on their foaming-at-the-mouth-nonpunctuating-typing-rants. jeez man, step away from the talk radio, go outside, and say hello to some one.

Buster:

My learned friend, this one is just for you. ",".

Hey Richard. The people you whine about are "leftists" not liberals. Liberals believe in liberty. Liberals would never ban smoking on private property (yes, resturants are private property) or require seat belts, or tell a business who to hire or what to pay or what kind of product to make or confiscate your hard earned money and hand it out to people and businesses that have failed.

Leftists and conservatives love to tell people what to do and try to get the power of government to FORCE people to do this stuff

Liberals feel that in a free country, you should be able to do whatever you want to do as long as you don't harm another person or their property. That is the principle that made this country great but few follow it now.

Hey Richard, drive your big old geezer Cadillac and park it in their "Hybrid, energy efficient, politically correct touchy feely" parking spot. Leave the car running with the AC on and go in and buy lots of packaged stuff. Smoke a pipe while you shop.

You'll feel better.

Richard, you are a fool. Nobody is telling you how to live; keep wasting whatever you want, and keep screwing over your kids and grandkids - I'm sure they will thank you.

But you do not have the right to treat my children like garbage, just because you're willing to do that to your own.

I can spot your kind a mile away. Cruel, angry, mean, blaming the whole world for your own problems yet never looking in a mirror.

Richard, what you're describing is Authoritarianism. It's rampant on both sides of the spectrum. Except on the side you're referring to it's used in an attempt to help. Whereas the Authoritarians on your side seem to do it for power.

Keep eating processed garbage, just don't come crying to me when you need medical treatment for your heart disease, obesity, cancer or whatever else develops from feeding at the losing end of a profit-first food chain.

PS: I love this article. It's nice to see all the care they have taken in construction. Hopefully they will follow that concern and adjust the food choices to offer food that doesn't pollute the waterways, make us fat and sick and treat animals poorly.

At the moment I'm rather enjoying being at my beach home abd have enjoyed shopping at the local Harris-Teeter. I find it to be a rather nice and well stocked store. A great produce sections.

As a proud and happy conserative"," I would like to pass on the following article and enviromental concern I've had since first reading. In my follow-up and research on the article I've been unable to find any references what so-ever in our main stream news media regarding this enviromental nightmare.
It has to be of great concern to the TVA. Your concerns and comments, please.

Al Gore, Environmentalist and Zinc Miner
By Micah Morrison
06/29/2000
The Wall Street Journal

"The lakes and rivers sustain us; they flow through the veins of the earth and into our own. But we must take care to let them flow back out as pure as they came, not poison and waste them without thought for the future."
-- Al Gore, "Earth in the Balance"
"He taught me how to plow a steep hillside with a team of mules. He taught me how to clear three acres of heavily-wooded forest with a double-bladed axe. . . . He taught me how to stop gullies before they got started. He taught me how to drive, how to shoot a rifle, how to fish, how to swim. We loved to swim together in the Caney Fork River off a big flat rock on the back side of his farm."
-- Al Gore on his father, Sen. Albert Gore Sr., from algore2000.com

CARTHAGE, Tenn. -- On his most recent tax return, as he has the past 25 years, Vice President Al Gore lists a $20,000 mining royalty for the extraction of zinc from beneath his farm here in the bucolic hills of the Cumberland River Valley. In total, Mr. Gore has earned $500,000 from zinc royalties. His late father, the senator, introduced him not only to the double-bladed ax but also to Armand Hammer, chairman of Occidental Petroleum Corp., which sold the zinc-rich land to the Gore family in 1973.

It also seems that zinc from Mr. Gore's property ends up in the cool waters of the Caney Fork River, an oft-celebrated site in Gore lore. A major shaft and tailings pond of the Pasminco Zinc Mine sit practically in the backyard of the vice president's Tennessee homestead. Zinc and other metals from the Gore land move from underground tunnels through elaborate extraction processes. Waste material ends up in the tailings pond, from which water flows into adjacent Caney Fork, languidly rolling on to the great Cumberland.

Mining is intrinsically a messy business, and Pasminco Zinc generally has a good environmental record. But not one that would pass muster with "Earth in the Balance," Mr. Gore's best-selling environmental book. As recently as May 16, the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation issued a "Notice of Violation." It informed Pasminco that it had infringed the Tennessee Water Quality Control act due to high levels of zinc in the river.

Those zinc levels exceeded standards established by the state and the federal Environmental Protection Agency. A "sample analysis found that total zinc was 1.480 mg/L [milligrams per liter], which is greater than the monthly average of .65 mg/L and the daily maximum of 1.30 mg/L." Pasminco "may be subject to enforcement action pursuant to The Tennessee Water Quality Control Act of 1977 for the aforementioned violation," the notice stated.

This was not the first time Mr. Gore's mining benefactor had run afoul of environmental regulations. In 1996, the mine twice failed biomonitoring tests designed to protect water quality in the Caney Fork for fish and wildlife. Mine discharge "failed two acute tests for toxicity to Ceriodaphnia dubia," a species of water flea, according to a mine permit analysis by Tennessee environmental authorities. "The discharge of industrial wastewater from Outfall 001 [the Caney Fork effluent] contains toxic metals (copper and zinc)," the analysis stated. "The combined effect of these pollutants may be detrimental to fish and aquatic life."

Tests for The Wall Street Journal by two independent Tennessee laboratories, conducted in September 1999 and this month, showed trace amounts of zinc and other metals in the Caney Fork that were in compliance with federal standards. But soil tests revealed what one lab called problematic "large quantities" of heavy metals in the riverbank soil downstream of the Caney Fork effluent. In both sets of tests, samples of water and soil were provided to the labs by the Journal. Soil samples drawn from the mine effluent and downstream "contained large quantities of Barium, Iron, and Zinc, as well as smaller amounts of Arsenic, Chromium and Lead," Warner Laboratories found in September. "The soil from each of these sites seems to have some problems according to our findings. The levels of Barium, Iron and Zinc far exceed any report limit [a detection threshold within the testing system] and it should be noted that these results are extremely high compared to typical soil found in a populated neighborhood."

Tests conducted in June by the Environmental Science Corp. found similar traces of heavy metals in the water and soil. The report found the soil samples to contain relatively high levels of "Barium, Iron, Zinc, and several of the other metals, including Aluminum, Calcium and Magnesium." The ESC report also noted traces of cyanide in some water and soil samples.

Pasminco is not required to test soil along the banks of the Caney Fork. Both labs, while noting anomalies in the soil, believe the results do not warrant concern as environmental hazards. The water and soil clearly are not, however, "as pure as they came," as Mr. Gore demands in "Earth in the Balance."

A 1998 study by the Environmental Working Group, a Washington-based organization, criticized the zinc-mining operation for purchasing a toxic waste that included sulfuric acid and reselling it as fertilizer. The mine buys acid waste from steel plants, uses it as purification agent in zinc processing, and then sells the waste to fertilizer companies, according to a report in the Tennessean, a Nashville newspaper. Most soil scientists say the procedure is safe.

Tennessee environmentalists disagree. "Clearly, when you spread those types of chemicals around on a farm or on the land, you're going to get a lot of runoff," Brian McGuire, executive director of Tennessee Citizens Action told the Tennessean. "So it's going to get into the water. We're poisoning ourselves."

A Pasminco official noted that the mine has had few violations and works to uphold a "very strict standard" of environmental quality. The Gore campaign did not respond to requests for comment. But some Tennessee residents say Mr. Gore becomes testy when questioned about the zinc mine. Tom Gniewek, a retired chemical engineer from Camden, Tenn., has studied the zinc mine for years and tried to question Mr. Gore about it at town-hall meetings. "He gets real angry," Mr. Gniewek says. "Instead of answering the question, he attacked my motives and accused people like me of vandalizing the earth."

Mr. Gore's original purchase of the zinc-rich land is of some interest as well, shedding light on his long relationship with Mr. Hammer, the former Occidental Petroleum chief. A controversial influence peddler who trafficked in politicians of all stripes and parties, Mr. Hammer pleaded guilty in 1975 to providing hush money in the Watergate scandal.

Mr. Hammer cut a wide swath across Washington from the 1930s until his death in 1990 at 92. His controversial career was marked by decades of profitable business dealings with the Soviet Union, which were closely watched by the FBI. He leapt into the big time by acquiring Libyan oil rights for Occidental Petroleum through what biographer Edward Jay Epstein has characterized as a combination of shrewd business dealings and bribery. After his 1975 conviction, Mr. Hammer spent the rest of his life campaigning for a pardon, which President Bush granted in 1989.

Mr. Hammer cultivated close relationships with many politicians, but he was closest to Mr. Gore's father, a U.S. senator from 1953 until 1971. Mr. Hammer's Occidental Minerals snapped up the zinc-bearing property in 1972. The senior Mr. Gore's farm is on the opposite bank of the Caney Fork. Mr. Hammer paid $160,000, double the only other offer, according to the Washington Post, which first disclosed details of the arrangement during the 1992 presidential campaign.

According to deed documents in Carthage, a year later Mr. Hammer sold the land to the senior Mr. Gore for $160,000, adding the extremely generous $20,000 per year mineral royalty. Ten minutes after that sale, the former senator executed a deed selling the property, including the mineral rights, to his son, the future vice president, for $140,000. Albert Gore Sr. told the Post he kept the first $20,000 royalty for himself, evening up the father-son transaction.

The purpose of the sale appears to have been transferring the annual $20,000 payment from Mr. Hammer to the young Mr. Gore. The Post reported that the "$20,000 a year amounts to $227 an acre, much more than the $30 an acre Occidental Minerals, part of Hammer's oil company, paid the senior Gore and some neighbors a few years before the 1973 arrangement."

In 1992 then-Sen. Gore told the Post that although he had been working for "slave wages" as a newspaper reporter, he quickly came up with a $40,000 down payment from two previous real-estate investments. In 1974, the zinc mine began annual payments of $20,000 to Mr. Gore, an important source of income to the young politician for many years.

After the senior Mr. Gore lost his 1970 Senate re-election bid, Mr. Hammer named him chairman of Island Creek Coal, an Occidental subsidiary, and appointed him to the board of directors of Occidental Petroleum. The late Mr. Gore's estate is conservatively valued at $1.5 million, including a block of Occidental stock worth between $250,000 and $500,000. The vice president is executor and trustee of his father's estate, with "sole discretion" to manage a trust on his mother's behalf.

As Albert Gore Jr. rose through the political ranks, Mr. Hammer continued to assist him. The Hammer family and corporations made donations up to the legal maximum in all of Mr. Gore's campaigns, according to Mr. Hammer's former personal assistant, Neil Lyndon, writing in London's Daily Telegraph. Mr. Gore regularly dined with Mr. Hammer and Occidental lobbyists in Washington, Mr. Lyndon wrote. "Separately and together, the Gores sometimes used Hammer's luxurious private Boeing 727 for journeys and jaunts." The former Hammer aide noted that the "profound and prolonged involvement between Hammer and Gore has never been revealed or investigated."

Mr. Hammer was famous for his dealings with the Soviet Union, and received a humanitarian award in Moscow in 1987 from International Physicians Against Nuclear War. Mr. Gore, who had been elected to the Senate in 1984, delivered a speech to the same convention, saying conventional arms should be cut along with nuclear weapons. As vice president, Mr. Gore became the Clinton administration point man on relations with Russia.

Mr. Gore would be well served to get the facts out about his relationship with Mr. Hammer, beginning with the zinc bounty. The issue is bigger than whether there is a pollution problem in Tennessee. When Mr. Gore's zinc riches are at stake, he appears unwilling to live by the standards he sets out for others in "Earth in the Balance."

His record of uncompromising environmental rhetoric seems another instance of the kind of hypocrisy that has dogged his campaign for months. He's been accused of being a slumlord for providing substandard housing to a tenant on a rental unit adjoining his farm. A well-remembered 1996 speech to the Democratic National Convention, invoking his sister's death by lung cancer and attacking the tobacco industry, also contributed to his reputation for slippery sanctimony when his close ties to Tennessee tobacco were revealed. And of course Mr. Gore has been sharply criticized for posturing on campaign finance reform while under investigation for possible fund-raising crimes in the 1996 campaign.

No mention of the zinc mine appears in "Earth in the Balance," on Mr. Gore's campaign Web site or in his speeches. At this point the story of the Tennessee farm, the zinc mine, the politician and the influence peddler is largely one of cant and hypocrisy. This is not a hanging crime in the political world, but the vice president, among others, might note that Bill Clinton's problems also began with a murky land deal and a shady financier.


"..it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.."
--Samuel Adams

Mr. Moe Hong:

Please forgive me for being a little late in answering your May 12, 2009, reply to my post. The good part of my delayed answer is that by now you are aware that it's not I that's spending your childrens money. I implore you to take an open minded look, for the sake of your family and children just who is.

And yes, I did drive a Cadillac but it became necessary for me to sell it due to the present administrations not allowing drilling for new sources of oil. The price of gas has gone through the roof. It's is puzzleing to me how or why so many of our governments liberal Lords chose to fly their fuel consuming jets to Copenhaven even in knowledge of knowing temperture models had been skewed for years. The reality of our situation seems to be coming to light and perhaps just in the knick of time. If for that reason alone the uncovering of this fraud has been worth the price.

For those slow to understand, our administration is painting a clear and terrifying portrait. Pictures are worth a thousand words one drop of truth at a time. But I assure you Mr Hong, I have not spent your childrens money and as I've owned my own company I have contributed 15% to FICA for as long as I can remember. Too, I try to eat healthy and always park as far away from grocery store entrance's in order to walk.

Green Peace and my blessings to you. Let's just hope cap and trade isn't final nail in coffin.