The Northeast Region has initiated a Climate Change Steering Committee that is promoting a sustainable building initiative along with energy audits, for all covered facilities. Also, parks in the Northeast Region are being directed to enter the Climate Friendly Parks Program and to establish regional Green Teams.

Both the Secretary of the Interior and the Director of the National Park Service have mandated youth programs as a high priority, calling for an increase in employment opportunities for youth in the Bureau by 60% this fiscal year. They have also directed the NPS to engage youth in resource and energy conservation efforts.

Friday, August 13, 2010

Independence N.H.P.


This week we are here at Independence National Historic Park. A completely different experience then the other parks we have worked at. Other then the tourists, traffic, buildings and noise it is also full of some of the most important historic buildings in our nation. This fact alone makes the work here much different.

The first day consisted of an orientation to the park and all it offers, which turned out to be much more then any of us expected. This fact was very exciting to Khalid.

The second day we got into the building we will be working on and did our visual weatherization audit. Due to the historic significance of the buildings there were some restrictions on what we could do, but still there was plenty to get done.

The third day was all about outreach. Now you might assume that a park that gets millions of people in it during per year would lead to throngs of visitors flocking to your humble info table. But it turns out that the kind of visitors to this park are much different then Valley Forge so we had to settle with around 200 for the day. There were good conversations though and as always Philadelphia provided a number of interesting characters.

We are looking forward to the rest of the week now and getting into what is referred to as the K. House, The Draft House: where Jefferson drafted the declaration of independence, and the Poe House: Home of Edger Allan Poe.

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