Cob: DCAT Holiday Greetings!

[ANovelli at aol.com]

Dear List Members,

Once again the Holidays are upon us, and this year, with all its troubles, 
leaves us with much to be grateful for. I want to extend thanks and warm 
wishes to all of you from the staff at the Development Center for Appropriate 
Technology… David Eisenberg - Director, myself, Tony Novelli - Asisstant 
Director, Loretta Ishida - Program Assistant, and Holly Altman – Office 
Manager. It seems like we end up talking to a good number of you during the 
course of a year, though often forget to express the gratitude we feel for 
those pioneering individuals in the area of green building.

DCAT has had another amazing year, focused on the ways building and 
development regulations make greener development harder to do, and relieving 
some of those constraints. Some of the measures of success during this last 
year are:

• A deepening of our working relationship with ICBO, and the other members of 
the ICC (the International Conference of Building Officials, Southern 
Building Code Congress International, Building Officials and Code 
Administrators, all making up the International Code Council). We are proud 
to call many building officials and staff members at these organizations 
friends and colleagues.

• The new membership of ICBO in the U.S. Green Building Council opens many, 
many exciting possibilities, and signifies the depth of commitment the code 
groups are beginning to offer to green and alternative approaches.

• Our upcoming regular column on green building issues in Building Standards, 
the official magazine for ICBO, and a new feature issue coming early next 
year.

• The building code survey so many of you participated in was completed at 
the end of August, and we are finalizing the preliminary report to our 
funders. The results will also be published in Building Standards and Builder 
magazine early next year, and we will announce to this list when it will be 
made available through our website. This survey, the first of its kind to 
examine the regulatory constraints to green building will add an invaluable 
tool as we all seek more widespread adoption of green practices.

• Significant progress has been made toward the creation of ASTM standards on 
earthen materials. Our initial focus has been convening a task group to work 
on standards for adobe, compressed earth blocks, and rammed earth. This 
international group is loaded with talent and is making excellent progress. 
In the future, we are expecting to establish standards for a wide array of 
lower impact building systems and technologies that will support their 
widespread acceptance and ease their eventual adoption into codes.

• David Eisenberg was elected to the Board of the USGBC, and he co-chairs the 
new Greening of the Codes Committee with John Guenther, chief building 
official for the town of Surprise, Arizona. There is a lot of energy in this 
committee, and as referenced above, the potential alliance with ICBO/ICC on 
code issues presents interesting opportunities. John and David are also among 
a group of USGBC members who are establishing a statewide chapter in Arizona 
that will work closely with the Arizona Building Officials Association, a 
chapter of ICBO.

There is much more to tell, but from these accomplishments we hope you can 
grasp the importance of the work we do here at DCAT. In the primary areas of 
constraint on green building, DCAT has completely changed the landscape of 
one of the most formidable. We have begun to turn what has often been 
considered an adversarial relationship between designers/builders and code 
departments into a mutually supportive one. We are committed to facilitating 
WIN/WIN, mutually beneficial solutions. We’re successfully making the case 
that sustainability does not promote unsafe buildings, but rather expands the 
definition of safety to include all of the impacts of the practices required 
by regulations; including those unseen, distant from the job site, or that 
extend into the future. In essence, the building regulatory community has 
begun to voluntarily choose to accept accountability for the consequences of 
their requirements. I think I can speak for us all to say this is something 
we can all feel grateful for, and even a little bit excited about!

In closing, I am making a request that those of you that are benefiting from 
this work share some of the responsibility to make sure it continues to 
happen, and so that it does eventually translate into very real experiences 
at your own local code department. We have great credibility with the 
leadership of these organizations, but a lot of work needs to be done to get 
the appropriate information in the right hands so everyone can be supportive 
of these new directions. We are now developing training programs for 
building officials and are discussing the development of informational 
resources on green products and approaches with ICBO/ICC.

Sustaining these efforts has been a challenge. DCAT has been supported almost 
completely by generous private foundation grants. In the wake of the market 
slowdown and the 9/11 disaster, we have been put on notice that funding 
avenues are tightening, and we are striving to diversify our funding base. 
You can read about DCAT’s fundraising philosophy on our website at 
[www.dcat.net/fundraise.html]. In any case, we are providing this information 
for you to measure the value of our work to you and your organization or 
business, and to ask you to help keep it alive and thriving. We feel it is a 
bargain, and a reasonable request to make in light of our leadership and 
success as one of very few organizations doing this type of work. Please 
give, and give generously. We are a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, and 
can take donations of cash, stock, or just about anything. 

Thank you, and we hope you have a blessed Holiday season.
(and please forgive cross-posting and dupes!)

Tony Novelli
Assistant Director


Tony Novelli
Assistant Director
Development Center for Appropriate Technology
P.O. Box 27513
Tucson, Arizona 85726-7513 USA
(520) 624-6628
(520) 798-3701 Fax
<A HREF="http://www.dcat.net">http://www.dcat.net</A>

"If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each 
person's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility."
                                                        -Henry Wadsworth 
Longfellow