Sustainability for all the places between the buildings.

Green Girl Land Development Solutions is a sustainability consulting business that helps private and public land development professionals identify opportunities and constraints to integrate more sustainability into site design and construction. Green building certifications aren't enough - there's still lots of low hanging fruit that is cost neutral or even a cost savings, so let's get started! (Click here for a 2007 EPA report on the costs savings of low impact over conventional developments!)

Services Offered: I can help you implement over 200 best management practices during the master planning, design, construction, and operations & maintenance phases of your project. If I don't know something or can't design it, I'll point you to the person on your team who should know or help you find who you need. I help you make good decisions about where to put your money with decision making documents and resources your whole team can use to build up their library of BMP resources for their deliverables.

Business Model: Green Girl is a one-woman (certified WBE) firm that operates like a temporary agency, except with a background in sustainable civil engineering and land development. I'm knowledgeable and fast and happy to jump in, give you just what you need, and get out. I can be the extra helping hand and fresh perspective that it takes to create as green a project as we can really afford.

This is the community building of the Oleson Woods Apartments, which is an affordable housing project chock full of sustainable practices so it can't be THAT expensive!

Informed Advice: I spend a lot of time in professional development and researching the latest and greatest thinking around green site development. You won't get that from your average project manager trying to get your permits issued in a hurry. My language will be simple and straightforward and my technical assistance will be provided in an easy to incorporate formats.

Rain Gardens 201: This summer, I'm organizing a technical field class on detailing rain gardens for sustainability. Click here for more details and the register.

Green Girl Land Development Solutions is a sustainability consulting firm that provides mentoring, training, and technical assistance to land development professionals and agencies. Armed with the latest science and thinking about best management practices, Green Girl evaluates the opportunities and constraints of not only the physical site, but also the community impacts and economic realities – essentially, providing project-based teaching to incorporate the triple bottom line into everyday thinking and practice. Green Girl offers expertise from the very early stages of planning to the late stages of construction in BMPs related to site design, demolition, grading and erosion control, utility design, stormwater management, and materials choices for both private and public infrastructure.

To reduce the impact of land development by assisting land development professionals in the application of sustainable site design principles.

Land development and its associated buildings have a tremendous impact on natural resources, both on- and off-site. Seventy-one percent of our energy and 12% of our water on average is used to construct, operate, and maintain American buildings annually. These processes comprise 39% of our CO2 emissions and 65% of our waste stream. In addition, conventional land design and construction practices typically destroy biodiversity; contaminate the air, water, and land; and increase greenhouse gas emissions directly on-site to impact off-site resources even further.

We cannot go for a few weeks without food, a few days without water, or a few minutes without air - these are the basis of survival and represent basic rights for all. Clean land, water, and air should not be sacrificed for the creation of shelter.