This Ought To Piss Off Doughy Pantload

Freep:

The city that has been named among the nation's safest, fittest and most livable has a new claim to fame -- America's most eco-friendly place.

So says Country Home magazine, which ranked Burlington tops among 379 metropolitan areas in a "Best Green Places" survey that rated cities based on air and watershed quality, mass transit use, power use and number of organic producers and farmers' markets.

Using data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the U.S. Department of Transportation, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Green Building Council, the survey rated Ithaca, N.Y., second; Corvallis, Ore., third; Springfield, Mass., fourth; and Wenatchee, Wash., fifth.

Charlottesville, Va.; Boulder, Colo.; Madison, Wis.; Binghamton, N.Y.; and Champaign-Urbana, Ill.; rounded out the top 10.
...
Burlington won high marks for the way its people, businesses and government value a green lifestyle and make it a priority, the magazine said.

Among its green assets:

A compost facility that collects food scraps from restaurants, supermarkets and food manufacturers and sells the compost to farmers, gardeners and landscapers.

The Burlington metropolitan area's 16 farmers' markets, five organic producers and three food co-ops.

Although mass transit use isn't big, car pools are -- 12.3 percent of Burlington-area commuters use them, according to Bert Sperling, a research consultant who worked on the rankings for Country Home.

About 5.6 percent of the work force walks to work, and 4.6 percent work at home, which also played into the city's high ranking, Sperling said.

"It's certainly an honor to be called the greenest city in America," said Betsy Rosenbluth, project director for Burlington Legacy, the city's sustainable city initiative. "Burlington, for many years, has worked hard on many, many fronts, whether it's preserving open space or helping to clean up our beaches and Lake Champlain to preserve our environment.

Jonah Goldberg really, really hates Vermont, so this will only make him hate us more.  Good: maybe that means he'll never visit again.

ntodd