This is where urban planning comes in. By laying out the space and how energy will be used, a more efficient city flourishes. Currently, there is an opportunity for planners to sustain rather than simply use vital environmental resources for energy.

Urban development is the planning of high population areas and cities. It also encompasses how buildings are located in respect to each other, and how building attributes can be sustainable, according to Delwin Benson, a professor in the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Conservation Biology and an extension wildlife specialist.

Sustainability, on the other hand, is how a resource is used so it is not depleted or permanently damaged, according to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary.

Benson explained that there is a disconnect between the people living in urban centers and the environment – living in an urban setting means we don’t see the source of our energy or the impact it has on the environment.

“In the old days, you were living on the farm and you had a wood stove. You knew that you had to cut the wood to put in the stove to heat the house to make it warm,” Benson said. “Now all you have to do is turn up the thermostat. You don’t know whether it’s gas and where the gas comes from, or maybe its electric heat – where does electricity come from?

Urban people in urban development centers are [detached] from sustainability. They may not know where it comes from and they may not know how to vote wisely about it because they are so far removed.”

David Rigirozzi, who works for the Denver regional office of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as the field environmental officer, said that urban planning dates back to World War II, when more people moved into suburbs. As commerce and retail centers began to shift away from large cities such as Denver, HUD’s attention has been drawn to more “blighted” areas.

“You have two options with sites like that – you can just let them be derelict forever, or you can turn them into a park,” Rigirozzi said. “But HUD’s idea is [to] go for a more concentrated plan because the more concentrated you get, the more efficient use of energy.”

HUD’s current model across cities is to fund mixed-use clean up projects where commercial and residential retail areas can be more affordable and sustainable.

The Sustainable Communities Initiative, a $100 million federal program started in 2009, joins the forces of HUD and the U.S. Department of Transportation to improve upon “housing, transportation, economic development and sustainability in urban planning efforts,” according the HUD Web site.

Rigirozzi explained HUD is also creating a new office for sustainablity.

“It is kind of just nature taking its course – a lot of it, to me personally, stems from the fact that the United States is an affluent country in the world and this takes a lot of money,” he explained. “We expect or want these things to happen. Sustainability costs more money – 50 years ago there was no technology.”

Rigirozzi is optimistic about current technologies, but explained there is a risk if operation and maintenance costs get too high.

“The companion to sustainability is recycling – we have to have a convenient system so we are not turning a lot of these high-tech systems into hazardous waste,” he added.

And part of this is educating the masses. Aside from spreading information gathered by the university, Benson seeks out people and custom-tailors solutions to them. One goal for a more sustainable community is “to convince people that they want to do things in a sustainable way.”

Sustainability is not just an environmental issue. It is also influenced by the economy, society and people, Benson added.

“It is not only how you build a building, how you find the structure for people, but [it is also] teaching people proper behaviors,” Benson said. He added that social sustainability can be just little things, such as turning off the lights and not running the water while brushing your teeth.

April Wackerman is a firm believer that sustainability requires people to work together. Wackerman is a project manager with the Institute for the Built Environment at Colorado State University. Through her work as a green consultant, Wackerman helps builders get Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED,“  certification for using resources wisely, along with providing a healthy space for occupants.

“In the past few decades, the buildings are a lot less efficient and decrease in quality of materials, so other components have affected the indoor environmental quality,” she said. “There is a social impact as well, such as having natural lighting versus manufactured. It is not just about energy; it is about the health and well-being of the people that occupy and build the buildings.”

Although the trend of sustainability in urban planning is fairly new, Benson argues that people have been practicing sustainability for a long time – such as finding efficient ways to grow crops, which has taught people how to use the environment so it won’t deplete itself over time.

Benson believes sustainability is a give-and-take relationship because everything is intricately connected in multiple-use environments.

“A balance should be found first in how the earth works, and we don’t want to do something that destroys the functions of the earth,” he said. “We should decide to never let our earth get any worse off than what it is now and hopefully do what you can to make it better. If we are to demand energy, we have to accept some trade-offs to get it.”

Brian Dunbar held the same philosphy in finding ways to make the earth better. Dunbar, a professor in the Department of Construction Management and the executive director for IBE, coordinates with graduate students, CSU faculty and off-campus professionals to work on green building and sustainable development.

“An entire neighborhood or city can be sustainable,” said Dunbar, who has a new innovative project in the works that will not only be sustainable, but will also create “regenerative living environments.”

Known as LENSES, or Living, Environment, Natural, Social and Economic Systems, Dunbar and his research team are creating a guiding framework that they are hope will be implemented by projects in Northern Colorado, and eventually across the country and around the world. Dunbar explained how this is the next step in sustainability.

“Green building has done a good job of showing we can harm the planet less. The next generation of development and building will ideally not just use less, but do good for the planet,” he explained. “What if there was a building that actually had a positive footprint? What if it creates more energy than it uses?”

Both Dunbar and Benson hold a positive outlook for the future of sustainability and, one day, regenerative buildings. Benson said the best way to do so should start here, at CSU.

“We are an institution of higher learning, we should experiment here,” he declared. “Let’s not save it for somebody else to build – let’s be entrepreneurs.”

Wackerman couldn’t agree more and champions personal, intimate involvement in every building project.

“Urban development has a real opportunity to think about ways to draw people to a community and where people want to live,” she said. “It’s a reconnecting.”

Photo Illustration by Chelsea Dunfee

This is the story of a condom that gets flushed down your toilet.

Once it leaves your home and makes its way into the Fort Collins sewer system, it joins a variety of waste and snakes west towards its first stop, the Boxelder Water Treatment Facility.

“Condoms and tampon applicators – it’s surprising how often we see those,” said Andre Rowlett, the pretreatment coordinator for Boxelder Sanitation District. “Not enough people realize those are supposed to go in the garbage. If it goes down the toilet, there’s a greater chance of ending up in waterways, and in our case, the Poudre River.”

Latex condoms are the most popular, inexpensive and easily accessible form of birth control. Latex is a natural rubber, but because of various ingredients manufacturers add to make condoms more flexible and tear-resistant, they decompose slowly over many years.  When your condom was flushed, it entered a sewage system that is primarily reserved for organic waste.

“The environmental impact is greater on our end to eliminate plastics,” Rowlett said, adding that condoms and tampons are often responsible for causing problems with filtration systems. “At larger treatment plants in the city, there are mechanical devices that catch plastics [that should go in] waste bins, and those end up in a landfill, but at Boxelder, we’re a lagoon facility.”

Your condom now sits near the intersection of I-25 and Prospect Road in one of several man-made ponds, or lagoons, each measuring a quarter-acre in diameter. The facility treats water naturally by letting aerobic bacteria eat away at waste particles.  According to Rowlett, most organic waste is decomposed within a week, but plastic can either remain trapped for years or force its way through the filters.

Brad Johnson, a research scientist in the Colorado State University Department of Biology, said plastics such as your condom can wreak havoc if they are deposited in an ecosystem.

“It comes down to a large degree that [plastics] aren’t biodegradable and they end up in the food chain,” he said, noting that polluted waterways expose wildlife to the threat of entanglement and ingestion. “It can be lethal, not just to fish, but fish and other animals that are dependent on aquatic resources – water fowl and so on.”

But Johnson’s biggest concern is what happens when your condom travels down the Cache la Poudre, into the Colorado River and eventually joins the 3.6 million tons of garbage Americans irresponsibly dump every year.  Once in the ocean, the waste forms what he calls “giant-sized plastic rafts” that can be twice the size of the continental United States.

The Ocean Conservancy, an international charity group, estimates that of the nearly 4 million pieces of individual garbage collected in the U.S. during their International Coastal Cleanup program in September 2009, about 20,000 items were condoms and tampon applicators.

Deb Morris, an employee with the CSU Health Network and coordinator of Pat’s Pleasure Parlor, believes privacy is at the heart of the flushed condom problem.

“There is the fear that someone might see [a condom] in the waste bin,” she said, mentioning that she always advocates proper disposal.  “It’s very out of sight, out of mind.”

Pat’s Pleasure Parlor promotes safe sex and STD education on campus by distributing free condoms.  The program does not currently offer eco-friendly condoms, but Morris said she would look into them if safe and reliable products became readily available. One way to avoid embarrassment is to wrap your condom in toilet paper before tossing it.

When you flushed your condom, there was no telling where its journey would end. While Larimer County Environmental Health Services has reported no evidence of condoms specifically endangering the Colorado ecosystem, the long-term effects are difficult to predict.

“Plastics in the waterways of western Colorado are not going to make the mallard duck go extinct yet,” Johnson said. “But what happens when these continental-sized rafts have ramifications with animal migration and the blocking of photosynthesis? Only time will tell.”

Photo by Garrett Mynatt

A frothy trail of saliva hangs to the ground as a mule deer slumps onto the bank of a river. The deer’s rough, patchy coat is stretched and looks melted on its rocky frame. Its eyes are bulging and transfixed on nothing. It is clear this animal is in pain. Its last moments are spent seeking an end to its perpetual thirst, but nothing can help the deer in its final stages of the always-fatal Chronic Wasting Disease.

This deer, like many of the cervid family (white tail and mule deer, elk and moose) in northern Larimer County are dying from this neurological disease.

And CWD is not letting up anytime soon.

“Prevalence rates aren’t going down, they’re going up – we don’t have a handle on it [CWD] yet,” said Kurt C. VerCauteren, a research wildlife biologist and CWD project leader at the National Wildlife Research Center, which is a part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. He added that 40 percent of the deer in this area are infected with CWD.

Although humans cannot contract CWD, it is in the same family of diseases known as Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies, which includes mad cow disease, scrapie in sheep and goats and Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in humans.

There is no known cure or vaccine, and this disease is difficult to detect in wild and captive species because the signs don’t show up until the animal is in its final stages.

According to the APHIS Web site, the disease first appeared in Colorado wildlife research facilities in 1967. For years CWD stayed around northern Colorado and in parts of Wyoming. It wasn’t until 2001 that an infected mule deer was found in Nebraska. Since then, the disease has spread throughout many states, but the heavy concentrations are in Colorado, Wyoming, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Minnesota and two Canadian provinces, which includes both wild and captive cervids.

After CWD appeared in other states, researchers could not figure out how it spread or how this disease was transmitted, aside from saliva contact. Only now are researchers learning the ins and outs of CWD.

N. Thompson Hobbs, an ecology professor and senior research scientist at Colorado State University’s National Research Ecology Lab, said one of the ways CWD can be transmitted is by one sick animal to another, and his research shows how the disease can manifest itself in other ways, too.

“Chronic Wasting Disease can be transmitted from the environment probably from urine, feces and residues from carcasses,” Hobbs said. “It is persistent in the environment, which makes eradication of the disease a much more challenging problem.”

Hobbs is leading a research team that was given a $2.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct an observational study about how CWD is transmitted among wild mule deer populations. His team will look at the different conditions of hunted mule deer and different soil compositions, particularly clay soil. Hobbs said that in the laboratory, clay soil is shown to elevate “the ability of the disease to be transmitted from the environment,” which is what one of their several hypotheses is centered on.

“Animals that live in areas dominated by clay soils have a higher risk of infection,” Hobbs said. “Prions that adhere to particles of clay are shown to be 200 times more infectious than those that are not, so the environment plays an important role.”

The main soil in northern Colorado has a heavy concentration of clay. So what does that mean for the cervids in this area?

“They’re getting dosed, potentially, quite a bit,” VerCauteren explained. “CWD has been here for a long time and environmental contamination is a larger issue than we realized even just a couple years ago. So these environments are contaminated and the longer you have infected animals in the area, it keeps building.”

So whether an elk touches or sneezes on another elk, it isn’t the only way CWD is transmitted. If a plant grows from the soil with a heavy concentration of CWD (from urine, feces or carcass residue from an infected animal) then there is potential transmission.

Photo by Stephanie Scott

But if soil all over the U.S. isn’t clay-concentrated, then how is CWD popping up in Canada, New Mexico and even Ohio?

VerCauteren’s research team recently finished a study that found crows – avian scavengers – to be responsible for moving CWD around because they feast on dead animals.

“We found that if positive material goes into the front end of a crow, what comes out the back end of the crow is infectious,” VerCauteren said.

Since cervids are already spreading CWD just by eating, excreting and dying in nature, it becomes problematic that crows are potentially spreading the disease, too.

Then what happens next?

Since research is still uncovering the how’s and why’s of CWD, one way to potentially manage a disease is through controlling the amount of infected individuals.

“In the wild, when animals exist at really high density, there’s a good reason to believe that transmission rates are going to be higher, not only for CWD, but all kinds of disease,” Hobbs explained.

That is where hunters come in.

Mark Vieira, a terrestrial biologist at the Colorado Division of Wildlife said in, 2001 to 2005 they greatly liberalized hunting licenses in northern Larimer County so they could manage cervids, in particular female mule deer.

“We attempted to lower the prevalence and stop the spread of CWD,” Vieira said. “To fast forward, we were unsuccessful in stopping the spread because now we have detected it in much of the state and the prevalence hasn’t gone down.”

During that time, Vieira explained the DOW extended the hunting season and also offered two for one carcass tags for hunters. He said that hunters could buy up to four tags, so if they were able to they could harvest eight does in one season.

“People were camped out there wanting the licenses,” he said. “That year, in 2002, we harvested 1,200 does in northern Larimer County with hunters. Now, in 2009 we’re going to harvest between 70 to 90 does.”

But this strategy, as Vieira explained, did not work and they had to reevaluate their management plan because even though they reduced the herd in northern Larimer County the DOW did not see CWD prevalence rates drop.

During 2002, when mad cow disease was a headline mainstay, VerCauteren explained there was a lot of paranoia surrounding CWD because the diseases are in the same family. This did not deter hunters from harvesting 1,200 does during that time of paranoia. And it was also mandatory for hunters to bring their harvested heads into the DOW for testing, Vieira said.

Now, however, it is a voluntary submission.

“Hunters can submit deer or elk heads, have them tested and it provides a way to survey units where we haven’t detected the disease in that area,” Vieira said. “If we have a stream of heads we can figure out the odds of what prevalence might actually be, based on hunter-harvested heads.”

Jeff Forsberg, a white tail deer hunter, said he has never worried about his harvests being infected with CWD, but still submits them for testing. Forsberg recently moved to Colorado from Minnesota where he worked in a butcher shop where hunters brought their harvests.

“It was interesting to see the results. In Minnesota some harvests were brought in from different geographic locations because we had a lot of animals from Canada in there,” Forsberg said. “A lot of people, though, did not pick up their meat and so we would donate it to a local food shelter.”

As a hunter, Forsberg explained that he has an obligation to not only kill something humanely and legally, but not to waste harvest because he wants to respect the outdoors and what he takes from it.

Josh Tashiro, a junior majoring in natural resources management at CSU, agreed that with hunting comes a great responsibility to be safe, which is why he only hunts on land belonging to friends of his.

“I’ve never dropped my elk heads [off for testing],” Tashiro said. “If I were to [hunt] off of my friend’s ranch, I probably would submit my harvest.”

Fred Quarterone, a wildlife manager at the DOW, said not all hunters submit their harvests now that it is voluntary.

“We have seen a reduction each year, but it’s a personal decision whether to turn [a head] in for testing,” Quarterone said. “A major reason some hunters do is because they want to know whether the animal they’re eating is infected or not.”

For Delwin E. Benson, a CSU professor in the fish, wildlife and conservation biology department and CSU Extension wildlife specialist, he said that it’s important for people to have more knowledge about CWD because even though there is no connection between humans and CWD, caution still needs to be there.

“It’s very important that people have an interest in wildlife and they need to know how to manage wildlife and part of that involves disease and preventing transmission,” Benson said.

As for the future of CWD, there is still a lot of research being done, and VerCauteren said they just developed a live rectal test for elk. This test enables them to detect CWD before the physical signs show up.

Even if humans may not be able to contract CWD, Hobbs said this problem demands our best attention.

“CWD is a serious environmental problem – even if it poses no risk to people, it poses grave threats to ecosystems throughout the world,” Hobbs said.