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S P R I N G / S U M M E R 2 0 1 3

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visit tHe Greenest smaLL town in

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On the CoverPhotography by: odessy Barbu/Getty Images

FeaturesECO-GENERATION 22actor Johnny Galecki joins cast of activists

AMERICA’S ALL-GREEN TOWN 26Greensburg, Kan., rebuilds after twister

GOOD BUSINESS 36Wal-Mart proof – green works

GREEN COMPANIES 38Making a difference

UNIVERSITIES/BUILDERS 40supporting the cause

TEST YOUR RECYLING IQ 48separate fact from fiction

CORPORATE LEADERS 52offer energy solutions

STADIUMS AND HOTELS 56eco-friendly features

EARTHSHIP HOMES 58living off the grid

Up FrontGREEN GOODS 9Responsibility, luxury

TRAVEL 12eco-friendly options

GREEN GROCER 14Food labels, lunches

COMMUNITY 17schools, social media

GREEN ALMANAC 20news and notes

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architect Mike Reynolds’ earthship homes typically are solar-heated and constructed of tires that reccyle water and are off the electric grid.

his model (above) in new Mexico looks like something out of oz.

spRInG/sUMMeR 2013

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USA TODAY’s ECO INNOVATORS

WELCOMEto Greensburg

KANSASMISSOURI

OKLAHOMA

NEBRASKA

COLO

RAD

OD

100 MILES

Wichita

Kansas City

GreensburgThe small town of

Greensburg straddles

U.S. Highway 54 in

south-central Kansas,

laid out in neat square

blocks. It is farm country.

If you look to your east

and west, wheat, soybeans and cattle

can be seen for miles. The seat of Kiowa

County is about 100 miles west of Wichita.

Greensburg’s claim to fame once came

from being home to the world’s largest

hand-dug well. The simply named Big Well

is 109 feet deep and more than 30 feet in

diameter. It’s an impressive structure and,

at the beginning of 2007, was the most

unusual aspect of this city of 1,600. But

what came next changed the community

forever.

On May 4, 2007, a tornado swept through

Greensburg, essentially destroying the

all-American town. The tornado killed 13

people and injured more than 60 oth-

ers. The twister razed 95 percent of the

structures in town, and the remaining five

percent were seriously damaged.

President George W. Bush and Kathleen

Sebelius, then state governor, immediately

declared the town a disaster area. More

than one Greensburg resident wondered

if the storm had flat-out killed the

community.

“We lost half the population [to reloca-

tion] right away,” recalls Greensburg Mayor

Bob Dixson, who was the postmaster at the

time. “They had no place to live. A lot of

older residents moved to neighboring com-

munities. But we were very blessed—2.8

million of our friends and neighbors came

to help us,” he says, referring to the popula-

tion of Kansas. “The Kansas Department of

Transportation, the Kansas

National Guard, many

cities, counties and towns

sent trucks and ambu-

From the rubble of a tornado, a Kansas town becomes a model for environmentally

friendly livingBY PATRICK QUINN

PhoTos BY JAIme gReeN

>Main Street in GreenSburG

in this block are sustainable features such as native plantings and a water catchment system used to capture and filter rainwater to be used in irriga-tion. Below is Kiowa City Commons.

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lances and equipment and volunteers.”

Work to clear the wreckage of

the town and care for the surviving

residents started immediately. The

U.S. Forest Service set up a base camp

and served more than 36,000 meals

in the four weeks after the tornado.

The Federal Emergency Management

Agency (FEMA) installed hundreds of

mobile homes that eventually housed

about 300 families.

Recovery from the wreckage and

planning for the future took place

amid scenes of almost unimaginable

devastation. Throughout the summer,

residents held weekly tent meetings

to discuss plans. Since the tornado

wiped out all communication systems,

residents depended on the “yellow

sheet,” a paper printed and distributed

twice a week to get the word out about

recovery efforts. “We had an 86-year-old

‘newsboy’ distributing the paper,” says

Ann Dixson, the mayor’s wife and a

municipal judge.

At sometimes-stormy public meet-

ings, Greensburg’s battered survivors

grappled with the complexities of

receiving federal disaster aid and the

daunting task of adopting a long-term

recovery plan. What would the future

hold for Greensburg, Kan.? Would the

town rebuild, and how?

From the swirling aftermath of

disaster came something amazing:

America’s greenest little town.

thinkinG in innovative wayS Today, six years after the tornado,

Greensburg is the world’s leading

community in LEED-certified buildings

per capita. The town is home to a

half-dozen LEED-platinum certified

buildings, including the new City Hall

and the new 48,500-square-foot Kiowa

County Memorial Hospital. Renewable

energy powers the entire community,

and the streetlights are all LED.

Reconstruction is nearly complete.

The new LEED-platinum K-12 school

is full. The 2010 census counted 777

residents, but Dixson thinks that

number is low. “Judging by the utility

hook-up reports I see at City Hall, I

think we’re at about 850,” he says. The

idea to go green was floated early on.

At the very first tent meeting, held

a week after the tornado, resident

Daniel Wallach proposed rebuilding

as a “model green community.” That

summer, he helped found Greensburg

GreenTown, a nonprofit organization

that became an information clearing-

house for the town’s environmentally

minded reconstruction.

Mayor Dixson concedes that some

residents “cringed a little bit” at all

the green talk. “For some people it

sounded very 1967-1968, you know,

powder-blue bell bottoms and tie-dyed

shirts. The number one topic at those

tent meetings was talking about who

we are—what are our values?” he says.

“There was a lot of hard work, a lot of

discussion. Some of it was positive,

some of it was less than positive.

Sometimes we agreed to disagree, but


we were still civil to each other. And

let’s not forget that our ancestors were

stewards of the land. My ancestors

lived in the original green homes: sod

houses.”

breakinG GrounDAn environmentally minded Kansas

City design firm, BNIM, worked with

the town and FEMA to help create a

long-term recovery plan. Gradually,

the notion to go green gained traction

with town residents, and they came

to embrace the possibility of turning

the town into a living laboratory for

sustainable development. Eight months

after the tornado, the Greensburg City

Council adopted a resolution: All large

public buildings in Greensburg with a

footprint exceeding 4,000 square feet

must meet the LEED-platinum stan-

dards of the U.S. Green Building Council

and utilize renewable energy sources.

“This is groundbreaking stuff,” city

administrator Steve Hewitt told people

at the meeting.

One enormous infrastructure

change was Greensburg’s conversion

to “100 percent renewable energy,

100 percent of the time,” as Dixson

describes it. The happy outcome came

about from the storm’s destruction of

Bucklin Tractor and Implement (BTI),

the local John Deere dealership owned

by the Estes family.

Mark Estes, a representative of

the third generation of the family to

operate BTI, was among the leading

voices calling for a commitment to

save the town and restore the business

community in the days after the storm.

“After all, we were one of the biggest

businesses in town,” he says.

The family decided to rebuild their

Greensburg BTI dealership to LEED-

platinum standards, and to erect a

wind turbine on the new site. All of this

“green dealership” talk was new terri-

tory for John Deere, which nonetheless

supported the Estes brothers’ goals.

“We had to educate them about what

LEED was,” Mike Estes recalls. “Once

they understood, they decided we could

be a model of sustainability for other

dealerships.”

Today the Greensburg BTI dealer-

ship operates in a 33,000-square-foot

metal pre-fabricated building that

also contains a large maintenance

facility and is indeed LEED-platinum

>a worLD LeaDinG CoMMunity

Clockwise from top left: The 5.4.7 Arts Center is named after the date of the tornado that razed greensburg. it was designed and built by University of Kansas graduate architecture students in lawrence and was moved to greensburg in seven pieces in 2008; ruth Ann Wedel shows a tornado shelter made from a propane tank and on display at greensburg greenTown’s Silo eco-Home. greenTown, a nonprofit group, educates residents and business owners on how to live sustainably; wind turbines dot the city’s landscape; gardeners plant 26 sycamore trees in front of the Kiowa County School; the top floor of the Big Well Museum offers visitors a panoramic view of the city; former Kansas state treasurer Dennis McKinney holds a photo of the tornado devastation on Main Street in 2007.

What’s in a name?> DiD you know?

The town’s curiously prophetic name comes from one of its founders, D.r. “Cannonball” green. Cannonball oper-ated a stagecoach line and was Kiowa County’s first representative elected to the Kansas legislature.

30 green living


certified—the first Deere dealership in

the country to be labeled as such. The

National Renewable Energy Laboratory

estimates that the sustainable construc-

tion techniques used in building the new

dealership have resulted in a “55 percent

annual energy savings compared to a

typical existing retail facility.”

Standing alongside the new dealer-

ship is an 8,000-square-foot steel ware-

house that houses the Estes brothers’

new venture—BTI Wind Energy. “We’re

in the business now,” Estes says with a

grin. He describes the new company’s

investment in “small wind” technology—

the use of a small turbine farm or even a

single turbine to meet the energy needs

of an individual farm or business.

Today the wind that nearly destroyed

Greensburg is what keeps the town’s

lights on. Turbines can be seen catch-

ing the wind throughout residential

neighborhoods and the business

community. The energy needs of the

larger Greensburg community are met

by a wind farm just south of town.

The decision to rebuild in green-

friendly ways added to the cost of the

town’s reconstruction by as much as 20

percent. The expense attracted attention

in Washington—the source of much of

the reconstruction money—and in June

2008, Hewitt was asked to testify before

Congress. His testimony was eloquent

and compelling. “Green starts in rural

America,” he said, and the committee

was convinced.

>winD Power

Wind turbines are scattered throughout greensburg.

big Well museum> better than beFore At 109 feet deep and 32 feet in diameter, greenburg’s Big Well is the world’s largest hand-dug well. The breathtaking masterpiece was completed in 1888 and served as the town’s main water supply until 1932. More than 3 million people have de-scended the metal stairwell since it was designated as a national museum in 1972.

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32 green living


buiLDinG a MoDeL townThe town’s unique story, one of devastation and

forward-thinking reconstruction, attracted media

attention, becoming the subject of two TV series

and several books. In 2007, Discovery Channel

reached out to Greensburg to film a TV series that

would document the green reconstruction of the

town. A deal was inked for Greensburg, and envi-

ronmental activist/actor Leonardo DiCaprio signed

on to the project. The series ran for three seasons

and documented the day-to-day struggle facing

residents. A second mini-series, the four-episode

Build It Bigger: Rebuilding Greensburg, premiered in

November 2008 on the Science Channel.

Several books have been published about the

storm and its aftermath, most notably The Green-

ing of Oz, by Robert Fraga, a semi-retired Kansas

academic with a longtime interest in sustainable

architecture. “The reconstruction is nearly

complete, and it’s a model for towns everywhere

in this country. A new town has grown up out of

the prairie with a spectacular collection of public

buildings,” Fraga says.

Other prairie towns have taken note. Since the

Greensburg storm, two more towns have faced

>rebuiLD

Bob Dixson, greensburg’s mayor since 2008, stands outside the City Council building, which was rebuilt with bricks found in the rubble.

builDing hOPe>PaSSinG it on The greensburg experience can be exported. The towns of Joplin, Mo., and Tuscaloosa, Ala., both flattened by tornados, are working to rebuild in green ways. “This approach might have seemed on the fringe 15 years ago, but today we haven’t got much choice,” says author robert Fraga.

– Bob Dixson, Greensburg mayor


destruction from a tornado. An

EF4 twister struck Tuscaloosa, Ala.,

on April 27, 2011, killing 64 people

and injuring more than 1,500. The

following month a catastrophic

EF5 cyclone roared through Joplin,

Mo., killing 158 people and injuring

1,100. Both cities have reached out to

Greensburg for advice on rebuilding,

says Fraga.

Mayor Dixson sometimes waxes

philosophical about Greensburg’s

extraordinary rise from the rubble.

“You have to do the best you can

with the resources you have,” he

says. “We learned that the only true

green and sustainable things in life

are how we treat each other.”

He’s pleased that many of the

rebuilt homes in Greensburg feature

roomy front porches. “We need to get

back to being front-porch people.”

We learned that the only true green and sustainable things in life are how we treat each other.

Watch our video on greensburg’s rebirth. Scan with a QR reader on your mobile device.

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