What Has Your Consultant Done For You Lately

JCM Environmental does many things that benefit their clients that never show up on their invoice. This is just the way we have always done things. In this economy many people are looking for the best price and not the best value, that is a big mistake.

Click here to see the value in hiring JCM Environmental.

You Wanted Change...You Are Getting It!

Jim presented a summary of the new environmental initiatives at the Federal level that are coming out of the Obama Administration at a Homebuilders Association of Delaware (HBADE) breakfast this morning.

These new initiatives cover everything from storm water, wetlands, nutrients and climate change.

HBADE will be sponsoring additional seminars in Kent County and Sussex County in the coming weeks.

For more information, contact Jim at jim@jcmenv.com

BRAC Know Before You Go Expo

This past weekend JCM Environmental was again the Signature Sponsor for the Know Before You Go Expo – Part 2 at Fort Monmouth in New Jersey. The Expo was to assist the thousands of transferees in learning more about the Delaware and Maryland area prior to their move prior to September 2011.

JCM Environmental teamed with 8 of our Green Building clients to educate the transferees about the value of buying a green built home. We also educated them on the value of an NAHB green home certification in order to ensure that the home they are buying is really green. The participating builders were: Bestfield Homes, Blenheim Homes, Cornell Homes, Empire Builders, Reybold Development, RC Peoples, Silverstock Builders, and Thompson Homes.

Several JCM Employees attended and manned the Expo booths, along with builder representatives. Everyone we talked to was a transferee and was making the move from New Jersey to either Maryland or Delaware. We estimate at least 500 people attended this Expo and received exposure to green building and our client’s communities.

JCM also made numerous great connections with the Expo host Cecil County Chamber of Commerce staff members, new builders, Realtors, government officials and others at the Expo.

For more information, please contact Howard Fortunato at howard@jcmenv.com or visit http://www.jcmenv.com/ for more information.

Seminar Announced

Jim McCulley will be presenting a brief update on Federal Environmental Issues on October 28th at a breakfast meeting jointly sponsored by JCM Environmental and the Homebuilders Association of Delaware.



Register or get more details here:



http://guest.cvent.com/EVENTS/Info/Agenda.aspx?i=e75958cc-bd18-43d4-807a-412d576df0cb



Some of the topics are:

Post construction SWM facility maintenance
Clean Water Act Enforcement
Effluent Limitation Guidelines (due in December)
Smarter Growth Options
Climate Change Legislation
Great Lakes Restoration Plan
Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Legislation
Chesapeake Bay TMDL and Legislation

HBADE Home Show Highlights Green Building and Living

Despite the rainy, windy and cold weather this past weekend, lots of people trekked to the Chase Center in Wilmington to attend the Home Builder's Home Show.

Attendees at the show were able to see many different green-minded products from hundreds of vendors. Our Green Building Council (including Howard and many of our clients and colleagues) staffed a booth and provided answers for the people asking various questions about green and reminding them to look for the NAHB certified green logo on new construction in order to make sure they were really buying a green home and not getting greenwashed.

Jim McCulley was a featured speaker, talking about green building and how to avoid greenwashing. Other speakers included DNREC Secreatry Collin O'Mara, Ralph Nigro who spoke about the stimulus package, and UD students who presented green energy seminars.

Ocean Sunfish - One of the highlights of our Event

Our customer appreciation event was held today at The Peninsula in Millsboro. Yes it was a rainy day and our golf outing got rained out, but the athletic center had ping pong, air hockey and foosball as well as Sports Center on TV and great food and drink. We got to tour the model homes and take a walk on the nature trail.

The highlight of the day was the discovery of an Ocean Sunfish on the beach. This species is extremely rare for Delaware and it was a once in a lifetime find.

Facts about the Ocean Sunfish:

The ocean sunfish, Mola mola, or common mola, is the heaviest known bony fish in the world. It has an average adult weight of 1,000 kg (2,200 lb). The species is native to tropical and temperate waters around the globe. It resembles a fish head with a tail, and its main body is flattened laterally. Sunfish can be as tall as they are long when their dorsal and ventral fins are extended.

Sunfish live on a diet that consists mainly of

jellyfish, but because this diet is nutritionally poor, they consume large amounts in order to develop and maintain their great bulk. Females of the species can produce more eggs than any other known vertebrate.[1] Sunfish fry resemble miniature pufferfish, with large pectoral fins, a tail fin and body spines uncharacteristic of adult sunfish.

Adult sunfish are vulnerable to few natural predators, but sea lions, orcas and sharks will consume them. Among humans, sunfish are considered a delicacy in some parts of the world, including Japan, the Korean peninsula and Taiwan, but sale of their flesh is banned in the European Union.[2] Sunfish are frequently, though accidentally, caught in gillnets, and are also vulnerable to harm or death from encounters with floating trash, such as plastic bags.

A member of the order Tetraodontiformes, which also includes pufferfish, porcupinefish and filefish, the sunfish shares many traits common to members of this order. It was originally classified as Tetraodon mola under the pufferfish genus, but it has since been given its own genus, Mola, with two species under it. The ocean sunfish, Mola mola, is the type species of the genus.

Another Rain Barrel Winner

JCM Environmental gave away a rain barrel at the Lewes Delaware Coast Day.

Rain Barrels allow you to capture rain water and then use it during dry periods to water your flowers or wash your car without wasting municipal water. This untreated rainwater is better for your plants because it contains no chlorine.

Congratulations to our latest Rain Barrel winner. To get more information on Rain Barrels, Rain Gardens or any other Green Practice, contact JCM Environmental at jim@jcmenv.com or visit http://www.jcmenv.com/

Solar Docks – Solar Panel Install Solution

Last week Craig Smith and I had to opportunity to learn more about solar docks, a system to install solar panels on roofs or other open areas without attaching or penetrating the surface. The system is designed and handled by a Wilmington company SolarDock http://www.solardock.com/. I decided to pass the information along as others could learn and possibly benefit from this.

Actually the solar dock is a lightweight frame into which the solar panel is installed. The beauty of it is that it is weighed down and attached to cinder blocks. We saw an application on their client’s roof in Wilmington, mounted onto an automotive repair facility roof without penetrating the roof itself. Pretty cool!

Its also an ideal solution for installing over vacant open ground, or brownfields where you don’t want to penetrate the surface. SolarDock has a schematic design to place fill dirt, geotextile matting and stone above the existing brownfields cap and then placing the solar modules and dock on top.

This could also be applied to vacant land parcels 10-80 acres in size if the landowner does not plan to do anything with the land for several years.

The benefit is being able to generate green energy from otherwise non-productive land.

Chicago NAHB Meetings

Jim is back from Chicago where he attended the 2009 Fall Board Meetings for the National Association of Homebuilders. Jim serves on the Environmental Issues Committee, the Education Subcommittee, the Post Construction Storm Water Management Task Force and the NAHB Board of Directors.

Some significant upcoming issues were discussed at these meetings as well as a very in depth housing economics update. Please contact Jim for more information at jim@jcmenv.com

A list of topics discussed includes:

• Post construction SWM facility maintenance


• Clean Water Act Enforcement


• Effluent Limitation Guidelines (due in December)


• Smarter Growth Options


• Climate Change Legislation


• Great Lakes Restoration Plan


• Gulf of Mexico Hypoxia Legislation


• Chesapeake Bay TMDL and Legislation

UD Coast Day in Lewes

Yesterday Amy, Jacki, Howard, Joe and his young cousin Cole (a future biologist!) were joined by a few thousand of our closest friends at UD’s 33rd annual Coast Day in Lewes.

Large crowds enjoyed the beautiful fall day and visited our booth, exploring all that our firm offers. But the runaway hit was our collection of wild critters – snakes, turtles and frogs (most of these were caught only a few days ago by our Senior Biologist Mick, and will be returned to the wild shortly). For many of our guests it was their first chance to get up close and personal with the critters. One ingenious ratsnake managed to figure out how to get out of his temporary plastic home and nearly escaped but Joe got him back in. And one lucky visitor, a UD student, won our drawing for the rain-barrel we gave away! She’s going to donate it to her parents house instead of her dorm. For those not familiar, a rain-barrel is simply a container which captures rainwater off the roof and stores it for watering nearby plants and shrubs.

Besides the thousands that attended Coast Day, some friends stopped by, including Rick Burritt, some DNREC folks, a homebuilder and remodeler, and our friends at Center for Inland Bays. A nice day at Coast day, literally within a stones throw of the Delaware coast.