County‐level, Order 2 soil surveys have been used for decades to illustrate the spatial distribution of soils and communicate the utility and limitations of soil series. For the vast majority of these soil surveys, however, there is a distinct lack of resolution of soil series and associated data for urban or highly developed areas of the United States. Yet, with unprecedented vacancy and demolitions in major U.S. cities, the availability of large tracts of open and relatively inexpensive urban land suggests that there are many prospects for using these soils for something other than redevelopment. Therefore, current public interests center on how urban soils may be used to provide a myriad of ecosystem services. Due to the different emphasis, data needs are different than for past soil surveys and we therefore suggest an approach and protocol that was employed in Cleveland, OH in 2010. This work is centered on the possibility of using vacant land mass to infiltrate and otherwise absorb excess stormwater runoff quantity as a sustainable and putatively cost‐effective way of managing combined sewer overflows (CSO). We examined a sample set of 56 vacant lots and 14 city parks or cemeteries located in the drainage areas of relatively small‐volume, high frequency CSOs. This paper details the survey approach rationale, methods, and level of effort required and presents a case study. Overall, this work is submitted as a proposal to the soil survey community for a soil survey protocol aimed at servicing emergent environmental management data needs in urban core areas of the United States.

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Gardening has been practiced by humans for food and aesthetic purposes for thousands of years. As urbanization intensifies globally, gardening is increasing in both popularity and extent in urban and suburban regions of the world, thus increasing its impact on the environments. Here we discuss the health benefits and risks of home-grown vegetables followed by an in-depth examination of how home and community gardening impacts the biological and physical environments of the world with a focus on North America. In addition to offering multiple health benefits, gardens may promote biodiversity by providing critical habitats for a variety of native plant and animal species. At the same time, gardening has the potential to alter cycles of carbon, nutrients and water in urban and suburban areas, consequently contributing to global environmental changes. Conversely, gardening may have a range of adverse impacts on the environment, for instance, higher nutrient runoff and increased risk of eutrophication in aquatic ecosystems. Intensive lawn care, particularly in North America because of its large lawn areas, could divert essential resources, such as manpower, fertilizers and water, away from more ecologically and economically important activities. Exotic plants commonly grown in home gardens could escape cultivation and become noxious in their non-native habitats as already demonstrated by an increasing number of ornamental species, such as Callery pear and non-native honeysuckle, in the USA. As the world becomes more and more urbanized, the increasingly popular gardening will have greater impact on the abiotic and biotic environments of the world.

The selection and approval of sites for power-generating facilities has become extremely complex, lengthy, and costly. Utilities, regulators and rate-payers alike suffer most when regulatory proceedings impose delays after financial commitments have been made and construction has begun. One response has been to create analytical tools that may be applied earlier to help identify and begin to resolve controversial environmental issues. The authors believe these tools will help avoid costly delay, help reduce uncertainties that impede efforts by the electric-utility industry to plan for the future, and help the Government to anticipate future energy and environmental issues. The approach they recommend is innovative because it incorporates environmental constraints and siting alternatives into long-range planning. Thus, these analytical tools can help evaluate the key tradeoffs between environmental impacts and economic costs. Furthermore, this approach makes it possible to identify cumulative environmental impacts of generating facilities across an entire region, such as New England. However, the authors caution that these tools have yet to pass the test of time. This approach was developed by Clark-McGlennon Associates of Boston, for the Massachusetts Energy Facilities Siting Council, and is part of an on-going New England project funded by the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission.When the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission decided last June to suspend construction of the controversial atomic power plant at Seabrook, N.H., after 10 percent of the work had been completed, it prompted a New York Times editorial calling the plant "a monument to the nation's paralysis on vital energy questions." Nowhere is this paralysis greater than in power-plant siting. Massive environmental reports are prepared with thousands of pages of technical and environmental data on each proposed power plant site, and days of hearings are endured by company representatives, regulators, and intervenors. However, many participants in such proceedings have felt that there has been no balanced weighing of the tradeoffs between environmental impacts and economic costs.In the case of the nuclear plant at Seabrook, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission ordered a construction halt that lasted for almost two months, in order to review alternative sites. The order came on July 21, 1978, after some five years of regulatory proceedings and about $400 million worth of construction on the site.Some of the problems in setting up power plants stem Legend:State agencies-environmental protection and siting agencies;

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