Montana is facing over the next few years. It begins with a concise description of the energy flows and trends within the state, then covers the full range of proposed projects, legislation, and agencies and organizations affecting Montana's energy future. Page for page, the Renewable Energy Handbook is by far the best introduction to renewable ener:gy technology I've seen. Its descriptions of small-scale conservation, solar, biomass, and electrical generation technology are up to date, complete, and very well written. Every sentence is packed with useful information, and Konigsberg has included a series of good bibliographi~ each type_of system. There is also a superb 24-page section detailing some of the systems,that have been built as part of Montana's Renewable Energy Program. -KB Landscape Design That Saves Energy, by Anne Simon Moffat and Marc Schiler, 1981, 223 pp., $9.95 from: William Morrow and Co. }05 Madison Avenue New York, NY 10016 Landscaping to save energy is a voice from began to notice trees in the vicinity which were totally defoliated with no discernible cause. She also found it curious that even as late as the summer of the following year, robins, bluejays, cardinals and finches seemed to be avoiding the area. Henry and Nancy Gilbert, who live near the plant and raise exotic birds for pet stores, returned home on the evening of May 16, 1979, and found that 416 of their birds had suddenly died. The experts they consulted could offer no satisfactory explanation. From The People of Three Mile Island the past; the earliest home builders recognized the many uses of plants. They respected the local climate an:d understood the significant role landscaping could play in designing shelters to meet even the severest conditions. Contemporary architecture has removed itself horn the environment through the use of artificial injections of oilbased climate controls. Moffat and Schiler have compiled knowledge from the past with advances in our understanding of physical processes in our environment to help us meet the future of ever-tightening resources. Clear concise diagrams and explanations make this book a useful guide for the homeowner. Lists of species for each broad set of climatic conditions give the reader an appropriate shopping list from which to choose, and tables of solar angles and tangents and a map of climatic conditions complete the background information necessary. One point that wasn't stressed as much as I had hoped is the importance of using native , plants, both from an environmental and energy efficiency point of vievV Not enough caution is used with regard to introducing plants into habitats in which they are not native. As a result we are plagued with hundreds of species which have become invasive •Photographer Robert Del Tredici introduces us to a cross-section of the people who lived through (and are still living through) the bizarre events surrounding the accident at Three Mile Island. His pictures and their words remind us that for many people on the scene, the real trauma began after the cooling towers disappeared from the front pages and the CBS Evening News. More than anything I've read in the two years since the accident, this book conveys the frustration experienced by many people in the towns May 1981 RAIN Page 9 weeds. On th~ other hand, many of the plants which are used horticulturally are not suited to the environment in which they are introduced and a great deal of time and energy must be spent to provide a hospitable environment for them. Californians learned the hard way when drought forced them to think more carefully about their garden's moisture requirements. Read this book, use native species, and start saving up to 30 percent of your home's heating and cooling requirements. -Cathy Macdonald HEDOE PROTECTII-JG 1-iOME ENTIUINCE FIIDM HOT WINlll., and on the farms of southeastern Pennsylvania when faced with an often invisible enemy posing uncertain long-term consequences in the midst of official cover-up and denials of damage. That people like Clair Hoover and the Gilberts should have been deeply affected is not surprising. They have h~d clear evidence, literally at their doorsteps, that things are not as they should be. For many of their neighbors the situation.is much less clear. "They think you have a screw loose or something if you go out and protest," says Georgia Luckinbill, a registered nurse who lives seven miles from the plant. "They think that everyone who gets all excited over this is over-reacting." Her experience is echoed by Mickey Minnich, football coach at a local high school: "you see the light and they don't see it and you wonder why they don't understand what's going on." It is the invisibility factor, as Del Tredici observes, which has been "the real wild card in the deck." For people like Luckinbill and Minnich, events which cannot be directly seen, smelled or tasted, and are repeatedly explained away by officials-, have taken on an eery "Alice in Wonderland" quality. For many of their neighbors, the fact that their senses have not been directly touched has only left them insensitive. "I wish you could smell it," says Minnich. "I tell you what, if that would have been chlorine on March 28,. they would have evacuated everybody because you could smell it. It's irritating.... People would be coughing, vomiting. I wish it would make you vomit." -JF
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