Vandersloot died Wednesday at his home in Newport Beach from what his son, Jon Vandersloot, described as a possible massive heart attack, although the cause has not been confirmed.

His death prompted a moment of silence and kind words at a meeting of the California Coastal Commission Thursday. Meanwhile, the allies in his many causes — from raising treatment levels for sewage emptied into the ocean to preserving wetlands and wildlife — spoke of his dedication, energy and drive.

Vandersloot also was a local dermatologist whose office was always crowded with patients. Read full O.C. Register story.

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Photo by Michael Goulding

When the day began, the lot sandwiched between two homes in Newport Beach contained nothing but a foundation.

By midafternoon, the space was filled with a two-story, three-bedroom home — and an ultra-green home at that.

The prefabricated house, its four modules hoisted into place with a giant crane, is only the third of its kind ever  built; builders and promoters hope it’s a sign of things to come.

Homeowner Greg Brown, a Newport Beach resident who will use the structure as a kind of beach house, says the interior should be ready in about four weeks.

“Now we’ve just got to bolt it up together, get it all finished off and then we’re good to go,” Brown said minutes after the last module was lowered into position.

Brown, who sells promotional products, said he and his family saw the home at a builders’ show in Las Vegas. They were already interested in living “green,” and thought the idea of an ultra-green house — made of recycled materials, filled with low-flow water fixtures, topped with solar panels — seemed a good fit.

Brown and the builder, Steve Glenn of LivingHomes, say they hope the home will be the first in Orange County to achieve the highest possible “green” rating — a platinum LEED certification.

It’s a title at least two others in the county are also hoping to be the first to receive.

“I’m not worried about being the first,” Brown said. “But I think it would be kind of cool.”

The construction job created quite a stir on the narrow street in Newport Beach, with neighbors coming out to watch and snap pictures.

“It’s amazing,” said neighbor George Nevin, who has lived on the street for 40 years. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

(Register photo of prefabricated module being raised by crane by Michael Goulding.)

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The building of the prefabricated, two-story house begins in Newport Beach about 9 a.m. and should be finished in a few hours. View it live at the LivingHomes Web site.

LivingHomes says it built the first home in the nation to obtain the highest LEED green-building certification — platinum — in Santa Monica.

And Steve Glenn, the company’s chief executive officer, says he’s aiming for another first: Orange County’s first platinum home.

Glenn isn’t the only builder seeking to achieve that milestone; at least two others, the developers of a luxury home project in Laguna Beach as well as a homeowner in Costa Mesa, also are seeking the first O.C. platinum rating.

It’s hard to beat the LivingHomes project, however, for speed of construction. The structure itself will take only hours to put in place using a 190-ton crane. In about a month, Glenn said, the home should be finished and ready to live in.

“We know a little bit about the process,” Glenn said. “Hopefully, we’ll get certification before anyone else does, but if we don’t that’s OK.”

Getting certified requires a bit of paperwork and an inspection, a process that, in other projects, has taken months.

The home will include familiar green features, such as solar panels and recycled construction materials, as well as the less familiar — a “gray water” system, for example, ready to recycle sink or shower water for irrigation if authorized by Newport Beach; such recycling is allowed in the city in some cases, and its use could be expanded in the future.

Watch this space Thursday for photos and video of the prefab construction event.

(Photo of LivingHomes house like the one to be built in Newport courtesy, LivingHomes.)

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319 21st St., Huntington Beach

A Huntington Beach developer today is hosting a celebration today for his “green living home,” shooting for certification under both the statewide Build It Green program and the internationally known Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program under the U.S. Green Building Council.

So, what’s the difference between Build It Green and LEED?A matter of degree, mainly, says Christopher Becker, a project manager with the Build It Green’s GreenPoint Rated division.

“Our thresholds are lower,” Becker said. “It pushes poeple, but it’s not as difficult as the LEED certification is.”

That difference makes the California program better suited for developers who may not be able to plunk down thousands more to upgrade multi-home projects to elite, super-green status, Becker said.

As we’ve seen with projects in Newport Beach and Costa Mesa, shooting for the most elite LEED status — a platinum certification — can cost major dollars.

The difference also means builders can earn recognition for smaller efforts as they learn more about green building.

That said, the non-profit statewide program isn’t a pushover.  Like LEED, Build It Green requires a project to be monitored by an independent third party during design and construction. It also requires home energy efficiency to come in at 15 percent above the state’s requirements, and seeks water conservation measures. Half of all building waste must be recycled.

The Huntington Beach home, at 319 21st St., has been registered in the state program since May 2008. And it just registered for LEED for Homes certification, according to the U.S. Green Building Council. Because the building effort was monitored for the state program, it should also qualify to pursue the LEED certification. (On the tech side: This home is also getting Verizon FiOs TV and Internet.)

How soon will the certifications be decided? It could be months for all the final documentation and photos to prepared, processed and presented to the certifying groups. And, as we’ve noted before, the race for platinum has multiple players.

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(Photo courtesy of Green Living Homes.)

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The report, Clean Tech Job Trends 2009, says activity is high in the renewable energy market, with some predicting the biggest chance for wealth and job creation since the rise of computers and the Internet.

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People always ask me about what to wash their clothes with. Nowadays, there are a number of great products that are not only eco-sensitive, but which can save you $ and time.

• Ecover: I LOVE this company, use everything they make, but their laundry detergent is super popular.
• Baking soda: Add baking soda — a ½ cup at the most – to your laundry. It softens the water, making your soap more effective. It’s also cheap and non toxic.
• Vinegar: It makes the smell go away. Add a ½ cup at the most.
• Soap Nuts: Great and uber-natural laundry soap, this Chinese berry is perfect for baby diapers, sensitive skin and people who do not like to deal with detergents … just drop the bag in!

Delilah Snell lectures on green living and food preservation throughout Southern California. To learn more about green products, you can visit Delilah at the The Road Less Traveled in Santa Ana or check out her blog, Project Small.

Click here for more green tips.

Got a green tip? Have a green question? E-mail green guru Pat Brennan or William Diepenbrock at the Orange County Register. We’ll review your tip or get an answer to your question, and get the details published in our new Green Tip of the Day feature.

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That’s why volunteers answering the call of the Irvine Ranch Conservancy will be armed with gloves and tongs as they fan out across  10,000 acres of charred landscape over the next few weeks.

The volunteers hope to save the cactus wrens from local extinction. The birds’ numbers have plummeted in recent years in Orange County, largely due to excessive wildfire, which has destroyed the cactus patches they need to survive.

In the central part of the Nature Reserve of Orange County, for instance, the 2007 Santiago and Windy Ridge fires severely damaged more than 1,000 acres of the wren’s cactus scrub habitat, leaving fewer than 800 acres for the wrens to use for breeding.

“We’re trying to mitigate the impact of the Santiago Fire,” said Megan Lulow, a senior ecologist with the Irvine Ranch Conservancy. “We need to try to plant cactus over as much area as we can because so much habitat burned.”

Volunteers will plant a total fo 40 cactus patches across the central reserve, on land that was once part of the historic Irvine Ranch. Cactus also is being planted on the reserve’s coastal section.

Anyone can volunteer for the central reserve planting. And, Lulow says, don’t worry about the thorns.

“We use tongs to collect the pads, to harvest them, and to handle the pads,” she said.

Volunteers have already been collecting cactus pads around the reserve for transplantation, including a group of students from Sage Hill School in Newport Coast.  Now, volunteers are needed to continue the planting effort. 

The planting is being paid for in part with a $25,000 local assistance grant administered through the state Department of Fish and Game, with matching funds from the conservancy.

Though they’re not listed as endangered, coastal cactus wrens are considered a species of special concern in California. They are very local — the birds are not believed to fly long distances to relocate when their habitat burns — and a bit fussy.

In fact, they appear to have fairly rigid requirements even when the right cactus plants are present: cactus height, density and spacing all are important factors, it seems, in a cactus wren’s decision about where to breed.

Fortunately for the cactus planters, a well-known local scientist has spent years studying the key features of the best cactus wren breeding sites. Robb Hamilton has developed an index that can be used to evaluate cactus patches for their wren-drawing potential.

During walking surveys on the ranch in 2006, Hamilton noticed a sharp drop in cactus wren numbers along coastal Orange County. He believes the devastating Laguna Beach wildfire of 1993 is the reason: although the cactus is growing back, it is growing slowly, and much of it is not yet thick enough to appeal to cactus wrens.

Cactus is also being planted on the coastal reserve to fill in gaps that still remain from the Laguna fire, though volunteers are not being used in this case, said Kristine Preston, science program director at the Nature Reserve of Orange County.

Both the conservancy and the Nature Reserve of Orange County have tried a variety of experiments to boost cactus wren breeding.

Last year, the conservancy installed several structures meant to mimic cactus plants near known wren habitat. So far, however, the birds have not nested in the structures.

And in 2006, The Nature Reserve of Orange County captured 10 inland wrens and moved them to the Upper Newport Bay, in hopes they would recolonize an area their species had previously inhabited. As of August, Preston said, 11 cactus wrens still inhabit the area, including some descendants of the translocated birds, despite high levels of predation by Cooper’s hawks.

To volunteer for cactus planting in the central reserve, call Lulow at 714-508-4766 or email her at mlulow@irconservancy.org.

(Photo of Sage Hill School students helping ecologist Megan Lulow with cactus restoration project courtesy Wida Karim, Irvine Ranch Conservancy.)

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Hidden in plant shipments or luggage – say on a cutting of a favorite fruit tree brought back from a trip overseas – the psyllids likely hitched a ride to Santa Ana. A bit smaller than aphids, their distant cousins, the psyllids have appeared elsewhere in Southern California, prompting other quarantines – most recently in Los Angeles County.

The insect itself is unlikely to kill the to trees, devouring leaves and stems and showing no interest in citrus fruits. But hiding within the Asian citrus psyllids might be a deadly type of bacteria.

Once transmitted to trees through the psyllid’s mouth parts, the bacteria can infect them with an incurable disease that goes by a variety of names: citrus greening disease, yellow dragon disease, huanglongbing.

In the long run, the bacteria will cause the trees to waste away and die. In the meantime, it causes enough stress to make the tree’s fruit discolored and bitter.

So far, the bacteria have not been found in Orange County or elsewhere in California. Some southeastern states, such as Florida and Louisiana, have the insect and the disease, while others have only the insect.

The quarantine means backyard citrus trees, especially their leaves, should not be moved.

Scientific name: Diaphorina citri
Sources: Orange County Entomologist Nick Nisson; California Department of Food and Agriculture.
Next week: bobcats
Photo: Courtesy CDFA

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Here’s a list of ways you can use your leftover jars beyond the recycling bin:

• Tea lights: Place a small tea candle into a jar for a quick mood light
•  Spices: Fill a jar with your favorite seasoning or make your own.
• Arrangements: Pick flowers and have a cute arrangement near your bed.
• Keep herbs fresh: Fill halfway with water, put herbs in like you would a flower arrangement and put in fridge … herbs will keep longer — I promise!
• Make dressing: Place the ingredients into a jar with a lid and shake, ready to go!
• Storage: Do a Martha Stewart and use jars to store buttons, nails, and any small bit. Just make sure you label things!

Apartment Therapy also demonstrates creative ways to reuse!

Delilah Snell lectures on green living and food preservation throughout Southern California. To learn more about green products, you can visit Delilah at the The Road Less Traveled in Santa Ana or check out her blog, Project Small.

Click here for more green tips.

Got a green tip? Have a green question? E-mail green guru Pat Brennan or William Diepenbrock at the Orange County Register. We’ll review your tip or get an answer to your question, and get the details published in our new Green Tip of the Day feature.

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EDCO Disposal Corporation paid the fine after being accused by the state Air Resources Board of skipping the tests in 2005 and 2006 on some of the trucks at a variety of Southern California locations, including Buena Park. The company is based in Lemon Grove.

The company’s president, Steve South, acknowledged in an e-mail that his company was “not complying with all aspects” of the smoke inspection program in 2oo5 and 2006, and that all testing is up to date for 2009.

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