The Birds and the Bees

Landfill becomes Bird's Paradise

www.trinityriveraudubon.org

Trinity River Audubon Center opened in 2008. It took citizens fighting for the air they breath to be the catalyst of a great resource being created.

The area was a landfill that the City of Dallas closed in the 70s. In 1998, tires caught on fire and the City of Dallas made the decision to let them smolder. The citizens filed a class action suit and the judge told the City of Dallas to clean it up. There was 1.5 million tons of waste. It was 6000 contiguous acres. The largest urban bottomland hardwood forest in the U.S. It was a great land use being that close to the Trinity River. The city spent $10.8 million to clean up the landfill and $5.7 million of that was spent constructing the Trinity River Audubon Center. 

Insulation

They installed a vegetative roof which supplies great insulation and food for critters. The flooring is bamboo farmed in East Texas. The ceiling is recycled cotton. The insulation is from recycled jeans. Almost all the windows are slanted to a 90 degree angle to prevent bird strikes. It is curious why not all windows are constructed that way. They have lost many birds on the straight windows and are putting circles of soap on the windows. That is an architectural flaw for an Audubon center. Everything else was impressive.

Lots of natural lighting. 

The walkway on the outside was made with 60% concrete and 40% fly ash which comes from coal plants. They etched the concrete and stained it to look like wood planks. They have 9 ponds that are either natural or natural/enhanced, a 33,000 gallon cistern underground for their butterfly garden, not irrigation. They leave everything to its natural native habitat. No maintenance outside. The outside deck is made out of recycled milk jugs - TREX. (I may look at using that for my deck and outside porch).

They have two wet labs to teach kids. Their furniture is cradle to cradle, meaning that it comes from recycled material and can be recycled again. The counter is made from recycled paper. 

The Center holds the LEED Platinum certification. They have a large septic system with a filtering system. The whole project was very impressive.

Photos provided by: Amari Roskelly unless otherwise noted.