Surely those trunks can surf the Web.

Jack Kassewitz said he wants to see this week if the iPad can get a good chit-chat going between the gray giants and folks curious about the insight other creatures might offer.

“I had a sense that elephants were a well-developed species,” he said in a phone interview with Flying Flashlight. “I want to go out there and see if they can manipulate an iPad with their trunk.”

Mr. Kassewitz recently announced (pdf) a similar project involving a dolphin’s beak that he said led to about 60 million hits on the SpeakDolphin Web site.

Stage one of that experiment is to get a dolphin to connect real-world objects to their matching image on the screen with a few taps of its rostrum. Just which screen has yet to be decided, however: A Panasonic Toughbook is also being considered for the task. Mr. Kassewitz said he won’t choose a final device until he heads into the water again in July.

Jack Kassewitz introduces the iPad to Merlin the dolphin.

“For me it’s about science,” he said. “It’s just what’s going to give me the best scientific results.”

Beyond the thrill of possibly communicating with another species, Mr. Kassewitz said that he hopes a successful connection would encourage better environmental stewardship of the planet, a goal he noted was cast into stark relief by BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

“Maybe by understanding that they have ‘sentient-ness,’ we might stop some of what we’re doing to this planet, realizing it’s not just ours,” he said. “This gift we have here – living on this wonderful planet – it’s really shared and we need to learn how to share better.”

Related goodies:

1. How the oil spill threatens dolphins and other animals.
2. The iPad Defender, the cover that Mr. Kassewitz uses to protect his iPad in the water.
3. “Dolphin Contact,” music inspired by dolphins, which Mr. Kassewitz said is copyrighted in the dolphins’ names.
4. Beepo at the Onion raised concerns about the Internet in your flippers.
5. A YouTube video of elephants Mr. Kassewitz has worked with in the past.

“Bottled water costs about 2,000 times more than tap water.” So it’s like buying a $10,000 sandwich. 1:47.

500 million bottles of bottled water bought every week in the United States. That’s enough to circle the globe more than five times.

One-third of all bottled water in the United States comes from tap water sources.

Each year, making plastic water bottles used in the United States consumes enough oil and energy to fuel 1 million cars. 3:40..

80 percent of bottles end up in landfills or incinerators. 4:24.

And how do companies get you to buy this? By “manufacturing demand.” 2:07.

“‘When we’re done,’ one top water executive said, ‘tap water will be relegated to showers and washing dishes.’” 3:10.

Amazing Race: E-Waste Violators’ Best Friend because trash is one of those characteristics of modern life that shocks, worries and amazes me (‘The average American throws away a staggering 4.5 pounds of rubbish daily.’).

Vice’s Q & A with Terry Gillam because I’ve enjoyed just about everything he has been involved with.

Our Three Bombs because who doesn’t worry about the effects of the mounting U.S. debt ($11.9 trillion) and the climate?

Canadian prostitutes sue for right to open bordellos because how societies treat sex is endlessly fascinating.

Bugs in Pictures: Incredible Insect Macro Photography because these ostracized and forgotten creatures need our help.

10 Business Ideas That Will Get Your Ass Sued because I’d like to start one.

10 Doomsday Cults because such groups are one launching point for new ideas as they begin their assault on mainstream society (aren’t we all cultists?).

Egyptian Police Arrest Christian Father for Attempting to Free Kidnapped Daughter because it vaguely reminded me of the Savoie case in Japan.

Inspiration: A CNN story about Riversimple, a company from the U.K. that has come up with a hydrogen-powered, less-poluting city car. Sebastien Piëch, a partner in the company, said this:

We don’t believe that making money on IP (intellectual property) is really what’s actually happening even now. We believe that service and providing the solution for customers will be where we make money.”

Does this mean news organizations need to understand customers’ problems that are created when they interact with stories? And provide solutions to those problems?

I’ve written previously about possible journalistic services.

The plan calls for energy-efficient appliances, rain-capturing and wastewater-reuse systems in new construction to reduce the water consumption in unincorporated areas of Bernalillo County – areas estimated to have used 12.2 billion gallons of water in 2005 alone.

Those areas don’t fall under the jurisdiction of the water utility authority overseeing Albuquerque and other areas of Bernalillo County, and Bernalillo County Chairman Alan Armijo wants to see the regulations equalized.

“The drought in the last year and water availability has highlighted it (water conservation),” Armijo said. “We needed to look at stronger restrictions.”

Proposed regulations – affecting roughly 108,000 people living in unincorporated areas of Bernalillo County – include an option for building gray-water systems into new homes in order to meet water conservation goals.

Gray-water systems capture waste water from bathroom sinks, showers and washing machines and use it to water lawns and flowers, but not crops.

Kerry Bassore, water and conversation planner with the Bernalillo County Public Works Division, said such systems could reduce a home’s water use by as much as 29,000 gallons per year.

John Stomp, water resources manager for the Albuquerque Bernalillo County Water Authority, said gray-water systems “would have a big impact on outdoor (water) usage.”

However, a $500 rebate offered by the authority for gray-water systems has never been used, though it has been available for two years, he said.

Why? Look at the cost, he said. To retrofit a house with a gray water system could cost $5,000 to $10,000, by his estimate. He said it would cost less if installed in new homes.

He said the water authority’s water-conservation measures – closely mimicked by the draft ordinance – have helped push Albuquerque’s per-capita water use down by 35 percent in 10 years.

The draft ordinance’s other proposed options for meeting conservation goals in the construction of new homes include installing energy-efficient appliances and an on-demand hot water system.

Armijo said the draft had been in the works for about a year. A final version could be approved by January, but getting additional public comment on the regulations could put off an approval until the spring, he said.

The ordinance also proposes banning spray irrigation from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. from April 1 through Oct. 31. Additional restrictions could be imposed if a drought watch is declared by the New Mexico Drought Monitoring Committee.

Armijo would like to see watering restrictions permanently imposed, regardless whether a drought has been declared.

“I don’t think you can look at it for a few months, a few years,” he said. “We’re in a cycle of drought in this community.”

Most of the draft ordinance concerns water-conservation measures for new development, leaving existing homes and other structures unaffected.

A representative with the Home Builders Association of Central New Mexico said that’s problematic.

“There’s more to water conservation than just new houses, and new houses are already meeting standards in place by the city,” said Katherine Martinez, the association’s director of government affairs. “Existing houses are the biggest percentage of where water is lost.”

While the proposed regulation doesn’t require water conservation upgrades in existing homes, Martinez said that could be an effective step, and encouraged incentives for such a measure.

“That will save a great deal more water than the new construction,” she said.

The new standards for one- and two-family dwellings and townhouses would take effect in January 2010.

However, developments larger than 10,000 square feet that are not a single-family home would be hit with the new requirements immediately.

Those requirements include installing a gray-water system or collecting rainwater with cisterns.

The lack of time to prepare for new regulations is a concern, said Lynne Andersen, president of the New Mexico Chapter of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties.

“Anything that’s going to be phased in, we can usually deal with it because you can build in those costs at the beginning,” she said.

Armijo said such concerns would be considered, and the ordinance could change before its final approval.

But that kind of trip – about 1,500 miles – is how far the components of a typical American meal are shipped before making it to the plate, said Warren Karlenzig, chief strategy officer with SustainLane, an online media company working for sustainable living.

The sustainable approach is based upon using the earth’s resources in a way that maintains them for future generations while promoting healthful living. It encompasses one’s decisions about all parts of life, including transportation, food and careers.

Karlenzig used the American meal example to show the efficiency of buying food from local farms, one of many types of local businesses to be highlighted during “Keep it Querque” Independents Week, which starts today and runs through Friday.

The event – launched by the Albuquerque Independent Business Alliance – will draw attention to the importance of supporting Albuquerque’s locally owned, independent businesses, said Roby Wallace, president of the business alliance.

“Spending our money with local companies – it is more efficient in terms of where we get our products from and where we get our services from,” Wallace said. “The whole concept of having a strong local economy means we can survive and we’re buffered against dramatic effects in the broader global economy. We’re more sustainable if we have businesses here and we support them.”

A strong local economy is especially important as energy costs – including the cost of fuels that make traveling long distances quick and feasible – rise, Karlenzig said.

“The economy that outsources everything or that is dependent on everything from the global supply chain will be much more susceptible to volatile price swings,” he said. “(In) a number of cases, the local or regional options are just as good or better from a cost perspective than the global ones. That’s only going to become the case more and more as oil prices go up.”

He pointed out that spending money at local businesses also sends money to the local community instead of to companies based out of the state.

“Instead of your money going to corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., or overseas, it stays recirculating in the local economy,” he said. “There are some relatively easy local purchasing choices to be made in areas like food, which reduces transportation impacts.”

City Councilor Isaac Benton said he often shops at La Montañita Co-op Natural Foods Markets, a cooperative that sells locally raised products.

He’ll do the same during Independents Week as part of contest with three city councilors seeing who can spend the most on locally owned businesses.

“We need to . . . encourage and remind our citizens to support local businesses because local business dollars stay in the community, they circulate again and again. The more we buy locally, the better off our local economy is,” he said.

FACTBOX: READY?

Albuquerque ranked 19th in a June study from SustainLane (www.sustainlane.com) that looked at the self-sustainabilty of the 50 largest U.S. cities.

The ranking was based on factors that included a clean environment, affordable transportation, support for alternative energy and a robust local economy.

Here are the most- and least-prepared cities for the future:

Most-prepared:

1. Portland, Ore.
2. San Francisco
3. Seattle
4. Philadelphia
5. Chicago

Least-prepared:

46. Fort Worth, Texas
47. Mesa, Ariz.
48. Virginia Beach, Va.
49. Oklahoma City
50. Columbus, Ohio

Source: SustainLane (www.sustainlane.com)

People in cities on the oceans’ edges, such as New Orleans and New York, would be forced to move as their homes and businesses flooded.

“There will be literally millions of people on the move in the United States,” said Ed Mazria, founder of the architecture firm Mazria Inc. Odems Dzurec and expert on energy-efficient building design. “Today we have a choice. . . . We can continue on our present course or we can choose another path.”

Possible paths to a future powered by sustainable and environmentally friendly energy sources were discussed Thursday at the two-day conference attended by political, business and scientific leaders from around the state and country.

New Mexico can lead the way, Mazria said, and the journey can start with building design.

The problem is buildings’ appetite for fossil fuels. Nationwide, buildings make up 48 percent of energy consumption, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration statistics cited by Mazria.

“Heating, lighting and cooling are the big three,” he said. “Globally, the percentage is even greater.”

That makes buildings powered by fossil fuels one of the greatest contributors of greenhouse gas emissions, Mazria said. Many scientific studies have shown the gases contribute to global warming.

Cutting back on buildings’ energy consumption, he said, can be as simple as designing them to better use the heat and light of the sun. Other technologies, such as solar power panels, can help, too.

“But you start first with the low hanging fruit, which is design out as much as you can,” he said.

By the year 2030, he and Architecture 2030, a movement sponsored by the nonprofit New Energy Economy out of Santa Fe, hope to see buildings consume zero fossil fuels.

“There are lots of ways to do it,” he said. “Albuquerque can take a leadership role.”

As a guiding philosophy for energy use, Mazria said any decision should be judged by how it will impact people seven generations into the future.

“If your action is good for that generation, then do it,” he said. “If your action is not good for that generation, then don’t take that action.”

But he warned other cities have to join in the effort to redefine energy consumption, or it will be for naught.

Kurtis Helvie, a 15-year-old freshman at High Tech High School in Albuquerque who attended the conference with several of his classmates, said the country needs to change its approach to energy use.

“I think if we don’t start changing our ways, it’s going to be deadly,” he said, and in comparison to problems caused by fossil fuels, “we’ll think Katrina was nothing.”

Conference attendee Cory Johnson, 14, said some of his peers lack knowledge about the environmental issues surrounding global warming.

“I don’t think they even really understand the full consequences of it,” he said. “They know that global warming is going on, but they’re just sort of fine with it. They’re like, `Oh, one degree celsius, what is that?’ ”

Education about energy – where it comes from, its costs and consequences of its use – will be an important part of Albuquerque’s future, according to one conference panel that brainstormed how the Duke City could evolve into a sustainability leader by 2015.

A classroom for such lessons could be stores, according to Bruce Milne, professor of biology at the University of New Mexico and director of the UNM Sustainability Program.

He proposed adding information to product labels that describe how much energy it took to make and transport a product.

It’s called embodied energy. It accounts for factors such as the fuel consumed to ship a product, and the energy expended assembling and refining the product’s raw materials.

“When you go to the shopping mall, you don’t have any clue as to which products embody a lot of energy and which don’t,” he said. “You can’t make choices based on the environmental impact that particular product has.”

Other changes are simpler to make.

As Milne left the empty panel room for a lunch break with two others, he stopped and, with a laugh, headed back.

“We should turn off the lights,” he said.

The fluid is used vegetable oil. Its destination is the red tank stuck into the trunk of a modified Volkswagen Jetta sitting in Sinclair’s driveway. Its mission: to change the way Americans think about getting around.

“I’ve hooked into grease and biodiesel because it would provide enough fuel for a combined individual-public transportation system,” says the Ph.D. instructor of American studies at the University of New Mexico. “We can no longer get our resources from far away. . . . There’s got to be some sort of shift.”

Sinclair isn’t alone in her quest.

Whether straight vegetable oil or its chemically refined version commonly called biodiesel, more New Mexico residents and companies are buying, selling or – if you’re a restaurant trying to get rid of grease – giving away the alternative fuel that burns cleaner than regular diesel.

For some, it’s a cheaper choice than diesel or gasoline. But even when it costs more, biodiesel users, buyers and sellers say the true satisfaction comes from doing their small part to wean America off increasingly expensive crude oil and keep the world cleaner.

Business is getting brisk.

A growing phenomenon

“We’ve seen such an increase in usage, the plants just can’t keep up with production,” says Linda Randolph, wholesale sales manager for Ever-Ready Oil Co. “We’ve had it for over 3, 4 years. Now all of sudden people want it.”

The company’s pump at the corner of Mountain Road N.E. and 1st Street N.W. delivers a mixture of biodiesel – 20 percent of the mix – and regular diesel – 80 percent of the mix – for about 30 cents more per gallon than straight diesel, Randolph says.

Individual sales at the only biodiesel pump in Albuquerque have held steady, she says. It’s her company’s wholesale sales that have been jumping.

In 2005, the Public Service Company of New Mexico, Santa Fe Southern Railway and Sandia National Laboratories began regularly using biodiesel. Go back a year and the city of Albuquerque had begun pumping the fuel into some of its vehicles. Go back to 2003, and you’ll see the the start-up of the University of New Mexico’s alternative fuel efforts.

But when biodiesel costs more than regular diesel, why the growth?

“The older diesels, they’ve got that kind of rattle to them,” says Richard Mason, executive director of Renewable Energy Partners of New Mexico, a nonprofit promoting renewable fuel sources for transportation and electrical generation. “They’ll fill up with the biodiesel and their engine will just smooth out.”

Besides being easier on engines, biodiesel emits fewer pollutants than regular diesel, he says. It reduces the country’s dependency on foreign oil because it can be made from locally grown plants. And, according to at least one driver, it gets better mileage, he says.

“I think these things are going to lead toward a future where you might not even find regular diesel,” he says. “Some blend of biodiesel might become standard.”

At one of Renewable Energy Partners’ three biofuel pumps in Santa Fe – one of which was added in early October to satisfy demand – about 7,000 gallons of biodiesel are being sold a month, he says. That’s up from the 4,000 gallons a month sold when the pump opened in September 2004.

Biofuels refer to biodiesel and fuels with ethanol mixed in.

The organization is also consulting a company about opening two biofuel pumps in Taos. And another biofuel pump may join Albuquerque, along Central Avenue near UNM, he says.

“It’s just about to become a widespread phenomenon as opposed to a very exotic, niche-type of fuel that it is now,” he says. “You’re really going to witness a revolution in biofuels in the next year.”

Nationwide, production of biodiesel is expected to double this year from last year’s 25 million gallons, says Jenna Higgins, director of communications for the National Biodiesel Board.

“Domestic energy security is taking on more importance in the minds of many Americans and with congressional leaders as well,” she says. “A lot of people are starting to recognize biodiesel as a serious player in our nation’s energy plan.”

Belen resident Tom Welch began using biodiesel in his energy plan seven months ago.

His domestic supplier? Local restaurants.

Liquid money

For Welch, used cooking oil is like liquid money.

With some refinement, he can take what restaurants throw away and turn it into truck-powering fuel. It cut down his Belen-Albuquerque commute bill to $20 a week from more than $100.

“When I heard about it, it was fascinating,” he says, pointing out he invested about $3,000 for biodiesel preparation equipment. “You could make your own fuel.”

It’s a good deal for restaurants, too.

Yashoda Naidoo, owner of Annapurna Chai House in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, estimates it would cost up to $135 month to have a company pick up the used cooking oil at her restaurants. With individual motorists coming by, it costs her nothing and gives back in intangible ways.

“We’re trying to be fully sustainable,” she says. “I feel better when I give it to individuals than when I give it to a company.”

At Flying Star Caf?, the story is slightly different.

The Flying Star restaurants around town don’t so much give the oil away as have it taken, says Clint Eatherton, vice president of operations for Flying Star Caf? and Satellite Coffee.

That works out great, Eatherton says, as long as grease scavengers let the restaurant know what they’re doing.

“The less we have to pump out through our service, the less money we’re paying,” he says. “It costs us $25 a month to have it pumped out, so we’re not going to get rich one way or the other.”

Sinclair with UNM says such steps are a good start to addressing transportation costs in American society.

But the real solution involves more than cheaper and environmentally friendly fuels, she says.

It calls for a new understanding of how not only Americans travel, but how the growing number of middle class members in countries such as China and India travel too.

“If we’re all thinking in 20, 30 years we can have access to this one car and just go . . . I am one that is really stressing the need to put money in public transportation systems and run them on alternative energies,” she says. “We can’t all drive vehicles. It’s part of a larger picture of consuming resources on the planet.”

SIDEBAR:

Before you throw out the oil you just fried tortillas in, consider this: It can also be refined to make biodiesel, a cleaner-burning fuel that is powering up more diesel engines in New Mexico.

Ponds of power: Algae, the aquatic organism that’s happy in swimming pools and oceans, could, with more research, provide billions of gallons of biodiesel on relatively small plots of land that food crops couldn’t use anyway, according to federal government studies.

Cleaning house: Pure biodiesel emits 67 percent less cancer-causing hydrocarbons and 48 percent less carbon monoxide than conventional diesel. But nitrogen-oxide emissions – the stuff that can make smog – go up by 10 percent with pure biodiesel.

Growing interest: In 2005, PNM, Sandia National Laboratories and the Santa Fe Southern Railway began regularly using biodiesel. The Duke City began in 2004, and UNM’s foray into the alternative fuel started in 2003.

Chicken fried steak, anyone?: Used cooking oil – with refinement – can power up diesel engines. For restaurants, that’s money saved on oil-collection costs. For biodiesel fans, it’s fuel for free.

FACTBOX: GET IT HERE:

So you’ve got a diesel engine and you’re ready to switch to biodiesel. Where do you go to fuel up? Between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, there are two choices:

• Albuquerque: Ever-Ready Oil Co., 1200 1st St. N.W. • Santa Fe: Baca St. Biofuels Station, 1229 Cerrillos Road

FACTBOX: DIESEL vs. BIODIESEL:

Besides being easier on engines, biodiesel has, in many cases, fewer emissions than diesel. Here’s a comparison of the two:

• Pure biodiesel (B100) emits 67 percent less hydrocarbons – which include cancer-causing compounds – than conventional diesel.

• Pure biodiesel emits 48 percent less carbon monoxide – a poisonous, odorless, colorless gas – than conventional diesel.

• Pure biodiesel emits 10 percent more nitrogen oxide – which can form smog – than conventional diesel.

Source: National Biodiesel Board, Environmental Protection Agency

SIDEBAR: WHAT IS IT?

Biodiesel is oil – taken from animal fats or plants such as soybeans, sunflowers and rapeseed – that works as a fuel for diesel engines.

It is often refined by a chemical process to improve its usability, but this step isn’t necessary for it to serve as a fuel.

The chemically refined oil is regularly called “biodiesel” while the unrefined oil commonly gets labeled “straight vegetable oil,” or, if it’s been used for cooking, “grease” or “waste vegetable oil.”

Much biodiesel – the chemically refined oil – for sale is combined with regular diesel to make a mixture labeled according to the percentage of biodiesel in it. So a mixture of 20 percent biodiesel and 80 percent diesel would be called B20. Pure biodiesel would be B100.

Using straight vegetable oil in diesel engines is possible, but problematic.

Unrefined vegetable oil lacking additives thickens more easily in cold weather and can gum up or damage an engine’s components. As a result, drivers who scavenge used cooking oil from restaurants – or buy a gallon from the grocery store – often add second tanks to their cars. One tank holds and heats the vegetable oil. The other tank holds regular diesel fuel, which is used to start the car and to cleanse the engine’s innards of vegetable oil before the car is shut off. Used cooking oil requires thorough filtration to remove trouble-causing solids. French fries, anyone?

For more info, visit these Web sites:

journeytoforever.org/ biodiesel.html

www.greasel.com/

greasecar.com/

www.biodiesel.org/

“I don’t like giving the gas companies $400 a month,” says the 56-year-old air traffic controller with the Federal Aviation Administration. “It was kind of a breaking point.”

So Berry – a Los Lunas resident who works in Albuquerque – parked his 22-miles-per-gallon truck and picked up a 56-miles-a-gallon Kawasaki 750 motorcycle.

“It’s my way of fighting back against the high price of oil,” he says. “I definitely will keep it.”

Berry isn’t the only one putting up a fight.

With prices at the pump having hit $3 a gallon or more, New Mexicans are finding ways to reduce how much gas they guzzle.

It’s a decision to change that can mean sacrifices. Those searching to save big bucks on their fuel bills say it’s worth it and, in some cases, a blessing.

Birthday on the bus

Barbara Thomas used to spend $50 or more a week on gasoline. It was, she says, “just ridiculous.”

“I have a grandson who goes to Sandia Prep,” she says. “We live in the Northeast Heights, and we were making this huge circle twice a day in addition to everything else. I just couldn’t afford it.”

It just so happens a bus stop sits a minute’s walk from Thomas’ house.

“All I have to do is go out the front door, walk around the corner, and there’s my bus,” she says. “I love it. I have a whole new outlook on life.”

But it wasn’t easy.

Thomas hadn’t ridden a city bus since she was a little girl accompanying her mother Downtown. She had expectations about riding one. It would be dirty, she feared. Possibly unsafe.

Not so, she says after a month and a half of taking the Candelaria commuter to and from work in Downtown.

“I have a whole new group of friends,” she says. “There’s a whole little bus subculture.”

On Wednesday, there was a mini-birthday party on the bus for one of the riders, she says. When the morning bus driver got married, riders had a small celebration with doughnuts. One regular rider, she says, occasionally buys food from Church’s Chicken for everyone.

Any worries about being immobilized at work because she lacked a car were swept aside as she realized “how many errands you don’t really have to run until Saturday or after work.” If necessary, she says she can always hop back in her Isuzu SUV and drive to work.

Then there’s the freedom of being a passenger.

“You don’t have to deal with the traffic,” she says. “You don’t have to get angry at people. I get to work, and I feel so much better than when I was driving.”

She’d like to see more riders and says the city could bring them aboard if more busses went down more streets.

Such additions don’t come easily.

“We get that a lot,” says Bill Slauson, manager of planning and marketing for the city of Albuquerque’s ABQ Ride. “`Just throw another bus out there.’ But it’s a significant financial investment that we need to consider carefully.”

Depending on the route, it can cost $100,000 to $2 million a year to get another bus on the road, Slauson says.

A five-year transportation plan – being put together at a time when ridership on the bus system has soared – will consider expansion of the city’s transit service even after the recent addition of the high-speed Rapid Ride bus service.

This September saw a 17.5 percent increase compared with the number of people who boarded a bus a year ago, says Jay Faught, spokesman for ABQ Ride.

In June, July and August, the average number of riders per month was 648,315, he says. September’s ridership number was about 13 percent higher – almost 733,000.

“Part of that can be attributed to the Rapid Ride,” he says. “Part of that is definitely due to the high gas prices.”

Even as more people get onto the bus, getting by without a car in some parts of Albuquerque poses potent obstacles to daily living.

The problem is not with providing buses, says Stephen Wheeler, assistant professor of community and regional planning at the University of New Mexico School of Architecture and Planning.

It is, he says, in how you design a city.

Striking a balance

“Suburban Albuquerque, particularly the West Side, is much more difficult to live without a car because you don’t have connecting street networks,” Wheeler says.

“It’s very difficult to run bus service through it because there are very few streets that connect all the way through, and the people can’t easily walk 10 minutes to get to a bus stop.”

Even in older Albuquerque neighborhoods with an interconnecting grid pattern of streets that make car-free travel easier, he says, there’s often something else missing as consumers flock to big-box retailers, shopping centers and local businesses.

It’s the neighborhood grocery store. It’s the small shops. It’s the theater down the street. The drugstores. Restaurants.

Not only do local businesses provide needed goods and services within distances doable without a car, but they provide nearby jobs, Wheeler says.

“We have to have balanced whole communities rather than this pattern of separated, poorly connected subdivisions like we are seeing on the West Side, where your office park is miles away from your mall, which is miles away from the subdivision where people live,” he says.

“People are just beginning to realize the difficulty we have in walking anywhere in this country and all the health impacts among other things that result from that.”

Yet along Albuquerque’s winding miles of black asphalt serving gas-powered, human transportation boxes on wheels, there are still people using that technology known as their legs – with a little help from the bus – to get around.

Suzen Light is one of them.

Elegant pair of tires

“I always refer to my shoes as my tires,” Light says as her elegant, heeled “tires” take her on the 10-minute walk from work to the Route 2 city bus stop along Eubank Boulevard.

“I actually love taking the bus,” says Light, who works as a center director for Jenny Craig Inc. “People don’t realize how relaxing it is.”

Light has lived without a car for about a year and a half. The problem was with her eyes: no depth perception. It meant she often used the bus, even as a car owner.

The minor fender benders piled up, and she took herself off the road. There were inconveniences, but the benefits outweighed them, she says.

She saves money on insurance, car repairs and, of course, gas – especially appreciated, she says, with the fuel’s ascent in cost.

Then there’s the birds.

As she walks from her office – through a Target parking lot and along little-used sidewalks – she smiles and motions toward a gray sky filled with popping chirps.

“Here, you can hear the birds,” she says. “You can’t hear that in a car.”

And see the leaves?

“I noticed on Friday the leaves were starting to turn,” she says. “How many drivers noticed the leaves were starting to turn?”

Her life, she says, requires more planning without a car.

It began with the choice of where to live. She got an apartment close to a bus stop. Her “tires” take her to and from a grocery store a 10-minute walk away.

Errands get combined. She brings extra clothes to work for surprise shifts in weather. She packs her lunch. Her cats go to the vet the same time each year when her car-owning friends are on vacation and free to offer a ride.

She admits she’s an anomaly – a 39-year-old, professional woman who can afford a car but goes without one.

She comes across unfair stereotypes: People without cars are unemployed; people without cars have a drinking problem.

“People have made those kind of assumptions before,” she says. “The social norm is you’re supposed to have a car. . . . People just don’t get it.”

Light says living without a car comes with more positives than negatives.

“You just make do,” she says.

SIDEBAR: Gas crisis can rev sales or kill the magic

Here’s a look at Albuquerque area businesses dealing with average gasoline costs that have gone up almost 50 percent from a year ago:

Two wheels cheaper than four

“We’ve sold everything we can get a hold of,” says Monty Cowan, owner of New Mexico Motorcycle, a used-motorcycle seller and repair shop. He says an average motorcycle gets 30 miles to 50 miles per gallon. “This time of year usually slows down, but people are still riding.”

Immobilized

“During the balloon fiesta, we usually get quite a few people. This year, we only got two RVs,” says Steve Gifford, manager of Mountain View Campground & RV Park.

He estimates the drop in visitors to be around 80 percent. Upping the rent for permanent mobile home lots on the property is “one of the options we’ve been talking about,” he says.

Hoofing it

“So far what we’ve seen is in the fuel charge,” says Martin Norlin, manager of Dan’s Boots and Saddles, a store selling goods for horses and riders. The charge typically comes to 5 percent when the store places a wholesale order. “We haven’t had to pass it along to the consumer yet. Here in another 30 days, you’ll probably see it.”

Rose on the rise

“We had to raise delivery prices (by $1),” says Tina Lambert, co-owner of Haley’s Flowers & Gift Baskets.

She’s also trying to cut down the number of wholesale orders she makes per week because each delivery now comes with an additional energy fee of up to $3. “The shipping charges are killing us.”

The end of the illusion

“It definitely has become a factor for me,” says the Amazing Bodinni, also known as Benny Bodo, an Albuquerque performer of magic and clown shows in New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona and Texas.

His bigger illusion shows are at an end because the props – normally stored in a gas-guzzling SUV he has stopped driving because of fuel costs – won’t fit in his more fuel-efficient Toyota Corolla.

“As far as taking shows that I normally would do, like in Amarillo. . . . Some of these gigs I may start passing on. I may just have to increase my price.”

Grice, president of the Mountain View Neighborhood Association, knows many residents with respiratory problems. Three people in one area family have asthma, she says. She wonders about a number of neighbors who have had or have cancer.

“We have one of the highest rates of air quality permits for the county in our neighborhood,” Grice says. “We’re just trying to figure out if some of the stuff down here is making us sick.”

She says a recent scientific study comparing the rates of cancer in Mountain View to cancer rates in other areas of New Mexico “raised a lot more questions than it really answered.”

That, in part, was the goal of the study, says Chuck Wiggins, director and principal investigator with the New Mexico Tumor Registry. The registry tracks cancer cases around the state.

“This (study) will be our first step in trying to figure out what’s going on,” he said. “This is a blueprint for us. It gives us an idea of where some of the cancers (cancer rates) are a little higher.”

The study shows eight cases of bladder cancer occurring in Mountain View from 1988 to 2002. But given the bladder cancer rates in other parts of New Mexico, only three cases of bladder cancer were expected.

Wiggins said having a higher-than-expected number of cancer cases did not necessarily mean there was a serious problem.

He needs to look at when the cancers occurred, to whom they occurred, environmental conditions and what particular sub-type of cancer it was, he said.

Many cases of cancer occurring simultaneously would indicate something needing further investigation. Many cases of a rare cancer would also raise additional questions.

“You’re looking,” he said, “for something that doesn’t seem to be the same as in a bigger population.”

He said the next study will be completed toward the end of September or beginning of October.

The initial study comparing rates of cancer in Mountain View to rates of cancer around the state was the first of many done as part of a four-year grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Len Flowers, bureau chief for Environmental Health Epidemiology with the New Mexico Department of Health.

Mountain View was studied first because its community leaders expressed interest in having such a study done, she said.

She said it was also chosen because “a lot of environmental sites” are located in Mountain View.

An environmental site is one that has the potential for hazardous chemical releases, she said.

There are 70 air quality permits for the ZIP code area of 87105, which covers Mountain View and other surrounding land, according to the Albuquerque Environmental Health and Air Quality Office.

That makes it the ZIP code with the third highest number of air quality permits, behind 87107 with 85 permits and 87102 with 101 permits.

“It seems like everything nobody else wants is coming to Mountain View,” said Grice, with the Mountain View Neighborhood Association.

She said the neighborhood has been concerned about environmental health problems for about 20 years.

In 1995, the state investigated contaminated groundwater in the area. There are two Superfund waste cleanup sites in the South Valley, which includes Mountain View.

Isreal Tavarez, environmental engineering manager with the city, noted that zoning plays a major role in what types of businesses locate to an area.

Flowers, with the health department, said more communities will be studied in the future. However, the CDC grant – good for one more year – will not last long enough to study every community in the state, she said.

The grant will be applied for again, she said, but she wasn’t certain it would be won.