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Watch this video online with Real Player. If you do not have
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Additional information on this topic provided below.
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The Antonio Cusano Environmental Education Center
At The John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge
  he
ultimate hope of the Cusano Environmental Education center at
the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinnicum is to help
the public gain a better understanding of the impacts humans
have on our environment. To that, the architectural design team
of the center has used positive, forward thinking design concepts
to create a center that will invite the public to learn more
about the wetlands and wildlife around them.
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designing the center, the team uses a simple philosophy "Green
design = Good design." It is their hope that this philosophy
will someday become the norm rather than the exception to building
design in this country. To that, they utilized recycled newspaper
for the insulation within the walls, recycled truck tires from
Lancaster on the floors, wood from a certified well-managed
forest in western PA, and a 'Marsh Machine' to treat the water.
What is a Marsh Machine? It is an ecological wastewater treatment
system that naturally cleanses the water used throughout the
building by filtering it through plants and filtration systems.
It's innovative, unique, and worth taking a second look at!
  long
with theses building designs, the center is concerned with the
affects of storm water run-off on local waterways. To do their
part, they have used vegetation that filters out oils and other
contaminants, along with developing a parking lot that allows
rainwater to percolate through the surface and return to the
aquifer.
he
Cusano Center opened in 2001, and is a very unique building
- both in the architectural design and also in the in-door educational
exhibits, public library, educational programs and wildlife
study tours provided there.
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For more information about the John Heinz National
Wildlife Refuge, check out this week's feature in "Between
Cattails".
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