Olympic village that housed athletes is the most visible example of the 2006 organizing committee’s commitment to sustainability

Jeff Lee
Sun

TURIN – On one side of a Turin railway yard is the Lingotto Fiere, the massive former Fiat automobile factory, a testament to everything industrial in this northern Italian city.

For nearly 70 years Europe’s biggest mass-production factory pumped out millions of pollution-producing cars and trucks, and in its own right became a significant polluter.

On the other side of the tracks is an equally potent symbol of the industriousness of Italy’s architects and planners, but of a different generation.

The 39 buildings that make up the new Olympic village signify a small but important change in the city’s stature as it tries to remake itself away from its heavy-industry image.

The village is the centrepiece of a complex environmental statement by the Turin 2006 Winter Games organizing committee.

The drinking and bathing water in each of the apartments is heated by roof-top solar panels. Wide-area radiant floor heating is used instead of inefficient wall radiators, and the heat comes from a new co-generation and district heating plant at Moncalieri that now heats part of the southern neighbourhoods of Turin. The walls are insulated with recycled cellulose fibre.

Each of the buildings has also been oriented to take best advantage of the sun as it rises and sets in the south, with deep double-pane windows to trap heat. The roofs all have wide flanges for collecting water that is then funnelled into underground cisterns for recycling on to area gardens.

Paolo Revellino sees the manifestation of a relatively new Olympic ideal, the concept that environmental stewardship should be as important in the Olympics as are two other concepts, sport and culture.

Revellino, the head of sustainability assessment for the Turin Olympic Organizing Committee, and his colleague Ugo Pretato, head of environmental programs, are the main architects of Toroc’s self-described attempt to be “the greenest Games ever.”

As he stood on the rooftop of one of the village’s buildings looking at the Lingotto, Revellino explained why Toroc undertook such a lofty goal.

“I don’t think you can consider the Olympics to be just about sport any more. It has the ability to influence the way people think and to change attitudes. Turin has the opportunity to do that also in how we take care of the environment. This is an industrial city, but it is changing.”

The Olympic village is the most visible example of Toroc’s sustainability commitments. It is built on the site of another industrial legacy, the old Mercati Generali wholesale grocers market, which operated from 1934 until the early 1990s before it was moved out of the city because of complaints of pollution and noise from residents.

In 2004 most of the abandoned warehouses were torn down, but the central building was kept and renovated into a series of shops and services.

Marco Operto, the construction manager for Agencia Turin 2006, the government arm that built the village, said it represents the best that Italy has to offer for changing public attitudes.

“This is something very new for Italians,” he said. “We haven’t always been so careful about conserving energy or water.”

It has only been in the last decade that the International Olympic Committee has realized its power to change public views around the environment. In 1994, when the Lillehammer Winter Games in Norway earned high marks for being compact and environmentally friendly, the Olympic movement began to recognize it could influence the world on environmental matters.

Two years later the IOC amended its charter to include environmental stewardship, and it has used moral suasion and political clout ever since to encourage Games organizers to plan events that meet or exceed environmental standards.

For organizing committees that have to manage tight budgets, these are not inconsequential costs. Operto figures the environmental initiatives drove the $198 million Cdn project up by about five to seven per cent, but the savings will be realized within 10 years.

Toroc’s environmental statement is much broader than just the Olympic village. The committee based its environmental management program on a set of stringent principles that included minimizing the footprint of the Games, recycling waste material, monitoring and mitigating the impact of construction and operation of the facilities and using eco-efficient transportation. It also encouraged local hotels and boarding facilities to subscribe to the European Union’s Ecolabel program which sets environmental standards for accommodation.

Toroc also sought certification under both the European Union’s Eco-Management and Audit Scheme (EMAS) and ISO 14001, two voluntary programs designed around standardizing environmental management systems. Failing to comply with the certification doesn’t earn participants a fine, but it is a public embarrassment to be de-listed or criticized, Revellino said.

Toroc put together a number of high-value environmental projects to demonstrate its management principles, including the Olympic Village, three co-generation plants — two of which are at mountain venues –and a biathlon venue building that generates its own electricity with photovoltaic solar panels.

Ever since the Sydney 2000 Summer Games organizers have tried to make the events “carbon-neutral”, offsetting the greenhouse gases produced by the Games through efforts such as planting trees.

But Turin was the first Games to attempt to meet the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases.

“Our goal was to offset the greenhouse gases generated by the Olympic Games,” Pretato said. “We want to be able to say we recovered the greenhouse gases between our Games and the next one in Vancouver,”

Carbon dioxide is blamed for causing global warming, and the Kyoto Protocol, which comes up for renewal in 2012, has been signed by a number of countries, including Canada, as an action plan for reducing greenhouse gases.

Pretato and his colleagues calculated that more than 121,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide would be generated by the Games, primarily from transportation and the operation of the events. It didn’t include the amount that the spectators themselves would produce.

The $7-million Cdn greenhouse gas initiative, called Project Hector (which stands for Heritage Climate Turin), is funded by the Piedmont Region and involves carbon credits generated from three low-energy district heating and two co-generation projects. The town council in Pinerolo, site of the curling venue, is also undertaking energy-saving programs that will generate carbon credits.

“I think we are expecting about 250,000 tonnes of carbon credits from these projects,” Pretato said. “Over four years we will generate more credits than were necessary for the entire Games.”

Toroc also became the first organization in Italy, and one of the first in Europe, to implement a “strategic environmental assessment.” The SEA program was mandated by Italian law and required Toroc and Agencia Turin 2006 to subject every project to set of environmental principles.

Revellino said one example of that was the snow-making facilities Toroc had to install at mountain venues. After reviewing the plans, Toroc cut the number of temporary reservoirs needed by a third.

Toroc also used methane-powered buses where possible, and electric golf carts in the village itself.

But not every program has met with success. Recycling in Italy is not widely practised and unlike the Lower Mainland, there is no curbside program. Inhabitants can take their cans, bottles and papers to communal depots, often large containers located on street boulevards. Italy also doesn’t have a container deposit system. Instead, manufacturers pay an up-front fee that is then supposed to be filtered down to municipalities which mount recycling programs.

Toroc tried to encourage a separate-at-source recycling program with its staff and at the media centres.

It put out different-coloured cardboard bins for bottles, papers, organics and plastics. In the media centres, however, they didn’t put all the containers together to offer a choice. As a result, people threw their garbage into the nearest container regardless of content.

However, Revellino said Toroc worked with suppliers to cut down the potential for waste; Coca-Cola, the corporate beverage sponsor, agreed to supply drinks only in plastic bottles that could be recycled, and McDonald’s, another sponsor, used environmentally-friendly packaging.

Food suppliers also used utensils made from corn starch instead of plastic. The only problem with that was that the corn starch, which is compostable, also breaks down under heat. Revellino said that presented problems for soup-eaters, and Toroc had to change to plastic spoons.

Turin‘s efforts have also earned high marks from the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Organizing Committee (Vanoc).

“They definitely raised the bar in environmental management and certification,” said Linda Cody, Vanoc’s vice-president of sustainability.

Cody said Vanoc is still working on its environmental management plan but has also pledged to be “carbon neutral.” Vanoc hasn’t finished a greenhouse gas audit but Cody thinks it will be less than Turin’s 121,000 tonnes because B.C. has a different energy structure.

Most of the province’s power-generation is hydro-electric. The city also uses a high proportion of electric buses and the SkyTrain and new Canada Line are also carbon-free.

BC Transit also has a proposal to have 20 hydrogen-powered buses in operation in Whistler. Vanoc will supply bus transportation between Vancouver and Whistler, reducing the amount of vehicles on the Sea-to-Sky Highway, Cody said.

Vanoc is also working on obtaining environmental certification under ISO 14001, and has also pledged to build most of its venues to a minimum LEEDS silver standard, she said. (LEEDS is a North American environmental equivalent to EMAS.)

Cody said every Olympics is different, even if the end goal in environmental sustainability is the same.

“There is no cookie-cutter plan for how you do this,” she said. “But I think we will be equally diligent in what we do.”

She said Vanoc’s map for its environmental programs will likely be ready by the end of the year.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

Olympic facility on time, on budget and has a strong future, mayor insists

Jonathan Fowlie
Sun

RICHMOND – The planned Olympic $178-million speed-skating oval is on time, on budget and has a strong future as both a community and high-performance sporting venue, Richmond Mayor Malcolm Brodie said Tuesday night.

“This project is on track,” Brodie told reporters. “We have a vision that we will have a speed-skating oval for the 2010 Winter Games and after that we will have a community use and high-performance sport [facility].”

Brodie was speaking after a public committee meeting where council members addressed recent media reports about the future of the oval, and took repeated shots at the coverage.

Last week The Vancouver Sun reported on a geotechnical report in which experts warned there is “considerable risk” the soil beneath the oval will shift.

The report suggested this shifting could happen to such a degree that within 10 years of the Games, the venue will no longer meet the International Skating Union’s criteria for holding speed-skating events.

The story was picked up by numerous media outlets and reported widely.

Throughout Tuesday’s meeting, councillors called the reporting on the issue “sensational” and “extremely irresponsible.”

“This is reckless reporting,” said Coun. Derek Dang. “This has really hurt Richmond.”

After the meeting, Richmond’s director of major projects Greg Scott said the information from the geotechnical report is part of a larger body of information and should not be read to mean the facility will necessarily be rendered useless as a speed-skating oval if the soil settles.

Scott said if the building settles after construction, there are ways to make adjustments.

“If it [the building] tips a couple of millimetres at one end, then there are opportunities where we could put coatings or leave it the way it is and you can build it with thicker ice,” he said, adding the soil issues at the site are similar to those in building sites across Richmond.

Brodie said the issue has been overblown in the media. He said Richmond had never planned to use the facility primarily as a long-track speed-skating oval after the Games, but always intended to convert it into a sporting facility for both high-performance athletes and members of the community.

“The only time that will be used as a long-track speed-skating oval would be very occasionally,” he said.

During the meeting, Coun. Harold Steves said he does not blame the media for the story.

“I think the reason we’ve got reporting like this is simply because of our penchant for secrecy and we’ve got only ourselves to blame for that,” he said.

“We’ve heard a lot from our council tonight saying we have done our due diligence and I agree that we have, but I think that partly because we have been worried about the IOC and everybody else looking over our shoulders … we got ourselves into this trouble,” he added.

He made the comment as council was debating a motion to compile a list of public documents and motions pertaining to the Olympic oval so it would be easier for people to get information on the project.

That motion carried with unanimous support.

Richmond has also attracted media attention over the amount of money it spent studying other Olympic ovals. Besides spending more than $115,000 to send representatives to the Games in Italy last month, it has spent more than $459,000 over the last two years travelling to former Olympic cities.

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

Easy to do, often lucrative, real estate agents say it is growing quickly across Canada

Mario Toneguzzi
Sun

CALGARY — Mortgage fraud has become a billion-dollar industry in Canada and a growing concern to the real estate and financial sectors.

Although difficult to put an exact number on, organizations such as the Quebec Association of Real Estate Agents and Brokers suggest the criminal activity amounts to an estimated $1.5 billion a year across the country.

“We believe that only criminal prosecution of mortgage fraud will deter unscrupulous operators in the marketplace,” said Bev Andre, chairwoman of the Real Estate Council of Alberta, “and that only through prosecution can those who commit fraud be made to bear its costs.”

Ron Esch, executive vice-president of the Calgary Real Estate Board, calls mortgage fraud a “huge problem because it does involve a lot of money — ill-gotten gains.”

“It’s relatively easy to commit mortgage fraud,” said Esch. “Obviously you’re doing a criminal act but it’s a criminal act not that difficult to do.”

In B.C., independent mortgage lender Gordon Altman gave an elderly White Rock man a $250,000 mortgage against a $500,000 house he said he planned to sell.

The man and his identification had already been verified by a lawyer who provided legal advice, and by a mortgage broker known to Altman.

It wasn’t until Altman checked with the White Rock realtor who was handling the listing that he discovered the man didn’t own the house and had fooled them all in a brazen scam.

When Altman told the realtor he held a mortgage against the property, she said that would have been impossible.

“She said ‘There is no mortgage, and couldn’t be because the owner is dead,’ ” Altman said in an interview.

Mortgage fraud occurs in two ways.

– The first involves individuals fabricating their qualifications for a mortgage when buying a house.

– The second involves fraud for profit — a growing concern — where someone intentionally defrauds a lender or a homeowner of their interest in a property.

The latter is often accomplished by identity theft. Ownership of a property is transferred fraudulently from the rightful owner to the criminal who then sells or mortgages that interest and makes off with the funds.

The problem is becoming more prevalent as technology makes it easier to falsify documents and create identities, say experts in the field.

“It’s huge,” says Det. Robbie Robertson of the commercial crime unit with the Calgary Police Service. “I’ve been aware of it for over three years . . . There’s a huge, huge effect of this.”

For example, following a six-month investigation last fall, the police commercial crime unit in conjunction with Alberta Government Services charged Lloyd Lewis Mason, 33, of Calgary, with one count of fraud and one count of fraud in relation to making a false registration of title.

The case involved the unlawful transfer of a title to a property to another person without the knowledge of the true owner. That person then took out an almost $110,000 mortgage on the property.

The fraud came to light when the true owner attempted to pay property taxes and the City of Calgary notified them that they no longer owned the property.

This was a case of identity theft where the object of the stolen identity was to fraudulently obtain mortgage money.

According to Alberta Justice, the accused was recently convicted and sentenced to four years in prison and ordered to make restitution of $109,905.

Wayne Proctor, regional director, Pacific region for First Canadian Title (a title insurer), said the magnitude of the problem is a rough guess because most of the fraud victims are mortgage lenders and in a lot of cases they may suffer a loss and may not know it’s mortgage fraud or not specifically identify it as mortgage fraud.

“The rough estimate of the problem that the Canadian Institute of Mortgage Brokers and Lenders made a few years ago was $300 million,” said Proctor. “But there’s more recent estimates that would indicate it’s probably closer to a billion dollars.

“In our discussions with regulators, with mortgage brokers and realtors and others connected to the real estate industry, it is pretty well a consensus that it is a growing problem. One of the reasons could be the awareness of potential fraudsters that this is a relatively easy fraud to commit. The payoff is very large as compared to other types of minor crime.”

Esch said there needs to be more resources committed to the problem here and more “serious jail time” for those convicted of mortgage fraud.

“The problem won’t go away until there are more checks and balances put in place,” Esch said.

– – –

Real estate fraud developments

– First Canadian Title estimates the average case of real estate fraud to be in the range of $300,000 while in comparison the RCMP estimates the average credit-card fraud case in Canada to average about $1,200.

– In 2000, real estate-title fraud claims accounted for only six per cent of total dollars paid in claims at First Canadian Title.

By 2005, that number reached 33 per cent.

– Law-enforcement officials and lenders believe that 10 to 15 per cent of all mortgage applications contain false information.

– According to the Quebec Association of Real Estate Agents and Brokers, mortgage fraud amounts to an estimated $1.5 billion a year in Canada.

– The Real Estate Council of Alberta estimates there were about $275 million in fraudulent mortgage loans in Alberta in the 2001-2002 fiscal year based on transactions investigated.

Source: First Canadian Title and Real Estate Council of Alberta

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

Software developed by pros, so thieves need no training

BRIAN KREBS
Sun

ONLINE FRAUD I When Graeme Frost received an e-mail notice that an expensive camera had been charged to his credit card account, he immediately clicked on the Internet link included in the message that said it would allow him to dispute the charge.
   As the 29-year-old resident of southwestern England scoured the resulting Web page for the merchant’s phone number, the site silently installed a passwordstealing program that transmitted all of his personal and financial information.
   Frost is just one of thousands of victims whose personal data has been stolen by what security experts are calling one of the more brazen and sophisticated Internet fraud rings ever.
   The Web-based softwa re employed by ring members to manage large numbers of illegally commandeered computers is just as easy to use as basic commercial office programs. No knowledge of computer programming or hacking techniques is required to operate the software, which allows the user to infiltrate and steal financial information from thousands of PCs simultaneously.
   The quality of the software tools cyber criminals are using to sort through the mountains of information they’ve stolen is a clear sign that they are seeking more efficient ways to use stolen data, experts say.
   “We believe this to be the work of a group, not a single person,” said Vincent Weafer, senior director of security response at Cupertino, Calif.-based computer security giant Symantec Corp.
   The data thieves use the IE flaw to install programs known as “keyloggers” on computers that visit the specially coded Web pages. The keyloggers then copy the victims’ stored passwords and computer keystrokes and upload that information to a database.