CURIOUS HOW-TO-FESTIVAL MORE THAN

OFFERS TASTE $190

MINDS OF NEW SKILLS
FEATURES | E1
IN COUPONS
IN TODAYS PAPER
VALUE MAY DIFFER IN SOME AREAS

METRO EDITION LOUISVILLE, KENTUCKY courier-journal.com S U N D AY , M AY 6 , 2 0 1 2 USPS 135560

SUNDAY EXCLUSIVE Students

to take

HEAT
A study shows
Louisville may be tougher
getting hotter at a
Ky. tests

ISLAND
faster rate than
other large U.S. Systems new approach
cities. One agency will begin this month
has its own plan to By Antoinette Konz
akonz@courier-journal.com

counter the
The Courier-Journal

The standards are higher, the tests will

be longer and more difficult, and the initial
results could be grim.
Thats how school officials are describ-
ing the new era of state testing that will be-
gin in schools across Kentucky over the
next few weeks, when roughly 500,000 stu-
dents in grades three to 12 will take tests in
reading, math, science, social studies and
writing.
But while the subjects are the same, the
kind of tests they will take and the way their
schools will be judged will be vastly differ-
ent.
Gone is the Commonwealth Accountabil-
ity Testing System, or CATS, whose objec-
tive was getting students to academic profi-
ciency. Replacing it is Unbridled Learning,
a testing system that focuses on students
college and career readiness and ensuring

See TESTS, Page A10

Blake Mitchell, 7, works with speech-

language pathologist Dave Emerich at the
University of Louisville Autism Center.
Urban areas are hotter than rural areas because buildings, parking lots and streets all retain heat. ANGELA SHOEMAKER/SPECIAL TO THE C-J

AUTISM
That stored heat is released back into the community. MICHAEL CLEVENGER/THE COURIER-JOURNAL
The citys
By James Bruggers
tree canopy jbruggers@courier-journal.com

L CAUSES
The Courier-Journal
covers less
area than ouisville native Kriston Glasnovic has HEAT ISLANDS
Average change in the difference
other large been a runner for nearly half of her 32 between urban and rural temperatures,

ELUSIVE
each decade, 1961-2010.
Southern years, but she still struggles with
LOUISVILLE* 1.67
cities, and training in summer heat. Phoenix 0.96
Atlanta 0.63
that could It seems like its getting hotter and hotter, Greensboro 0.56

be a key said Glasnovic, who runs about 25 to 30 miles a

Detroit
Indianapolis
0.50
0.48
Despite research, rate in
reason. A week and competes in such events as last Las Vegas
Syracuse
0.46
0.44
children continues to rise
tree-plant- months Kentucky Derby Festival miniMarath- Oklahoma City 0.42 By Laura Ungar
Toledo 0.41 lungar@courier-journal.com
ing plan is on. ... I dont enjoy it. Portland 0.36 The Courier-Journal
Richmond 0.36
in the It turns out that Glasnovics impressions are Wash. D.C. 0.36 The occupational therapy session had
Baton Rouge 0.36 just begun when 7-year-old Blake Mitchell
works. But grounded in fact. Albuquerque 0.29 let go of the ropes on a swing and flapped
El Paso 0.28
past efforts During the past 50 years, the annual average temper- Minneapolis 0.28
his arms, then put his hands over his ears
ature at Louisville International Airport has been warming overwhelmed by a sensory overload.
to cool up about eight-tenths of a degree every 10 years a rate
Philadelphia
St Louis
0.27
0.25
Blake has autism, a developmental dis-
order that has skyrocketed in the past dec-
things off that would add up to a sizable 8.3 degree increase over a New York 0.24
ade. According to recently released fig-
century, according to Brian Stone Jr., a Georgia Institute of Boise 0.22
havent Technology city and regional planning professor who is Charlotte 0.21 ures from the U.S. Centers for Disease
studying rising urban temperatures and their conse- Hartford 0.20 Control and Prevention,1in 88 children has
stopped the quences nationwide. Seattle 0.20 Autism Spectrum Disorder up from 1 in
Whats more, Louisvilles rate of warming has outpaced 150 in 2000.
temper- rural areas and is more than double the rate planetwide.
New Orleans 0.18
*Louisville's ranking was inuenced by an Its frightening. Were raising a whole
ature from And the numbers also show that Louisville might be getting excessively hot 2007. generation of kids with autism, said
Blakes mother, Melanie Mitchell, 40, of
hotter faster than other large cities across the United SOURCE: Associate Professor Brian
rising. States. Stone Jr., School of City and Regional Fern Creek. Its a public crisis right now.
Planning, Georgia Institute of Technology A spate of new research attempts to un-
ravel the risk factors behind this complex
STEVE REED/THE COURIER-JOURNAL
See URBAN, Page A8 neuro-developmental disorder that im-
pairs communication and social interac-

See AUTISM, Page A6

TRAFFIC HELP AT HAND WEATHER | B2 INDEX 146 PAGES

Arts I-1 Lottery A2
$2.00 Get the latest traffic info on 36-HOUR FORECAST Business D1 Metro B1
retail
your smart phone to help with Class. F1, G1, J1 Movies I-4
For home Louisville area: Partly
delivery your commute. Scan this code
pricing
see with a QR Code reader or go to Love UofL and hate Big Blue? sunny today with Deaths B5 Sports C1
Page 2.
www.bit.ly/cjtraffic Or cant stand Big Red? Go to chance of rain. Storms TODAY TOMORROW Forum H1 Travel E2
RedNBlueFans.com and let possible tomorrow Features E1 TV TV Week
86 67 84
KY SUN

everyone know.
A8 | SUNDAY, MAY 6, 2012 | THE COURIER-JOURNAL
URBAN: Group wants more trees to help cool down Louisvilles heat island
Continued from Page A1
With extreme heat now ac-
counting for more deaths annual-
ly than all other forms of ex-
treme weather combined, the
threat of such a rapid rate of in-
crease in urban temperatures in
Louisville should be taken very
seriously, said Stone, who is also
the author of the new book, The
City and the Coming Climate: Cli-
mate Change in the Places We
Live.
Like most cities, Louisville
has what experts call an urban
heat island, where the temper-
ature in town can be several de-
grees hotter than the surround-
ing rural area. Thats on top of
any temperature increases asso-
ciated with global warming.
Experts say cities are hotter
because of their construction
buildings, parking lots, freeways
and streets all absorb and retain
heat. The darker the buildings,
their rooftops and pavement, the
more heat they can store and then
release back into the community.
Lack of trees
Too few trees also contributes
to the problem, reducing shade
and pulling less heat from the air
to evaporate water they emit
through their leaves.
Stones research doesnt iden-
tify causes of Louisvilles heat
growth. He said his information
on the city comes from a larger
research project looking at urban
heat across the United States and
represents only a snapshot of
what might be occurring locally.
But he said one potential ex-
planation could be the citys ap-
parent lack of robust tree cover,
citing work done last year by a
group of University of Louisville
students. Their team mapped Jef-
ferson Countys tree cover by
census block and found a thin
canopy for much of the area in-
side the Watterson Expressway,
Louisvilles urban core.
They found that Louisvilles
tree canopy covers about 27 per-
cent of Jefferson County, while in
other Southern cities trees can
shade 40 percent to 50 percent of
a community. Stone said Atlantas
canopy is in the 50 percent to 60
FROM PAGE ONE | courier-journal.com KY KY FROM PAGE ONE | courier-journal.com THE COURIER-JOURNAL | SUNDAY, MAY 6, 2012 | A9
LOUISVILLE LAGS ON URBAN FOREST
Percentage of urban tree canopy
Map key
47% 42% 0%-7.7%
41%
34% 7.8%-23.9%
27% 24%-44.3%
44.4%-71.2%
71.3%-100%
n.
.
d.
Ke lle
ky
la
en
,A
i
uc
sv
,T
An ery
nt
ui
lis
le
Lo
po
om
vil
na
sh
tg
Na
on
M
James Armstrong drinks some fluids during a break from driving a tram
during the Kentucky State Fair in 2007, one of the citys hottest
summers. Wife Wanda Armstrong worked with him. FILE PHOTO
IF YOU GO: the heat, the concrete, the brick,
and are re-radiating the heat
Professor Brian Stone has two public thats stored up during the day.
appearances in Louisville on June 5. We woke up many mornings
Noon to 1 p.m. with the Tree last summer in the low 80s. It nev-
SOURCES: Metro Tree Canopy Assessment 2010, Metropolitan Advisory Board, Centennial Room, er got to the low 70s, as it should. The trees and grass in Waterfront Park provide a bit of a break in downtown Louisvilles urban development. MICHAEL CLEVENGER/THE COURIER-JOURNAL
Government of Nashville and Davidson County; Urban Tree Canopy for Main Branch Louisville Free Public
South Central East Region 2000, U.S. Department of Agriculture; Urban Ecosystem Library, 301 York St. Killer heat ers, he said. change in average annual tem- And a significant portion of colored roofs, said Connie Ewing, $274,000 to organizations that
Analyses, American Forests 2002; Report on Annapolis' present and potential Urban 5:30 p.m. at University of Louisville Urban heat is also a growing Heat stress can sneak up on peratures every 10 years to Louisvilles trend could be ex- spokeswoman for the Louisville will soon plant as many as 2,695
Tree Canopy 2006, Maryland Department of Natural Resources; Urban Tree Canopy Urban Design Studio Sustainable public health concern. people, he added. It starts af- changes across rural and urban plained by extreme heat during Metro Planning and Design Ser- trees and 500 shrubs, mostly
Analysis, University of Louisville, 2011; Evan Conder, Urban Tree Canopy Plan Cities Series, Glassworks Building, The U.S. Centers for Disease fecting your ability to think, he areas in the United States, and 2007, what Stone said was the hot- vices. within the Watterson Express-
815 W. Market St. Watch for details Control and Prevention counted said. It begins to be a real spi- the planet overall. test year in Louisvilles history, But in the approximately 10 way.
STEVE REED/THE COURIER-JOURNAL
and online registration the second 8,015 heat-related deaths in the ral. It shows that Louisvilles rate based on government data going months since they have been In the meantime, Louisville
WARMING UP week of May at United States from 1979-2003. Urban heat also makes air pol- of increase is about 50 percent back to the 1880s, and possibly an available, no builders have used metro government has a contin-
Average temperature (Fahrenheit) change each decade*, 1961-2010: http://uds.louisville.edu/. During this period, more peo- lution worse. It can speed up the greater than the average of 49 aberration. them, she said. gency plan for whenever the heat
ple in this country died from ex- chemical process that forms other large cities studied by the Despite that, he said, the re- We havent had enough devel- index tops105, said Jody Johnson,
1.0 with tree board members and treme heat than from hurricanes, lung-damaging ozone, which Georgia Tech team, and more search shows there is something opment occurring to really push spokeswoman for the Louisville
0.8 speak publicly June 5. His wife, lightning, tornadoes, floods, and Louisville has struggled with for than double the changes for rural going on locally that is extreme. it, said Phil Bills, planning direc- Metro Emergency Management
Elizabeth Chandler Stone, is from earthquakes combined, accord- decades. and global areas. tor. Agency.
0.6 0.83 Louisville. ing to the agency. And, said Thomas Nord, The second approach exam- Cooling the city The government agency that Some government buildings
0.4 0.56 Whats indicated by his re- Dr. David Tollerud, chairman spokesman for the Louisville ined the growth over time in Louisville officials say they is spending the most on cooling are opened and staffed as cooling
0.2 search is very scary, said Katy of U of Ls Department of Envi- Metro Air Pollution Control Dis- Louisvilles heat island by com- have been working on the prob- Louisville is the Metropolitan centers and water is made avail-
0.30 0.28 Schneider, the co-chairwoman of ronmental and Occupational trict, The hotter a city is, the paring temperatures in the city lem. Sewer District, whose $46 mil- able, she said. The health depart-
0.0
Globally U.S. rural U.S. urban Louisville the tree board. Heat is a public Health Sciences, said he was not more energy is needed to cool it. with nearby rural temperatures. Nord said the air district has lion green infrastructure pro- ment also provides tips for cop-
SOURCE: Associate Professor Brian Stone Jr., School of City and Regional Planning, health issue. Its a quality-of-life aware of any recent accounting That requires more coal-pow- Based on that measure, Louis- been advocating efforts to design gram could climb to $90 million if ing with heat, such as staying hy-
Georgia Institute of Technology issue. of Louisville deaths attributed to ered electricity, and that means villes heat island has grown and build a cooler urban area for it proves to be successful even drated.
*Stone computed the average decadal change rate by analyzing temperature data for Margaret Carreiro, a U of L heat but said he expects some oc- more harmful emissions. more rapidly in the past five dec- a decade. though it was actually put in And people find their own
each ten-year period between 1961 and 2010. This allows for the analysis to account for biology professor who has been cur. Those emissions contribute ades than any of the other 49 cit- And a climate action report place to help reduce sewage over- ways to cope.
cyclical uctations that might have resulted from weather phenomenon such as El studying Louisvilles urban heat He said urban heat is a threat to ozone and elevated levels of ies measured by the Georgia published in 2009 as part of an en- flows . For example, Glosnovic said
Nino, producing an average decadal rate that provides a good basis for projecting island and tree cover for about a to the very young and those older particulate matter. Tech researchers, exceeding vironmental partnership be- The agency has offered subsi- she knows runners who seek in-
forward, as well as an average snapshot of the recent past. decade, said the city needs to act than 65. Burning more coal also Phoenix and Atlanta. tween the city, Jefferson County dies to businesses and govern- door tracks during the worst
STEVE REED/THE COURIER-JOURNAL because excessive heat stresses It also is hard on the homeless, pumps more carbon dioxide into There are some caveats. Public Schools and the Univer- ment institutions to help pay for summer heat. Others run early in
people and plants alike. With poor, those with mental or mobil- the air, which scientists say has Stone said that while Louis- sity of Louisville called for each roofs covered with plants, park- the morning, she said.
plants, it sickens them and short- ity impairments and the socially been contributing to global villes warming appears to be to take steps to reduce urban ing lots that drain into gardens I look for places where there
percent range. regulate that temperature gain. ens growing seasons. isolated, he said. warming, making urban heat among the most rapid in the coun- heat. and other features that turn is a lot of greenery, like parks,
As temperatures increase in Louisvilles new Tree Adviso- We need to have as much I think its an issue, and par- even more pronounced. try, more temperature data from For the past year, Jefferson Louisville into more of a sponge. where there is a lot of tree cover,
general, we would expect Louis- ry Commission has taken note green as we can, and not lay down ticularly in places like the Rub- a larger number of weather sta- Countys development code has MSD also plans to get 14,000 trees she said.
ville to warm up more quickly and is sponsoring Stones visit to as much hardtop, she said. bertown area and the West End, Measuring changes tions would be needed to confirm included green building and de- planted by 2024.
than Atlanta, he said. You just Louisville next month to discuss The heat-island effect, she where you have fairly dense Stone analyzed the weather that. For example, the study re- velopment design incentives to Within the next few weeks, Reporter James Bruggers can be
dont have as much moisture in his research. said, makes it so we never really housing and older housing where data two ways: lies on urban temperatures from encourage such things as tree- district staff expect to bring a reached at (502) 582-4645.
the air that is going to help you Stone is scheduled to meet cool off at night. Buildings trap they may not have air condition- The first compared the a single weather station. covered parking lots and lighter- proposal to their board to award
A thoroughbreds soul at a ponys price.
Starting at $14,988.
Sam Swope Fiat 888-377-5566
Now Open 4311 Shelbyville Rd, Louisville KY 40207
FiatUSAofLouisville.com