Bill Harmon is a solidly built 55-year-old with freckled, calloused hands. Those hands have been his living ever since he graduated from high school in 1972. "I'm blue collar," Harmon says. "I'm the guy in the ditch laying cable."

Harmon grew up in Pikesville. His father worked for the fire department. His mother wanted him to be a doctor or a lawyer. Harmon did eventually get a college degree, but he stuck to manual labor. He worked on a golf course maintenance crew, inspected telephone poles, laid sewer pipe, and installed railroad signals. "I like working outside," he says. "And there was always work in construction."

Then two years ago he picked up a drug habit, and to kick it, he had to stop working. He lost his apartment. It was winter and he found himself sleeping in the waiting room at the Johns Hopkins Hospital emergency room, searching for a treatment program that would keep him for more than a couple of days. He eventually found one, but then he couldn't find work. He applied for jobs on construction sites and at McDonald's but never heard back. "I had pretty much lost everything," he says.

Harmon's story is a familiar one in a city where more than 23,000 adults—roughly one in twelve—are out of work. But for now, at least, there's a happy ending.

Harmon was living in a drug treatment house when someone handed him a flyer for the B'more Green job training program run by the nonprofit Civic Works. The seven-week program trains under- and unemployed individuals, many of them recovering addicts and people returning from incarceration, to clean up industrial "brownfield" sites. Harmon was accepted into the program and later hired as a field technician by a small company called Urban Green Environmental.

Harmon's new job looks a lot like his old ones: dirty, dangerous, and back-breaking. He has spent much of the past six months working on a former industrial site in South Baltimore that is being prepared for development. Last fall, Harmon walked the site with a dust monitor, checking to be sure workers weren't kicking up too much of the soil, which contained arsenic and metals. This winter, he returned to inspect the "cap" of clean soil they had laid over the site. Wielding a digging bar and an auger, he scratched about sixty holes through 2 to 3 feet of fresh dirt until he hit the buried fabric that sealed in the contaminated earth beneath. "One day it was so cold, I couldn't even break the ground," he says. "Then everything warmed up, and it was all mud."

Harmon isn't complaining—far from it. He's thrilled: "I got a car. I got a little apartment. I got money in my pocket. I'm clean and sober, and I'm really happy," he says. He's making $15.72 an hour plus health benefits. He has made more—the railroad job paid $20 an hour—but he feels as if he has opportunities for growth. And his new job brings something that laying electrical cable or sewer pipe never did: a sense of purpose. "I've always considered myself an environmentalist," Harmon says. "Back in the '70s. I wanted to have a little farm, use solar power. I tried to recycle. But it just didn't seem like the country was into it." He lost hope. He figured he would never get a chance to do good for the environment. "Now I am," he says.

Harmon has landed a ground-level position in the so-called "green economy," which aims to recalibrate the nation for warmer and leaner times. Even if you have no idea what the term means, you've probably heard it bandied about by politicians and pundits over the last year: The green economy's many champions imagine a new Manhattan Project that will cure our addiction to oil and other fossil fuels and replace them with wind, solar, geothermal, and wave energy. They want to transform an aging electrical grid to a more efficient, powerful "smart grid," tighten down houses and buildings so they squander less heat and electricity, and capture and recycle all manner of waste, from building materials to storm water. In short, they want to save the planet—and fix the ailing American economy at the same time.

Advocates of the green economy are also pushing for a wartime mobilization of workers that could stop the freefall of the American manufacturing sector and create millions of "green-collar jobs." These aren't high-tech positions, designing solar arrays or engineering hydrogen fuel cell cars: "Let's be clear, the main piece of technology in the green economy is a caulk gun," writes environmental advocate Van Jones (an Urbanite guest editor in April 2007) in his recent book, The Green Collar Economy: How One Solution Can Fix Our Two Biggest Problems. "Think of Joe Sixpack with a hard hat and lunch bucket, sleeves rolled up, going off to fix America. Think of Rosie the Riveter, manufacturing parts for hybrid buses or wind turbines."

It's a heroic vision, and for now, at least, it is winning support from working people who have traditionally considered environmentalism a movement of job-killing, owl-coddling elitists. But we've seen similar efforts before, back in the 1970s under Jimmy Carter, and that didn't last. The question this time: Are Baltimore's green-collar workers on the cutting edge of the next big thing, or are they being set up for yet another fall?

One year ago, the champions of the green economy were voices crying in the wilderness. Today, they've been invited inside. Van Jones is now a special advisor to the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Labor Secretary Hilda Solis is also a green jobs advocate.

In his first speech to Congress, President Barack Obama called on lawmakers to set a cap on carbon emissions, making renewable energy more cost-competitive. He laid out his plans to invest $15 billion a year to develop wind and solar power, more efficient cars and trucks, biofuels, and so-called "clean coal." The stimulus bill he'd signed just a week before serves up more than $62 billion for green initiatives and $20 billion in green tax incentives. Included in the package is $7.5 billion for renewable energy and power line construction, almost $10 billion for energy-efficient retrofits of low-income housing, and more than $8 billion for transit capital assistance programs. Another $500 million will train people for green work. The administration says the stimulus will double the nation's supply of renewable energy in three years and save or create 3.5 million jobs.

Around the country, there is a mad rush to rake in some of this windfall. Maryland's General Assembly is considering bills that would require welfare-to-work programs to train people to build and retrofit energy-efficient buildings, manufacture renewable-energy and clean-car technology, produce biofuels, deconstruct and recycle buildings, restore streams, capture storm water, and install green roofs, among other things. Here in Baltimore, taskforces are looking at the potential for jobs in deconstruction, weatherization, and urban agriculture. Keith Losoya, the former director of the Chesapeake Sustainable Business Alliance who sits on the city Sustainability Commission, says a green jobs summit is in the works for later this year. There's even talk of giving students in Baltimore City schools opportunities to train for green jobs.

It's easy to see the attraction. Hard-luck industrial towns from Fargo, North Dakota, to Philadelphia have cashed in as the rising cost of fossil fuels led to a surge in alternative energy development. In Toledo, Ohio, a glass factory has retooled to manufacture solar panels. In Bucks County, Pennsylvania, former steelworkers build wind turbines in a moribund US Steel plant. "We are de-rusting the Rust Belt," a company representative recently told CNN. "We are creating good manufacturing jobs showing that in America, we can make things again. And we are rolling back climate change—so it is a three for one."

The problem is, the math doesn't quite work yet. No one suggests that these jobs will fully replace the manufacturing work already lost, much less keep pace with the hemorrhaging of existing jobs. The credit crunch has put the kibosh on clean energy projects across the country. The New York Times reported in February that, after a banner year in 2008, wind and solar manufacturers were laying off workers. The stimulus will help, experts say, but it will take time. And while the stimulus pours billions into energy-efficiency measures, some question whether the market will support the industry once the government money is gone. Homeowners and businesses may save money over the long haul by sealing up leaky windows and installing more efficient heating and air-conditioning systems, but with the economy in shambles, they may be less able to make that upfront investment.

In Baltimore, Losoya says that the city can provide an extra push for green initiatives. For example, the city is considering requiring demolition contractors who would normally level derelict buildings with wrecking balls to instead hire trained deconstruction crews that can carefully preserve and recycle building materials and keep demolition waste out of the landfills. The city could also offer incentives for homeowners to weatherize houses, Losoya says, and ultimately mandate that every house in the city have an energy-efficiency upgrade.



Richard Clinch, director of economic research at the University of Baltimore's Jacob France Institute, says green jobs are indeed coming, but he adds some cautionary notes. For one, many of them won't be new jobs. "Most of the green jobs will simply be the greening of existing jobs, rather than creating some new class of green worker," says Clinch, who co-authored a study on Baltimore's potential for green jobs last fall for the Annie E. Casey Foundation. "A construction worker who used to build McMansions in Carroll County can weatherize homes."

Clinch says there are opportunities to resurrect Baltimore's former industrial might for green manufacturing work. For example, Baltimore Marine Industries—the old Bethlehem Steel ship-repair facility in Sparrows Point—could retool to manufacture wind turbines. But Baltimore lags behind many of its post-industrial brethren on this front, Clinch says, and while Gov. Martin O'Malley supports a proposal to put up windmills in the waters off Ocean City, a wind farm proposed for Western Maryland has struggled to get off the ground.

Baltimore has plenty of reasons to be skeptical of the great green hopes—and few are more outspokenly so than Morning Sunday Hettleman, president of the Maryland Environmental Justice Coalition. Hettleman argues that efforts to clean up the environment and rebuild the inner city since the 1970s have often left working people, and people of color, out in the cold. "Billions have been spent in Baltimore, supposedly to help us, and still it looks like a bomb went off. Where did the money go?" she asks. "The money went to consultants who live in Baltimore County. The money never made it down to the people."

Sitting in her drafty home in Waverly—weatherized, badly, by a city work crew, she notes—Hettleman and Dale Hargrave, a local contractor, make their prediction for the green economy, using history as their guide. "If you come back here in five years and ask, ‘Where did the green jobs go?'" Hettleman says. "Well, they went down I-95. They went down I-83. They went down I-695.

"Millions [of dollars] in green jobs are going to come through," Hettleman begins, and Hargrave finishes her thought: "and the city is going to look the same."

Mary L. Washington, with the nonprofit Parks & People Foundation, understands the suspicion. Washington oversees the Urban Resources Initiative, which includes the BRANCHES program, a partnership with the city Recreation and Parks Department that trains middle- and high school-age students in community forestry and parks restoration and maintenance. She recalls an encounter she had a few years back with a single mother named Monica, who had sat through every job-training program she could find. "She learned to drive a truck. She learned to drive a taxi. She learned to weld," Washington says. She couldn't find more than a temporary job.

Still, Washington is optimistic, in part because of the new administration in the White House and the historic election that put it there. "We're talking about a group of people who've voted for the first time—and they voted for someone who won," she says. Now, Washington argues, President Obama and the other champions of the green economy must deliver, and not just job training, but careers: "We have a lot of convincing to do."

Even those who are training green workers have their doubts. John Mello, who manages the B'more Green program at Civic Works, says his organization has an impressive record of placing its graduates in jobs. But for a new team of energy efficiency experts (the 3E Team) trained in air-sealing leaky houses, Civic Works had to "create a market," he says, working with institutions and a local business that does home energy audits. "We hope that once these people are done here, the private sector is willing to pay a living wage," Mello says.



Despite the somewhat shaky start, the green-collar economy seems to be setting root in Baltimore, and for at least the next four years, we can count on the federal government to tend it. A green-jobs makeover may not restart Baltimore's acres of idled factories or magically turn the clock back to Baltimore's pre-blight glory days, but it does promise incremental growth at a time when many other sectors are withering. But can it last?

If there's an answer to this question in these early days, it is to be found in an industrial stretch of South Baltimore. There, in the shadow of the Ravens football stadium, is a salvage yard called Second Chance Inc. Its warehouses are lined with doors, cabinets, sinks, and architectural details hauled out of demolished houses in and around the city. The company's employees are experts at dismantling entire buildings and salvaging every last nail and board, which are resold. What started just five years ago with 12,000 square feet of dilapidated warehouse now fills 150,000 square feet. Thanks to an in-house job training program, three employees have multiplied to forty-three.

Second Chance owes its success to its innovative business model. It's a nonprofit, so most of the materials that come through are donated; in lieu of payment, donors receive tax benefits roughly equal to 40 percent of their donation's value. Second Chance asks donors to make a cash donation amounting to some part of that tax benefit, then sells the salvaged materials. Combined, sales and donations cover the business' $3 million annual budget.

Second Chance founder and president Mark Foster says the business has plans to open branches in Philadelphia, Boston, and Detroit, among others. Here in Baltimore, it has blueprints for a "green village" that will serve as a retail center for Second Chance's salvaged materials and antiques, plus anything else one might need to rehab, or build, an eco-friendly house. And the company is planning to expand its job training program to include geothermal and solar energy installations, green and cool roofs, and home energy audits. "We're building an industry," Foster says.
To Second Chance's workers, the future looks bright. Sitting in one of the warehouses on a winter afternoon, three of them tell the stories of how they came to be there.

Durrell Majette was laid off from his job as a sewing machine mechanic at London Fog. He had worked for the company for twenty years, but corporate higher-ups sent the work overseas.

Victor Sanchez, an immigrant from Juarez, Mexico, supported his growing family working construction by day and cleaning houses by night. He was working himself to the bone. "I couldn't take it," he says.

David Poke Jr. was working in a shoe store out of high school, but he had higher aspirations: A sharp, detail-oriented kid with a flashy grill of gold teeth, he wanted to be a building inspector, but he didn't have the training to get started.

Majette, Sanchez, and Poke now work together on one of Second Chance's deconstruction crews, making between $12 and $20 an hour. "The first time I walked into this warehouse, I said, ‘All this old shit in here, this ain't me,'" says Majette, sitting amid an eclectic collection of old hearths, furniture, doorknobs, and claw-foot tub feet. "But after a couple of months, I began to see the value. Now when I drive down the street, I look at all the old buildings. I'm looking at them, thinking how to take them apart. ‘Can I save anything?'"

The green part of the work? They're all right with it. "You're making things grow again," Majette says. "You're giving it another life."

Second Chance, it seems, is making good on Van Jones' admonition that "the green economy must do more than reclaim thrown-away stuff. It must also reclaim thrown-away lives and thrown-away places."

Before the workers pick up their belongings and head home for the night, David Poke tells the story of painstakingly dismantling a mahogany-paneled room in a house in Ellicott City. There was $35,000 in wood in that room, he says, and they got 95 percent of it out, undamaged. The wood is now for sale in a nearby warehouse. A picture of Poke grinning a gold-toothed smile hangs on the wall next to it.

—Greg Hanscom is Urbanite's senior editor.