SCN Magazine Vol. 8 July 2013

SUSTAINABLE CITY NETWORK

VOLUME 8 JULY 2013

MADISON COLORS WISCONSIN GREEN LEADERBOARD SERIES SPONSORED BY: CRESCENT ELECTRIC SuPPLY CO.

PLANNING FOR AN AGING AMERICA 6TH ANNUAL SUSTAINABILITY CONFERENCE GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE PASSES KC TEST

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contents

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VOLuME 8 JULY 2013

Buffalo ‘Green Code’ to Replace City’s 60-Year-Old UDO

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Planning for an Aging America

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Small Town Makes Big Strides in Energy Efficiency

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Power Purchase Agreement Wins in Iowa District Court

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Dubuque to Host 6th Annual Sustainability Conference

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Community Gardens Flourish in Lawrence, Kansas

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Seattle Breaks New Ground with Bicycle Master Plan

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Green Infrastructure Passes Kansas City Test

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Cities Share Advice on Disaster Recovery

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cover story

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Gulf Coast Slow to Recover from Hurricanes Katrina and Isaac

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Sustainable City Network Magazine

The Best of Sustainable City Network is a quarterly magazine highlighting the most popular articles posted on sCityNetwork.com, an online trade publication that serves municipal professionals and elected officials in all 50 u.S. states and the provinces of Canada. The magazine is available in print or as a digital download at www.sCityNetwork.com/bestof. The opinions expressed in the magazine are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sustainable City Network, Inc. SuBSCRIPTIONS Contact 563.588.4492; bestof@scitynetwork.com

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Jeffrey F. Bullock, Ph.D. President university of Dubuque

Dan McDonald VP Existing Business Greater Dubuque Development Corp.

GROuP PuBLISHER Karen Ruden

Roy Buol Mayor City of Dubuque

Prof. Philip J. Parker, Ph.D., P.E. Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering university of Wisconsin - Platteville

PuBLISHER & EXECuTIVE EDITOR Randy Rodgers ASSOCIATE EDITOR Michael Manning BuSINESS MANAGER Linda Flannery CONTRIBuTING WRITER Julianne Couch DESIGN Imagine That!, Dubuque, Iowa

Cori Burbach Sustainability Coordinator City of Dubuque Jeffrey L. Bruce Owner Jeffrey L. Bruce & Company, LLC Scott Knapp VP Marketing A.Y. McDonald Mfg. Co. David Lyons President The Iowa Institute

Sustainable City Network, Inc. 801 Bluff Street Dubuque, Iowa 52001

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Bob Settle Vice President, Marketing Crescent Electric Supply Company Barry Shear CEO Eagle Point Solar Cindy Steinhauser Asst. City Manager City of Dubuque Scott Taylor President & CEO CarteGraph

from the editor Welcome to Sustainable City Network Magazine – the Best of sCityNetwork.com! This quarterly magazine is a compilation of the most popular articles on our web site and in our weekly e-newsletter, the InBox, which is now delivered to more than 40,000 municipal professionals and elected officials across the u.S. and Canada.

Sustainable City Network, Inc. produces advertiser-supported, non-partisan articles, webinars, trade shows and white papers that provide local governments with quality, organized and timely information about sustainability projects, plans and best practices. This magazine is another way we fulfill our mission.

Randy Rodgers Publisher & Executive Editor SuSTAINABLE CITY NETWORK www.sCityNetwork.com 801 Bluff Street Dubuque, IA 52001 563.588.3853 randy@scitynetwork.com

In this issue, we continue our Leaderboard Series by showcasing the City of Madison, Wis. As the capital of Wisconsin and home to a Big Ten university, Madison is a regional center for government, education and healthcare – recently recognized by Forbes Magazine as the city with the highest percentage of individuals holding Ph.D.s in the united States. Long-time Mayor Paul Soglin started his political career as a student activist in the late 1960s and has been a strong advocate for environmental and social issues ever since, making Madison one of the “greenest” cities in the u.S. Madison leadership must be doing something right: even at the height of the recent recession, its unemployment rate was 3.5 percent.

In other top stories: Find out how Buffalo, N.Y. is completely scrapping its out-dated unified development code and starting over with a new “green code” that makes sustainability a primary objective. And, learn what cities across the country are doing to prepare for the aging of America. If your community hasn’t started preparing yet, then you’re already behind. One in five Americans will be over 65 by the year 2030!

OUR MIS SION “To make u.S. cities more sustainable through quality and well-organized information.”

Other articles in this issue look at topics from small-town energy efficiency projects to community gardens, disaster recovery, power purchase agreements, green infrastructure and bicycle transportation plans.

The articles in this magazine have been selected by our readers. We’ve packaged them together in this convenient magazine format, available in print or as a digital download at sCityNetwork.com/Bestof.

We hope you find value inside.

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BY RANDY RODGERS, PuBLISHER & EXECuTIVE EDITOR

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Capital City Takes Leadership Role in Sustainability

BY RANDY RODGERS, PuBLISHER & EXECuTIVE EDITOR

In the heart of America’s breadbasket, Madison, Wis., is a blue city in a red state with a long tradition of green living.

A college town with a vast network of bicycle trails, more than 500 rain gardens and a farmers’ market almost every day of the week, Madison is a city where every homeowner has the RIGHT to install solar or wind power, and where people are free to pick and eat fruits and berries growing in public parks and green spaces.

First a Bit of History Madison was named the capital of the Wisconsin Territory in 1836, even though the town only existed on paper. Designed by a landowner specifically for a bid to develop the capital, the city was named for founding father President James Madison, who had died earlier that year. It was laid out with streets named for each of the 39 signers of the u.S. Constitution, its thoroughfares converging on the capitol building in the center of an isthmus between two lakes.

Since that time, Madison has grown to become a regional center for government, education and healthcare – recently recognized by Forbes Magazine as the city with the highest percentage of individuals holding Ph.D.s in the united States. According to City-Data.com, 48.2 percent of Madison’s population over the age of 25 holds at least a bachelor’s degree. Even at the height of the recent recession, the city’s unemployment rate was only 3.5 percent.

Madison is a liberal-leaning city in a conservative-leaning state, and city officials make no secret about sometimes contentious relations with Gov. Scott Walker’s Republican administration on issues related to sustainability, among others. Madison’s Democratic mayor Paul R. Soglin is a veteran advocate for environmental and social issues. Beginning his political career as a student activist at the university of Wisconsin – Madison, Soglin was elected to the common council while still enrolled as a graduate student in 1968. He served as mayor from 1973 to 1979 and again from 1989 to 1997. His current term as mayor began in 2011.

“We are way past the global warming debate,” Soglin said. “Even for those who refuse to accept the changing environment, the economic reality is that every city must prepare to deal with the unpleasant consequences of climate change.” He said Madison’s current council and its electorate provide “tremendous support” to his administration’s sustainability efforts.

“If there’s any disagreement it’s about what to do first, and if there’s any criticism from the public it’s that we’re not moving fast enough,” he said.

Step One: Getting the House in Order As in many cities, Madison’s first sustainability plan looked inward, said Facilities and Sustainability Manager Jeanne Hoffman.

“That first plan was really about making sure city operations were being sustainable. I think that was a very important first step. Before we could go out to the business community, neighborhood and stakeholder groups and ask them to be sustainable, it was important for the city itself to have a sustainability story to tell; to show the community that we weren’t asking them to do something we weren’t already doing ourselves.”

Madison’s first sustainability plan adopted in 2005 established Hoffman’s position and focused primarily on installing energy efficient lighting, insulation, HVAC systems and renewable energy in city buildings; incorporating alternative-fuel vehicles into city fleets; adopting green purchasing policies; and establishing sustainability metrics and reporting structures. The plan adopted as its foundation The Natural Step, an international framework for strategic sustainable development.

Bringing the Community into the Fold “Our second plan, which was just adopted a few years ago, basically said, ‘We as a city have done a lot of things to be more sustainable and now we’re asking the community – other governmental groups, the business community and residents – to also take a stake in being more sustainable,’” Hoffman said. “So that second plan is much broader, in that it has recommendations and goals in areas like natural systems, climate and energy, transportation, culture and art, education, and a whole host of chapters that obviously go well beyond what the city has direct control over.”

The control the city did have, however, was in its zoning code, which it completely rewrote with the help of an ad hoc committee of stakeholders and focus groups. The new code incorporated renewable energy, urban agriculture, increased density and mixed-use development.

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The city’s old zoning code included specific restrictions on installation of solar and wind energy systems in certain urban design and historic districts throughout the city.

“The old code made it possible for renewable energy to be denied if somebody didn’t like the looks of it, based solely on aesthetics,” Hoffman said. “We went through all that code and changed it, and basically made it a right to be able to install renewable energy regardless of whether you’re in an urban design district or an historical district.” She said aesthetic considerations are still incorporated, but they can’t prevent a project from moving forward as long as certain standards are met.

Green Building – Despite Obstacles Now that the zoning code has been revamped, Hoffman said the “next big project” is to rewrite the city’s building code. But, according to Hoffman and Mayor Soglin, that’s where the city is butting heads with state government.

“In Wisconsin, the state controls most of the standards for building and construction,” Soglin said. “It preempts us in many areas. It allows developers with short horizons to go outside the city, contributing to sprawl.”

In response, Soglin said, the city has “penciled in” $3 million to provide incentives for developers who maintain greener standards, with particular emphasis on advanced insulation technology, lowvolume toilets, green roofs, LED outdoor lighting and modernized water softeners.

Local Foods for Everyone Madison is also encouraging residents to think differently about their lawns and public green spaces. urban gardens are now allowed on terraces between the sidewalk and the street in residential neighborhoods. Another recent ordinance allows individuals or groups to plant fruit trees and berry bushes in public parks, provided they care for the plants and allow anyone to pick and consume the fruits and berries.

“Gardening is a really big deal in Madison. We have many, many farmers’ markets all over the city. Basically, every day of the week you could do your shopping at a farmers’ market. All of our farmers’ markets are very traditional, in that almost all of the food is locally sourced,” Hoffman said.

Madison and the Dane County area have a robust network of urban gardeners and community-supported farms that provide food stocks for the markets and many area schools, hospitals and restaurants.

Many of the farms are food co-ops that sell shares to area residents before the growing season begins. This gives them capital to plant and harvest the crops, which are then delivered to shareholders’ homes throughout the harvest season, Hoffman said.

“One of the grocery stores in town has a mobile market – a refrigerated tractor-trailer with produce in it that goes to parts of the city that have less access to food… so everyone can have access to fresh produce,” she said.

Caring for Madison’s Water

Funded in part by a federal Solar American City grant, Madison hired a “solar advocate” to help property owners navigate the complex steps necessary to finance and install solar energy. A bulk-purchasing program allowed groups of homeowners to install solar at a low negotiated price.

Surrounded by four large lakes, one would think the city of Madison would have plenty of potable water. But, looks can be deceiving. In fact, water quality has created concerns among public officials, prompting the city to initiate a number of water conservation and pollution control programs.

The city has also grappled with the state on power purchase agreements, which are not currently allowed in Wisconsin. These agreements, allowed in many states, make it possible for third parties to finance renewable energy installations and sell the energy back to public entities for a long-term negotiated rate.

Madison’s water utility is in the process of installing “smart meters” that have already helped identify leaks in the system and “saved a lot of water,” Hoffman said, as has the low-volume toilet replacement program.

“We did a lot of research and tried to suggest to the statewide policymakers that opening up (power purchase agreements) would be a win-win,” Hoffman said. “It would provide green jobs as well as lowcost renewable power to the state. But, we have a political structure that isn’t going to consider those kinds of changes right now,” she said.

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Madison hopes to create 1,000 rain gardens in the city, and is more than half way to achieving that goal. Each time a residential street is reconstructed, residents are given the option of having a rain garden installed in their terrace, Hoffman said, and the city has installed many large bio-swales in city parks and greenways. Developers are required to include sustainable stormwater management features in new and renovated developments over a certain size.

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The city is partnering with Dane County, the local sewerage district and the state Department of Natural Resources to extend funding for watershed restoration projects into the rural areas feeding into the city, she said. Projects include putting roofs over livestock feed lots, fencing off livestock access to stream beds and building bio-retention facilities to protect against floods and destruction of natural habitat in the waterways.

The primary objective is to reduce the amount of phosphates and metals that find their way into the lakes and the underground aquifers that supply Madison’s drinking water.

Recycling, Reusing and Reducing Madison has a long history of recycling. Programs include curbside collection of plastic bags, pots and pans, hand-held power tools, faucets, small kitchen appliances, and all the usual paper, cardboard, metal, glass and plastic products, said Recycling Coordinator George Dreckmann. In the past 20 years, the city has sold more than 25,000 home compost bins, and its drop-off site accepts items such as cooking oil, electronics, polystyrene, scrap lumber and a host of other items. It will soon accept mattresses and box springs, too.

In 1999, the city diverted 52 percent of its waste from the county landfill. It implemented single-stream recycling in 2006, which increased its diversion rate to 57 percent. A 2010 ordinance controlling construction and demolition waste got the city to 66 percent, and by 2012 it was diverting 69 percent of its collected waste, Dreckmann said.

Two years ago, the city started a pilot food-scraps collection project and now plans to build an anaerobic digester to take that program to full-scale implementation, Dreckmann said. The digester will be used to process food waste and other source-separated organics like dirty paper napkins, plates and pizza boxes. Energy generated by the digester will be used to power a new fleet maintenance facility and provide natural gas to fuel some city vehicles, Dreckmann said.

“It’s the largest single piece remaining in our waste stream,” Dreckmann said of the food scraps. “We landfill about 45,000 tons of material on an annual basis within the city – the part that the city collects – and this digester will take care of somewhere between 15 and 20 thousand tons. So, between 30 and 40 percent of what we landfill we’ll be able to pull out with this program.” That should take the city’s diversion rate to about 80 percent, he said.

Dreckmann’s goal is to make Madison a zero-waste city, but he said waste diversion projects have been slowed by the fact that landfill tipping fees are still relatively low in Wisconsin, as compared to other parts of the country.

“When you’re paying $100 or more per ton to dispose of your material in a landfill there are lots of options that are less expensive than [8]

that,” Dreckmann said. “But when you come to Wisconsin, where you’re paying $40 per ton, it becomes much more of a challenge to make diversion strategies cost effective.” He said tipping fees are expected to increase when the county implements a planned landfill expansion in the next few years.

A Bicycle Culture Madison adopted its first bicycle transportation plan in 1975, the result of a 1972 resolution co-sponsored by young alderman and future mayor Paul Soglin.

“So we’ve been working on consciously accommodating bicyclists in our transportation system for at least 40 years now,” said Pedestrian and Bicycle Coordinator Arthur Ross.

Since then, the city has been developing “complete streets,” even before the term complete streets came into fashion, Ross said.

What’s changed over the years is that bicycle paths and lanes used to be scattered throughout the city as disparate pieces. Today, the focus is on interconnecting those systems, making traveling by bicycle a legitimate option for those commuting to work, school, shopping or other destinations.

Bicycle usage in Madison has tripled since the early 1980s, and Ross credits the interconnections.

“As things become more connected and networked, use goes up and up,” Ross said. “People start to say, ‘Hey, you mean now I can ride my bike from here all the way over to there?’ And use just goes up dramatically whenever that happens,” he said.

Today, Madison has 46 miles of bike paths, 112 miles of bike lanes, 7 miles of curb lanes and 116 miles of designated bike routes within the city limits. These connect to a vast network of regional and suburban systems throughout the Madison area.

In recent years, city designers have focused on retrofitting “loop and lollipop” neighborhoods by interconnecting cul-de-sacs with bicycle paths that allow people to move efficiently through residential areas without increasing vehicle traffic. New developments are returning to more of a grid design to allow for that interconnectivity, Ross said.

Other aspects of Madison’s bicycle transportation system include: All metro buses are equipped with bike racks; snow is plowed from bike paths in the winter; there are police and first-responder crews on bicycles at various locations throughout the city; a bicycle parking ordinance requires new developments to provide off-street parking for bicycles; the city uses a variety of innovative traffic control features to protect the safety of bikers and pedestrians; and the city has about 30 Madison B-cycle bike-share kiosks where users can swipe a credit card or pay an annual membership fee to rent a bike, returning it to any of the kiosks when they’re done using it.

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Buffalo ‘Green Code’ to Replace City’s 60-Year-Old UDO City Starts from Scratch to Completely Replace unified Code

BY RANDY RODGERS, PuBLISHER & EXECuTIVE EDITOR

So, on Earth Day of 2010, Mayor Brown announced the launch of the Buffalo Green Code project, an ambitious plan to completely scrap and re-write the city’s land use plan and uDO. Although not as densely populated as it was prior to urban renewal, Buffalo still has 6,400 people per square mile, which Hawley pointed out is denser than Portland, Ore.

CH R IS H AWL EY

B Y RO N BR OW N

BuFFALO, N.Y. — Two years in the making, Buffalo’s new unified Development Ordinance (uDO) – dubbed the Buffalo Green Code – is about to be unveiled. In a bold and daunting initiative, the city decided in 2010 to completely scrap its 60-year-old development code and rebuild it from the ground up, using a New urbanism model steeped in smart-growth development principles, green infrastructure, clean energy and sustainability best practices.

Working with consulting company Camiros, Ltd., urban design company Goody Clancy and more than 5,000 citizens over the past two years, the city has refined the draft ordinance that officials hope to adopt by the end of the year.

Chris Hawley, a city planner in Mayor Byron Brown’s Office of Strategic Planning, said Buffalo’s existing code, adopted in 1953 at the onset of the “urban renewal” craze, has become grossly outdated as the city’s goals and objectives have changed over the years.

Hawley gave a presentation on the Green Code project at the Building Energy 13 conference hosted by the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA) recently in Boston.

While big-box stores on huge lots without pedestrian access are perfectly legal in Buffalo, and even encouraged under existing code, Hawley said sidewalk dining at neighborhood restaurants is technically against the law, requiring a zoning variance to allow what most people find desirable in today’s urban landscape.

It also has about the same transit and walk-to-work rates as Portland – 13 and 6 percent, respectively. With a population of 261,000, Buffalo is the smallest city in the nation with a metro rail system, and as a result, 30 percent of its population is car-free, Hawley said.

“In Buffalo, it’s possible to live without a car. I might be a living example of that, because I’ve never learned how to drive one,” he said.

In 2006, a special task force developed Buffalo’s comprehensive plan. But, in it the authors of the plan said, “Without a companion zoning ordinance the comprehensive plan will lack the enforceability that will make it credible and achievable.” That spurred leaders to begin laying the foundation for the Green Code project, which Hawley said will use the New urbanism model of mixed-use neighborhoods surrounded by districts such as college campuses and industrial parks, and the transportation corridors that connect them. “Walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods is the foundation,” Hawley said.

“Sprawl is, in fact, the legally required outcome under our current zoning code, and under the new code, mixed-use, walkable neighborhoods will be the default development option,” he said.

Developing the new code is a daunting task for a city with a relatively small planning staff. “It’s my project,” Hawley said. “It’s what I work on all day, all night and all weekend.”

The LEED for Neighborhood Development rating system has been a guide for the project, Hawley said, and more than 5,000 Buffalo citizens have provided input over the past two years.

“We’re trying to move toward a much more predictable and certain development process where both investors and neighborhood residents know what’s required, making the process easier. The document will be a visual instruction manual for how to build our city, so requirements will be depicted not just through text, but through helpful diagrams, tables, and illustrations.”

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Hawley said the new code will be much shorter and easier to understand than the 1,500-page document it will replace. He said the new code will “legalize” many of Buffalo’s historic buildings and neighborhood developments that were written out of the code in 1953.

“We want a return of the corner tavern and the corner store, which is a staple of Buffalo… and we want to be able to adaptively reuse some of our historic resources with an adaptive reuse permit that allows a wider variety of uses for buildings that are landmarked or on the National Registry of Historic Places,” he said.

Open-air markets, artisan industrial uses, roof-top solar and residential wind turbines will all be allowable under the new code.

He said the new ordinance will accommodate garden-style residential landscaping rather than restricting yards to traditional turf, and it will protect some of the city’s legacy trees. The code will provide direction on rain gardens and wetlands as well as a “dark sky” ordinance that aims to reduce “light pollution” from buildings and parking lots.

He said complete blocks are “a system of small connected blocks that allow walkable communities to happen. Complete streets are not enough; we need complete blocks.”

“What this whole project is about is deciding what kind of city Buffalo should be,” Hawley said. “That is a question that anyone who’s thinking about their community should ask. What has occurred over the past couple of years is we found that the city we want to be is very much like the Buffalo we already have, only better. So, we’re designing a code that hopefully will make Buffalo healthier, wealthier and more beautiful for future generations.”

For more information on the Buffalo Green Code project, see www.buffalogreencode.com.

related youtube video: http://youtu.be/jxmEwa-KPcA

One of the controversial aspects of the new code is a proposal to eliminate all minimum parking requirements. If approved, Buffalo will be one of the first large cities in the country to do so.

The Green Code project will fix what Hawley called “the worst sign code in the entire country.” under existing code, if you own a restaurant and want to put a small “sandwich-style” chalkboard sign on the sidewalk in front of your business, you must first pay a $75 application fee. Then you need the permission of the commissioner of inspection services and the commissioner of public works. Then you need to post a $5,000 performance bond acceptable to the city controller, holding the city harmless in case somebody trips over the sign. Finally, you need the approval of the common council.

“And then once you go through all that, the permit lasts for 30 days and you have to go through the process all over again,” Hawley said, to a roar of laughter from the audience. “So, removing barriers and making things easier is an import part of what we’re doing.”

The Green Code will incorporate “complete streets” concepts, as well as something Hawley called “complete blocks,” which provide guidance on connectivity between neighborhoods. He showed an aerial view of an “absurd example” in Orlando, Fla., where two property owners who share a rear lot line have to travel seven miles by car to get from one address to the other.

“That is NOT a complete block,” Hawley said. “That’s the state of our country.” [ 10 ]

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Former Buffalo Mayor Frank A. Sedita, left, was known by some as the “urban renewal” mayor. Serving from 1958 to 1961, and again from 1966 to 1973, Sedita presided over a massive transformation of the city landscape.

Along with most other cities across the country, urban planners in Buffalo helped usher in the age of the automobile, low-density development and suburban living, all concepts that are now falling out of fashion.

Photo credit: City of Buffalo

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Planning for an Aging America One in Five to be Over 65 by 2030

BY RANDY RODGERS, PuBLISHER & EXECuTIVE EDITOR

JA NA LYNOT T

S A ND Y MA RK WO O D

“I hope I die before I get old…”

That line from Pete Townsend’s iconic rock and roll anthem, “My Generation,” might have helped American baby boomers break free from the shackles of a repressive establishment in 1965, but it’s evident today that not many of them got their wish.

“Every 7.5 seconds, another baby boomer turns 50,” said Sandy Markwood, CEO of the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging (N4A). And, barring any unforeseen catastrophe, not many of them will be dying anytime soon. In fact, by 2030, analysts say, more than 70 million Americans – twice the number in 2000 – will be 65 or older. At that time, older adults will comprise nearly one in five Americans.

Markwood, a former urban planner, and two policy advisors from the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) spoke at the recent New Partners for Smart Growth Conference in Kansas City, Mo., in a presentation on “strategies for creating communities for all ages.”

R O DN E Y HA R RE LL

The first of the post-World War II baby boom generation, those born between 1946 and 1964, entered the ranks of the 65-and-older crowd in 2011.

“So, you can no longer talk about the fact that the baby boomers are coming,” Markwood said to advocates for older Americans.

“The aging of the baby boomers is here.”

But, while those post-war babies grab the headlines, as they usually do, Markwood said they’re not the only ones coming ashore with the silver tsunami. The fastest growing segment of older Americans is actually the 80-plus age group, meaning that the parents of baby boomers are living longer just as their children are joining them on the plus side of 50. The combined effect will impact Americans of every age, Markwood said.

“We’ve got a dramatically increasing aging population that has just begun to turn into what once was called the ‘golden years,’” she said. “We’ll see how we define it, and/or redefine it, as the baby boomers age.”

“Old age isn’t really what it used to be,” Markwood said as she juxtaposed photos of an attractive Tina Turner and a haggard Anna McNeill Whistler (made famous in the 1871 portrait, Whistler’s Mother). Both women were 61 years old at the time they were photographed, yet Turner looks 20 years younger.

Life expectancy in America has increased from an average of 46 years in 1900 to more than 77 today.

“We’ve really redefined what aging is in this country and we’re just at the beginning of that redefinition,” Markwood said. “All older adults aren’t alike… so, when you’re planning for an aging population, please recognize the fact that you’re planning for multiple generations.”

The aging population also has a widely diverse racial and socioeconomic makeup.

And, while the correlation between age and disability is not a direct one-to-one correlation, it’s still a fact that disability does increase as a population ages, Markwood said.

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While the aging of America will create new challenges, not all the indicators are negative, she pointed out.

“Older people are not just a drag on society.

In fact, they’re workers, they’re entrepreneurs, they’re volunteers, they’re consumers, they’re homeowners, they’re investors. So, there are a lot of positives that come with an aging population. But, to be able to age successfully, people need to plan,” she said.

That planning needs to happen at a personal level, as well as at a family and community level, she said. And, it won’t just impact your aging services department.

Markwood said whole communities need to be prepared for significant impacts to: • Housing – Modifying existing housing, developing new housing, regenerating housing in downtown areas, developing new active communities and assisted living facilities, and developing new technologies that assist aging people in their existing homes.

• Transportation – Making roads safer for older drivers, making communities more walkable with safer sidewalks and street crossings, expanding mass transit options, increasing mobility management efforts.

• Economic Development – Taking advantage of the fact that older people create economic opportunities and attract new businesses.

• Public Safety – Promoting safe communities, preventing elder abuse, altering plans for emergencies and disasters.

• Recreation – Providing multi-generational community facilities and civic programs.

N4A and a variety of local government interest groups conducted a survey of 10,000 u.S. cities and counties in 2011, finding that less than half of them had even begun planning for an aging population. In its report, “The Maturing of America,” the research team concluded: “…As a result of the severe economic challenges associated with the recession,

most communities have been able only to “hold the line”— maintaining policies, programs and services already established.

Thus, they have not been able to move forward to the degree needed to address the nation’s current “age wave.” The survey captures encouraging steps forward in some areas, and retrenchment in others. But overall, it appears that many communities are struggling to maintain the status quo.

“We call upon policymakers at all levels of government, but particularly at the local level, to move forward energetically – even if incrementally – to address the challenges at hand.”

Markwood said the report includes examples of what some communities are doing to implement whole-scale planning – looking across the board at all the things they do and how those things will be impacted by an aging population.

“The bottom line is that looking at developing livable communities for all ages is good planning; it’s good governance and it’s good for everyone,” Markwood said. “Whatever you do to plan for an aging population will help all of your citizens.”

Rodney Harrell, Ph.D., senior strategic policy advisor for AARP’s Housing/Livable Communities Public Policy Institute, said the recent recession not only impacted local governments, but caught many older Americans off guard. He said a 2012 survey indicated a growing number of baby boomers are concerned that they may not be able to afford to stay in their homes as they grow older. And, a recent AARP study suggests they may be right.

“Over the last decade, all age groups have really hit financial difficulties and that’s reflected by the fact that more older adults now have mortgages,” Harrell said. He said the study showed a significant shift from 2000, when the majority of homeowners over 50 owned their homes “free and clear,” to 2009 when the majority had a mortgage.

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In 2011, one out of seven who still had a mortgage owed more than the home was worth, the study showed.

“And, more importantly, housing cost burdens are worsening for older adults,” Harrell said. The study showed the percentage of middle-income people 50 and over who spend more than 30 percent of their incomes on housing increased from 20 to 29 percent between 2000 and 2009. That threshold defines a household as “housingcost burdened,” he said, “meaning you can’t afford things like emergency health care if something like that comes up.”

Harrell said the study concluded that housing affordability for middle-class older adults is in jeopardy and will likely worsen as the population age 50-plus grows over the coming decades. The recent decline in home values will further limit the choices of homeowners who must rely on their home

equity to pay for supportive services or housing alternatives, the report noted.

Harrell said local communities can help by considering older citizens when planning for transit-oriented development and livable communities.

Jana Lynott, also an AARP public policy advisor, said the use of public transportation by older Americans increased by 40 percent between 2001 and 2009. About 16 percent of that ridership was on transit vehicles specialized for older or handicapped users, she said.

Lynott said one way communities are expanding the potential of these services is through mobility management.

“This can take many forms, from bringing the stakeholders together to do very integrated public transit/human services

transportation planning, to reaching out to the land-use planning community, as well as being a broker to help put the consumer in touch with the transportation services available to them in the community,” she said.

One example of this exists at the Marin Access Mobility Management Center in Marin County, Calif.

“They have found a sustainable form of funding for their mobility management services,” Lynott said. “In 2010 voters approved a referendum to increase their vehicle registration fees by $10 annually.

All of that funding is going to transportation in the county, but 35 percent of it is dedicated to the mobility center,” she said.

AARP’s Public Policy Institute has a variety of research papers, surveys and reports on its web site at: http://www.aarp.org/research/ppi/liv-com/

related youtube video: http://www.aarp.org/videos.id=773683854001

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Sustainable City Network Magazine

Small Town Makes Big Strides in Energy Efficiency Northampton Makes Sustainability a High Priority

BY RANDY RODGERS, PuBLISHER & EXECuTIVE EDITOR

“I knew I had to work on city facilities first, to lead by example. The city had to be seen doing the right thing before it could ask private residents and businesses to join in,” he said. The first step was to create a database for tracking energy use and savings through efficiency and cost-effective renewable energy projects.

CH R IS M ASON

NORTHAMPTON, Mass. — When you’re trying to advance sustainability in a small town, it’s important to focus on priorities, pick your battles carefully, and don’t show up in the council chambers looking for a hand-out.

Chris Mason, energy and sustainability officer for the small town of Northampton, population 28,500, said prioritization is a key component of a sustainability strategy in a smaller community where manpower and financial resources are often in short supply.

Mason shared his perspective at the Building Energy 13 conference hosted by the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA) recently in Boston.

“When I was hired by Northampton, my job description was to improve efficiency, get renewable energy, guard against climate change, and guard against energy-supply disruptions or depletions in all community sectors… and it was a part-time job,” Mason said. “So, my first question was, ‘Can you prioritize?’”

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the mayor’s office and the Northampton Energy and Sustainability Commission to drive more energy efficiency projects in Northampton.

Acquiring these funding sources is a big part of the job, Mason said.

“We spent over $6.5 million on efficiency improvements and, as of fiscal year 12 our buildings had dropped their energy use by 27 percent over fiscal year 09,” he said.

“You need to bring your own resources to the table. I didn’t expect to go to the city council and have them give me a lot of funding to do stuff. So, I’m always looking for resources and I’m always looking for community support.”

All but a few city buildings were converted from heating oil to high-efficiency gas or to air-source heat pumps; some parking lot lights were converted to LED lamps; and the city installed solar-powered parking meters.

Mason said Northampton has had an energy commission and designated energy officers “on and off” since the mid-1980s.

Mason’s office also facilitated the installation of 129 kilowatts of solar power at two local schools and an adult learning center.

“I install renewable energy when it makes economic sense, and that largely means when I have a grant,” Mason said. In the case of the Smith Vo-Ag-Tech High School in Northampton, half the money for its 106-KW solar array came from a low-interest Clean Renewable Energy Bond (CREB) and the other half came from a Massachusetts Green Communities grant. The bond is paid off with the off-set cost of electricity.

In Massachusetts, qualified rate payers also receive Solar Renewable Energy Credits (SRECs), which total between $30,000 and $70,000 per year for the Smith school project. That money is used to feed a revolving energy and sustainability fund controlled by

sCityNetwork.com

The current commission includes four city department heads, two city councilors, a representative of a local school, four members of the public and several nonvoting associates, including Mason.

Mason’s job is funded by a state program that provides local communities with a certain amount of money for every resident or business that selects the renewable energy option on their electric bill.

“Northampton raised over $260,000 this way, over three years,” Mason said. “We raised twice as much as any other community in Massachusetts, including Boston and Worcester. So, that gives you a sense of who lives in Northampton. They’re willing to put their money where their mouth is.”

phone calls do I have to make in order to get this energy efficiency in? …We want to reduce that time and effort for businesses,” Mason said.

So, a partnership was established between the local utility company and a nonprofit group to act as an “energy concierge” service helping businesses select and apply for the appropriate rebates and other incentives. The city’s role in the project is to act as a public relations component, encouraging participation and promoting the advantages of the program.

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City code now requires new buildings to exceed Energy Star ratings for efficiency; the city provides “as-of-right” and expedited permitting for photovoltaic generation projects greater than 200 KW; it enacted streamlined permitting and site-plan review of residential level ground-mount PV; it developed a fuel-efficient vehicle purchasing policy; and it now requires new municipal buildings to meet LEED criteria, specifically with regard to clean energy.

related youtube video: http://youtu.be/W8Goth_NvpA

Northampton’s downtown trash is collected by haulers on bicycles, and the city’s 121acre community farm is the largest in the state, Mason said. Its landfill has an 800 kilowatt gas-to-energy plant, and 70 percent of city residents live within a half mile of a multi-use trail.

The city has won a number of state awards and designations for its sustainability efforts. “We’re doing a lot, but there’s a lot more to be done,” Mason said.

After making city facilities energy efficient, Mason’s next priority is to reduce barriers for private property owners by doing what he can to change city policy and build partnerships to make energy efficiency and renewable energy easy and affordable. A big part of that job is opening the lines of communication between citizens, local utilities and city staff to make sure the community knows what incentives are available, who qualifies and how to apply.

“One local business owner said, ‘Sure there’s money out there, but what’s the pain factor?’ And what he meant by that is how much time, how much effort, how many

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Northampton, Mass., Mayor David J. Narkewicz, left, unveils a sign for the Florence Organic Community Garden, 7+ acres of space at the Northampton Community Farm dedicated to making garden space available to residents of any income level. At 121 acres, Northampton’s community farm is the largest in the state. Photo credit: Grow Food Northampton

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Sustainable City Network Magazine

Power Purchase Agreement Wins in Iowa District Court Judge Rules Solar Company is Not a ‘Public utility’

BY JuLIANNE COuCH

DES MOINES, Iowa – You can call Barry Shear and his Dubuque-based company, Eagle Point Solar, a lot of things – renewable power advocates, solar energy system developers, cutting-edge local business, for example – but the one thing you can’t call them is an electric power utility. So ruled a district court judge recently when reversing an Iowa utilities Board opinion to the contrary.

Polk County District Court Judge Carla Schemmel reversed the board’s 2012 ruling that a power purchase agreement between Eagle Point Solar and the city of Dubuque constituted a breach of Alliant Energy’s protected service territory.

This story begins in 2011. That’s when Dubuque, a city interested in sustainability and lowering its carbon footprint, decided a solar photovoltaic (PV) system on the roof of its Maintenance Operations Center would be a great idea. City officials worked with Eagle Point Solar, which developed and installed the system.

One wrinkle: as a tax-exempt organization, Dubuque could not use the renewable energy incentives crucial for making renewable energy systems affordable.

So, they convinced a local bank to act as a third-party investor that would own the system and sell them the power through a third-party Power Purchase Agreement (PPA).

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However, Alliant Energy objected to this plan, arguing that PPAs are not allowed in Iowa and that Eagle Point Solar was, in effect, acting as a utility company, thus illegally competing with Alliant. They argued that in a regulated utility state like Iowa, the utility company’s rights, duties and obligations are assigned by law.

According to Shear, “Alliant is taking the position that by furnishing electricity, I am an electricity provider, triggering their monopoly provisions as a regulated utility.”

The difference, he said, is that he is not “furnishing electricity to the public for compensation.”

Judge Schemmel ruled that selling electricity to the city of Dubuque via a third-party power purchase agreement does not mean Eagle Point Solar is a public utility or an electric utility. However, the ruling was narrow. The court said “its determination is limited to these parties, this PPA and the particular facts and circumstances of the case before it.”

Alliant officials have indicated they are considering what might happen next, which could include an appeal of the ruling to a higher court. “We’re still trying to figure out what it means,” Alliant spokesperson Justin Foss told the Dubuque Telegraph Herald.

“What we know is, this order only applies to that one installation on that one building in Dubuque. It is not a broad order or a policy change overall.”

Dubuque and Eagle Point Solar had to do some complicated negotiations to change their thwarted PPA into a lease agreement.

The solution was to lease the solar equipment directly to the city, charging a flat monthly fee.

The 847 rooftop PV panels were online in late November of 2011, allowing them to produce electricity right on schedule. But Dave Heiar, economic development director for the city, said it was only a few months ago that the city was able to receive any credit from Alliant for any excess power the solar system produced.

“We were surprised based on previous ruling from the utilities board,” Heiar said of the court’s ruling. “This was a huge reversal.”

That said, the city is unlikely to backtrack and negotiate the PPA they’d once hope to enter into.

“After the initial decision by the utilities board we revamped our agreement with Eagle Point Solar so we have an agreement in place that does coincide with the way the rules were being interpreted by the board.

We are not sure if we want to go back to the original agreement. We would need to do new calculations to decide if it was worth it to change,” Heiar said.

Shear’s reaction to the ruling was not so much one of surprise as it was of “delight,” he said. “We had a very high confidence level that we would win in district court and that the Iowa utilities Board did not adequately consider current state law around transactions.” He isn’t sure on what grounds the case could be appealed.

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“The utility took the position Eagle Point Solar would be one of the state’s three utilities, since we were proposing to sell energy behind the meter on a customerowned site. They didn’t win.”

Shear said he’s spent a great deal of time over the matter of his company being considered a public utility and whether PPAs are legal or not. As a result, “I haven’t really pursued municipal deals, which is a shame.

They all want to power their buildings, their wastewater treatment plants, their high schools. unless I can deliver it in a structure that works, these entities can’t get incentives for renewable energy.”

Shear said he will now start trying to pursue municipal deals using PPA instruments “because we won the case, so right now that is the law.”

As Shear noted, “this is not just about me as a businessman in Dubuque. This is not a Dubuque or an Iowa case. It is really a national case. Twenty-three other states are closely following the decision.”

According to the Database of State Incentives for Renewable Energy (DSIRE), many governmental entities and other tax-exempt organizations are developing renewable energy projects. For example, in recent years, the city of Minneapolis used a PPA to install a 600 kilowatt solar PV system on the roof of the Minneapolis Convention Center.

Regulations vary widely by state. In light of this, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), operated by the u.S. Department of Energy, issued a technical report describing the desirability of renewable energy and the often prohibitive cost.

One solution they describe is the third-party PPA. While acknowledging some of the obstacles presented by public utilities, NREL said some states, including Colorado, New Mexico, and California, have determined

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The city of Dubuque, Iowa rescinded a power purchase agreement with its solar contractor, Eagle Point Solar, in 2011 when its public utility said the PPA violated the monopoly provisions of the state’s utility regulations. Instead, the city agreed to lease the solar equipment installed on the roof of its Maintenance Operations Center. In April 2013, an Iowa District Court judge reversed the state utility board’s decision and ruled the solar contractor is not a public utility under existing law.

Photo credit: Eagle Point Solar

that third-party owned systems are not utilities or electrical corporations and are therefore exempt from regulation.

Nevada and Oregon exclude third-party owned renewable energy systems (specifically solar and wind power in Oregon) from the definition of a public utility. Peter Kostes of the Nevada Public Service Commission explained that even though Nevada is a state that regulates utilities, it has a “hybrid condition for those large commercial customers or public entities as a way to leave the electric grid provider in a regulated process.”

Nevada codifies exemptions to developers based on location, size, and percentage of the overall electrical requirement. “There is a process for commercial customers, 1 megawatt or larger, to exit the system,”

Kostes said. “There is another way for public entities to do the same thing if aggregated to at least 1 megawatt. under bill SB 211, they could exit the system, but the difficulty is the reserve requirement for transmission and that economically kills that process for most. The requirement that such systems can’t produce more than 150 percent of the electrical load on site is key.”

For Heiar and the city of Dubuque, the bottom line is that having more than one way to pursue renewable energy projects is a good thing. “For future projects, assuming the ruling stands, cities would have another option on how to fund these improvements,” he said.

Julianne Couch is the author of “Traveling the Power Line: From the Mojave Desert to the Bay of Fundy” (2013). [ 17 ]

Sustainable City Network Magazine

Dubuque to Host 6th Annual Sustainability Conference Visionaries to Headline Sept. 24-25 Event

BY RANDY RODGERS, PuBLISHER & EXECuTIVE EDITOR

DE B FR ODL

MI CH E L E H uNT

DuBuQuE, Iowa – Three women who have helped community leaders and some of the world’s most successful companies plot a course toward a more sustainable future will deliver keynote addresses at the 6th annual Growing Sustainable Communities Conference Sept.

24-25 at the Grand River Center in Dubuque.

Michele Hunt, founder of Vision & Values, a leadership consulting firm based in Washington D.C., will share her thoughts on The Power of Visionary Leadership, which she defines as leaders who put vision and values to work to achieve extraordinary success. Hunt is a strategic advisor on leadership, team and organizational development, cultural transformation and communications. She is known internationally for her work helping leaders develop strong, cohesive leadership teams to enable them to create high-performance, high‐energy organizations. Read more about Michele Hunt.

R EB EC C A RYA N .

Rebecca Ryan, futurist, author and founder of Next Generation Consulting, will present Cities 3.0: Reflecting, Responding and Redesigning for an Uncertain Future. As we enter a new era in which cities have fewer resources, citizens are uncertain about their future, and people become more “home-oriented,” civic leaders must remember what cities are for, and make smart, contemporary choices to endear them to generations to come. In this dynamic presentation, audiences will learn about NGC’s extensive research on “Next Cities” - places that have the attributes to become talent magnets - and will help cities gather momentum for “The New Normal.” Read more about Rebecca Ryan.

Deb Frodl is global executive director of ecomagination, General Electric’s commitment to imagine and build innovative solutions to today’s environmental challenges while driving economic growth.

growing

sustainable communities www.gscdubuque.com

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Learn how GE is investing $10 billion in clean-tech research and development and reducing water use by over 45 percent and greenhouse gas emissions by more than 30 percent. GE, the third largest company in the world, is currently the number one wind manufacturer and is developing hybrid locomotives, desalination and water reuse solutions. The company has deployed more than 5,000 alternative fuel vehicles and has launched infrastructure solutions including CNG in a Box and Wattstation to support adoption. Read more about Deb Frodl.

Presented by the City of Dubuque and Sustainable City Network, the Growing Sustainable Communities Conference is intended for community leaders representing local government, business, non-profits, and schools. This year’s event, sponsored by Crescent Electric Supply, GE Lighting and other corporate sponsors, will directly precede the Iowa League of Cities’ annual conference, also at the Grand River Center. Iowa League members who register for the Growing Sustainable Communities Conference will receive a coupon code for $60 off the ILC conference registration fee when registering online prior to Aug. 21.

The GSC conference will feature 25 educational workshops and mobile tours related to sustainability, resource conservation and community engagement. Registration is now open at http://gscdubuque.com. Early-bird pricing is in effect for a limited time.

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Complete session descriptions and updates can be found at http://gscdubuque.com/programming.htm.

Workshop topics will include: – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Creative stakeholder engagement Waste-to-fuel technology Green-business certification Sustainability planning Renewable energy Green building best practices Deconstruction urban forestry Composting Bike-sharing Green infrastructure Green fleets Lighting retrofits Flood and drought protection Alternative fuel vehicles Sustainability metrics Stormwater management Health and aging Local foods

Connect with the conference on Twitter at #gscDubuque.

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Sustainable City Network Magazine

Community Gardens Flourish in Lawrence, Kansas

BY RANDY RODGERS, PuBLISHER & EXECuTIVE EDITOR

E IL EEN HO RN

Community gardens have the potential to beautify vacant lots, augment local food supplies and enhance the urban environment in a variety of ways. But, successful program management requires careful planning and ongoing support, according to Eileen Horn, sustainability coordinator for Douglas County and the city of Lawrence, Kan. In the winter of 2011, the city surveyed its vacant and underutilized properties, identified appropriate sites for agriculture, and made these sites available to citizens through an application process.

During the 2012 growing season, four pilot sites were opened to the public through partnerships with neighborhood associations, nonprofit organizations and schools. The sites include a neighborhood community garden, a youth-focused garden in a city park, a community orchard for free picking, and a market farm coordinated by college and middle school students. In exchange for receiving a free license for use of city property, each applicant created a community benefit plan for their project.

Horn presented an overview of the city’s “Common Ground” community gardens program in an April 18 webinar hosted by Sustainable City Network. A video recording of the webinar can be downloaded at sCityNetwork.com/webinars.

Home to the university of Kansas, Lawrence is a town of approximately 88,000 people located between Topeka, Kan., and Kansas City, Mo. Despite last year’s devastating drought, the four gardens

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maintained by 41 gardeners and 640 volunteers managed to generate an estimated 5,800 pounds of produce at a market value of approximately $11,700.

Horn said the city was encouraged to develop a community garden program by citizens active in a grass-roots effort to promote local foods. A food policy council had already been established by Douglas County in 2009 and participation in the local farmers’ market had been growing exponentially for several years, she said.

“Although we had some privately funded community gardens around the city, many of them lacked continuity or potentially lacked funding, so some of them would fizzle out after a couple years,” she said.

Spurred by research from the food policy council that revealed more than 10,000 area residents had limited access to grocery stores and healthy food choices, and less than 0.1 percent of the area’s farmland was devoted to vegetable production, Horn said the city decided to investigate how community gardens might play a role in mitigating the area’s 54 percent overweight/obesity rate without being overly burdensome for city staff to implement.

Lawrence drew inspiration from successful community garden programs in Cleveland and Boston, both of which provide city property but rely heavily on local organizations to take responsibility for operating the gardens.

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Key goals established for the Common Ground program included supporting the local food economy; supporting the city’s healthy food initiatives; helping address food access issues in the city’s “food deserts;” providing for potential “agritourism;” supporting neighborhoods; and avoiding maintenance costs of existing vacant lots.

“A lot of the applicants ended up donating their excess produce (550 pounds of it) to food pantries and organizations that serve families in need,” Horn said, “and this was a great way to help address food access issues in our community.”

As the city looked for properties that would be appropriate for community gardens, certain characteristics emerged.

“We were especially interested in looking for vacant or under-utilized properties,” Horn said. “Being near neighborhoods was a key point, because we wanted to be sure people could walk to these community gardens, feel pride and keep an eye on them to protect them from vandalism.”

It was also important that sites had access to existing water infrastructure; were unlikely to face development pressure; and had a known land-use history. The latter consideration was particularly important for ensuring that food grown in the gardens would be healthy and free of toxins.

“The past use of a particular site – for example, if it was a house that had lead paint on it – can be really critical,” Horn said. “It could potentially be a source of contamination for your garden, so we definitely wanted to avoid that.”

The city identified more than a dozen sites of various sizes. Some were on undeveloped park land and some on vacant lots. A few proposed sites were on county land outside the city limits, but those were eventually ruled out. The city tested the soil for contaminates and reviewed the sites for potential stormwater issues. A press release was issued, site neighbors were notified and public meetings were held to gather citizen input.

Once the sites were established, the city published a request for applications on its web site. The application asked prospective garden organizers for a narrative description of their project plan, design drawings, a business/fundraising plan, a community benefit plan and an agreement to adhere to city codes and procedures.

“We wanted to know what kind of production they were going to be using,” Horn said. “Was it a community garden; was it a market farm; were they going to be selling the produce; donating it; working

with a school? If it was a community garden, then they didn’t have to do a business plan or talk to us about their business model. But, if it was going to be a market farm, we asked the growers to explain to us where their outlets were. Were they going to be selling at the farmers’ market, were they setting up a community-supported agriculture program, etc.”

Design drawings helped city planners determine if there would be any conflicts with city development codes. Horn said no codes were added or revised, although the city already had some applicable code with respect to gardens, urban chickens, hoop houses and such.

“In recognition of the fact that they get free access to this land and they could potentially be using it for commercial gain… we asked them to propose a community benefit plan,” Horn said. “In the community benefit plan, they outlined what they were going to do to pay that back or pay it forward. And we got some really creative proposals to donate food to the food pantry, to teach classes and workshops, to partner with schools. There were some really creative components, so I would highly recommend including the community benefit plan if you’re considering a program like this,” she said.

These plans also help answer potential concerns about the program unfairly competing with commercial growers, Horn said.

A dozen applications were reviewed and scored by the Douglas County Food Policy Council, which sent its recommendations to the city commission.

In 2012, four sites were awarded “rolling” three-year license agreements: a children’s community garden in a city park; a garden operated by a nonprofit neighborhood group on a vacant lot; a community orchard; and a market farm operated by a local community college’s sustainable agriculture program in partnership with a foundation that supplies food to local schools.

The rolling license is renewed for another year after each successful year of operation, assuming the grower complies with the program.

The city pays for the installation of water meters at each site, and the growers pays for any water infrastructure beyond the meter.

Growers pay the “irrigation-only” rate for the water they use. In some cases, the city provides liability insurance and allows the gardens to be subleased to multiple participants.

Growers must maintain properties in compliance with noise and weed codes, and must adhere to the city’s agricultural chemical policy. Oversight is provided by Horn and the food policy council, however, Horn said numerous city departments have been involved in creating and maintaining the program.

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Sustainable City Network Magazine

“This required the participation of our water utility, our planning department, our waste-reduction/recycling division, which donated compost, our city manager’s office, the city attorney… this was a multi-departmental effort,” she said. Her busiest months, when she spends 10 to 20 percent of her time on the Common Ground program, are January during the application phase and March, when the gardens begin operations. “They kind of run themselves after that,” she said.

Horn called the success of the first year “remarkable.”

“I had one citizen complaint call (concerning weeds at one of the gardens) over the course of the entire growing season,” she said.

“It was really amazing to see how the community supported and embraced this.”

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As a result, the city has expanded the Common Ground program for 2013. Added was an “incubator farm,” which will be operated by three independent market farmers who will donate some of their produce to food pantries, and another nonprofit neighborhood community garden.

Horn’s advice to cities considering similar programs include: – Target “food deserts” – Partner with organizations with proven capacity – Educate commissioners about the community benefit plan – Monitor and evaluate – Form solid partnerships with community groups

A children-focused community garden in Lawrence, Kan., hosted “The Great Veggie Hunt” organized by the Dads of Douglas County in summer 2012.

The “garden incubator” project was funded in part by a $4,500 grant from the Kansas Health Foundation. It includes a variety of “sensory plants” that are fun and educational for children to touch and smell. The garden is one of four pilot sites in the city’s Common Ground community garden program, which i s expanding in 2013. Photo credit: City of Lawrence, Kan.

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Seattle Breaks New Ground with Bicycle Master Plan City Revs up Its Pedal Power

TOM RASMu SSEN

SEATTLE, Wash. – Already considered among the leading u.S. cities for “bikeability” the city of Seattle has recently taken strides to accelerate its plan to triple bicycle usage and improve bike safety in the city.

In June, the Seattle Department of Transportation made a draft of its 2013 Bicycle Master Plan available for public comment.

It includes the city’s vision of making “riding a bicycle a comfortable and integral part of daily life in Seattle for people of all ages and abilities.” The improvements and actions identified in the plan will not only make bicycling a viable form of transportation for Seattle residents, workers and visitors, but will also help the city achieve its goals relating to climate change, economic vitality and community livability.

“This plan will make riding a bike easier and safer for a broad group of people,” said Mayor Mike McGinn. “A combination of cycle tracks, trails and neighborhood greenways will encourage healthy active travel for everyone from our children to our grandparents.”

using public input, the draft plan was developed over the past year and reviewed by the Seattle Bicycle Advisory Board. Two phases of outreach have been conducted to date, including an online survey and mapping tool, and a series of public meetings in November 2012. The draft includes an updated policy framework; a network plan map, showing the location and type of new bicycle facilities throughout the city; a bicycle facilities visual glossary; recommendations for end-of-trip facilities and programs; and a prioritization framework for how new projects will be evaluated.

“Council intends for the new Bicycle Master Plan to make Seattle the leading city when it comes to providing a safe, connected bicycle network that works for all riders, ages 8-80,” said Councilmember Tom Rasmussen.

Rasmussen, who chairs the city’s transportation committee, has been a long-time proponent of bicycling in Seattle. Safety has been one of his biggest concerns. In a newsletter released in May, Rasmussen recounted the recent death of a bicyclist in

a collision with a truck on a designated bicycle route leading from West Seattle to downtown.

“While we are not certain what led to the collision, I am determined to improve conditions on this route that will benefit bicyclists and motorists,” he said.

Rasmussen said he bikes the route himself on occasion and knows first-hand how badly improvements are needed.

“It is very challenging because of the heavy traffic and the many and sometimes confusing crossings. There are long stretches where the streets have been pulverized by the mammoth trucks going to and from the Port. The conditions require extra caution on everyone’s part whether they bicycle or drive this route,” he said.

Last fall the Seattle City Council increased the 2013 SDOT budget for bicycle improvements city-wide, and specifically funded improvements to the West Seattle - East Marginal Way bike corridor. The accident in May has given new urgency to completing those improvements.

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Sustainable City Network Magazine

Seattle has been working on its bicycle system since the early 1970s, when the emphasis was on building off-street trails and installing signage for designated onstreet bike routes. On-street bike lanes began appearing in the 1980s.

“As the bicycling movement grew, an emphasis was placed on the shared use of arterials,” Rasmussen said. “Seattle recognized a need for a comprehensive approach to our bicycle investments. This was the context for development of the 2007 Bicycle Master Plan.”

Seattle, along with cities like New York and Portland, has helped write the book on engineering standards for bicycle facilities.

These and other cities formed the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), which in 2011 published its first urban Bikeway Design Guide. This guide helped form the basis of Seattle’s 2013 draft plan.

According to the plan’s introduction, “the BMP update provides an opportunity to include fast-evolving best practices and new thinking towards bicycle facilities, resulting in planned investments that will

serve a broader range of people who ride bicycles as well as those interested in riding a bike.”

“The case for improving the bicycling environment for people of all ages and abilities is growing,” the plan authors wrote. “Academic and popular literature is expanding America’s under¬standing of the relationships between bicycling and health, economic, and environmental benefits, time competitiveness, space efficiency, and equity. There is evidence that bicycling is good for individuals, cities, and society as a whole.”

It was this plan that set up a 10-year framework for tripling the use of bicycles in the city and reducing the rate of bicycle crashes by one third, through education, enforcement and investments in 450 miles of safe, connected bicycling facilities, according to Rasmussen’s newsletter. These facilities included in-street bike lanes, shared lane pavement markings (called “sharrows”), climbing lanes, bicycle boulevards (neighborhood greenways), multi-use trails, as well as safer intersections and crossings.

Rasmussen said the city is on track to fulfill the 2007 plan’s goals for most of the in-street network of bike lines, sharrows and signed routes, but is behind on some of the more “complicated or expensive projects,” which he said have been held up by funding shortfalls, permitting or legal hurdles.

Despite those obstacles, Seattle’s bicycle system improvements helped the city achieve gold level “Bicycle Friendly Community” status by the League of American Bicyclists, and Seattle’s bicycle commute rate (3.5%) is second only to Portland, Ore. (6.3%), among the 70 largest u.S. cities, according to the league.

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The city of Seattle has released a draft of its 2013 Bicycle Master Plan, which includes fastevolving best practices and new thinking towards bicycle facilities. The new plan intends to increase the number of people who bicycle and make it safer for everyone.

Photo credit: City of Seattle

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Gulf Coast Slow to Recover from Hurricanes Katrina and Isaac Author Finds Signs of Hope Amid Damage Still Apparent

BY JuLIANNE COuCH

Earlier this year, during a long spell of snow and cold, the travel bug bit me. My thoughts drifted to the white sands and blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico. My fingers soon followed, and in no time I found myself online, surfing vacation rental homes up and down the coast of Mississippi and Louisiana. Based on my aversion to crowds and casinos, I selected a vacation home half a mile from the beach in the quiet town of Waveland, Miss. It was just small enough and far enough from the water to be affordable, thus perfect for my husband, our dog, and me.

It honestly never occurred to me to connect the list of towns I’d researched, including Waveland, Bay St. Louis, and Gulfport, to any specific events in the news. I knew there were frequent hurricanes, such as Isaac, which struck in 2012. I knew the BP drilling rig explosion gushed oil into part of the Gulf in 2010. I knew Hurricane Katrina had badly damaged the Gulf area, most famously New Orleans, about 50 miles west of Waveland. But that was in 2005.

Ancient history, I thought.

cardinals would fill the densely timbered lots with song. Some days a stray dog, not ever the same one, would tentatively skitter down the middle of our road, headed for the trees.

One evening we walked two blocks to a neighborhood bar and grill that specialized in soft-shell crab and alligator Po-Boys. This structure was not on stilts and, indeed, had filled with water near to the ceilings when Katrina hit. The owners had soldiered on, however, repairing what they could, leaving the foundation at ground level and hoping for the best.

Part of our daily routine included driving a few miles southwest along Beach Boulevard, past block after block of empty waterfront property, occasionally punctuated by an under-construction home or condominium. Here, “empty lot” might include a set of porch steps to

A Google Earth view of the rental house was my first indication that Waveland’s significant damage from Katrina lingered still. It was in a beautiful spot: a quiet cul-de-sac blocks from a major street, with a mature live oak in the front yard and wooded lots filling the block.

Zooming in closer, I could see etched in those overgrown lots the outline of a foundation here, the remains of a crumbled driveway there. The streets here are not much wider than a bike path might be in other towns. Panning in all directions, I saw that the aerial view revealed mile after mile of neighborhoods, each with only a few intact houses. It wasn’t until arriving in town that I understood that while quiet streets are nice for middle-aged spring breakers, they are getting old for the local residents.

My husband and I started each morning of our week-long trip drinking coffee on the front porch of our rental-house-on-stilts. The place was built in 2010 to hopefully sit higher than the next tidal surge. Swaying on our porch swing, we’d notice the neighbors from the two houses still standing on our block leave for work. Then in the motorless quiet, a cacophony of mockingbirds, blue jays, and [ 25 ]

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nowhere, or a teetering chimney stack. Our destination on these drives was Buccaneer State Park, on the west edge of Waveland, to wander the trail system which led to a gazebo overlooking a marshland full of egrets, pelicans and other water birds.

Katrina’s 140 mile per hour winds and a tidal surge of nearly 30 feet completely destroyed all of the park’s structures, ironically including the water park. The state park has been under varying stages of reconstruction since that time. Phase III of the reconstruction is scheduled to be complete this year. As testimony to that goal, our nature strolls were accompanied by the smell of freshly oiled parking lots and the sound of skid-steer loaders prepping the campground for resurgent motor home traffic.

Some mornings we’d leave our neighborhood and drive northeast along Beach Boulevard, into Bay St. Louis. This community and Waveland are really one — at least in the eyes of visitors — their division only apparent by a line on the map. At 12 feet above sea level, Bay St. Louis is the highest point along the Gulf Coast. This area was heavily destroyed by Katrina also, including the Highway 90 causeway and railroad bridge connecting this part of the Gulf Coast to Pass Christian. Now a small restaurant, antique store and art gallery district is thriving there.

We stopped a few times at Antique Maison, in Bay St. Louis, just a few blocks from the Gulf. We visited with proprietor Ed Young, a New Orleans native and long-time resident of Bay St. Louis, who made sure we found at least one thing we couldn’t live without that would still fit into our car. We told him we’d escaped south from the long string of winter storms in the Midwest.

“I’m not trying to be facetious,” he said, looking only a little bit like he was. “But how do y’all live there?”

Not letting on we’d been thinking the exact same thing about people choosing to live in the path of one devastating hurricane after another, we asked about the town’s recovery from Katrina.

Young told us stories in the way of a man who can sit all day on a porch, visiting with friends, never tiring of tales. He told us he and his wife Sylvia operated a bridal/tuxedo rental store in the building where the antique store is now. When the storm hit, they had “wedding gowns and tuxedos floating all over the Gulf.” He described the unthinkable

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“But now we need men who know how to do electrical work and plumbing.”

That need might be real, but the “rednecks” and their supporters were able to rebuild the causeway, the railroad bridge, and much more. Waveland, too, is progressing, with much of the area north of Highway 90 still a vibrant community. It has schools, a hospital, intact residential neighborhoods and useful businesses. It also has the Garfield Ladner fishing pier, which looks inviting, with its bait shop and restrooms. The pier is new, built to replace the one completely destroyed by Katrina. But it was damaged in 2012 by Hurricane Isaac and still sits barricaded and unused. Now the city of Waveland has sued the contractor, arguing the pier was not elevated to required levels, making the city ineligible for reimbursement by FEMA for damage repair. This brief telling belies a long complicated story, the sort that is not unusual along the Mississippi Gulf Coast.

Wrangling between local governments, federal agencies, insurance companies and average citizens was evident wherever we looked. n

This property in Kiln, Miss., is about 12 miles north of Waveland. Kiln is best known as the birthplace of NFL quarterback Brett Favre. Now it is also known as being hard-hit by hurricanes Katrina and Isaac. Many Gulf Coast properties are in various stages of rebuilding. The owners of this property make it clear that even though they don’t have much, they are prepared to defend what they have left. The message scrawled on the building reads, “No Trespassing. u-Loot, I Shoot.”

Photo credit: Ronald K. Hansen

scale of the disaster, in human and commercial terms. He also said that volunteers from churches all over the country made the difference in the area’s recovery. Now, he said, things were moving more slowly without those legions of volunteers, especially when it comes to the skilled crafts people require in construction.

We’d see this deserted pier each day as we walked the white sand beach, flanked between a broad, newly laid concrete sidewalk and the sparkling blue Gulf waters. Our dog chased seagulls and learned the hard way not to slake his thirst with salt water. Walking along the edge of the surf, we gathered to take home with us the sorts of beach-combed treasures people have brought back from ocean vacations since vacations began: a red plastic lobster, a white coffee mug, a mostly eroded fishing bobber. And in a little plastic bear that once held Iowa honey, we stowed a handful of that white sand.

Julianne Couch, who resides in Bellevue, Iowa, is the author of Traveling the Power Line: From the Mojave Desert to the Bay of Fundy (2013).

related youtube video: http://youtu.be/ddWMi5f34rQ

“We rednecks know how to put up a roof,” he said, chuckling.

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Green Infrastructure Passes Kansas City Test City Official Says Green Solutions Make Economic Sense

BY RANDY RODGERS, PuBLISHER & EXECuTIVE EDITOR

control plan, the largest capital project in the city’s history.

JA N MAR CASON

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Just last year, workers in Kansas City replaced the last of the city’s wooden sewer pipes, some constructed prior to the Civil War. But, the infrastructure changes having the most impact on one challenged neighborhood are blossoming above the ground, not buried beneath it.

Green infrastructure is helping alleviate combined sewer overflows, as intended, in the neighborhood where heavy rains often sent raw sewage spilling into the waterways of the Middle Blue River Basin.

But, Jan Marcason, a Kansas City councilmember speaking at the recent New Partners for Smart Growth Conference in Kansas City, said going green in the basin has created a ripple effect, increasing community pride, a spike in private investment, an increase in property values, and citizens who are more engaged in neighborhood beautification projects and city policymaking.

Marcason said her city plans to spend nearly $4.5 billion over the next two decades to implement its combined sewer overflow

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In a city that has expanded to more than 320 square miles – eight times the area of San Francisco – Marcason said Kansas City has 1,750 miles of sanitary sewer lines and 1,050 miles of combined sewer lines, which serve 653,000 people in the city and 27 satellite communities. Its seven wastewater treatment plants treat nearly 40 billion gallons of sewage per year.

As in many cities across the nation, the u.S. Environmental Protection Agency is mandating changes to Kansas City’s stormwater management systems to bring combined sewer overflows under control.

Kansas City’s consent decree with the EPA gives the city 25 years to develop systems that will capture and treat 88 percent of combined sewer overflows and eliminate sanitary sewer overflows during a five-year rain event. The region’s clay soil and “torrential” rain patterns make this particularly challenging in Kansas City, Marcason said.

To meet the federal demands, the city’s 25-year plan, beginning in 2010, starts with various green infrastructure projects and postpones the construction of huge underground rainwater detention systems for about 14 years. This buys the city time to extend financing terms and see just how much green infrastructure and other system improvements can reduce the overflows before final decisions are made on the size and scope of the gray infrastructure investments, Marcason said.

She said Kansas City was the first city in the nation to include green infrastructure in an EPA consent decree, and the first to be given 25 years to execute the plan – an extra five years to allow the native plants used in green infrastructure to reach their full potential.

In May of 2011, the city started with an $80 million investment in green infrastructure that included the construction of 64 rain gardens, 30 bio-retention cells, 36 curb extensions, five cascade rain gardens, four permeable paver sidewalks, and 23 porous pavement sidewalks, among other green solutions. Construction was completed in December 2012.

Half of that $80 million investment has gone toward green infrastructure in the Middle Blue River basin, a “challenged” neighborhood that was originally intended to get a $50 million underground stormwater detention facility. “With green solutions, we think we can capture the same amount of rainfall for $40 million,” she said.

Marcason said green infrastructure has four economic advantages over conventional stormwater management techniques: 1) It costs less to construction and implement.

2) It is used as a neighborhood and community development strategy. “We don’t just do pipes,” Marcason said.

“We use green infrastructure to improve neighborhoods and do economic development.” She said property values in the Middle Blue River Basin have already

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gone up, and she credits the green infrastructure for creating a “springboard” to neighborhood beautification efforts and private investment.

Kansas City has initiated a relief program, funded by late-payment fees, to assist lowincome rate payers who have trouble paying their ever-increasing utilities bills.

3) The strategy creates “green jobs” in some of the most disadvantaged areas of the city. Maintaining green infrastructure requires low-skill labor that is available locally.

Marcason credits the city’s community outreach and engagement efforts for the fact that a $500 million water and sewer bond referendum passed with 80 percent of the vote in 2005.

4) It makes city operations more efficient.

“With green infrastructure, we wanted to multiply the spending impact,” she said.

“When people are spending that much money, they want to see something for it.

When you just put pipes underground, they don’t see where their money is going.”

“We’ve really looked at our business processes and have done a lot more integrated planning with our water services department, our public works department and our parks department,” she said. “And that’s saved us money.”

The integrated planning approach used in Kansas City is being offered as a bestpractice example by the EPA, as reported last November.

“We really feel like this will show that green solutions do work and they provide muchneeded economic development and increase property values. These results will guide the other phases of the overflow control plan that will follow,” she said.

“The community’s commitment to green infrastructure provides that triple bottom line – social, economic and environmental benefits that make our city a better place to live and work,” Marcason said. “So, we feel like we’ve proven in Kansas City that we can re-think the way we do infrastructure. For us, green infrastructure was a viable solution that not only saved money, but re-built community pride.”

related youtube video: http://youtu.be/pi7WHysURGs

Citizen engagement has also been a key factor in the project’s success, Marcason said.

Kansas City formed the Wet Weather Panel in 2003, a 50-member citizen group that provides input in the overflow control program. A utility Funding Task Force is another citizen-led initiative that has researched and made recommendations on the level of funding coming from taxes, special assessments, system development charges and other local sources.

Marcason said these groups have pushed for green infrastructure solutions, particularly because very little federal or state funding is available for major gray infrastructure projects. At the same time,

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Kansas City Mayor Sly James shows off the design of street sign toppers for the first “KC Green Neighborhood.” The city completed an $80 million green infrastructure project in December and officials say the new rain gardens, curb extensions and other green solutions have boosted neighborhood pride, spurring private investment and increased property values.

Photo credit: City of Kansas City

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Cities Share Advice on Disaster Recovery Greensburg and Cedar Rapids Learned How to Weather the Storm

BY RANDY RODGERS, PuBLISHER & EXECuTIVE EDITOR

The recent news that Moore, Okla., had been devastated by another EF5 tornado – the second of that magnitude in 14 years – brought to mind a session at the New Partners for Smart Growth Conference in Kansas City this past February. In that session, titled “Howling Winds and Ominous Skies: Disaster Resilience in the Age of Climate Change,” speakers recounted two extreme weather events and how local officials worked with state and federal agencies to deal with the aftermath and rebuild their communities.

A 2007 EF5 tornado that nearly wiped out the village of Greensburg, Kan., and a 2008 flood that spilled over the 500-year floodplain in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, provided lessons applicable to any community that suddenly finds itself up to its neck in mud and mayhem.

Dixon joined Christine Butterfield, the community development director for the city of Cedar Rapids, in sharing insights at the conference. The panel also included Steve Castaner, branch chief of community recovery with Region VII of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and Doug Kluck, central region climate services director for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Butterfield became community development director in 2007, just seven months before the Cedar River overflowed its banks on June 13, 2008. The flood inundated a two-mile wide swath through the heart of the city, covering 1,400 city blocks with nearly 32 feet of muddy water. It was by far the worst flood in the city’s history, exceeding the previous record by 12 feet.

Bob Dixon was elected mayor of Greensburg, population 777, in 2008 about a year after the 1.7-mile-wide tornado destroyed nearly every building in the community, including his own house. The city’s population was more than 1,500 prior to the storm.

Butterfield said the flood engulfed the city’s downtown where many of its primary employers are located, and 5,900 homes had to be evacuated. “We had about 22,000 residents that were displaced and 900 businesses that were impacted,” she said.

“The value of the damage was estimated at $7 billion.”

“The concept of resiliency meant nothing to me until May 4, 2007 at 9:40 at night,” Dixon recalled. “Ninety-five percent of our community was leveled to the ground and turned to rubble, and the other five percent was severely damaged.”

Making matters worse, 310 city facilities were caught in the deluge, including city hall and the public works building. The county courthouse was also damaged.

The city took a direct hit from the tornado, which generated winds of 210 mph, killing 11 people.

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With 14 percent of its land mass under water, the city of 126,000 people was rocked to its core.

A common theme expressed by Dixon, Butterfield and Castaner was that a community destroyed by disaster can turn tragedy into an opportunity to build a better, more resilient city rather than just restoring the community to the way it was before the event.

“There is never a better opportunity to change systems, perspectives or mindsets than when a disaster hits,” Castaner said.

“Once you get past the trauma, the hurting, the loss of either possessions or family and friends, there are real opportunities to change the mindsets and perspectives community-wide for a better, more resilient future.”

Contrary to what a lot of people think, Castaner said, FEMA does not tell communities what to do.

“We may advise them on what the impacts of their decisions might be on funding, insurance or other things, but we never tell a community what to do,” he said. “We don’t know all the answers, but we have the role of bringing partners to the table who can help communities look at alternatives and opportunities after a disaster.”

Some of those resources include services provided by the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, other state and federal agencies and numerous nonprofit organizations, he said.

Dixon said it was public/private partnerships and the determination of the people of Greensburg that allowed his town to rebuild and recover.

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“Too many times, post disaster, communities think they’re entitled; that the state and federal government is going to come and make them whole. Ladies and gentlemen, that doesn’t happen,” Dixon said. “In America, we’re entitled to the opportunity to achieve. You pull all the resources to the table at the time you need them, and that’s what happened in Greensburg.”

Dixon cautioned against making major decisions too rapidly after a disaster.

“You’re in an emotional state of mind.

You’re going to doom yourself to what got you in this situation. Systematic problems will continue,” he said.

“Is your community resilient prior to disaster,” Dixon asked. “Are you sustainable?

Do you have the ability to endure? Are you doing things for future generations? Are you smart, prudent and responsible in everything you do in your community? Do you have those public/private partnerships and work together?

would not be enough. The disaster recovery plan had to provide protections from future flood events. Rather than sit back and wait for direction from state and federal agencies, Butterfield said the city government took ownership of the challenge.

“There is a real lack of clarity on the role of government in response and recovery,” she said. “understanding where one agency’s role ends and another agency’s role begins is a critical part of resiliency.”

Communicating with other cities that had recovered from similar disasters provided a laundry list of best practices and things to avoid, Butterfield said.

An immediate concern was reining in the massive influx of building contractors and homeowners eager to repair their damaged properties. Butterfield said the city shut down any non-essential services and

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repurposed all available staff to help conduct background checks and issue special permits to contractors, taking great care to prevent citizens from being swindled.

The city engaged more than 3,000 residents in a four-month community dialog to develop a plan for recovery and protection from future floods.

“They said, ‘We want to retain our neighborhoods, but we also want to provide more room for the river to flow,’” Butterfield said.

After receiving input from the public, the Army Corps of Engineers, FEMA, and about 11 different consulting groups, city staff developed a flood protection plan that was approved by the council in November of 2008. The plan was a combination of structural and non-structural measures to safeguard the city. Developing the plan was a lot of work, but implementing it would prove exhausting.

“If you have that prior to disaster, you’re going to come out on the back side of that disaster in great shape,” he said.

“You have to be adaptive and willing to change; and willing to listen to every idea that’s out there.”

Castaner, who was part of the FEMA team that helped Cedar Rapids and Greensburg through their recoveries, said Cedar Rapids broke new ground by aggressively planning during the restoration and recovery process.

He said the state of Iowa helped that process by giving the city time to develop those plans, while some other states often give their local communities restrictive funding windows that force reconstruction to begin before solid planning has had a chance to take place.

When the water receded, the Cedar Rapids City Council organized around the concept that restoring the damaged properties [ 31 ]

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In order to complete 10 neighborhood redevelopment plans in four months, the community development team surveyed other cities, developed a set of best practices, and held eight more public meetings.

“We asked the community and business owners how they wanted to see housing recover, how they wanted to see businesses recover, where did they want to see them located, how would it be integrated with flood protection, including flood walls and levees, and how did they want to ensure the community was stronger once it was implemented?”

Kluck. He said governing bodies need to make sure their policies stay up to date with changing realities.

“It’s very hard to build resiliency with laws and policies that were written in the 40s and 50s that may not even be climatologically realistic,” Kluck said. He used the example of the Colorado River, where water allotments were decided as far back as the 1920s, a time when precipitation and snow melt far exceeded that of recent years.

Kluck said local governments can get a wealth of information about local climate and weather conditions on three federal

In May of 2009, 11 months after the flood, the council approved the development plans and the recovery of Cedar Rapids began to take shape.

web sites: drought.gov, weather.gov and climate.gov.

For Dixon, the role of government is to prepare communities in advance to be resilient in the face of disaster.

“Are you operating in your community as crisis managers, or visionary managers?

We’re all good at putting out fires. But those fires will keep coming if you don’t have a vision and a commitment to a brighter tomorrow; to address those systematic problems that keep coming up.”

related youtube video: http://youtu.be/08PM3YEqBcE

In tiny Greensburg, getting input from community stakeholders was easy.

“We were all homeless – the whole community. So it was very easy when FEMA came and put us up a big tent on the east side of town. We’d have 4 or 5 hundred people show up at community meetings and planning sessions facilitating a long-term recovery plan. Everybody was listened to and provided an opportunity to be heard… It’s about conversation and collaboration; listening to everybody, even people in those CAVE organizations (citizens against virtually everything) that every community has.

There are some good nuggets and ideas in what they have to say. Listen to them.”

In hindsight, the disasters in Cedar Rapids and Greensburg, combined with Hurricane Katrina and other storms of the past decade, seem to have marked the beginning of a gradually escalating problem: The increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events as a consequence of climate change. While climate and weather data clearly validate that presumption, they can’t predict exactly where and when the next major event will occur, said NOAA’s [ 32 ]

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The center of Greensburg, Kan., 12 days after it was hit by an EF5 tornado in 2007. The twister generated 210 mph winds and killed 11 people. Although the city lost nearly half its population, it recovered and today is a model for other cities racked by disaster. Photo credit: Greg Henshall/FEMA

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