The City of Rochester will hire a consultant to help it put together a Climate Action Plan — a step that an official says builds on other projects and programs helping to make Rochester a more sustainable and, therefore, more desirable city.
“You want to be in a community that’s somewhat progressive in sustainability areas. People like that,” says Anne Spaulding, the city’s energy and sustainability manager. “It’s a place where people kind of like to live and like to be.”
The plan will essentially be a blueprint that will include goals, actions, and strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the city, she says. The city will accept proposals from interested consultants until January 30.
The city already has a detailed plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from its own operations, including its buildings and its fleet, Spaulding says. So the next logical step, she says, is to evaluate the city as a whole – both the public and the private sectors.
It’s premature to talk about what the plan might include, Spaulding says. But the areas it will focus on are energy efficiency, green buildings, renewable energy, transportation, solid waste management, land use, and community engagement. The engagement part means encouraging people to learn about what they can do to reduce their carbon footprint, she says.
“Many of these things are things that we’re already doing,” Spaulding says. “We have a bicycle master plan. We’re doing a lot of infill development. We put in electric vehicle charging stations.”
The state encourages Climate Smart Communities to create Climate Action Plans — although participation is voluntary. Climate Smart Communities pledge to take local actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to the changing climate.
Locally, the Town of Irondequoit, the City of Rochester, and the Town of Brighton are Climate Smart Communities.
Brighton was focused on sustainability long before it became a Climate Smart Community, says Town Supervisor Bill Moehle.
Brighton has a Sustainability Oversight Committee that advises the town government on environmental issues including energy conservation, waste reduction, building codes, business practices, and sustainable transportation.
And the town is doing an inventory of its greenhouse gas emissions that it will use as a benchmark if and when it decides to put together a Climate Action Plan, Moehle says.
“There are not a lot of Climate Smart Communities in this area,” he says. “We want to set an example.”
Brighton, Moehle points out, was the first community in Monroe County to enact a local fracking ban.
And Moehle says that he wants the town’s new Comprehensive Plan to have sustainability at its core for the first time. Brighton is in the process of updating its plan. (Comprehensive plans are guides for growth and development.)
“In a lot of ways, it’s a no-brainer,” he says, because reducing the town’s carbon footprint saves energy, money, and protects the environment — a win on all fronts.
It’s important for the City of Rochester to be viewed as a leader in the climate change fight, the city’s Spaulding says. State and local efforts are the primary battlefronts against climate change, given the paralysis at the federal level.
“I think many times people look to municipal governments to see what they’re doing and maybe to follow their lead,” Spaulding says. “If they can see that it’s important to a city and that we are good stewards of our energy dollars and of our environment, I think that’s important to people and people can follow suit.”
Spaulding says that the city will gather input on the Climate Action Plan from community groups, nonprofits, businesses, and others.
The city will also look to prepare for unavoidable changes in climate, such as the more frequent and more intense storms that are already happening.
“We do try to incorporate green infrastructure wherever possible,” Spaulding says. “We have a new porous pavement parking lot here at City Hall, along with our green roof. We’ve put in several rain gardens. We’re doing another porous parking lot at Turning Point Park and also some porous pavement up at the port development.”
And use of the city’s electric vehicle charging stations is growing steadily, she says.
“Even if people aren’t interested in dealing with the climate change aspect of it, all of the actions that we’ll take do have other benefits,” Spaulding says. “They do have economic benefits. They do have public health benefits. So they will be making it a better, more livable community and saving money and saving energy. So I think it’s kind of a win-win for everybody.”
This article appears in Jan 21-27, 2015.
The City of Rochester, NY starts to put together a Climate Action Plan. It’s very milquetoast but it’s a start.
It seems to be the City’s goal to quietly address Climate Change with the ‘no regrets’ strategy, which is to say actions that can be justified economically, socially, and environmentally whether Climate Change is real or not. This is not leadership; this is hedging your bets politically.
Although the City is doing many things on the climate front, few know about these efforts.
Number one on the Climate Action Plan should be ‘community engagement’. That is not happening. Even the City’s bicycle projects (bikeROCHESTER http://www.cityofrochester.gov/bikerochest…), which is fantastic effort and constitutes one of the City’s strongest adaptation strategies (as 27% of greenhouse gas emission come from the transportation sector) ‘Climate Change’ or even ‘greenhouse gases’ are not mentioned.
You cannot lead by quietly setting an example that nobody knows about.
You lead by continually educating the public so that they will understand the threat, by updating our various infrastructures so that will be resilient and robust enough to tolerate more frequent extreme weather, and by asking the public to become engaged in viewing and acting on all our local issues through the lens of Climate Change—election year after election year.
More on Climate Change in our area: http://rochesterenvironment.com/weather&cl…
Cool Rochester (http://www.CoolRochester.org) had hoped our partnership with the City several years ago would have gotten them off the dime, but it takes a lot to start up a freight train I guess. Good points per usual, Frank!
The big energy advantage Rochester has over its suburban neighbors is its relaxed policy on snow and leaf removal. Perhaps this is by default, but the nominal savings in capital, labor and health cost cannot be overstated. City residents get a chance to rake their own leaves and shovel their own walks all the while getting healthier for the exercise it provides them. Meanwhile the environment is cleaner, healthier and less noisy.
This is pretty awesome, with how the city is formulating more concrete plans toward a more livable city; especially more awesome if the city rolls forth with such plans and keeps on going forth. I’ve already transitioned to the world of electric bicycles and electric motorcycles, and have my gasoline automobile parked (a goal: the Tesla III). I love being able to walk & bike around to live out my life instead of being stuck in an anger-inducing automobile. My like-aged friends aren’t fond of using cars to live out their lives, as well.
Also, as a college teacher, I very clearly perceive this as being the sort of thing Rochester SHOULD be doing to stay viable as an attractive place to live for our emerging, working generation.
Stockholm’s Carbon Conservation for Heat, Home & H2O Health
Bloomberg Philanthropies, no less, reports;
Stockholm, one of the five winning cities in the 2014 Mayors Challenge prize competition, Are planning:
District Heat & Biochar production.
(Note to Companies send your proposals, they are choosing partners)
Biochar in return for Citizen’s garden waste.
Use for storm water cleanup.
What A great, and engauging, way to run a “Biomass Railroad”.
(Note to Stockholm; In the mean time promote TLUD Char-B-Qs, Wassail/Tea parties with community gardening folks.)
Biochar-ging Ahead to Engage Citizens in Combating Climate Change
http://www.bloomberg.org/blog/biochar-ging-ahead-engage-citizens-combating-climate-change/
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DC Farm Site Eco-Disaster
Stockholm’s Carbon Conservation could be a model for a District of Columbia Carbon Conservation, thus a world urban model. This Nouveau brown field the perfect challenge for Biochar remediation.
DC farm site is ecological disaster
http://news.yahoo.com/apnewsbreak-dc-farm-ecological-disaster-164534203.html
The team at BrightFarms has been working in commercial scale urban agriculture since 2006 and claim “Revolutionary” zeal. (I hope zeal enough to read my char soils presentation)
http://www.brightfarms.com/s/#!/about_us
The city department of general services could hook-up with the White House.
The first lady’s garden I recall had some lead issues,
I have seen two videos of the president congratulating Biochar science fair winners on the White House lawn.,
The Smithsonian Institute has a Terra Preta Soils display.
http://forces.si.edu/soils/02_08_04.html
Plus, I have copied the USDA Biochar research folks.
City of Trees is a former nickname of DC,
Contact Bartlett Tree Arboricultural Researcher Kelby Fite, about their Biochar product.
http://www.bartlett.com/tips/Biochar.cfm
But if ya’ll can’t work it out….Welcome to Virginia!