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A recent commenter posed a question as to what sustainable practices and policies I would like the city to implement - or poor practices that we should stop. Suggest a few - besides urban chickens (Sunny had a good column in the Herald-Independent this week on urban chickens Urban chicken proposal has people talking).
Thoughts?
Friday, February 13, 2009
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How about turning OFF the streetlights after 10pm?
ReplyDeleteA couple of qs for ya since it is very quient around here-
ReplyDeletehow can we get the pagado renovated w the natural spring??
is Jake going to have a summer concert series at the nice shelter at Winnequah park?
I cringe after a big storm when I see the leaves and sticks piled up on the storm grates. I'm tempted to fork it up onto the parkway, but I'm afraid the adjacent homeowner would not appreciate it killing their grass. But could one of the crew go around with a pickup and a fork and load it up? Maybe the one that otherwise runs the street cleaner (I hope I am correct in assuming that the street sweeper makes regular rounds and doesn't sit idle in the garage).
ReplyDeleteBike racks! Everywhere!! Bike racks!!!
ReplyDeleteDoug,
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting this question in the community's forum.
In the study circles The Natural Step Monona has led in the last two years, participants have come up with literally hundreds of ideas for moving our city toward a sustainable future. Many if not most of them are worthy, cost-saving, and would help to make our city a more attractive and livable place. I would be happy to share the list for you to post, if you'd like (although I need to add the more recent ideas to it first.)
The bigger questions I see for our city are:
How do we train city employees to see the gaps between sustainable and unsustainable projects, policies, and programs every day, so that they--who see the city in action like citizens rarely do--will institute sustainability from the bottom-up?
How do we institutionalize best practices for sustainability without a sustainability budget, department, or director? (How much more can we expect from overworked city staff?)
How do we implement sustainable practices in a comprehensive fashion so that we look at how our city operates from the big picture?
How do you move the process forward when the public doesn't feel the urgency that is required?
How can the urgency be stressed to the public without strong political leadership on this issue?
If people don't understand how they are unsustainable, how can they be expected to become sustainable?
If the alders and mayor don't understand how the city is unsustainable, how can they lead us in becoming sustainable?
In my opinion, the answers to all these questions reside in the last one.
Heather Gates
The Natural Step Monona
Heather-
ReplyDelete"If the alders and mayor don't understand how the city is unsustainable, how can they lead us in becoming sustainable?"
And how can they understand if you can't point to specific examples of where we are not using sustainable practices and if we did use them it would save us money. Sadly, until you do that you are going to be viewed as talking gobbled gook....I do not mean that to be an angry response...I appreciate your words, thoughts and efforts around TNS....but bring it down to earth for people who do not understand and maybe they will get it.
Can the City heat and cool the library, city hall, and/or community center by installing a geothermal pump into Winnequah Park like the district did? Nichols and/or Heally would have to get ripped up a little, but it saves something like $50,000 a year in costs for the middle school.
ReplyDeleteCould the geothermal tubes (which need the surface area to exhange the heat) be installed with every street construction (Monona Drive), and then auctioned off to residents?
I agree with the above poster. I just went to the TNS Monona site, and tried to find the list of the ideas generated by the folks that have taken the study circle, specifically about the city and their practices. Could not find it. I don;t think it needs to be posted on Doug's blog, but I wish that site were more Monona specific and gave actual news about the activities of TNS. There is lots of stuff about general "green" strategies, but where is the list?
ReplyDeleteI think the list is here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.tnsmonona.org/real-examples-of-sustainable-living/
Actually the city has a much more efficient option than the school district. The MMSD sewer line runs less than a block from the city building- waste heat from the sewer flow could be captured with a heat exchange and heat pump and used to heat and cool the facilities.
ReplyDelete(Heather here)
ReplyDeleteThank you, Anonymous One and Anonymous Two, for the push. It was a great suggestion to have the ideas list on the TNS Monona website.
We did have a blog of things to do to be sustainable that we created to go along with the Sustainability Committee's piece in the Monona Fall Guide. As other blogs got posted, it moved down until it was shoved off into the ether. I have moved it back up.
I have also posted the asked-for-but-incomplete list of ideas from study circles (that I mentioned in my previous comment) which include many more ideas beyond the household--city, nation, business, education...
A list of ideas isn't the answer, but it is the start of an answer--the start of the conversation about how to move toward sustainability. It may sound like gobbledegook, but it is important that we see understand the big picture of sustainability so that we see the gaps ourselves. This is what I mean by educating our leaders and city staff.
Here's my Cliff Notes version: With increasing population and escalating demand for finite resources, the world’s ecosystems are stressed beyond what they can repair or absorb. Today, human demands on natural systems exceed sustainable yield capacity by an estimated 25 percent. Instead of living off the interest of the planet, we are now eating away at her capital.
Our planet cannot meet escalating human demands indefinitely. Working toward sustainability is necessary for global civilization to succeed. With leadership, innovation, and creative solutions we can do so, while also shaping vibrant, desirable, and more united communities. The challenge for Monona, then, is to tap into these abilities in our citizenry, and leaders, and through communication and connections, challenge ourselves to use the aforementioned best practices for sustainable living.
What are they? Best practices are those that use resources in ways that preserve natural cycles—we don’t extract so many materials from the earth that they cannot be reabsorbed; we don’t pollute our environment with things that don’t naturally break down or harmlessly assimilate; and we don’t outstrip resources to the point of exhausting them. We also see that people are treated fairly and efficiently so their needs don’t conflict with these practices for preserving the natural cycles.
Training or education in sustainability teaches us how to spot the gaps between what is and isn't sustainable in everything we do, thus institutionalizing the process.
As I have said and written before, sustainability isn't rocket science, but it doesn't fit neatly into a single short slogan either.
Thanks again for the suggestion to post the list. (For future reference, more, but not all, blogs can be found on our site by clicking on the word "blog" next to a post.)
Have I written more gobbledegook, or have I made this clearer to you? I'm really trying to help.
Heather
This really should not be about Natural Step at all. That is a certain group with a certain type of agenda. But the city does have a sustainability committee. Who is the council member lead on that? And what does he/she see as priorities? The Natural Step is a citizen's group organized with citizens in mind, but I am more interested in what the folks in leadership positions on the council think can be done.
ReplyDeleteThe council members on that committee are Bob Miller and Dennis Kugle.
ReplyDeleteI intend try and respond to some of the comments but am just swamped with other stuff.
(Heather here)
ReplyDelete"This really should not be about Natural Step at all. That is a certain group with a certain type of agenda."
Lest anyone get the wrong impression, The Natural Step Monona is a grassroots, non-partisan group. Our mission is to educate about, advocate for, and promote environmental, economic, and social sustainability in Monona. I would think that our mission is one that all could embrace, as it is about the well-being of all. The word "agenda," used to describe us by a previous poster, can have negative connotations and I hope nothing negative was meant by it.
"The Natural Step is a citizen's group organized with citizens in mind, but I am more interested in what the folks in leadership positions on the council think can be done."
The Natural Step is both a tool and a framework used worldwide by communities, businesses, organizations and individuals wishing to be more sustainable. The American Planning Association has adapted its principles to guide city planning nation-wide. Wisconsin leads the country in the number of communities (twenty-two, last I checked) that have adopted the framework to help guide them in their sustainability efforts. It is not something to be dismissed as outside the realm of our municipality's use. The Sustainability Committee is using it to help our city, too.
But as you can see by people's comments about The Natural Step, things are not easily accepted if they are not understood. That is why it is important to have a populace and leaders who understand sustainability. Then we can move toward it with greater ease and speed.
(Thanks for the soapbox, Doug!)
(Heather once more)
ReplyDeleteI didn't mean to cut off the conversation on suggestions for sustainable policies and practices. You folks had some good ideas. (Should I have left my frustration elsewhere or was it good to share it?)
John, if the storm grate at my corner is ever clogged, you have my permission to fork the debris up on my lawn. Someone else does that on occasion if I have been lax in cleaning it out, and I appreciate it!
Why can't the city put up Wind Turbines in some of our parks?
ReplyDeleteHonestly-this would be a good idea.
HP
Alright, Henny Penny -
ReplyDeleteChickens i can live with. But Wind Turbines?? Are you high??
"Chickens i can live with. But Wind Turbines?? Are you high??"
ReplyDeleteNo, I am not "high" Frankly, I am never been high except on life and laughter, but that is another story
In any case, why not? There are very few reasons not 2. I suppose there are some.
But imagine a Monona that really was sustainable and we produced our own electricity!
This model is not uncommon (cities owning their own electric utilities). We could place about 3 or four that the top of woodland park or on some other parks around town. Bonds could be floated to build'em and they would pay for themselves........unless people stopped using electricity.
If we do not like the big ones....many places are putting up micro wind tower units for buildings.
Henny "Windy" Penny
Founder, Chickens for Change