Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Sustainability Planning in STL

There are two major sustainability planning initiatives currently underway in our region. One is being led by East-West Gateway Council of Governments, the second by the City of St. Louis.

What sorts of things would you like to see come from such plans, and would you be interested in participating in any public events to help shape the final product?

More importantly, have you heard of either of these two projects, and what would it take to get you personally involved?

Free food? Child care? Complimentary movie passes? Seriously. There is a role for the public in these efforts. Do you plan to participate? If not, why not?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I am skeptical of top down approaches to this sort of thing; we've seen how well the St. Louis government manages things. However, the best thing that could be done would be an incentivized system of recycling. The more the city recycles the lower the trash bills go. Someone is making money off of all the recycling we do now that we have the dumpsters so there has to be a way to make it worth people's while; especially for those people who don't do it currently. This should really be done by ward. Then we need the same thing for sewage; the more water we keep out of the storm trains the less our MSD bill.

Beyond that, we need PACE, Property Assessed Clean Energy if we are really going to build the sustainability of the city.

Unfortunately, I don't see the city as willing or capable of taking either of these issues on. I fear their initiates will be superficial.

-Eric Matthew Wilkinson.