Act Local

Some may have seen it as inevitable, but I am still pretty stoked about it. This past Monday I was sworn in as one of 5 members of our village's Green Committee. We advise the village board on, well, All Things Green. We recommend standards for landscaping, ways to improve water quality, and most importantly given our explosive growth (500% in the next 10 years)-mitigating the environmental impact of our Village.

In addition to working closely with NGO's like the Rock River Coalition (the Rock is 2 miles from our village center), we are also setting standards for the developers that seek to cash in on our prime realestate. Over the next year we will be looking to enact a variety of statues to put us into company of such progressive municipalities as Madison, WI and Chicago. For starters we are considering mandating that all new developments have engineered or natural Rain Gardens in place under every downspout to limit runoff, encouraging the use of native plantings in detention basins, and including packages with the land rights to protect greenspace in eco sensitive areas near the new developments.

If you come across any ideas that you think could help my budding village of 1200 souls stay green please let me know!

Stumble It!