LIST OF ISSUES OF CONCERN GENERATED AT OUR FIRST MEETING, May 4, 2009
Local planning: low income housing, zoning? (Johnny Yother)
Water quality: buffer zones, development, private property rights, cattle in water, sod farms (Yother and all)
Waste: plastic, CFL disposal (Elise Drummond)
Sustainable Living (Amye McCallie, and everyone! This overarches all the other issues.)
Water Supply: contamination with pills (Myra Lightheart) quantity relative to new development) Marshall McCallie
Identify shared values, education, dialog (all, discussing how to deal with issues)
Poverty, link to environment (Howie Boyd)
Energy: solar, climate change (Elmer Olikkalla)
Coal: mountaintop removal, air pollution (Elaine Long)
Food: meat, local produce (Elmer, Johnny)
The intent is to approach these conservation sessions as training exercises, but at some point we may see that there is a particularly pressing issue that we all want to get involved with, or perhaps one that looks like real low-hanging fruit that we could make rapid progress on. We shall see. In any case, we had a most enjoyable session, and learned some interesting things about each other in the process.
Second Meeting, 6/1/09
Present: Bill Thomas, Howie Boyd, Amye & Marshall McCallie, Jim Keenen, Bob Taylor, Elaine Long
We reviewed the list of issues generated at the first meeting, and then Bill handed out "Elements of a Conservation Campaign" (see above).
In line with this, the first element was the definition of the Issue and its desired solution, and we began with Howie Boyd's interest in the relationship of poverty and the environment.
Howie first focused on the fact that most low income folks are stuck with driving old gas guzzlers, and that we would be doing both these folks and the environment some good by getting them into more fuel-efficient and therefore less costly cars. Tax credits and philanthropic trades of good cars for guzzlers were discussed, as were mopeds and motorbikes, which would probably need county and town effort to create bike safety lanes on most roads. Public transportation might also help. Mayor Jimmy Harris had suggested the idea of an electric bus or buses that would run a route around town to make it unnecessary for visitors to use their cars. Something like this would be an enormous help to low income people as well.
Howie then noted that in general he saw little recycling by low income people, and wondered if some sort of economic incentives could be created. We noted that bottle return bills had been attempted several times in the NC General Assembly, but had been killed by the bottlers and the retail outlets that would have to handle the returns. We need data on how well the recycling system is working in Brevard and the County now, and what the current values on cans, bottles and paper are. Howie wondered if Bethel A Church (and other churches and organizations of course) would give up styrofoam if they had dish washing machines.
Next discussed was energy efficiency audits to help people reduce energy bills. Our state utilities have a few energy conservation programs but they are very little publicized and probably little used. Brevard has signed the "Cool Cities" declaration, but we do not know if anything at all has been done, including an energy audit of city and county buildings. Elaine Long volunteered to do some research on this.
Meeting ended at 8:30. Everyone was asked to research their own favorite issue as Howie has done, for discussion at the nest meeting, which will be Monday, July 6 at 7-8:30 at the UU Church.