Green Team

Minutes Morgantown Municipal Green Team December 4, 2017 Meeting Attending: Holly Purpura (chair), Jim Kotcon, Joey James, Karen Kalafat, Alex Davis, Joseph Kanosky, and Pam Cubberly (by Skype). City Climate Action Plan Jim Kotcon and other members of the team’s subcommittee on this action plan reported on their progress. Members have been reviewing the City’s baseline carbon study to update/confirm/add data where needed. One focus has been the current and potential role of local urban forest in carbon sequestration. Estimates on existing and planned green space expansion or reduction (e.g., through City paving projects) are being sought. Another area of focus has been assessing and proposing green City purchasing policies as an approach to reducing carbon emissions. The subcommittee is developing alternative scenarios and goals (e.g., 28% carbon emission reduction from 2005 levels by some year to be decided). Action: Jim Kotcon will notify the team in early January if the climate subcommittee will have a good draft of the climate action plan to present at the January 8 team meeting and possibly at the January City Council COW meeting. Richard Mine Holly updated the team on plans to clean up the Richard Mine through funds provided by the NRCS. She was very optimistic about the focus on the Richard Mine. Holly reviewed specific activities that would be taken in the coming year relevant to the cleanup. When asked how the team can be helpful, Holly asked for continued team support of efforts to raise money for FODC for operations and maintenance and to buy additional land in order to protect this key watershed for the City. FODC is planning to present the Richard Mine cleanup to the City Council also at the January COW. Attendance by team members and other supporters would be helpful. Volkswagen Settlement Jonathan Rosenbaum had discussed with various team members an opportunity for the City to apply for funds from the Volkswagen settlement to the State of West Virginia for air pollution management. Projects could include such things as electric buses, electric car charging stations, etc. Action: Jim Kotcon will follow up on this opportunity with Jonathan Rosenbaum. City Implementation of IAC Energy Audit Study Discussion turned to City implementation of energy audit recommendations from the 2016–17 Green Team– sponsored study by WVU’s Industrial Assessment Center (undertaken by engineering student Alex Davis, who continues to participate in the Green Team). Alex noted that both she and Dr. Gopala had contacted City Manager Paul Brake, offering IAC services in planning for and/or implementing these recommendations and received a positive response from Paul, who said he would distribute the revised report to relevant City staff. 1  December 19, 2017 Joey James noted that this was a perfect time to propose a budget for the City engineering department to implement IAC recommendations in the coming fiscal year, as the City budget will be prepared in January (Note: Jenny Selin had originally suggested the team propose such a budget each year, starting with low-cost recommendations.) Joey also noted that some City advisory boards actually receive a small budget each year for specific purposes and wondered if the team should ask for support for specific projects that further City environmental as well as cost- saving goals. Action: Jim and Joey agreed to pursue a team proposal for City budgeting for implementation of IAC recommendations for the coming year, and look into proposing a small budget for the team to support specific concrete projects or actions to assist the team in obtaining specific results for the City. Recycling Karen Kalafat reported on her work this past fall to promote team goals on recycling as the City continued to negotiate with Republic Services on its contract with the City. The City is signing a contract in December. She is trying to follow up on metrics, i.e., will the City obtain regular data from Republic Services that it can regularly pass to the Green Team? This will keep the City and team apprised on the amounts and types of recycling actually picked up and recycled in order to identify any problems that need to be addressed. She had been in touch with someone at Republic Services who had given her the same glossy but inadequate flyer on recycling they produced a year or two ago with a small list of what could be recycled. It still did not include glass. [Note: This Republic flyer directly contradicted information supplied by the single-stream recycling company in Pittsburgh where the city’s recycling is processed, as well as the detailed update the team had made to its own proposed flyer with assistance from that company. Information from the team’s flyer had been published at the team’s request in the Dominion Post earlier this year.] Joey mentioned that Down Stream Strategies had been commissioned by Republic Services to study recycling in the City. The report was due by the end of the year and was to be finalized the week after the December Green Team meeting. LED Street Light Study Joe Kanosky was not sure if Abby Cayton—who last summer and fall had undertaken a study on the potential for LED streetlights in the City as well as several energy audits on additional City buildings not undertaken by the IAC study—would be available to present her findings at the team’s January meeting. Action: Joe agreed to contact Abby to present her results to the team and ideally also to City Council at its January COW meeting. [Note: Joe later contacted Abby who agreed to present her results to the team at its January 8 meeting. Council.] Meeting Dates Pam had contacted the Morgantown Public Library to set up the next four Green Team meetings (winter-spring) on the following Mondays: January 8, February 5, March 5, and April 9. The location remains the same Conference Room #2 on the second floor of the library. Pam will be able to Skype to team meetings in January, February, and March (but not April and May) and is working on the audio issue she experienced at the December meeting. Meeting Adjournment The meeting adjourned at 7:00 pm. The next meeting will be held on Monday, January 8, from 5:30–7:00pm. 2