Toward a more sustainable Cedar Mill
What would a sustainable county look like?
by Bruce Bartlett and Virginia Bruce
We hear a lot these days about sustainability. We are exhorted to recycle and re-use, cut down on energy use, eat locally and grow our own vegetables, all in the name of sustainability. But it seems like few really understand both the definition and the consequences of true sustainability.
"Enough for everybody, forever," was the phrase Douglas Tsoi offered in a recent talk to the Washington County Public Affairs Forum. Tsoi is the Coordinator of the Partners for a Sustainable Washington County Community (pswcc.org), a coalition of eleven county governments and agencies to improve practices and education.
Forever. What we are doing now should not negatively impact the lives of future populations. The truth is, what we are doing now is negatively impacting our own lives and those of everyone on the planet, and will bring an end to our way of life unless we change our habits fairly drastically and fairly quickly.
Some people say that science will find a way, that we shouldn't worry about conservation or sustainability because science and technology have always found a way to get us out of experiencing the consequences of our actions. We don't have that kind of faith, and we don't want to risk the future of the planet on a gamble like that.
Population growth, rates of consumption, the extractive nature of our technologies (taking stuff out of the ground), and the economic pressure on business for never-ending growth have gotten us here. Government actions and personal choices will both have to change to make a difference. But what can we do at the county level to turn spaceship earth toward sustainability?
Washington County's nascent efforts to achieve sustainability recognize the roles and responsibilities for public agencies to protect and conserve natural resources, use financial resources effectively and efficiently, and celebrate the achievements of a healthy and productive organization as described at www.co.washington.or.us/Support_Services/Sustainability/index.cfm.
Looking to the future, there is much work to be done in plotting a course of action and accomplishing it. Factors to be considered are policies dealing with land use and transportation policy, environmental protection, and food security.
Help us make the road map
The authors of this article are devoted to promoting all forms of sustainability in the community, county, region and state. Citizen Participation Organizations provide a logical platform to discuss this work at the grass-roots level. CPO 1 is planning a series of brainstorming sessions over the next year (starting December 7) on practical ways to address sustainability in the county. You are invited to attend and share your ideas for creating a more sustainable county. We'll also be doing outreach to other groups and audiences around the county.
We have created a short, preliminary survey to gauge interest and get county residents thinking about what a more sustainable county might look like. If we don't make a plan, we can't follow it.
To get you started thinking, here are some of the actionable ideas that we have come up with, that could be implemented at the county level:
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Enhance the county's Community Development Code to include the latest best practices for green building, lower-impact footprints, streets designed to best deal with surface runoff, residential developments designed with Active Transportation in mind.
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Require that community garden space be provided in large housing developments and in affordable housing projects,
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Allow unused public property and foreclosed property to be used for community garden space. Allowing unused lands to be gardened with a property tax deferral while used as garden, tax to be paid upon subsequent development.
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Require better coordination with public transit for new development.
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Work with TriMet to provide transit to existing built areas.
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Support more fully the mission of the OSU Extension Service. Their Master Gardener program already trains people in the how's and why's of gardening, and shares this information freely. They have established a demonstration garden at the Washington County Fairplex which should be expanded to include permaculture. We should create a local food preservation infrastructure so that we can freeze, can and dry the foods we grow for winter consumption. You can't eat locally if you don't put something away for the winter!
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Encourage the use of existing farmland through education programs at local schools and through "farm conservancy," where student farmers are matched up with older farm owners wihtout children who want to farm. Imagine the results if we defined "Eco-Settlements" as a means to increase the vitality of farmland. Get young and old people living together on the land with the goal to make them self-sufficient, growing food as well as nursery stock.
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It can be observed that Oregon's land use laws protecting farmland from development are not increasing the number of actual farms, instead they often produce lots of fallow land, because no one wants to, or can afford to, farm it. As older farmers retire we don't have new farmers who are able to step in and continue farming. In the next 10 years, half of the current farmers will retire, raising the question: Who fills the farmer gap? The Extension Service's Growing Farms program offers a practical answer: start creating a new generation of farmers. See smallfarms.oregonstate.edu/growing-farms-workshop-series.
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And last but not least, contribute to the control of the birth rate through an expanded network of county health clinics.
We invite you to take our survey at surveymonkey.com/s/PSLVGPP and attend future CPO meetings, where the discussion will continue. We intend to present our findings to the Board of Commissioners in 2011.
We can't expect all the leadership in these areas to come from government. Many of the steps necessary to move toward sustainability have entrenched opposition in the business community, so leadership needs to come from us, the people, so that our politicians can follow!
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