Elgin’s Sustainability Action Plan moves ahead

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

ELGIN — With all the environmental efforts under way in town, you could say that Elgin is greener than Ireland on St. Patrick’s Day.

More than two years in the making, Elgin’s Sustainability Action Plan finally is set to be reviewed and adopted by the city council in late April. The plan is available for viewing on the city’s website. It recommends 108 specific objectives, “developed to be realistic, actionable and time-bound,” according to the document.

Over the course of the project, about 100 volunteers worked on it by dividing up into work groups that focused on alternative energy; economic development; green building technology; green infrastructure; healthy living and community engagement; recycling and waste management; transportation and mobility; urban design; and water resources.

Councilmen Dave Kaptain and John Steffen oversaw the sessions, at first with assistance from a consulting firm, AECOM. But for the second phase, which began in earnest last summer, the effort went grassroots and saved the city more than $100,000 in additional consultant fees by bringing the effort in-house and overseen by Aaron Cosentino, sustainability and grants coordinator for the city.

Cosentino said the group’s work has provided a clearinghouse for those wanting to know what’s going on with the city’s environmental efforts. It’s also helped get the word out about those efforts and, with “so many moving parts involved, allowed for connecting the pieces,” he said.

For those unsure what sustainability is, last summer the subgroups gathered as one to define it as “a movement that complements community values to foster a cooperative spirit and reward efficient use of all resources locally, regionally and globally; accomplished by incorporating the social, economic and environmental objectives of our citizens into our policy, development and culture.”

Among the plan’s objectives are to lessen the city’s collective environmental footprint and to “accept that we are one species among many.”

Input sought

Cosentino also oversaw four outreach sessions held throughout Elgin this year to get public input into sustainability, each of which drew between 25 and 30 participants.

“I wish we would have heard more from people not as actively engaged in sustainability efforts,” Cosentino said.

If the plan is adopted, Cosentino said, the group’s next job will be to further inform the public about steps people can take to implement it. Those don’t have to be extreme, but can include using more efficient faucets, watering lawns at off-peak hours, landscaping with plants more suited to the climate and in less need of pesticides and fertilizers, and making use of storm water.

“Change doesn’t come all at once,” Cosentino said.

The plan may be found at www.cityofelgin.org. Comments may be emailed to sustainability@cityofelgin.org .

To reinforce just how environmentally friendly Elgin is positioning itself, on April 28, The Centre of Elgin will host “Green Town: The Future of Community,” a conference presented by Seven Generations Ahead, a non-profit organization dedicated to sustainability efforts and a5, a Chicago-based marketing and communications firm.

According to an event press release, about 300 public officials and professionals are expected to attend the day’s offerings, which “will not only focus on Elgin’s progress and future, but will also look at ways communities around the Chicago metro area are going green.”

Speakers will include Elgin Mayor Ed Schock; landscape planner Randall Arendt whose latest book, “Envisioning Better Communities: Seeing More Options, Making Wiser Choices,” was released last year; and Bob Dixson, mayor of Greensburg, Kan., a town destroyed by a tornado in May 2007 that is rebuilding in environmentally responsible ways.

On May 7, The Centre hosts the Elgin Green Expo, a free event open to the public. According to the expo’s Facebook page, the “focus at this year’s event will once again be on all things green and energy efficient, but with special emphasis on older home retrofits, sustainable gardens, landscaping, new technologies and innovative products for your home, business or community.”

And in late June, Cosentino and others involved with the Sustainability Action Plan will be speaking about their work at the National Sustainability Conference hosted by the American Public Works Association in Portland, Ore.