The Process and Community Engagement of Sustainability

Nine Mile Run Greenway Project Meeting
The Process and Community Engagement of Sustainability: Opening Remarks Presented
by J. Glenn Eugster, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, D.C. July 2, 1997


Thank you for inviting me to join your discussion tonight. I’ve had the opportunity today to visit your watershed and listen to a number of people talk about the Nine Mile Run Greenway work. I've also learned about the many other exciting community environmental protection initiatives underway, such as the Pittsburg Environmental City Initiative and the Steel Industry Heritage Project. My visit here is not so much to suggest things you should do, but to share some experiences I've gained working in other communities in the hopes that they might contribute to what you are doing.

Sustainability
I’d like to talk about sustainable development or sustainability tonight. Sustainability has been a hard term to define. Many people say it’s a nebulous term. To some it means everything and to others it doesn’t mean anything. My experience with the concept of sustainability has changed over time. I received my academic training in 1976 at the University of Pennsylvania studying under Professor Ian McHarg the ecological planner and author of "Design With Nature". At that time the word sustainability wasn't being used but many of us were trying to find a better way to achieve environmental quality and economic prosperity. As the term sustainability has received more attention and acceptance, I initially wasn’t sure how to react to it.

Working in Washington, you look at new initiatives with a certain amount of skepticism. Is it the slogan of the day? Is it a boutique term or is it something more substantive? Is it a movement that's going to last?

As I have watched the trend in sustainability I've wondered whether my training and expertise is appropriate for what we are trying to do with watersheds such as Nine Mile Run. If I were someone who was in school now learning about sustainability, I'd probably feel as if I was current and on top of the new thinking in sustainable development. As I thought about sustainability and the work that I do, I wondered how does my training relate to this new direction. On one hand it is a new generation of environmental protection and economic development. On the other hand it~s also an approach to the way we plan our land, water and communities that has been coming together for quite some time.

Converging Ideas
Sustainable development seems to an idea and a movement which reflects an evolution of our thinking in environmental protection and economic development. This evolution is a change in the way we view environmental protection and economic development separately and together and it offers great promise for the future of our communities, watersheds, States and the Nation.

When I talk about this convergence of thinking which has led us to sustainability, I am talking about how all of us have been moving in the same direction, whether you are in environmental protection, historic preservation, in civic organizations, in the business of managing the city, or in economic development. I think we have all come to the conclusion over time that for our efforts to be successful---and sustainable, certain things must be taken into consideration. Specifically, there seems to be a formula that goes into making decisions about the future of places like Pittsburgh and Nine Mile Run and by-in-large we~re all pretty much agreed to what the inputs are.

We may use different terms and we may in fact at times have a little different
approach for how we make those decisions, but I think there are some
common elements in this convergence and I'd like to highlight them. By and large we're all at a point where we agree that we need to:

Base the setting of goals and the selection of actions on the best available
science. Science about the ecology and also science about the people.

Empower people to help them, help themselves make decisions and use broad-based decision making to achieve a broad‑based consensus process.

Look at opportunities for what we call place‑based
protection development and management. Those places may be a
neighborhood, they may be a community, they may be a watershed or a
river corridor, or some subset of some larger geo‑political region.

Foster community‑based action. That local leadership is essential to all of these ideas and that there may in fact be a role for federal, state, and private sector
involvement, but that actions first come from communities and from local
officials.

Work toward environmental, community, and economic goals, simultaneously. This conclusion is the keystone concept~ behind sustainability

Use a full range of financial, technical, and information approaches and tools and programs and laws in order to be successful. We have all learned that no one agency, no one organization, and no one program can in fact carry out strategies like you are undertaking. The problems are too big, too complex, too expensive, and involve too many different interests.

Measure programs and to monitor whether or not we are achieving results and to take that measurement and that monitoring and feed it back into our processes to make sure that things are working.


Sustainable Development
If you~ve been following the literature and dabbling, or diving, into sustainable development work you know that the general definition is " to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs". That's a pretty broad goal that you could interpret any number of ways. Inherent in the general definition, however, is the concept of meeting multiple (ie. environmental, community and economic) objectives.

In order to achieve that goal a sustainable development approach needs "to recognize all legitimate beneficial public and private uses which have the least adverse impact on environment, community, and economic resources which reflect a high degree of public involvement and consensus at all stages of decision making".

In EPA’s Sustainable Development Challenge Grant Program, we~ve tried to better define what sustainable development means for us. We've attempted to define
"non-sustainable behavior" as " development or land and water activities, management or uses, which limit the ability of humans and ecosystems to live sustainably by destroying or degrading ecological values and functions, diminishing the material quality of life and diverting economic benefits away from where they are most needed".

The more you research and learn about sustainability you will see that there is no one approach or definition to how you go about this work. For example, at EPA we are trying to reinvent the way we go about protecting the environment. Part of this reinvention process involves trying to develop a better understanding of what sustainability means to us. I think through projects like Nine Mile Run, and others going on in your community, you have the same reinvention challenge.

What you are doing here is very important, not just for the specifics of
the Nine Mile Run Greenway, but also because of the context which Nine
Mile Run is within the city of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh
metropolitan area. Eighty percent of the U.S. population resides within
metropolitan areas. EPA is working on the recently announced Presidential "Urban Initiative" which targets urban areas and we are in the beginnings of a process to attempt to better identify how EPA can contribute to the priorities that the President has set for urban areas.

The Urban Initiative recognizes that if the patterns of metropolitan growth and development (ie.investment and divestment, mobility and access to jobs,
services, transportation systems, the amount of impervious surface, etc.)
continue, environmental quality will be significantly diminished. The current metropolitan tends indicate that if these growth and development
patterns are unchanged they will virtually guarantee further increases
in vehicular miles traveled, declines in air quality, the degradation
and loss of critical habitat, increased urban runoff, diminished access
to nature, and growing environmental and justice concerns.

EPA believes that cities and metropolitan areas of the U.S. are critically important and that efforts like these are in fact a way to address some of these problems. Cities and metropolitan areas constantly change and what we have seen in many urban areas is an outward migration which has led to the creation of edge cities and in some cases, the creation of sprawl development. What we are also seeing, and Pittsburgh is an excellent example because of its' Brownfields work, is a reallocation of uses. This turnover in land use is an opportunity for cities and communities to look at how we use our areas--a second chance.

We~ve seen some very exciting efforts going on here and in other cities
through programs like Brownfields, waterfront restoration and heritage areas. The reallocation of uses in urban areas is extremely important not only for what possibilities it generates within your urban areas, but also for the impact it will have on the surrounding countryside. We feel that the efforts within the cities
will have a major influence over the future use of countryside areas. The
two are inseparable although we often talk about urban sprawl in one context, and talk about urban regeneration efforts in another.

Sustainable Perspectives
Let's look at three points around which sustainability pivots~ environment, community, and economics. It is an equation that does in fact need to be met for us to have any chance of achieving sustainability.

First, from an ecological perspective, there is an opportunity for you to look at the values and functions of our natural resource systems and how they fit into the future uses of the watershed. Whether it be the stream you are focusing on, or the larger watershed, and looking at the opportunity to understand how it is functioning now and how do you need it to function in order to maintain some type of environmental quality. These natural resource systems, to be sustainable in the future, need to be recognized and managed as a type of "natural resource infrastructure".

This green infrastructure should be planned, implemented and managed in a way similar to other types of infrastructure which provide the public with values economic and environmental services. This type of natural resource infrastructure approach requires an effort like yours to think one size larger than your project area. If you~reworking on a river or greenway corridor, think about your watershed. If you~re working on a watershed, think about the relationship of the watershed to the larger community.

There are a number of excellent examples of stream restoration and greenway efforts which you might like to look at. Groups and governments in West Eugene Oregon, the Woodlands Development in Texas, and the Suwannee River Water Management District in Florida are testing these ideas and actually applying sustainable development approaches. Another excellent example for you to examine is the Lackawanna River Valley in Scranton, Pennsylvania, which in some ways has similar problems to those you are tackling.

Exciting work in a larger context, in that case, in a county wide context, looking at economic development, historic preservation, and open space. At the local and community levels, there~s some wonderful work going on looking at alternative
economic uses that make the protection of open space and riparian systems possible. One example is the Port of Cape Charles in Virginia, which was one of four areas selected by the President's Council on Sustainable Development to test the idea of an ecological industrial park. The Port of Cape Charles is coming up with a strategy to rebuild an industrial park that is ecologically sound, and do it in concert with a sustainable development strategy that encourages the protection of
certain rural qualities and agriculture and allows them to achieve a zero discharge goal for water that goes into the Chesapeake Bay.

Second, from a community perspective, it~s important for an effort like this to take community attitudes and people's relationships with natural values very seriously. There's a growing movement~increased attention~being given to human ecology, understanding the relationship people have with watersheds and greenways as well as
natural values. Never under estimate the importance of private property owners, users~ attitudes, and the attitudes of local officials towards the work that you are doing. I think you also need to factor in local interest, people~s connection, be it recreational or access~fishing, boating, scenery~to the area you are working on and certainly Nine Mile Run has a lot of people that care about it.

Part of what you are doing is taking local initiative. Your approach can help the City and County to empower people at the community level and at the local government level to make more decisions about their future. What~s exciting about that,
is that it does put you in a position to shape the future of your area. The challenge that comes with that is to step up and assume that leadership, and it will test your local capacity to work out differences of opinion; to take on tough decisions and figure out ways to come up with solutions that will bring the community together rather than drive it apart. You'll find as you go through this that you'll have to hone your conflict management skills and this idea of multiple objectives will become something that'll be a second language.

One example to look at is the work of the Pennsylvania Heritage Park Program in Lackawanna County Pennsylvania. The Lackawanna Valley Heritage Area is one of the flagships of the Pennsylvania Program and it offers demonstrable results you can in fact take a look at and see if they apply to what you are doing here~ideas about greenways, ideas about compatible development.

The third perspective, is the economic part of this equation. As we look at the land, especially in places like Pennsylvania, we have to understand that with the land comes an intrinsic economic value. That a private property owner does in fact
look at their property and believe that they in fact have the right to prosper from that property at some point in time; as we look at natural values, we have to [understand] and respect that. There's a growing movement of looking at areas to determine what resource-based economics might be possible in the future and an exciting thing about sustainability is the land uses that are coming out of these projects. Ecological and cultural tourism, industrial ecology, recycling, converting
agricultural waste to energy, and so on.

This idea of industrial ecology, where the principles of nature (waste equals food) is being embraced by many communities. Bill McDonough, who was on the President's Council for Sustainable Development, uses Pittsburgh examples of how industries are changing their industrial processes to eliminate the idea of waste and change the equation from waste being something that you have to bury somewhere at the public expense, to waste equaling energy~very exciting work going on.


EPA Assistance
Let me highlight three specific programs EPA offers that offer opportunities to support your efforts:

Community-Based Environmental Protection: We have been going through a reinvention effort in our agency away from command and control and away from a top‑down type of environmental protection. That change has been underway for quite awhile. One of the driving forces of that change hasbeen community‑based environmental protection. Our Deputy Administrator, is partially behind that, and he is in fact charging our headquarters and regional offices to work more with communities, helping them to achieve environmental protection solutions.

It's a redirection and it embraces this idea to sustainable development. It has empowered our region to work with groups like yours and to provide assistance, technical and financial. EPA leadership envisions that in a couple years most of us will be spending 80 percent of our time on community‑based environmental protection work.

EPA Sustainable Development Challenge Grant Program: EPA provides small grants to community organizations to pursue sustainable development projects. A demonstration project last year, the Program was an attempt to help EPA figure out what sustainable development is and create a source of funding assistance for community‑based projects.

You had an application in last year. Unfortunately, it wasn’t selected and I hope you reapply this year. They have increased the funding; it is still small, it~s five million nationally, but these funds can be used to leverage other public and private funds. It is in fact a program that is specifically aimed at what you are trying to do here.

Regional Geographic Initiative Program: Each year, Congress gives us
money which we in turn pass on to our regional offices to use on
community‑based and geographic‑based efforts. This money is discretionary; it~s used based on the priorities of the regional office. I have been talking with your leadership about conversations you should have with our leadership in Philadelphia about your work and priorities. The money is used to address risks to human health and ecosystems and achieve multiple objectives; again, the work here in this watershed and in Pittsburgh certainly would qualify for this assistance.


Summary
Let me summarize by saying that the Nine Mile Run effort is very much part of this new approach to environmental protection and economic development. As a locally initiated sustainability project, you are one of the incubators of these ideas. You have to define and demonstrate the best way to do this. At times, it will be frustrating because you'll look to others, the Commonwealth or agencies like us, for policies and clarification. We are looking to you to let us know what works and what the appropriate role is.

The challenge is for you to test these efforts and to communicate that to policy organizations like ours and for us to glean those rich insights and experiences and fold it into a policy that makes sense. The context of your work is terribly important and I encourage you to think one scale larger than what the focus of the
project is. As you look inward to your project area, be looking outward and be mindful of the context that you are working in. You do have to combine the lessons of the past and the present with those of the future. Build on your rich history of cooperative work here, in this metropolitan area.

This is not so much a new idea, but, rather, a different way of working and it's a new arrangement of ideas. It challenges us to take down the boxes we put ourselves in, the stereotypes we create as we look at different organizations and
different disciplines and different jurisdictions, and realize that by working together you have a chance for this area to be successful. Compete with the rest of the Nation, don't compete amongst yourselves. The process is extremely important. Incorporate ecological, community, and economic values into your decision making. Be sure you listen to everybody in terms of the issues and what the priorities are and go through the difficult process of coming up with a consensus‑based
approach. At times, you will want to act independently and you will want to have your differences and your good fights, but there will be times especially when you're competing for resources~where you speak as a unified group.

As you interact with each other, starting tonight, look at everyone as a designer of this plan and for the strategy of this area. Stuart Cohen a sustainable development practitioner and author of the book Sustainable Design" says, “Listen to every voice in the design process. No one is a participant only or a designer only. Everyone is a participant designer.”

Explicit goals and objectives are essential. If you do that, you will be able to measure progress because any kind of progress may not be the way to go. It's important that you are mindful of what you want to accomplish. That you have a sense of what success is going to look like so that you can go back and say, ~How are we doing and are we doing the right thing for what we hope to accomplish?~ Sometimes, in general, goals and objective statements, those important directions get
lost. I encourage you to communicate in a way that connects people with
the place that you are interested in.

I'm thrilled with the University, the Carnegie Mellon effort, because it does in fact bring an opportunity to increase and diversify the type of communication that you use in your community to help make decisions about the future.

When I first came to Lackawanna Valley in 1987, I was there to help carry out plans for the Steamtown National Historic Site and, also, I was invited to help with community interest in the Lackawanna River. In one of my first visits, people held up a painting by George Innes, called "The Lackawanna Valley." They actually brought it to the meeting. They said, This is our vision for the Lackawanna Valley. Some of you are very familiar with that painting; it is a vision of what was going on in the Lackawanna Valley at that time~it's partially pastoral landscape
qualities and also, the industrial landscape in that particular valley, it's an important part of the history.

What was fascinating about it was the reference to that painting and the use of fine arts to make such a point with everybody. It crystallized the beginnings of a vision that ultimately led to shaping their plan for Steamtown, Scranton, and the Lackawanna River Valley. It got me very interested in the relationship of fine arts to environmental protection. So I applaud your effort here. I think you add something significant to the community perspective by going in the direction you are going.

Thanks once again for inviting me to participate in your effort and I wish you continued success in your work.


J. Glenn Eugster of the U.S. EPA currently works within the Office of Sustainable Communities & Ecosystems in Washington, D.C. Where he is Co-Chair of a EPA Workgroup to develop a Community-Based Environmental Protection Fund and is leading a Metropolitan Ecosystem Action Strategy to help communities identify and implement alternatives to sprawl development.