Regional Councils and the Environment
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Issue: Regional councils across the nation plan, manage, and evaluate innovative policy, programs and tools to help their local governments address common environmental issues. Regional Councils help assess problems and plan initiatives that promote sustainable solutions and build local/regional support environmental quality and protection issues cross jurisdictional boundaries. Regional Councils transcend these boundaries by helping plan and create continuity and sustainability on a resource and asset basis and not necessarily on a boundary basis. Regional Councils also are able to connect environmental issues to other critical issues such as public health, transportation and economic development. Regional Councils support policies that focus on regional solutions that promote safe and sustainable communities.
Background on Environmental Issues
Air quality
Regional Councils and Metropolitan Planning Organizations are critical part in reducing air pollution in their community. By integrating air quality and transportation planning they maximize efforts to reduce pollution and congestion simultaneously. Through the use of inventories, models, and an extensive planning process, Regional councils, as required by the law, strive to keep their communities in attainment of National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS), such as ozone and particulate matter. These plans and tools not only have significantly affected transportation decision-making and air quality pollution but also have affected broader issues such as land-use, travel mode choice, and reductions in vehicle miles traveled.
Brownfields
Regional Councils are very involved in Brownfield’s activities, due to their roles in planning compact urban growth, infrastructure, economic development, open space conservation, and waste management activities across jurisdictional boundaries. Regional councils are valuable partners in Brownfield’s assessment, clean-up and development because of their contracting skills and technical expertise. Regional Councils complete regional inventories of potential brownfields sites, histories of past land uses to better determine potential contamination, environmental assessments of marketable brownfields sites, develop toolboxes of information and resources to promote brownfields redevelopment, conduct public outreach on brownfields issues, and undertake demonstration projects with federal agencies. Regional Councils utilize their software and information capabilities as a smart growth tool to better assess land use, economic development, environment, and transportation initiatives as they relate to the redevelopment and cleanup of Brownfield’s.
Green infrastructure
Green infrastructure is a strategic approach to conservation that addresses the ecological, social and economic impacts of sprawl and the accelerated consumption and fragmentation of open land. (Source: www.greeninfrastructure.net). Regional Councils are well suited to play a constructive role in identifying, mapping, connecting and protecting their region’s Green Infrastructure – its natural life support system. Regional councils can lead formal Green Infrastructure initiatives on the regional level by convening stakeholders and conducting the strategic conservation planning process or simply by helping their local governments work through local planning processes of air and water quality; collecting and synthesizing complex layers of natural resource data and creating maps from this data; bringing local government, business and civic groups together to address land and water issues on a regional basis; and providing administrative and fundraising functions for these projects. There are many examples of Regional Councils creating effective green infrastructure tools and projects in their respective regions. Many of these projects are not specifically using the Green Infrastructure technology, but support a similar vision and goals. These projects go by a variety of names: Greenways Planning, Ecological Design, Land Use Planning, Conservation Planning, Open Space/ Recreation Planning, Natural Resource Planning, Natural Infrastructure, Corridor Management, Visioning/Scenario Planning, Regional Growth Management, and Environmental Protection or Preservation/Restoration Planning.
Landcare
Regional Councils are involved in Landcare. Landcare is a conservation movement that brings local communities, private corporations and government agencies together to support hands-on and on-the-ground action to promote sustainable land and water management. A Landcare group is a community-based group of volunteers working on conservation projects with positive environmental, economic and social outcomes.
Landcare combines the following: personal responsibility for the environment a commitment to on the ground community-based volunteer groups; integrated, scientific management of working lands; ecosystem maintenance and restoration good group process; and corporate funding of conservation projects.
Sustainability:Regional Councils provide a number of the skills to provide sustainability to their communities. Sustainability is the ability to achieve continuing economic prosperity while protecting the natural systems of the planet and providing a high quality of life for its people. Achieving sustainable solutions calls for stewardship, with everyone taking responsibility for solving the problems of today and tomorrow-individuals, communities,
businesses and governments are all stewards of the environment. The four key areas Regional Councils are involved include: the built or human-created Environment; Water, Ecosystems and Agriculture; Energy and the Environment; and Materials and Toxics.
Water quality
Regional councils play a large and diverse role in water resource planning. States and locals fund regional councils under the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act to help locals: create comprehensive water quality management plans for their states; create wastewater treatment management plans; inventory and identify waters, within their jurisdictional boundaries, that do not meet water quality standards; create non-point source management planning, and; utilize the 1 percent mandated by each state, to plan for programs. Some of the water management plans they create include corridor management and protection, watersheds, source protection, nutrient loading, drought and conservation, special districts, water regulations, flooding, groundwater monitoring and availability, coastal protection, wetlands, storm water management of ponds, wetlands, infiltration, filtering systems, and grassed channels as well as tools for public education and outreach.
Solid waste and hazardous waste-management
Regional Councils play a key role in developing solid waste and hazardous waste management plans as allocated by the State and local governments. Regional Councils help their local communities with illegal dumping issues, electronics recycling, waste clean-up, source reduction, reuse, recycling benefits, linking waste to air and water quality, industrial waste management, household waste management, flow controls, and landfills.
Homeland security/ hazard mitigation
Regional Councils are becoming involved with newly designed homeland security initiatives. Many of these initiatives have environmental components that are critical to keeping our regions safe, such as operating nuclear plants safely, energy development, and bioterrorism. Regional Councils also take part in hazard mitigation of natural disasters, such as hurricanes and floods.
Contact: Peggy Tadej, Director of Environment and Special Projects - Click to Email or call 202.986.1032 Ext: 224