Published: April 27, 2008 11:30 pm      

The ‘green’ movement

This past Tuesday, on Earth Day, Meridian Mayor John Robert Smith kicked off a "green" initiative in Meridian, giving tips on "greener" living to residents and issuing a nearly 90 point order to all city departments, instructing them to be responsible about their energy use.

The plan covered small steps like opting for reusable items over disposable ones, to big changes, like bringing city buildings up to LEED standards, and everything in between.

Smith was joined by Meridian Homeland Security Director and "Green Team" Leader H.C. "Bunky" Partridge for a Meridian Star Editorial Board to discuss Meridian's move to awareness and energy efficiency.



The Meridian Star: Can you talk a bit about the "green" department and the "green" hotline that are mentioned in your greening plan.



John Robert Smith: Well, we have the Web page set up, and we'll establish a hotline where folks can call in to a specific number for greening information, greening suggestions. We've gotten a lot of suggestions from the general public, and that's what we want. We want the buy in from the public, we want their ideas. We want them to tell us their success stories. And it'll also be a place where the public can report problems they may see as we really make this push ... it will be a number that's for information, suggestions, and reporting where we can do better.



The Star: Have you had much feedback from the public already?



Smith: We have had a lot of calls with either, again, "how do i get more information about what I can do in my house," or a mother calls saying, "my child came home talking about this green event downtown and has gotten the whole house stirred up" ... That really pleased me, because though we want to change starting yesterday about what we do as a city, truthfully our audience is the next generation. They've got to not only sustain our effort, but they've got to see that we remain on task, because it's their planet that we're using up.

And you might ask what difference is it going to make for a city of 40,000 to be involved in this issue when it's so much larger than we are. Well, a lot of things in life, in this world, I can't change. But I can









change my behavior, and we can change our little corner of the world which is our hometown of Meridian, and that's what we want to do. We the citizens of Meridian and Lauderdale County do have responsibility for our little corner of the world, and it's time we take that responsibility seriously.

The affect of this issue is so much larger than you might think ... look at what's happening with the cost of fuel. There are businesses in Meridian that are seriously considering ceasing their business because they cannot purchase fuel with diesel costs in excess of four dollars a gallon, and deliver their product. They simply cannot make money at what they can sell their product for. Those are very real issues that we have to be sensitive to. I'm not sure we recognize what the cost of fuel is doing locally to businesses.

Of course one of the disadvantages of the South is when it gets too costly for you to go work. I guess you're going to have to get a bike, because we don't have other forms of transportation. We have inter-city transit, but to move from here to Jackson, you have to take your personal automobile or you don't go. That's where we're way behind the west and the northwest and the northeast but I think it's a push you'll see coming forward. This whole issue of greening and energy reaches much further than what we kicked off yesterday.



The Star: Are there any other cities that have gone green elsewhere?



Smith: Oh yes, a number of them. We're the first one and so far the only one in Mississippi, but Seattle, Washington is probably the leader in green initiatives. So far there has been an absence of real federal policy, and so municipalites have begun to take up that slack. (Seattle Mayor) Greg Nichols has been the leader within the U.S. Conference of mayors ... but yes, Los Angeles, Miami, San Francisco, Chicago's a huge leader, New York's a huge leader — so you look at those very large metropolitan areas, but there's also those smaller municipalities. And that's where Meridian gets attention within the conference and nationally, because you may not expect it from a city of this size.

There are over, close to 800 citites around the country that have signed on to the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Accord. So each of those mayors have made a committment to follow through as best they can within their financial resources at their local level addressing environmental issues and climate control.



Star: Tell us about the green department. What is that going to consist of?



Smith: Well, that, of course, will be next year, because that's going to take next year's budget to accomplish. We have to set up a department and a support staff, which we think should be a very slim support staff. We feel that the green iniative of the city is going to grow so that it can no longer be handled by, for example, Bunky Partridge, who is the head of Homeland Security. For him to do everything I've already got him doing and then take this on, which grows every day in the ways it touches this city government, is expecting too much.

We'll have to have a department to oversee the greening effort and make sure it stays on task. You have to mesasure you're progress, and are you staying true to your committment.



Bunky Partridge: Well, that's absolutely true, and we have joined a group called ICLEI who is going to set our base where we're at now, our carbon footprint now, and then ICLEI will come in and meet with us and meet with different organizations and different businesses and say, "this is where we're at, and this is where we need to be."



The Star: Is there anything you plan to do traffic-wise besides reducing the number of traffic lights?



Smith: What we're talking about, we're looking at two-waying the streets downtown, as you know, and what it is is, 22nd avenue is really Highway 45, and it's marked as the highway through the downtown. Eighth Street is 11/80, 14th street is Highway 39. Well, I talked to MDOT and said, "Well, before I start two-waying parts of what is your highway system, I think you ought to study this for me." MDOT has agreed to do that study for us if the Federal Highway System passes off on it. We also said, "But there's another issue involved, and that is redundant traffic lights, needless traffic lights, needless stop signs. Help us study that because the more you sit at the stop light idling, thats fuel you're burning up, negative to the environment, costing you money, and building frustration within the driver." It's maddening to sit at t a traffic light when no one's passing you. So we think there's lights that'll be able to come out. We think there are stop signs that are able to come down. We think there are alternative traffic calming devices that can be used.



The Star: What kind of alternative traffic calming devices?



Smith: I was afraid you were going to ask that ... up to and including traffic circles, possibly. A traffic circle works very efficiently in some places and we're going to look at that possibility. And Meridian had traffic circles initially, at the turn of the century ... so there is some historical background or precedent for it.



The Star: How do you feel about the attitude a lot of people take that it's too late to do anything about climate change, that it's going to happen no matter what we do?



Smith: Well, and again, that's not what the prevailing science shows. It shows if we are very aggresive about it, we can make a profound change in what will be our future absent that change. But it will take a profound change. What we're offering here, and we want to make it very clear that we decided to lead by example, instead of saying, "City, these are the things that you must do." We're saying "This is what we in the city government are going to do. We'd like you to follow that lead and we'll help you follow that lead." These are easier changes to make in your lifestyle. Let's make these now. If we don't, we will be forced in the future to make much more drastic changes in lifestyle.

On the national level, we've got to begin to make some of those profound differences. One is mass transportation and having an option out there for our people. Another is alternative fuel sources and how we push those at federal and state government. But if we make those changes, the prevailing science is we can have dramatic impact on the future of our planet in lessening the penalty we pay for our past misbehavior on this planet. Absent the changes that need to take place, Mississippi's going to be too hot for my grandchild to live here. I mean, if you look at a projected map, in his lifetime — he's two years old — in his lifetime that Chicago, Illinois could be a zone 8 horticulturally. Well that's what Mississippi is today. Well, if Chicago is a zone 8, what are we? We're going to be absolutely tropical. We're going to be equatorial. That's not going to be much of a quality of life here.

So, I think one of the best ads I've seen on this subject is, there's a man standing in the middle of the railroad track and there's a freight train coming from behind him and he's saying, "Global warming, climate change, why should I care. You know, it's going to take 40 years before it becomes uninhabitable. That's beyond my life. Why should I care?" And he steps out of the way and there's a little girl who could be his granddaughter standing there and the train's almost on her. Now that really spoke to me. I can say, "Well, I'm 59. How much do I really have to worry about the climate for the rest of my life?" Probably not a whole lot. But I've got a 2 year old grandson. What am I leaving him? I'm burning up his future. And I can't do that to my child. He deserves better from me.



The Star: What have you done personally to lower your carbon footprint at home?



Smith: I'm changing all my bulbs out to compact fluorescents. When we leave the house we're turning all the thermostats up in the summer, down in the winter. And they're all digitally controlled, so the house does not become really comfortable for me again when I get home. So I'm not wasting that energy during the middle of the day. Working hard to conserve water consumption. I would love to go in the future to some solar panels on the outside of the house. I live in a very old home, and when we replace windows we're doing so with more energy efficient tiger windows. The house was built in the 1880's. It's fairly porous to the environment. In the future would love to see the addition of solar panels, especially for hot water heating.

What we're doing with City Hall, and it's not a dissimilar situation because City Hall was built in 1915, and it's limited what you can do to a historic building for energy efficiency, but we're taking those measures very seriously. And one of the things we're doing ... building the new police station, we can perhaps introduce solar power there. And that same solar power produced on the police station side will also work to certainly take care of hot water needs on the city hall side. Maybe even more than that. And we're going back with energy efficient double pane windows. We're installing blinds that have, I guess a heat sensor, maybe a light sensor, that as the sun comes the blind drops down, so that it blocks that heat, and it blocks virtually all of those negative suns rays entering the building. And we'll be doing that on the northwest side where we have so much heat gain, historically in that building.



The Star: Where can we recycle our recyclables in Meridian?



Smith: Well, you can recycle here. Waste Management has a recycle pick-up. Unfortunately, the public has not embraced recycling over a period of time. There's still a good bit of recycling north of 20th Street. There are other parts of Meridian that recycling simply doesn't exist. Waste Management has agreed they can do a much better job in public education about recycling that is offered.

Bunky and I just had this conversation yesterday — we need to seriously look at recycling drop-off points established througout the city, where certainly Waste Management's going to continue to conduct their recycling method, but perhaps we can augment that with drop-off points, recycling points.



The Star: Are there any residences in Meridian where recycling does not get picked up?



Smith: Oh no, the whole city can get recycling pick-up.



The Star: At some homes, Waste Management threw the recycling into the regular garbage truck with all the non-recyclable trash.



Smith: Yeah, we had a real problem with Waste Management on that. We have to be insistent with Waste Management on the recycling. And that's clearly an area where we can do better. Odell Hopkins heads up the waste contract for the city, and he will be the point person for dealing with Waste Management on a renewed effort on recycling.



The Star: Would we have to seperate all that stuff if we get into being more serious with Waste Management doing the recycling?



Partridge: Yes. From aluminum cans to the plastic bottles to paper.