 On behalf of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute, I am happy to welcome you to this briefing, Green Infrastructure, a Blueprint for Climate Resilient Communities. I'm Ellen Vaughn, and for those of you who don't know us, EESI has been bringing briefings like this to Capitol Hill for about 35 years now. EESI was formed from a Congressional Environmental and Energy Caucus and became an independent, nonprofit organization that continues to bring facts and science to the policymaking process. I have the honor of introducing our expert panel today, but first I would like to thank Congressman Cartwright for sponsoring this event and also to the American Society of Landscape Architects for supporting and partnering with us on today's briefing. As this Congress and many of you consider legislative proposals over the next two years, we think you'll agree that infrastructure repair and modernization and resilience to extreme weather are critical issues. The 115th Congress made some terrific progress on this front. There was the Disaster Recovery Reform Act, National Defense Authorization Act, Water Development Resources Act, these all had resilience provisions, which are terrific, but they left plenty more to do. So in a series of briefings and materials over the next two years, EESI will take a look at the implementation of these new laws and other important matters such as reauthorizing, reforming the National Flood Insurance Program and looking at public infrastructure funding and financing mechanisms. Today's discussion about green infrastructure is essential as we look for solutions to address climate change and its impacts. The fourth National Climate Assessment cites the ominous but real threats of more frequent and longer lasting power outages, fuel shortages, and impacts on critical systems and also health and safety impacts. It reports that infrastructure currently designed for historical climate conditions is more vulnerable to future weather extremes and climate change. And that coastal communities and the ecosystems that support them are increasingly threatened and underserved communities are the most vulnerable. But the report also offers hope. More than half of the damages to coastal property are estimated to be avoidable through well-timed adaptation measures, it says, such as shoreline protection and conservation of coastal ecosystems. And forward-looking infrastructure design, planning and operational measures and standards can reduce exposure and vulnerability to the impacts of climate change and reduce energy use while providing additional near-term benefits such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions. So our panel today will discuss how green infrastructure is already making a positive impact and can do even more. ASLA's interdisciplinary blue ribbon panel on climate change and resilience identified core principles and public policies that will promote healthy climate smart and resilient communities. And this is the report which you saw out there. We are delighted to have four of the blue ribbon panelists here with us today. So I am very happy to introduce our first panelist. And let me say also that if you could hold your questions, I hope you will ask questions and remember them, but if you could hold them until the end, I'll introduce each panelist individually and then we'll have 30 minutes at the end of the presentations for Q&A. So our first panelist is Nancy Somerville and Nancy is the Executive Vice President and CEO of American Society of Landscape Architects. Since joining the society in August 2000, she has expanded ASLA's public relations programs, increased their presence on Capitol Hill and in district and regional policy forums and enabled the society to become a more effective advocate on transportation, green infrastructure, and other environmental and land use issues. Nancy initiated the ASLA headquarters green roof demonstration project and directs the society's ongoing green roof and green infrastructure education and advocacy programs. She also directs ASLA's participation as a founding partner in the Sustainable Sites Initiative. So it is my pleasure to welcome Nancy Somerville. Thank you, Ellen, and thanks to your entire team at EESI for partnering with us and doing such a fabulous job getting this together. We really appreciate that. And I also want to add my thanks also to Congressman Matt Cartwright and his staff for assisting with this briefing and for all of the leadership that he has shown, his support on legislation such as those that address the public health impacts of climate change, create energy efficient schools, encourage transit use, and of course promote green infrastructure among others. So first a little bit about ASLA. The American Society of Landscape Architects was founded in 1899. We are the professional association in the U.S. for landscape architects. We have over 15,000 members who practice across the country and abroad. Landscape architects lead the planning, design, and stewardship of healthy, equitable, safe, and resilient communities. Since sustainability, what we used to call stewardship of the land has been part of the society's mission since its founding and continues to inform all of our programs and our operations. We have been a leader in demonstrating the benefits of green infrastructure and resilient development practices through the creation of our own green roof over at 636 I Street Northwest. You're welcome to come and visit. Co-development of the Sustainable Sites Initiative Rating System and creation of many publicly accessible, sustainable design resources. Landscape architects recognize that climate change is intensifying the negative impacts of standard development practices and putting our people and our communities at risk. We need a new paradigm for how we are building resilient communities that works in tandem with natural systems and considers the needs of all. To meet that goal, ASLA convened an interdisciplinary blue ribbon panel on climate change and resilience. The panel included landscape architects, of course, other designers, engineers, environmental scientists, and public policy makers. The panel identified core principles, key planning and design strategies, and public policies that will promote healthy climate smart and resilient communities. First, the panel identified core principles that provide a basis for public policies that support resilience. These emphasize meaningful community engagement, a special focus on vulnerable communities, and a regional approach based on landscape ecology, since watersheds and other ecosystems do not recognize political boundaries. The design and planning strategies identified by the panel fall into five categories. Natural systems, community development, vulnerable communities, transportation, and agriculture. Our briefing today focuses on natural systems and the primary recommendation in that category, green infrastructure. Many of the problems that we are facing, flooding, urban heat island, air and water pollution, coastal erosion, groundwater related subsidence, these are the direct results of ignoring or trying to engineer our way around natural systems. In other words, paving the planet really wasn't a very good idea. The better approach is to design in concert with natural systems and to protect and maximize the multiple benefits provided by those systems. That's what green infrastructure is about. In urban and suburban settings, green infrastructure key strategies that should be applied to all development and reconstruction are reducing paved areas using porous pavements and incorporating trees and vegetation, green roofs and cisterns for capture and reuse of stormwater, use of bio habitat supporting and pollinator friendly plant species appropriate to the region and to changing climate conditions, maximizing the green infrastructure capabilities of community parks and open spaces, and increased tree canopy. Green infrastructure strategies outside urban corridors include protection and expansion of open space and natural systems, including wetlands and other important buffers along coasts and inland waterways, preservation of wildlands and bio habitat, protection of critical water sources including aquifers, and greenways and wildlife corridors to provide and support animal and plant migration. The beauty of these nature-based green infrastructure strategies is that they come with multiple benefits. Some communities have embraced green infrastructure because they're looking to manage stormwater. Some communities have embraced green infrastructure because they're looking to reduce the urban heat island. Whatever the reason that they're going in, the beauty of it is they get all of the other benefits that come along with them. When you factor in all of those benefits, you get a tremendous return on investment for your investments in green infrastructure. Our blue ribbon panel also identified some specific public policies to promote green infrastructure. These include providing dedicated funding and providing incentives for infiltrating precipitation on site, using pollinator friendly vegetation and protecting green space. The report also calls for a national and suburban tree planting strategy and tree canopy goals. Finally, I want to mention some key legislation. First, the Water Infrastructure Improvement Act. After many years of ASLA and landscape architects educating policymakers about the effectiveness and value of using green infrastructure to address water and stormwater management issues, Congress passed and the president signed into law the Water Infrastructure Improvement Act on January 14th. Sponsored and championed by Congressman Bob Gibbs and Senator Deb Fischer, this new law promotes the use of green infrastructure in municipal planning for stormwater and wastewater management projects. The measure also calls on the EPA to provide research, data, and technical assistance to help communities implement green infrastructure projects. Passage of this bill was an important win for ASLA and frankly for communities across the country. I also want to applaud Congress for recently passing legislation to permanently authorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund. This legislation was overwhelmingly passed by both the House and Senate and is now ready for the president's signature. LWCF, I think as many of you know, is the premier federal program to protect our nation's natural and cultural resources, including public lands and waters, and to create local community parks and recreational facilities. ASLA members across access LWCF funds to plan and design community park and recreation projects across the country. And as noted earlier, parks and other green spaces also serve as natural sponges, soaking up rainwater, providing flood control, and helping to recharge groundwater, all increasingly important as we see the effects of climate change. And finally, the Living Shorelines Act. Our coastal communities have always been at risk at storms, but climate change has increased the intensity and frequency of weather-related events, leaving many coastal communities and their residents in peril. To address the unique vulnerabilities of coastal communities, Congressman Frank Pallone introduced legislation last Congress that would promote the use of green infrastructure and other natural solutions to better protect these critical and vulnerable areas. The bill would promote the use of living or natural infrastructure, such as seagrasses, mussel and oyster beds, and other nature-based solutions along our coasts and inland waterways. This legislation would also help communities to monitor projects and collect data on the efficiencies of these green and nature-based infrastructure solutions. We were a champion for this important measure, and we will continue our support when Congressman Pallone reintroduces the bill during this current Congress. Oh, and last that was not last, but last, but not really last, but not least in the legislation Environmental Justice. ASLA firmly believes that all communities are entitled to fair treatment and meaningful involvement of their citizens when making decisions impacting the built and the natural environment. ASLA supports legislation that calls on our federal agencies to address these environmental justice tenants and looks forward to Congress reintroducing environmental legislation this Congress. Thank you, and I will hand it back to Ellen Vaughn. Thank you, Nancy. I think the trick is to not stand over it, yeah. Thank you so much. And I would like to just segue right into our next speaker. Be sure to keep your questions for Nancy until the end. And it's my pleasure to introduce Mark Dawson. Mark is a landscape architect and managing principal at Sasaki Associates, an international interdisciplinary planning and design firm. Mark views the cities in which he lives and works as vital and dynamic ecosystems. Synthesizing the complexities of social, economic, environmental, and cultural influences, he's able to create coherent, enduring, sustainable civic designs. Mark speaks to communities about the importance of planning and designing for resiliency and how their voice in the process ensures dialogue and contribution, environmental stewardship, and lasting positive contribution to their communities. Mark, thank you for being here. Thank you so much, Ellen. Good afternoon, everybody. I'm Mark. I'm really excited to share with you some of the things and trends that we've seen in the last 40, I've seen in the last 38 years of my practice. As a landscape architect, we were trained, I think we were trained in a manner that was always about designing with nature. And that's not a cliche. There's a tremendous book that has sort of inspired me as a young landscape architect by Ian McCard called Designing with Nature, which talks about durability and resiliency. And he wrote that book in the late 60s. So it's not a new phenomenon that we're talking here about resiliency. You know, I think some of the things that continue to face us, our organization is, you know, has one foot in academia and the other in practice. And that's a really interesting seam to be on because we support research. And one of the research projects we took on seven years ago was looking at Boston and the waterfront and the whole conversation was starting to percolate around sea level rise. And we sort of did an analytic on that and looked at what impact would happen to sea level rise in Boston. And, you know, over the years, we have king tides, we have, you know, lunar tides, we have wind conditions that make the coastline, the harbor itself fluctuate quite a bit. And it's not uncommon to see sea water breaching the sea walls around Boston. That's not an uncommon occurrence. But I think what we did as part of our little research project was sort of try to map what we could ascertain from science about the impacts of sea level rise and what would that be over a period of time looking out roughly 80 years. But it's not just sea level rise, really. It's the risk of flood completely increasing. And we see that not only on the coastal areas where we work, but certainly on riverine environments and in urban centers. There's a continuation of these sort of extreme temperatures that are happening, whether it's cold or whether it's hot. They seem to be increasing. And we had a phenomenon in Boston earlier in November where we had temperatures that I don't remember ever being, you know, down in the single digits in November, quite that early. But it happened, and it seems to be happening in a more regular and frequent occurrence. This map that I'm going to show you now is really kind of a build, right? So we're talking about, you know, in 2030 to 2050 some of the impacts of what sea level rise would happen in the downtown core of Boston on its waterfront. And you can see sort of blue, this kind of blue shading. This map builds. So then you see what happens if those sea level rises increases from 9 inches to 21 inches. And then what happens if it exceeds that 21 inches and looks to be perhaps 30 inches? What was really interesting was we were asked to then exhibit our research at the district hall in the kind of new development area of the city of Boston in the Seaport District. And so we put our boards in and of course, you know, just we're interested in conveying things graphically so people can touch them. Well, I got a call right before this opened from the mayor's chief of staff saying, remove that blue tape on that riser. Because eight years ago the Seaport District was beginning to redevelop and just gaining its momentum and steam. And there were developers and investment interests who were coming to this meeting to talk about this issue and the chief of staff hung up on me. He said, take it off. So we did, of course. We didn't want to jeopardize the economic future of the Seaport District. But the point was we were trying to stimulate the conversation and it certainly did that. So, again, in our practice, we work all over the country and all over the world and I've spent 20 years working in Cincinnati on the Ohio River. This is a riverine environment, but it's controlled. So we know when the flood's coming. They can tell you how much water they're going to release downriver. So when we design these landscapes, because they're really sexy, right, people want to get to the water. They want to touch the water. And I think that we allow them to do that. But we, of course, in our analytical manner, studied the flood impacts. And basically the park we were designing, we recognized was going to be underwater every year in some form or another. That's not really true. Sometimes the floods don't come, but you'll get more extreme floods more frequently than we've ever seen. So in that design process, we really had to look at the improvements we were making and the pretty intensive capital improvements and how do you make those durable? What do you do to protect that investment for the community? This was the flood in 2018. And these are just what happens to your design work, what happens to people's parks. But what we did do in the process was design things like in this middle image of this slide is a restroom block that we designed to be able to be moved out when it was going to be a 10-year flood or greater. And so the parks department mobilizes its team and they have particular levels to come in and they remove anything that they feel could be impacted. And we didn't just scatter those anonymously. It was a long discussion about where those improvements were made. Places like the Chicago Riverwalk, the more recent effort, is rediscovering the Chicago River. I mean, it was completely undervalued and underappreciated and inaccessible. But Mayor Ron Emanuel had the foresight and we had the opportunity to design that. And wouldn't you know, the day before opening, literally it looked like this right side of this image that you're looking at. It was underwater. I had the project manager call me and say, what are we going to do? I said, well, we designed it so that the water recedes and it takes any filtration through it. And so again, it's about designing for durability. And they were able to clean it up in four hours. Three people with hoses were able to wash this down and open it. And that was part of this event. But again, it's about designing for durability here. I mean, these urban environments are fascinating and exciting for people. Again, people want to touch the water. They want to get to the water. It's like a fireplace on a cold winter night. You want to be near it. There's something magical about it. And now we're in the process of planning and designing some work in Memphis, which has to do with South Cypress Creek. But in 2011, they had a terrible flooding condition caused by the Mississippi River. But primarily that was because of the backwaters. It was not the Mississippi that did it. It was that backwater watershed collided with the overflowing Mississippi River and created the real problem. And through Greenprint and Shelby County, we really started to look at how do these watersheds relate to one another. And then you start to look at what is the socio-economic impact to those neighborhoods. And wouldn't you know it? The most challenged economic neighborhood had the most flood impact. And it's just breaks your heart. But we were able to get into the neighborhood and work with the community and talk through urban design principles. Simple things like how does your neighborhood impact when 50% of the lots are vacant and of the 50% remaining lots 30 to 40% of them are derelict or abandoned. So it's a very challenging conversation. We looked at typologies. We looked at what a neighborhood could actually do. What assets in the neighborhood are really important to try to leverage? Because again, we really understand that this neighborhood was just devastated and had been. It's not the first time that it had flooded. And then we sort of break down and even further and look at talking to people they wanted to be bought out. Well, why do you want to be bought out? What happens? Who pays for that? How does that then assure a neighborhood stays intact? And these conversations have become very personal. And then we looked at sort of what actually happens in inventory of the existing buildings. And then what happens if you look at the lots if there's an effective property that's in reasonable condition and it's near four vacant lots? Is there a way to aggregate a lot or two so these people could have more space allowed for more gardening? And then whether it was a community lot or flood lot, we sort of sectored that based on the flood waters. And then each one of these has sort of a pretty detailed kind of summary of what would happen if you combine lots and provide a little more space to people who wanted it. And then what flood lots would look like that you'd expect they would flood. And you'd receive that water through resiliency. And then the various sort of community lots and then of course rotating to a nature lot which would mean we know this area will flood annually or every fourth or fifth year let's return that to nature and really try to redistribute the green infrastructure back into the watershed. And with that I'll turn it back to Ellen. And thank you. Thank you so much Mark. And I have been alerted that we had some live cast issues for the first 15 minutes. So I wanted to let everyone know that we are also video recording and that will be available online within two days. So just so you know. Okay. So I'd like to now introduce our third panelist Adam Ortiz. Adam is the director of the Montgomery County Department of Environmental Protection. 140 million dollar agency with 300 employees and contractors. The department oversees programs for watershed restoration, greenhouse gas reduction, renewable energy sustainability and environmental compliance. Previously Adam served as the director of the department of environmental protection environment for Prince George's County, Maryland where he oversaw a successful 100 million dollar public-private partnership for stormwater and led the state in recycling and composting for three years in a row. Adam, thank you for being here. Thank you so much Ellen and thank you for everybody for putting today together and I'm sure there's many constituents whether you live in Prince George's County or Montgomery County so I'm pleased to be working for you if you live in Washington D.C. and you think your rents are a little too high, I'm happy to recommend some neighborhoods in suburban Maryland to you. So I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the projects I've been involved with as a local implementer of green infrastructure in suburban Maryland. In Prince George's County almost 10 years ago to the day we cut the ribbon on the first green complete street in the United States. I'm going to talk about that project in a minute but incidentally that project got a big boost from President Obama's stimulus package and reasons I'll describe in a minute we had been planning an upgrade in a green street for some time and we're raising the money for a little working class town and then President Obama was asking for shovel ready projects so because we had the design in hand and we had some funding in place we were a candidate and we were one of the very first projects to be funded under ARA so looking back almost 10 years later I'm deeply appreciative of the investment at the federal level of local green infrastructure. So Edmondston is a little town in Prince George's County is the county to the east of Washington D.C. It's about a million people and the town of Edmondston is a little working class town. It's on the Anacostia River it's 1400 residents which is smaller than a high school it's also very diverse it's about equal parts white black and Hispanic and it's diverse in every way except there's no rich people there so but it's kind of an interesting history that the town was actually settled by freed slaves after the Civil War so there's a sort of equity and environmental justice connection that continued to this day so I became mayor in 2005 and the town had flooded three years in a row and the town is engineered in the flood plain for the 100 year flood which means that once every 100 years it floods so you can tell that that math wasn't quite working anymore and that's the entirety of climate change and all the changes that we had so I won't bore you with all the stories about the flooding and how we mitigated it but what we learned was that the impacts that we have on development is paid for somewhere downstream so although our little town was on the Anacostia River our town never in those three years never once flooded from the river itself because there was a levee system that held during those three storms the little town flooded three years in a row because of impervious surface and development that created such runoff volume that our little town was overwhelmed over and over and one year 60 homes were under water it was quite devastating so what we learned is that we wanted to be responsible in the way that we were building so governments are in charge of infrastructure all infrastructure has an expiration date which means that we have an opportunity to upgrade and take it to the next level 2.0, 3.0, 5.0 so we wanted to create a green complete street so we worked with a local design firm in the University of Maryland to design a street that was completely sustainable from top to bottom not just so it could withstand weather impacts but that it could be development that is net positive on the environment rather than net zero or negative on the environment so this was the original street and I'll just take you from top to bottom 1.0, lot of invasive trees and you can see an inconsistent tree canopy 2.0 these are old sulfur street lights the kind of orange lights very energy intensive 3.0 not ADA compliant sidewalks 4.0 no bike lanes 5.0 regular curb and gutter on the side of the street so when the water came it would run off the street right into the storm drain and be piped directly into the Anacostia river so all the pollution that settles on the street is washed off everything from vehicles everything from airborne particulates are washed off and then when it gets backed up or when it's overwhelmed it doesn't flow fast enough and the little town gets overwhelmed so we redesigned it and this is the conceptual drawing and I'll show you what we actually built in a minute so we restored the canopy with all native trees 100% native trees number 2 we replaced the whole street which is about 3 quarters of a mile with LED lights and we're seeing more LED lights now in parking lots in particular slowly they're getting onto the streets but this was the first street that I know of at least on the east coast that was completely LED in the year 2009 3.0 4 bike lanes Washington DC is a wash in bike lanes which is a great thing but at the time there wasn't a lot of bike accessibility and number 5 and importantly in tying into our presentation here today in Mark's comments was having bio retention and stormwater capture along every inch of the street so what we did was this so this is what green infrastructure looks like curbside in a little town you can see elevated crosswalks so there's pedestrian protection the trees haven't quite grown yet because this was taken in 2009 but they're much bigger now native trees you see some local magnolias Virginia magnolias here switch grass LED lights also notice bike lane but the curb cut so most streets are crowned so the water runs off on the side so it doesn't pool in the middle bad for vehicles on the side and that's usually where it goes into the storm drain but with curb cuts like that in a vegetated area the water then is diverted into the natural area where it can be filtered where those pollutants can be captured and I'll talk about that in a minute as well so that sort of interrupts the sort of pollution pipeline into local waters so it doesn't accumulate as much in one place as fast which has important impacts to prevent flooding this is a project in Montgomery County this is Dennis Avenue which is in the Wheaton area this is a bigger bioretention than the ones you saw on the Green Street but you can see a lot of the same principles where the water is running off onto the side being captured there it's being filtered and a little bit more the beautification impacts so one other thing that we've been focusing in the Metropolitan Maryland region is that we're trying to locate these projects in historically under invested neighborhoods so we're here in Washington D.C. where we see lots of neighborhoods exploding when there's market forces the developers pay for the sidewalk improvements they pay for the trees they put money into the local park they don't have those market forces working they deserve beautification as well so as government leaders we have choices where we invest our infrastructure projects and I argue to put them in working class neighborhoods as much as possible so this is kind of how it works for bioretention you can see sort of from top to bottom there's the plant media that you see hopefully pretty trees and flowers that's important from an ecological standpoint for reasons you could imagine but it's also important from a curb appeal perspective but we often not talk about infrastructure conversations so we want to make our neighborhoods beautiful right? we don't just want to drive we don't just want to pour concrete but we want to make them livable in places that we enjoy passing through every day places that we're happy to come home to every day so that's why it's important to give it a 2.0 upgrade where it's something beautiful so that's really important secondly is a soil medium so it's a rich soil mixed where plants can grow in but also where there's natural processes micro bacterial processes that break down pollutants so nitrogen and phosphorus and all sorts of bad stuff that comes off from cars actually can't be handled by nature in the right proportion if it's engineered properly the other nature is a smart lady she's a pretty good engineer so we let her do her work and you see a little bit farther down different grades of gravel and then that helps the water filter down come through and then at the bottom there's a perforated pipe, a PVC pipe that then captures the clean water and then discharges it to the local stream so with these little installations like this we're actually cleaning the water every step of the way also they don't have to be so big even though you may get a lot of water it's really only the first half inch or inch depending on the circumstances of that first flush of water that needs to be treated and then the surface generally is clean so that was a lot more than you probably asked for in terms of how buyer retention works but it's worth noting some curb appeal stuff Maryland's Dayflower important to notice but there's also other applications engineering and industry is catching up the prices for this stuff is going down a lot and these are permeable pavers so you can see they have some architectural value but there's spaces in between the bricks where the water can come down and then filter underneath this is actually a permeable asphalt so permeable concrete but there's also permeable asphalt that has space in between in between the material so it can also filter through there and provide the hardscape so it doesn't always have to be green stuff it can be grey stuff but it can be good green grey stuff alright so you're getting the idea here's another curb cut there to the left so it's pretty simple engineering when you think about it but just that sort of switch about trying to be sustainable and responsible for everything that we build in our impact can make a big difference this is another project we had in Forest Estates which is in Forest Glen, Metro Stop on the red line and just back to the curb appeal piece so we have a lot of neighborhoods that are like this don't have a lot of beauty, don't have a lot of ecological activity have a lot of turf grass Alice and I, Montgomery County resident were talking about turf grass limited to no ecological value but with green infrastructure we can really create ecological value we can create curb appeal and we can help clean the air as we go some more projects you get the idea in the minute or so I have left, I wanted to talk about the co-benefits of green infrastructure and this is something as being a part of this industry for the last 10 years has been one of the most important parts about green infrastructure and we're in the middle of a robust debate about the green new deal and that's an important discussion to have what's great about this work is that unlike putting down some concrete or asphalt there's doesn't really do much for you after you do that but with stuff like this you have lots of co-benefits I talked about the greening I talked about the revitalization that we can put it in neighborhoods that are under invested to make them more beautiful and provide tree canopy so these are sustainable jobs sustainable in every sense of the word so to put this kind of stuff in you need all sorts of layers of workers you need landscape architects we have a few in the room we need engineers we need the building trades to pour the concrete and actually do the work we need gardeners and landscapers and nurseries so just think of the supply chain here we're working when we're doing this work and then it's not dead infrastructure it's not great infrastructure it's living infrastructure that needs to be cared for so we have ongoing maintenance so this is a great opportunity for mom and pop landscaping companies to get involved and local businesses to get involved I'm new in this job in Montgomery County but when I left my job in Prince George's same job I did a project $100 million green infrastructure program three year program where we retrofitted 2,000 acres very successful in that project we created more than $130 million of local economic benefit more than 80% of our contracting went to local small and minority businesses and for those of you who know the region you know that Prince George's County commercial development don't have much wealth and importantly we created a sustainable economic green industry there we're going to continue to build stuff like this we have businesses that are based there they're small, local and minority businesses that are going to continue to flourish they have expertise and they're going to compete and they are competing around the region for more work so the nexus between environment and economic benefit couldn't be more clear so if there's questions at the end I'm happy to take them and I'll stick around afterwards but it's been a pleasure to be here and I appreciate it Ellen thank you so much Adam and now our final certainly not least panelist is Dr. Jalon White Newsom Dr. Jalon White Newsom is a senior program officer with the Kresge Foundation's environment program in Troy, Michigan and she is responsible for grant making related to climate change urban flooding and public health prior to Kresge Jalon's career has span various sectors and fields including state government academia science based NGOs engineering, public health and working for a community based environmental justice organization specifically on federal policy her passion for people and for justice continues to be the thread throughout her work a proud native Detroiter Jalon holds a B.S. in chemical engineering and M.S. in environmental engineering and a Ph.D. in environmental health sciences please welcome Jalon good afternoon oh you can do better than that how are you well first of all thank you so much to ASLA and ESI for this opportunity thank you to my wonderful speakers they have made it easy for me because why would I try and make some slides that wouldn't be as pretty as landscape architects and planners so you have no slides for me so unfortunately you have to sit here and listen to me so I apologize in advance but before I begin my remarks I always like to start off acknowledging the indigenous lands the folks that were here before we occupied this space because I think it's important to understand that for us to move forward we have to recognize and acknowledge our past so I always like to do that but I grew up in Detroit, Michigan and had the wonderful opportunity as a high schooler to work for Dow Chemical Corporation in Midland, Michigan and what I soon found out as a 14 and a half year old is that there are certain communities that unfortunately are inundated and overexposed to environmental hazards they wake up with dirty air they unfortunately have to drink dirty water there are waste facilities right outside their door they're inundated with truck traffic and all these sorts of things and what I realized soon is that it wasn't just in Midland, Michigan and some of the facilities where Dow was but it was everywhere and I realized that I had family members church members folks that again were suffering from these environmental insults is what I'll call it and so as we talk about solutions, primarily green infrastructure it's important that we understand the context of the solutions that we're offering and remember that the reason that we're doing this wonderful stuff is to hopefully impact the lives of people so for the next couple minutes I'm going to try and share a couple of things and you will probably I'm going to try not to go over so please the person with the car just wave and dance and do what you have to do to get me to shut up but I'm going to start with a couple of brief highlights of the environmental justice movement because I don't want to assume that folks know what environmental justice is provide a little bit of information about Kresge's definition of climate resilience and then end with sharing some tactics about how we want to think about as leaders in this room, architects, engineers congressional folk tactics that you can use to really help enhance community resilience in the face of climate change so very quickly how many of you know what environmental justice is? okay well that's okay because I don't see all the hands in the room up and so I will encourage you to do research on your own because there's no way in a minute and a half I can give you the full history of the environmental justice movement but I'm going to highlight a couple of things that will hopefully set the context of what we're talking about here so Dr. Martin Luther King led a strike of sanitation workers in Memphis and many folks point to that as the first kind of incident in the environmental justice movement because it was about sanitation it was about the rights of African-American workers and getting fair wages but folks also point to this incident in Warren County, North Carolina essentially this rural African-American community was decided by the governor of North Carolina to be the spot for these new PCB landfills and essentially if you do the history folks lay down in the street in front of these trucks to prevent these you know again this egregious act of plopping pollution in this community where there were plenty of other spaces across the state so again from those incidences the United Church of Christ again this is something that you can Google pull together this report that actually documented the fact that there were more toxic waste sites in communities of color black and brown communities and so this was kind of the first really non-antidotal evidence that this was happening and so from that right here in DC in the early 90s the first national people of color summit occurred where all these leaders grassroots organizations from across the country but I'm feeling that I'm dealing with the same stuff and from that the principles of environmental justice were created which is something that if you're a true environmental justice group that is how you do your work so I encourage you to Google principles of environmental justice but from that on the federal side under Clinton's watch Executive Order 12898 was the first executive order around environmental justice and this was an attempt to hold our federal agencies accountable a little bit or at least get them to recognize that environmental justice should be something that they should consider and how they do their work so again that was a quick blast of the EJ movement but I share with you this for a couple things share with you for a couple reasons the first is that environmental injustice is really it's environmental racism and so I know sometimes racism is an uncomfortable word but when we think about the reasons why certain communities end up in these places it's not because of anything they've done but it's because of the institutional racism and the structural racism that exists across this country the second thing is that people's lives are actually cut short because they are living in these places so the quantity of life and the quality of their life is impacted and so then we throw on climate change and worse right so that is another layer of complexity for these communities that are already dealing with a bunch of stuff now you have the threat of climate change and so whenever we look around at the things that are happening in this world and I can't turn on the news or lester hold and not see something about climate change but it is our black and brown communities that are hit the first and worst and sometimes unable to recover in the same way so that leads me into the conversation about what we're trying to do with the Kresge Foundation I've been a program officer there for a couple of years still learning the wonderful world of philanthropy but the one thing that impressed me about the Kresge Foundation is that we focus on low income communities in America cities and so when you think about building climate resilience and building community resilience it's important that we address it holistically and when we say holistically we tackle the mitigation part so we try and look at ways to reduce the sources of pollution we also look at adaptation so how are we going to actually try and figure out how to adjust to this new normal that we're living in but then we also really support efforts to build social cohesion and that's critical because when you think about these climate disruptions that we see whether it's the heat waves in Chicago the hurricanes pick your place the folks that tend to sustain are those folks that come from communities that are connected to the network so how do we support building community capacity and community cohesion and so as I think about the work of this committee and you know when we talk about this comprehensive definition of what climate resilience and community resilience means there's a couple of things that I want to share with you that come to mind four tactics that I hope you will consider one is around using good science and innovation the second tactic is around removing barriers the third is around conducting an EJ analysis and the fourth is around recognizing community power and expertise okay I know I went through that fast but that's alright hopefully you got it so when we talk about good science and innovation so I am a nerd I love science I love data always have and I think it's important it's important as planners it's important as community folks and what are the things that could possibly happen and how do we how do we plan for that how do we make sure that our folks are safe and comfortable and so I was an author on the national climate assessment and you know one of those multiple reports that tell you that you know our world is about to end but it also gives us data and ideas about how we can adapt better despite these impacts and risks so the importance of using science to drive your planning is important but not just the traditional science there are so many organizations that are using citizen science to help particularly around flooding and I want to highlight the work of two of our grantee partners the Anthropocene Alliance which again they organized national flood groups across the country using social media documenting where flooding is happening and kind of using this as a supplemental data set to go into their local decision makers and say hey this is where the green infrastructure needs to land or hey we need a policy for this so really using that citizen collected data to really drive policy change I'd also say Freshwater Future is another organization that has actually developed an app again using social media to again get to policy solutions but I don't want to just focus on the citizen science but it's also our utilities that are doing great things in terms of using data to drive their planning their capital and how they're forecasting for 10 and 20 years and I'll put out there the city of Seattle the city of San Francisco and I will pick on San Francisco because they are actually thinking about not only just how we plan but how we actually plan together now I would you know maybe want to ask Adam in terms of one of the things that I hear from our city folks is that you know we work in silos you know so you'll have your transportation you'll have your environment you'll have even ever and so San Francisco is really trying to take a look and say hey how can we actually all work together pull our resources together to not only address the flooding problems but the health problems the transportation problems and all these things so when you talk about innovation that's what I mean the second thing tactic is around removing barriers there are always multiple barriers to building climate resilient communities we could probably have a three hour briefing on that but the one the couple that I'm going to bring up is the access to education the access to decision making and financing there are a couple organizations that I want to highlight one of our grantee partners Eco Action out of Atlanta that I hope you all will look up has done a great job in not only assembling a large watershed learning network for the city of Atlanta that's not only composed of community based organizations but municipal leaders academics all these great folks but they have actually developed a curriculum to train their community folks to engage in the decision making process because one of the things is that it's not that black and brown folks which is always this assumption that I hear and I cringe black and brown folks don't care about the environment it's just really understanding the process and the leverage points to engage and where they can get in and so Eco Action has done a wonderful job of doing that I also want to highlight our work with and I don't see my folks in room but the Chesapeake Bay Foundation talk about financial barriers you know the cost of green infrastructure I hear from my folks in the field is kind of this barrier is it worth paying for you know are we going to get the return on the investment and in addition to a lot of the co-benefits that you will see from green storm water infrastructure one of the big barriers is how does a little city pay for it and my love is for those small to medium sized cities that are underserved and don't have a lot and how do we get them to play so one of the things that we do we work very closely with our social investment practice inside of Kresge and so we're trying to do a couple things you know I have grant capital as a grant maker but grants are not going to pay for the infrastructure challenges in this country we have a lot of private partners that we can work with we have money out there that a lot of communities don't know how to access for many reasons and so improving the access not only for municipal leaders but also for communities as well as making sure that we have opportunities to partner and kind of build in the social investment landscape so we're doing a couple of things and Baltimore particularly we're supporting the development of an environmental impact bond and we can get into that a little bit later in Detroit we're conducting actually a feasibility study for a watershed improvement district that will not only look at managing storm water in this particular open air market in downtown Detroit but also what are the economic benefits that come from that and they were also supporting project developers that have a social equity vision and frame to work with utilities and folks that want to better use the money they have and they haven't been able to actually operationalize to put green infrastructure in places that would be overlooked and they've done some great work in St. Louis and I can definitely share some information about that in our conversation the third point how am I doing on time I don't even know where the person is okay you're good conducting an EJ analysis so I will try to talk to this very quickly so in the olden days with the Clean Power Plan which somebody mentioned I think Ellen you mentioned the Clean Power Plan maybe or somebody did well that was the first time that the Environmental Protection Agency conducted an EJ analysis and what that essentially is is what it sounds like really looking at this big policy solution asking the questions what are going to be the impacts or the unintentional consequences of this policy on the communities again that I talked about in the beginning that are already dealing with multiple environmental hazards and so really using this of asking the question who benefits who's at the table who is actually helping craft the solutions and after this policy is in place is there something that's going to happen that we didn't think about that is essentially in a truncated half minute what an environmental justice analysis is of course you need data you need people to help shape that but that is something that's critically important as you talk about any type of solution including green infrastructure because the one thing you want to make sure of that I hear from my folks is that it doesn't cause displacement because once things get pretty folks want to move in and we got to make sure that there are ways that we protect those communities that are structures happening for whatever reason so that's the quick and dirty on the EJ analysis and last but certainly not least is the importance of recognizing community power and I can say this enough I don't like the term vulnerable communities because to be called vulnerable as a person I wouldn't like that would you I don't want to be known as vulnerable what I will say is we have climate vulnerable places but I will tell you most of the communities that I've worked with are super duper resilient because they have undergone so much stress from multiple levels environmental stress is another stress and so as we think about the community power that already exist in these places it's an opportunity to harness that and to harness that expertise so as we talk about solutions for anything recognize the power of the people that are the most impacted and your solutions and your policies will be even stronger so with that a couple things and I'll end the main point one of the main points that I want you to hopefully share again is that we have to address structural and institutional racism head on because we can write policies all day but they will not get at the sources of the problem the second is that communities always should speak for themselves so that means they actually have to be in the room after the solution is already created climate change does not affect everyone the same so one silver bullet solution for one community is not going to work for the other and again I'm really encouraged about green storm water infrastructure being one of the solutions that we really push at Kresge through all of our grant making practice because it has those multiple benefits so it's not only the fact that you're getting in compliance but it's public health benefits and it doesn't like to look at green stuff and make you feel good and then it makes you know just proud of your community so with that thank you for the opportunity and I hope I didn't go over time no that was just great thank you so much so I have questions but I'll I'll be a good moderator and I'll open it up to to the audience lots of lots of great information from each of the panelists and so we do have time for for Q&A and I will just open it up to the first brave person yes sir oh we have a we have a microphone coming sir a microphone okay I'll start again thank you I'm Bruce Hamilton from the National Science Foundation and to a new mention I believe the relationship between science and research and objectives that you outlined and I wonder if you might be able to comment a little bit further on what you might envision as the relationship between science research and the objectives that you were talking about okay Bruce and I want to be clear the objectives around what before I start responding well for example environmental justice research on environmental justice and connecting that to actual implementation along the lines you were talking about great and I'll share with you an example so you know and as I'll put my researcher hat on and the one thing that really I guess has been a challenge is really making research meaningful and actionable when you talk about when I was going through my doctoral program it was like okay publish publish publish but I tried to push back and say we're just not publishing for not but how is this actually going to impact and change the community and so what's awesome is that there are a couple of organizations that are working towards this the Center for American Progress the Union of Concerned Scientists has set up opportunities for community scientists to work with researchers to create a shared agenda and that is so critically important because often times our black and brown communities in my opinion are overstudied and so folks come in and fly in and collect all this data and then leave and then what happens so when you talk about creating that true authentic partnership between researchers that are from the community and researchers that care not to just use folks as data and get out is critical and there was something else that I wanted to say but I can't remember but yeah so there's examples Union of Concerned Scientists Center for American Progress which is a program that we're funding with the Center for Earth and Energy Democracy which would be a great case study to look at and something else but we can talk after. Great thank you. Anyone else? In the way back. Hi I'm Stacia Turner with the Conservation Fund and I work as a program manager of park projects in urban communities so my question is if each panelist could give a brief comment about what you think are the best strategies for exploring the best synergies for the intersection of green infrastructure construction and development and green jobs because what I've been seeing at least on the ground in my program is that because a lot of municipalities are just gearing up momentum to start having consistent green infrastructure capital improvements there hasn't been a lot of coordinated strategies around trying to have the construction and maintenance of those projects come from within the communities especially if they're in low income communities making sure that there's actually job opportunities from within the community and not outside landscape design firms who are managing and maintaining those and I'd love to hear your thoughts on that. I'm happy to start Stacia I really appreciate that question governments have a lot of discretion about site selection and funders also have a lot of discretion about what they fund what I would encourage is a partnership to try to find an intersection of a few different things Dr. White Newsom mentioned communities that are environmentally distressed so we want to put money in places that have an environmental benefit areas that tend to be under invested so often communities of color but working class communities are important and then from that intersection of places where we can make the most progress partnerships are really important so it's relatively easy to put money into a community but it's a little harder to get the outcomes that are required so if the focus is jobs and local or smaller minority job development business development I think it's really important to partner with local chambers of commerce who know the community there's in every community under federal workforce laws there's workforce development boards that can also create a pipeline of workers and then it's sort of the key thing and it gets kind of geeky from a procurement standpoint but that whoever the contracting agency is develops a performance based contract and usually performance based contracts for infrastructure projects or on time or on budget that's important but if we're trying to get to other social goals particularly wealth building those should be built in as too as well in my experience we had 50% as our benchmark for local small minority but because we partnered with the local community college and the local chambers and the local workforce board our outcomes were actually between 80 and 90% in all those categories which is really unheard of in the environmental space but a really great question I would add that what I see in the design world is about educating community and that's not that's not literally the language that we speak to but it's about learning and learning and learning and learning and learning learning the personalities of the community in what their interests and where their interests lie in Memphis it was it was really eye opening to engage in those conversations when most of the community wanted to retreat to high ground and we came in at one session and we're sort of embarrassed by saying you know we have these great urban farms and these people who live in such modest lives said well we have our gardens why do we need an urban farm in our neighborhood and they're absolutely right so I think so much of it has to do with how do you connect in these communities to understand the issues the other piece is when we design public open space very very early in that conversation in that design process we start talking about adding demand on a already stressed maintenance community within the municipalities we work and you never hear about municipalities adding to their maintenance crews all you hear is the deduction of their maintenance crews and the truth is these public spaces can be designed to be less maintenance intensive we try to accomplish that but the reality is they require maintenance unless you you know in Memphis where you really get into the wilds of the river environment the only maintenance that's going to happen there is nature is going to flush itself and trees will fall and nobody needs to come and remove them but the truth is we see this all over the country where there's a real lack of not a lack of commitment there's just a lack of resources the community only has so much resource and we talk a lot about it and we make progress but not as much as one would like there are some really interesting and good programs and partnerships that are happening around this issue DC Water has been a leader in this and working with some of other kind of water and sewer authorities and other cities really focusing on training the green jobs training of what's required how do you deal with construction and maintenance of green infrastructure and really trying to make that match with the local populations including a certification that would go along with it so the folks who have gone through it are really are going to be very employable and in demand and have something that will help them in the market so there are some things that are happening to help us get where we need to go there thank you I think right here oh could I add something to that I'm so sorry that's okay I mean they are the experts but just a couple of things the one is that as a funder we have the power to say where we are going to put our money and so when we talk with partners and we're talking about projects part of that criteria is saying if we're going to fund green storm water infrastructure projects then we want to make sure that a certain percent of the hires a certain percent of the benefits go to folks from that community now from the outside so there is a power that we can use in terms of the green storm water infrastructure certification some of our partners well that's a great opportunity it's not accessible to most it costs a lot of money so there's a way that we can figure out to fund and support that certification for our lower income communities that want to get into the GSI maintenance work that would be fabulous but just recognizing that there's sometimes barriers there and then I'd also lastly list green infrastructure exchange which is a national network of green infrastructure leaders like Adam and others that come together to talk about workforce development and there's a particular story about this woman in New Jersey that's doing some awesome stuff so I can't remember who asked the question but I would want to point to that story because they've actually brought in community folks to help with the maintenance and you know from high school to just it's a wonderful example so sorry Ella no I'm sorry thank you so much so yes sir and then Richard Hoy from Bethesda Maryland I was very taken by your presentation Dr. White Newsom and I would say that climate change in particular is bringing us into the point where we have to value everyone in the community in order to make a difference in climate change and that's going to take some changes in the structures of our communities in my community we have structural segregation through our housing policies and so it's real impediment both for those who are priced out but also for those who are trying to change it because it's the bubble that is so hard to pierce but on to and I'd like to know from all the panels how we can do modeling that involves the community and the experts and the fire chiefs and all the people who say no at the end of the process get them in at the beginning like a health impact assessment and model different outcomes and evaluate them for their total benefit but my issue in particular is our utility management it seems like we do have a forest of strips of land that would make a forest of all the rights away for roads, utility lines, pipelines and so on and it's managed in a disaggregated manner we actually cut down enough trees from these parcels to supplant one third of all the lumber used in the United States on these little strips of land and we don't look on it collectively as an opportunity to grow and reforest the trees not only for shade and stormwater management but for use and the co-benefits of using the land below the tree for stormwater runoff, the tree for shade and so on and utility rights a way that are combined and not dug independently separately one after the other in the same place could yield an enormous number of benefits so maybe one of you can speak on any attempts around the country to look in a complete manner at this opportunity great question Richard and I think as we get more sophisticated in our public responses to any issue we realize that they're all interconnected you know the environmental issues are not just about the environment they're also about social and economic and cultural decisions that have been made 10, 20, 50 or 100 years earlier so our responses have to be multifaceted as well I think there are a handful of good examples Dr. White Newsom mentioned the green infrastructure exchange they've highlighted a handful of projects that have been success and the whole idea is that we are information sharing from coast to coast on it I really like your point about having all the stakeholders at the table that's always easiest facilitated when you have leadership that requires it so that could be political a county executive for example or a mayor that requires everybody to be at the table or a funder that requires for a project to get funded folks are at the table the silo issue was a real issue between utilities between departments of transportation between sustainability folks no question about it but it's not rocket science we can definitely get past it and then I also want to go to another point that couldn't be underscored more is the importance of folks on the ground in every community there's a lot of wisdom and you expressed a bunch of it about your neighborhood the top has to meet the bottom it has to be top down and bottom up at the same time and come together because those folks on the ground are going to know all the ins and outs about the history of the land the uses things that utilities that may not show up on the map as well and one of the biggest silos is quite frankly utilities those power line rights of way or a tremendous wasted opportunity so I concur in a nutshell and I really appreciate the question and I look forward to continue the conversation with you I'm sorry so that totally agree and the only thing that I would add is there's an organization called Earth Economics that works out of Washington and they do what you call an economic valuation that includes not only the policy benefits but the social environment on everything and so they've done this for several different communities particularly on ground green stormwater and working with communities to say hey this is what we want to see can you help us build the case so I encourage folks to check them out as well because that gets totally what you're saying it's hard to do that I wanted to interject a question related to that how is the best way to inform the public I know public notices in the paper don't really do it did you have experience with that Adam or anyone else I've probably been a part of more than projects like this and you got to invest the time in the community and public notices are awful an awful positively terrible way to get so the trick is not to call your own meeting but to go to the community's meeting go to their space, invest the time in my experience it takes at least three meetings of showing plans, getting input responding unless there's something really important that has to be addressed like a flooding issue listen to the community, listen to what they have to say, they have to live with it long after we go and I've seen projects that have been very successful where there's a lot of buy-in and I've seen projects that have failed because they don't have the community buy-in and I call that pre-development that's the time that is really spent on the ground and it is as important as any engineering drawing I might add quickly to that is I think we've had the most successes where we've found leaders within the community who could marshal certain community groups to engage in the conversation and to be really good listeners Adam's right, you know you ask these people to come to two or three meetings and then you don't listen shame on us to be a good listener matters a lot works at home too with my wife that's a good point and I also recall a Colorado legislator who was dealing with flooding there had talked about partnering with different community groups trade groups social organizations who have this regular contact with different community members yeah, thank you anyone else? again just don't let it be a transactional relationship not transactional spend time even before the plans start going to those communities and just listening and sitting that's all I want to add thank you Ben Evans with the Alliance to Save Energy and we're doing a lot of work here in DC to get Congress to pay more attention to energy efficiency and infrastructure and build it in through policy and I'm wondering and maybe it's a question for Nancy best if what kind of traction you're getting for incorporating this type of stuff into an infrastructure bill or legislation and what specific policies you see as being most effective for doing that I'm trying to think where to start on that one I think there's a lot of interest and of course we're looking at all levels on trying to get it moving because as you can kind of hear from some of the recommendations that we're talking about there's state, there's local and there's federal pieces of this all of which can be extraordinarily helpful either in making it happen or in creating barriers to having it happen so there's kind of a multi-pronged approach I'm looking over for my federal affairs team to see because they were going to be far more where's Roxanne, she's going to be far better equipped to answer that question for me Ms. Roxanne Blackwell ASLA Yes, good afternoon I think Nancy pointed out in her talking points with the Water Infrastructure Improvement Act it was just signed by the President in January but we started advocacy efforts on this particular issue many many years ago and we initially went into offices and our arguments fell on deaf ears to be very frank and in some instances it was party related in other instances it was just not being very familiar with the issue so we took the approach we know this is the right thing to do we know that it's not a partisan issue and we're going to be persistent and we're going to be patient and this was one of the biggest yields that we've seen you know to have a freestanding bill just addressing green infrastructure we thought was phenomenal so my advice would be to not give up you have partners with us you have other partners here in the room I think when we started out we may have been one of the few talking about green infrastructure but now we're seeing this issue being embraced by a number of entities and organizations thank you Roxanne I'd like to just add to that in the sense this came up from a number of the speakers about the different the co-benefits and the different what I always call sort of the performance goals and so looking for all those intersections of you know a solution that provides that saves energy saves money but is also providing health benefits providing amenities for the community providing you know just reducing pollution so economic social environmental and it just finding those those cross sections and I'll add to that too thanks Ellen and thank you Roxanne the co-benefits of course is key but even if you're just looking at cost so many of the studies show that if you're dealing with stormwater management issues green infrastructure is going to be cheaper every time and it comes with all of those other benefits and we have not done a terrific job of really doing the research to monetize the all of those other pieces of benefits that happen at the same time but if you even just look at what it is just for handling the stormwater it is the more inexpensive better approach hands down and if nothing else that speaks very well to policy makers when they're dealing with stormwater issues that they have to to attack and we were one of the co-writers of a report called banking on green so if you're interested and it's really that particular publication is directed to public policy makers talking about the benefits and really the cost savings of a green infrastructure approach so you can check that out I think that and also the a report that has come out from the National Institute of Building Sciences sort of a number of reports on that return on investment from investing in resilience you're going to get this payback so that's thank you yes sir hi I'm Bill Orleans who wants his former DOE director to go back where he came from I don't want to dismiss the importance and relevance of there being community meetings but I certainly want to defend the principle that a local government entity who may be desired to be non-transparent and non-responsive should continue to have the requirement to publish a notice, a public notice or a circulating paper there is in too many instances I think there have been non-transparent non-responsive governments who would just assume not have to publish a local notice and no one would know about what they they don't want us to know about so I believe certainly in response of local governments and plenty of meetings I'll offer having more meetings but I want there to be meetings that I've noticed in the local legal section of the paper so thank you very good point did you have a question I'm Reverend Dr. Jean Wright and I'm with the Faith Alliance for Climate Solutions in Fairfax County we're about local advocacy and we have about interfaith and have about 70 different congregations that are working with us now so one of the things we have found when we talk with local businesses and we are advocating for community-wide county-wide sustainability plan is that they want to retrofit they would like to transform their buildings and properties into green but when they go to the local zoning board or the county zoning board there are barriers that make it difficult for them to do that so I'm wondering what your input would be about how to have more of a welcoming hospital conversation with local zoning boards about rules and regulations related to retrofitting and to becoming green thank you Adam that sounds like your question sounds like my question thank you Reverend Dr. Wright great question now it's critical that there's the education piece people need to understand the benefits and we have talked about a lot of them here the master planning process is probably required by law in every jurisdiction every 10 years or so so my guidance and my limited experience would be to convene your coalition and that would be the green groups faith groups community groups every stakeholder you can think of and since this is environment you should have a pretty broad coalition because as far as I know everybody lives in the environment so I think it's easy to get those voices and then work the councils or whoever comes up with the plans I imagine that the zoning board follows the lead of the legislative body so I think that's the place to go there's so much good literature out there the point has been raised that a lot of our communities in these projects have been studied to death but there's a lot of examples and there's a lot of people who could provide validation for what you're trying to do and then there's just the long term resilience of green infrastructure it just looks better it works with the environment rather than against the environment and it's a way of I tend to think of it not as not so much as infrastructure but more as like parks and public space our roads aren't just roads they're public space they can be anything that we want so why doesn't the road feel more like a park than a road isn't that a more pleasant experience so I think more and more zoning boards more and more planners are getting there but we still have some work to do I'll just add that even the communities that completely get it have a lot of legacy zoning or whatever requirements and their regulations about the way things have to be built that came from the old standard operating procedure that were just the pavement is good that's all fine because this is a major shift that we're talking about there are a lot of those legacy pieces that are happening the really forward leaders and communities like that will work with interest groups or with the designers to say help us show us what the problems are so we can kind of attack them one of the things we recommend in the smart policies report love to see a community take this and embrace it as a case study is to do a top to bottom with the regulations and everything that's in place to say what is barriers with that climate resilience lens take a look at everything with that lens and see what has to be changed because there's just, as you're pointing out there's so many of those legacy barriers just going in the wrong way but they're kind of still in place Nancy I'm going to let you have the last word because that was an excellent last word so thank you very much and I just want to thank you all so much for joining us here on Capitol Hill and online for this very important briefing and I want to thank our panel please help me thank our wonderful panel thank you