 So good evening, everyone, and welcome to the CPAC's quarterly webinar, and we have a great lineup today. If you weren't familiar with an awesome conference that took place this past spring talking about climate and what that means for the city of Columbia, for the Midlands area, then you missed a treat, but don't worry because we're going to actually recap that conference today. So we're actually going to be continuing that climate-ready conversation where we had a lot of experts and a lot of individuals that are concerned about climate protection as it relates to the city of Columbia in the Midlands area having that conversation in April. And so we're going to brief what we have done is we brought together some of those experts as well as others to kind of continue on that conversation and have some different perspectives. And so as a short introduction, my name is Dr. Tamara Warren. I am a CPAC appointee as well as a member of the University of South Carolina. And so I'd like to introduce you to the panelists that we're going to be talking to today. First, we have Clint Shealy, who is the assistant city manager for the city of Columbia. So welcome, Clint. We also have Stacy Washington, who is a senior energy specialist with the South Carolina Energy Office, Office of Regulatory Staff. Hi, Stacy. And we also have Dr. Matt Kisner, who was actually a director for Climate Ready Columbia, as well as a professor at the University of South Carolina. So nice to have you here, Matt. And again, I am Dr. Tamara Warren, and I'm going to serve as moderator for today's conversation. And so as mentioned, this past spring in April, we had the Climate Ready Columbia conference. And it was an opportunity to get subject matter experts and other individuals together to talk about the importance of addressing climate change as it relates to the city of Columbia, really the whole region. And so there were multiple different workshops, or I'm sorry, sessions that took place. And so what we're going to do is Matt is going to share with us the really the vision behind the conference. Why was something that was important for the city to actually get behind the city and the university to get behind. And if you weren't there to give you an update of what that conference was about. So Matt, please share about the conference. Great. Does that work? It does. Fantastic. Yeah, thanks so much. And thanks for giving me this chance to talk about the conference. The first thing off the bat, I want to recognize that the conference was made possible by a grant from the Ann Johnson Institute for Science, Technology and Society at the University of South Carolina. And that grant actually funded a lot of activities, not just the conference. So I developed a course at the university about climate justice in Columbia, in which the students were required to do field research. They were required to get outside of the university, find out what's happening in the city, find out what's happening in the Midlands, in terms of how we're responding and preparing for climate change. And the research that those students did became a lot of the basis for the conference. So I'm very grateful to my students. We also had a speakers series. There was a very successful sustainable yard tour done by us in concert with sustainable Midlands. And then of course there was the conference. And the conference was put on by a lot of organizations. It was a true team effort. So I want to just acknowledge and recognize all of the different partner organizations that contributed to the conference. Thank you very much. So the main goal is just to facilitate municipal planning for responding to the climate crisis in the Columbia metropolitan area. So so often when we think about climate change, you think about global, like the UN or you think about national projects that the federal government's doing, but climate change is going to affect every aspect of human life. And it in cities are on the front lines of this and counties and smaller communities too. So the question is, what should, you know, we be doing here in Columbia to get ready. With that goal, there's a couple other goals sort of sub goals. So one big one is knowledge sharing. There are so many different pieces to responding to climate change so you have somebody working over here and then somebody working over here, and oftentimes they can get siloed. So people don't know what all of the different actors are doing so one big goal was just to share knowledge about what is happening now what are all of the different people who are working and what are they getting done. And most importantly probably though we want to highlight municipal level policy options. What is it exactly that we can be doing here in the city and the county and the university with local businesses at that very local level. What can we be doing to prepare. We also want to share scientific research about, you know, about policies about climate science, and then we also wanted to share experiences that other municipalities have had what are they doing in Asheville. What are they doing in Portland what what experiences are they having what works what doesn't work. A second goal is connection building. So if we're going to be responding effectively to climate change we need a lots of different parties working together in a coordinated way. And so the conference work to bring together all of these different groups so we had Mayor Rick and men kicked us off so that's city elected officials we had city staff we have excellent representatives from city staff thank you very much we had county representation. The energy office was there state agency staff the business community at lots of advocacy groups nonprofits, other municipalities we had people here from Greenville we had people from Charleston University students faculty and staff and then this national nonprofit that our keynote speaker was from the Emerald Cities collaborative and she actually had a ton of really important information for us. And sort of the last goal of the conference was public engagement. So, all of this information, we wanted to share not just with the experts but share it with the public, and we wanted to provide meaningful points of entry for public involvement involvement in in planning our climate response. So that's the that's the quick and dirty overview of of what we did with the conference. And so again, for those of you who were not in attendance and even for those we had the opportunity to come to come it actually was a two day conference. And so the way we're going to do the webinar today is we wanted to kind of recap those highlights and just have general conversation about the topics that were covered in the different sessions and what that means as we relate to our areas of expertise. And so you have an opportunity to actually see some of the footage from the videos will have a few clips kind of going over the topics that were covered, and then we will give our perspectives. So one of the first clips we're going to take a look at is the keynote address by Dr. Denise Fairchild, and she is the hair was ahead of Emeril cities collaborative and so in the clip everyone and take a look at now. She's talking about how we're actually existing in various areas as it relates to climate change or the impacts with climate change and what that means for the community. It's really the smaller rural communities that should be leading the way in this. I think the lifestyle of smaller rural communities and we were talking about it earlier today and black and brown communities we've been living as environmentalists and we don't even call ourselves environmentalists in terms of how we reuse things and your own closeness to land, you know, these land economies are really the drivers I think for a new way of thinking about how we live our lives and I'd like to hear your perceptions about this. And I would say I mean urban I'm an urban jungle girl born and raised in New York City and never like probably bring out in hives if I had to live in a rural community but but the bottom line is, you know, my, my parents came from Charleston. You know, my father did and my mother's from North Carolina, I mean we're out of the South is because y'all chased us out, the lynched us or, you know, just made his life so miserable we had to get the hell on out. Okay, so, but you know, folks coming back we go to see you from Detroit, she came on down. She's coming back home so anyway, there's something about rural life that just means that we need to capture and and and every every new question if your cultural anthropologists there's studies that show anytime we've changed sources of energy. We've also changed our culture. We changed the institutions how we educate people or finance systems. All of that's changed you know who agricultural industrial. Well what is the cultural shift we're making with this is nothing intentional yet being said about if we're going into renewable energies what is it about our sensibilities about being more in balance with the ecosystem that should be changing our culture. So anyway, I just think that this is the time to do this. I believe, I believe you with this is that I don't think is that crazy to really figure out how we live large unless because I think it's happening already. The cultural shift is happening and my job is to figure out how to accelerate and how to amplify on it. And it's happening because of COVID and what it's brought to families but it's also the great resignation, right. I have four million jobs every month it's just like for out. I'm just done. Okay, I'm just not living this way anymore. You know, 12 hour days and weekends and I need life work balance or I'm just I'm just out of the city. I'm going to rule community people out the quality quits love to figure that out. You know, they're done with the myth of the American dream, right and $200,000, you know, college bills can buy a house can still live with mom can't get a good paint job kids, you know, don't want a car. So what you know when you think about culture, you know who's young people are the carriers of culture. Young people and women so how do we have we capitalize on how young people are thinking the shared their notion of a shared economy. There is a movement to dematerialize our economy. There is the whole new and new economy movement as well as a new energy movement. The only thing I want to leave you with is just a couple of things one is that in this particular clip, there are at least are two major areas that Dr. Fairchild cover. One was the idea that the biggest energy use we see is that which is discretionary. But then she also talks about this big cultural shift and even the idea of living large living larger or bigger one less. And I think that actually resonates as we are coming on the other side of the pandemic. We have been in a state in a, not the state of South Carolina, but we've been in a state where we know where we've had to kind of shut down in what that has meant for business and for our economy. And so I pose a question to the three of you, what do you think of those two major concepts that she's talked about the cultural shift, what that means as it relates to addressing climate issues, and then the idea of world kind of connected is that idea of the discretionary energy that has been our biggest uses. And I open the floor to anyone who wants to start us off. Well, I'll chime in about the whole discussion of the rule, and I think that's kind of the cultural where she said the rural communities are mainly be leading the way because I think back to my family and came from a rural area. And I think about my grandparents and how, you know, back when they were my parents were growing up, you ate every part of the animal. And you know you didn't there was an any waste and now we're coming up into the times where everybody is just like she mentioned disposable and the new you buy a shirt just for one event. And I think that's some of that shift that we need to think about now we're coming out of a pandemic. We're coming out of a time when we had a time to reevaluate. This is the time to think what if I learn from that and how can I change. So this is a good time to make those changes. It could just be one little thing that you do that can be the start of something new you can do meetless Mondays or you could decide that I'm going to buy a power strip and make sure I use that and cut off my plug loads you know whatever it is that one little thing can make a difference and this is the time to do it. I could, I could jump in here. Yeah, I, I really, I like this idea of, you know, getting comfortable with living with less and using this as an opportunity to rethink what we're doing and I do think there's like, there's an appetite for people being inspired by the rural so I part of the affiliated conference with the sustainable yard tour, right and so much of that is people growing their own food and bringing kind of more of those practices back into their lives. And I could tell from that that there's definitely an appetite for it. So I hope she's right. I hope people are rethinking these kinds of things because we definitely need to be rethinking them the way that we are living is not sustainable in the long term. But I also I think I kind of want to push back a little bit about something she said though. Often these conversations ask us to be reflective as individuals about how we need to be changing our lives to fix these problems. And I just want to point I want to push back against that right. There are large institutions and large corporations that are at the appropriate scale to be able to create the kinds of solutions that we need for the climate crisis. We're not going to get ourselves out of this by people, you know, just, you know, people decide they want to ride bikes or plants and vegetables that's not going to fix it. We need institutional level change so cultural change is definitely part of the picture but we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking that that's the only solution right we can't do it without larger systematic change, which requires our governments and institutions and not just changing our individual practices. I'm in a little bit there. Can you hear me okay. Yes, perfect. Great. So yeah, really good. You know, Dr. Fairchild hit some really good points there and it's striking when she talks about living large on less. I think, you know, we need to redefine what living large really means, and we've allowed larger corporations that are marketing to us to, to be consumers and consume more and more and that driving our happiness. You know, I talked with our employees quite often about being content, you know, and then having a sense of purpose and that means a more meaningful life. And it's not about how much stuff we have. And I talked to my family a lot about that and they talked to me a lot about that and it's, you know, just getting back to what what is living large really mean what is the good life. It doesn't mean we've got so much stuff and and the disposable nature of consumerism. I don't know y'all may have seen the. There's a popular blue gene manufacturer has a commercial out now that is encouraging you to buy their blue genes because they last a whole lot longer and truth be told they probably do. They've been somewhere up here of that particular brand for years and but that's, that's kind of the model that they're pushing now to make folks buy their product because it'll last a lot longer and it's more sustainable and better for us so the discretionary consumeristic attitude and thinking about how that will drive our happiness individually or as a culture is something that that we obviously need to change those of us that grew up in rural areas or, you know, it was a different day at least my generation when we grew up and so consumerism wasn't an option. And so, you know, but but we were very very happy while we were happy as kids and growing up so I think changing that mindset. If you look at the demographics people are gravitating more toward our cities, but maybe if we can bring some of that simpler, less consumer driven lifestyle that mentality of the rural area to living in an urban area then then it can just, how do you get the corporations to stop wanting to sell all their stuff to make money. I don't know, Matt, that's a great question but I mean that is really. That's driving a lot of it a lot of the propaganda to, hey, this is how you can be happy, get more stuff so just a couple random thoughts there. And I think all of those are great because to your last point Clint, which was brought up by Matt, if you're talking about a cultural shift. Yes, there's definitely the individual things that we can do as residents. But I think one of the bigger questions is how can I actually transfer over to our businesses or other institutions, especially again as we're coming out of a pandemic and we want to make sure that we still have economically viable area. And part of that is going to be through some level of consumption or consumerism. So how can we balance that and I think it is, there's no one easy answer for it, given all of the challenges that we have but can, can we have a cultural shift that supports that while everyone is still getting some type of benefit. Okay. Any other any other thoughts on that if not we're going to move on to the next segment. Okay, so thank you. So the next clip we're going to look at is from a session that was looking at the actions that are taking place in other cities. And so we had calm palm who was an organizer of the campaign in Portland, Oregon, who passed the citizens initiative that established the Portland, Portland Clean Energy Fund. She is now a representative in the Oregon State Legislature, and specifically this fund provides grants to community based organizations for green projects, and especially to promote equity in the green transition. And so we'll see in this particular clip, her explaining a little bit more about those initiatives. So, as Sam mentioned, PSF passed overwhelmingly on a nearly two to one basis in 2018. And we, our grassroots coalition went up against some of the, the largest corporations in the world and it was such a huge boost for our organizations we had never launched a ballot measure campaign before. We, we had very little funding it was really, it was really led by groups that use our existing organizers we did have, you know I was on staff as the environmental justice manager at a panno. But, but we, I wanted to say like it wasn't sometimes people feel like oh you have to be so powerful or you all had your, your stuff together before you launched but in truth, I would say we didn't know what we were doing but we still had to do something given, given the immensity of the crises we face and so this was a huge capacity building exercise for us we knew I we knew that we wanted to we didn't know if we would win but we knew that launching this would actually strengthen us strengthen our capacity to know what it took to pass to pass to win a campaign at the ballot. And that was what our goal was as well not just to win this fund but also to build our muscles it our electoral muscles. So, so Sam talked a little bit about how it's fun how it works and what it funds and the, the nine member grant committee that really reflects the economic ratio and racial and social, social diversity of our, of our city. And you talked a bit about some of the grants that we're funding. It's, you know, it includes includes weatherizing homes of low income home Portlanders and Douglas heat pumps that are going to keep us cool during these heat waves. It includes job training for, for people who are formerly incarcerated I mean there's so many, so many areas where we need to, to broaden the green economy to include all of Portland. You're muted. My apology. In this clip, we see where grass root efforts were taking place in another larger cities such as Columbia, where individuals on the ground decided that they wanted to take control, or even be in the frontline as far as making a difference within their community. And so in this case she talked about, you know, their ability to actually go to the ballot to make some changes. And what we saw, or what she shared was the different projects that took place and so the job training, the different funds that were available to implement within the city. And so what do you think this looks like for the city of Columbia, just as we've just had a conversation about cultural shifts, and who the onus really falls on is it the individual citizen. Is it the municipalities is there a shared experience and so just from what took place within this clip. What are your thoughts. I always say, you know, you have the power, you know, so if you have, you know, and of course there's the quote be the change. And if you see a problem, you know, don't be afraid to step out there and make that change. And so many times, you know, working in the energy office we see all these opportunities and we say well where'd the money come from, you know. So this is inspiring to see that somebody took that initiative to create this fund, because you need money to have these things happen. And I say, you know, it fits the CPAC or if it's a citizen or if it's a member of the city of the staff, whoever it is, step out there and help and be that change. And this is one of the results of that is having a program for weatherization for energy efficiency projects. And we do by the way have an initiative going at the energy office for a green bank. We're looking at the feasibility of one for the state. So hopefully we'll be able to do some things like this out of that. So, stay tuned. Awesome. Any ideas or thoughts. Should we keep going in the same order. Whoever wants to step up, that's fine. It's inspiring isn't it it makes me like it makes me jealous of Portland, but I guess my, I guess my response to that is, it would be awesome to live in Portland. It would be awesome to be part of that community and that's exciting, but at the same time I don't feel like, because we don't live in Portland and we don't necessarily have that kind of community action, but that doesn't mean that there's nothing that we can do right. And one of the things that I learned, I've learned just by watching kind of how things work over the last few years is how much power individuals can have like you don't have to have I mean if we can get a ballot initiative awesome, but if you don't have a ballot initiative movement or anything like individuals can still make a huge difference and I've seen like individuals who are on CPAC, who just completely take the bowl by the horns and become very active and like get into the nuts and bolts of like what can we be doing what should we be doing, making time every week to make progress on their projects and like a lot can happen from that. So, I'm inspired by Portland but I also don't want people to feel like you have to be like Portland like there's still a lot of good that we can do here as individuals. In our in our own ways. Totally agree with both Stacy and Matt. Great comments there, you know we. Columbia is different we're different than Portland we're different than Charleston we're different than Greenville and so we got to be true who we are. And maybe we're not ready for ballot initiatives but we can do great things and I've seen CPAC do some incredible things. In terms of planning and being strategic and smart about how do we craft a path and what does that look like really intrigued by their job training program I think that's excellent. I think that speaks to, you know when you look at housing and we've already started having conversations about, you know, some of our equity in making renewable energy available to the entire community of Columbia the entire community of those are those are important, you know, grant opportunities and having those things we're excited to hear about the green bank. That's, that's really cool and there do seem to be more grant opportunities that are out there for us. I think, being smart, strategic and finding a solution that will work well or building a movement that works well for Columbia is really really important for us as we, as we let them move forward we don't have to be like. Somebody else, it can be unique to us and our partnership with USC and and the work that CPAC is doing is really got us moving well in that direction. So one question I pose is that I think sometimes when we hear about grassroots efforts there could be the perception that it's us against them and so maybe it's the little guy against the municipality is the little guy against the big big box store. And so what are your thoughts in the idea that grassroots doesn't necessarily mean there's a division, but it's an opportunity to really be collaborative on, you know, measures that could benefit the entire community and so maybe what are your thoughts on that that we trying to kind of kind of change perception on what it means to be grassroots not that the I guess the traditional definition isn't relevant but what does it mean, especially when you're talking about you know all of these different entities that are within the community. And so if the people decide they want to make these various changes or they want these things to come in. What does it mean to have those collaborations. I'll start with Dr. Warren. Oh, I'm sorry, Stacy I reverse the order on you here. You know, I think about it in terms of, you know, it is a municipal government employee, you know, we're so focused on the provision of basic services and, and whatever councils priorities are. But to me that the grassroots is the voters the citizens, making these initiatives a priority to their elected officials and communicating with them, and then communicating with staff that you know this really is a priority we need to be spending on this, certainly not adversarial it's a matter of discussing priorities, and folks speak at the ballot box but that only happens every so often. There's an open channel and conduit and public meetings and communication opportunities with elected officials, all the time. And so, you know that to me that's where it happens people speaking about what is important to them, and letting elected officials know that and letting us as staff that certainly CPAC is a good model for that so Matt spoke to it you know the power of the individual, and then as we as we do have organizations like CPAC to be more collective and that voice, it can be very effective. So it makes me hopeful. And I'll just piggyback on that from the state level, a lot of what we do is working with, I don't we don't call it grassroots but stakeholder engagement, bringing in all the different parties to talk about a specific topic, and everyone voicing their opinion and then we come out with recommendations that are a collaboration from everybody that was at the table. And that's really powerful because we can say okay everyone came together, and we discussed this topic about our last one was electric vehicles, and these are the recommendations that we put forward, and then people can take those and make things happen whether it's an energy office or whether it's a legislative initiative that is needed, whether it's another group that needs to meet to make a plan. We have all come together and agree that these are the actions to take to move forward and that's more powerful than anything I think is that everybody came together and agreed on that. Yeah, I totally agree like adversarial is not the right way to think about how to get changed done. It's all about collaboration and working together and it's amazing they're people from like a totally different part of the political spectrum and you just assume they're different but but it's not like we were all human beings and we all have shared kind of values and concerns and you'd be amazed at how much people are willing to work with you and and find coming ground with you kind of no matter where there starting places so there's a lot of there's a lot of there's a lot of space for collaborative work. Awesome. Now we're going to take a look at a third clip, which is looking at the future of electric vehicles in the city of Columbia. We had been hustler who is a public policy manager for the East Coast branch of charge point and they're responsible for installing and managing EB charging stations and in this particular clip. He talks about the steps cities and other major institutions can take to support how do we support electric vehicles here in South Carolina. We know that these vehicles are here in Columbia they're operating they're coming through our city to other cities. How we make sure that we're benefiting from this as well so public charging but we talked about can be used as an economic engine to get people into areas to revitalize or shopping retail areas, but also just to bolster the image of what Columbia is right we want to be a leader a thought leader in this you want to be a leader we have this goal to be climate ready electric vehicles are certainly an element of this because our emissions are now our highest emission sectors transportation. So this is a way to reduce that fleet. You know we talked about lead by example using EVs the South Carolina Energy Office is a great example of that right we want to pilot and then scale so what do that means you know getting one vehicle in and then you know seeing how it goes for getting five that goes well start small and then start growing up you know we got a we got a crawl before we can run and before that we got a walk. So those are good things to keep in mind also say there are electric vehicles on state contract now. There is an e song lead that you can take advantage of that's really at a competitive price and really can be used and multitude of different functions from admin to police to public work things like that. Again like I said utilize means charging, especially if you're a bus or transit fleet, plugging in at the wrong thing and it would keep pricing can really be bad. Another thing that's really important I think for the city as well as the university with housing is multifamily right we want to provide incentives whether that's economic or financial or whatever it may be to builders that to include and make ready within construction plans. We know that the cost of construction to put in a dryer plug to plug in a charger is about $50 at the point of new construction, you go back and retrofit a new building to be a couple $1000 so that is the point we want to get across that it is so much a little up front and to come back with this all this resistance permitting codes you know making sure that the permit process if the developer or construction contractor wants to put in the eb charger. Make sure that there's an easy to follow easy to navigate process to the city to get that permit for construction approved, whether it's a breakaway for a function from all the other commercial building permits that you're doing just making an easy process in the same way. I'm going to get building codes will help enable this and then take advantage of grant opportunities, the state energy office really tries to pair and match make on great opportunities, work with them work with private public partnerships to enable the expansion of eb charging infrastructure. In this particular clip, there's a lot of options that have been presented. So there's opportunities for having infrastructure that supports electric vehicles and the charging stations, as well as the idea that these institutions, whether it's the university or other city of Columbia can switch their fleet over to eb's and then just the support of those private citizens who have eb's themselves. And so what are your thoughts as far as a municipality or an institution moving into these areas where you're actually promoting these type of initiatives where you know we are a country that is big on, you know, cars and vehicles that are typically tapped into fossil fuels, but now making this transition to the other options and so what are your thoughts about just really encouraging the larger institutions to kind of make this shift or change. I was trying not to go first. Okay, go ahead. Yeah, I'll take that safety that we got to make Mac the first year one time. Now, so just a couple things that I mean this transition is happening I mean everybody's filled up their SUV lately is felt the pain the pump right and so I think it was happening even before the gasoline prices increase some way. So we're starting to see a lot more interest is a city late this afternoon I was reviewing some of our capital projects that are on the horizon, and one of those capital projects is kind of redoing our fleet services facility and retooling that so that we're in a position to work and train our workforce on electric vehicles, rather than just, you know, the internal combustion engines and diesels that we use now. So that that's something that we want to do and and kind of again retool that facility. There's also an item and some hopefully dollars associated with electric vehicle charging infrastructure, or both cityfully but also throughout the city. Those are things that are on our minds and we're thinking about trying to facilitate that and accelerate that. We're going to have, as soon as we can get it off of the off the assembly line a new F 150 lightning vehicle that we're going to try out and public works as a light duty pickup and to kind of that'll be our first, you know, really the that that we've had. And we're also putting together based on a model from North Carolina request for proposals and looking for some grant funding to develop that electric vehicle electrification roadmap for our cityfully. And I think there's a model in Chapel Hill where that has been done, and we kind of gotten a little bit of what they've done and I know Stacy we've been working with some of your folks to get information about what does that look like educating ourselves on where where do we need to go and what are the steps that we need to take to be smart out and be ready for for when this transition happens so that's kind of the fleet discussion. Really interested in what the speaker was saying about the multi family housing incentives and the cost to do it upfront being so much more affordable than than the retrofit. It's something that we're very interested in as a city and then grant opportunities have participated this week on some some interviews where we're seeking some consulting services to help us go after grants and energy grants was a that was a specific category that we were looking for assistance with so the city is looking to move in that direction as well and try to capitalize on any opportunities that are out there. Awesome. Additional thoughts matter Stacy. Let's just talk about like from my perspective of how it's happening and what's happening from the top as far as federal government from the bottom from our ED electric vehicle stakeholder initiative we had this past year. Like, like Clint was speaking about you know they're looking at doing a roadmap at the city we're also looking at doing a state roadmap is one of the recommendations from an electric vehicle stakeholder initiative. So there's encouragement from the federal government in the way of grants for infrastructure for the Department of Transportation so, you know, what's first the chicken of the egg, you know, you know, you know, they're encouraging people to get vehicles and then we also need that infrastructure for people to charge when they travel, when they're at destinations, you know if you go to shopping or you go on a trip you need a place to charge, just like you need a place to fuel so a lot of activity and what's happening on the federal and state level are report for the electric vehicle stakeholder initiative will be out this summer, hopefully in July. So you'll be able to look at the recommendations there and a lot of that is looking at infrastructure and multi family make ready a lot of the utilities are planning for that and having incentives available to for commercial and for residential to encourage on charger implementation as well so a lot of activities come in and look for it. And so they're really trying to encourage that all over. So just to add real quick firstly I am just like over the moon about the transition to electric vehicles and how fast it's happening I mean at this point it's happening like they can't. Produce electric vehicles to keep up with demand. It's happening that quickly and so sometimes I get this kind of hopelessness that we're not changing as quickly as the scientists tell us we need to be changing and then you start to see this like real radical shift and that's very exciting and gives me great hope. But I was glad to hear both Stacy and Clint talk about the importance of residential charging because I think that when we imagine changing our infrastructure. We think oh well it'll be like the gas stations will just be charging stations. And so we'll just keep like gas stations but have them do charging, but the way that this works is that most of the charging would happen at your house, because it's only, you know it's not like if you had a gas station private gas station in your house and unless you're going further than 200 miles away from your house. That's the only thing you would use like that's the transition. So, making sure that we're thinking about what this new infrastructure is going to look like, I think is really important in the ways that it's going to be different than the infrastructure that we have now, which I think is just fascinating. It's like as someone who's interested in like the futurism and like what the world will be like in the future I think that's really just interesting to think about. Okay. All right. So we're going to go to another clip. And this one is looking at climate change and the Gales Creek watershed and so as you, or as some of you would know this is an urban watershed that is located right here in the city of Columbia or the Midlands area. So there were multiple individuals on the panel but in this particular clip, we're going to hear from Bill Davis who is the director of Richland County's utilities. And he's talking about designing for flooding risk in the county and for many of you who are residents you know unfortunately flooding is something that we deal with regularly and for multiple reasons and so we're going to hear about some of his ideas behind that. We need to design for the new normal and I want to do a quick picture. This is actually a hurricane will key coming over. I didn't know it was going to work or not but the graphic actually is working. And that is Jessica in the top left corner, and she and I were working together for FEMA down on Timberlane when I was with CDM Smith and tall pines area and that's me on the bottom with all the structures that went into the woods. And it was pretty pretty crazy to see that kind of that kind of water. And it really is life changing when you see all that damage and all that destruction and you think, are we going to continue to rebuild I think one of the biggest things we can do as as municipal people as as activists as as people that are concerned as citizens. We can think about one of the things that we can do to mitigate future damage. I think one of the biggest things that we can do is start to to catalog all of our structures that are in these areas as far as municipalities like recent counties I think that we go in and we itemize all of our structures, all of our infrastructure, and there's several things you can do you can say what happens if I do nothing, and it gets underwater, the new normal, not the old normal. What happens if it goes on a five feet of water, how much of it's going to be burned up and not be able to be used again versus how much of it's going to be able to be utilized so so do we adapt it, do we build it up, do we waterproof it. Those are things that we need to think about, or do we rebuild it in a situation like I know Jessica was talking about structures that had been rebuilt. How do we make those structures resilient. There's other things that we can do like we can reconsider the base flood. What is the base flood what we assign that you know so do we need to reconsider what does that storm need to look like do we need to consider rain events. Do we need to start considering this in feet of water as opposed to storm events I don't know the answer to that. Again, the difference of a few feet can exponentially reduce your loss. If you work with the local authorities let's try to streamline the ability to get these easements. If you're a community person work with your local municipal folks to try to get those gravity systems installed. They take more time. They're a little bit more of an investment in the front, but in the long run those are going to be better. You're going to need to try to build your get this adequate free board. One of the things that I really love is being able to keep those right away is clear. We can start looking at greenways, we can double dip so to speak by putting our gravity sewer lines through an area that we're going to keep clear anyway. So now we're protecting our infrastructure, and we're opening it up to viewing our beautiful environment that we live in South Carolina so fortunate to have so many beautiful waterways. I think you know where I stand right now is regarding a bunch of little tiny pump stations and a bunch of little tiny infrastructure I think we need to think of the larger infrastructure. And the fact that we're reducing our carbon footprint by having one localized facility one localized wastewater treatment facility, and we reduce the workforce that's required, because right now I'm driving my people are driving all over the county trying to get all these pump stations, whereas if we could eliminate we are doing that recent county is very forward thinking we're eliminating some of our pump stations and putting gravity sewer lines in this an investment, because these assets are already occupied. We're investing in the money with funding. We're trying to get things going so that we can eliminate as many pump stations as we can. Lastly, I did meet a really interesting gentleman that worked Hurricane Sandy he was from Oklahoma he was from FEMA when I was with CDM Smith. And I met him out in the field we were right down off Bluff Road, and he always chewed a cigar was a big fellow to cigar. He's out there talking to our Twitter cigar. He said something I'll never forget. He said, elevation is your salvation from inundation. And that's what I'll leave you with. Thanks again for having So I think in this clip. It really talks about one of the major issues we see just in the conversation about climate change itself is the actual impacts that we see on communities so the flooding that takes place those low line areas where whether it's coastal cities or islands where they have to contend about those, you know, the sea rising that's going to take place. You know what that means for the infrastructure and for the people and so obviously in this clip you had Bill talk about different initiatives that can take place. And so one of the things that he really holds on is designing for the new normal. And so just your thoughts on what does that really mean he gave some great initiatives that are currently in the works or things that they will like to do. But this whole notion of, you know, designing for the new normal, maybe at a municipality or institution or a state level, we have an understanding of what that means. But what does that how does that resonate for just a general resident or a citizen so just kind of what are your thoughts about this, preparing really for the new normal which really is already upon us. And that maybe you can take the new order. I won't put put the pressure on you. Yeah, I mean I just I love that clip it was great that guys got a lot of character and what he was saying sounds right to me in terms of the details of, you know, specifically, like, if what does the new world order look like and like which specific kinds like I don't think I'm a I think I would need somebody who's more of a policy expert than me on that. I would say though that something that really resonates with me that the speaker said was looking at the long term cost. And I think municipalities are so often so cash strapped, you know, and resources are so limited that there's this pressure to kind of just do what is cheapest in the short term. But, but we have to be, you know, keeping in mind these, you know, intense weather events that are used to be really rare and are now really frequent. And then and kind of doing a cost benefit analysis that really takes that into account when we make these kinds of decisions. So I'm curious if anybody was in five points on Saturday around three or three 30 this past week. That is a glaring example of high intensity rain events in an urban area what can happen when you've got so much impervious surface out there. We had just quick numbers rocky branch went from about a flow rate of about a 1 million gallons a day to about 2 billion gallons a day in 15 minutes. The flow was roughly equivalent for 15 minutes to what is released from the Lake Murray Dam into the lower Saluda River. That went through rocky branch because we had a thunderstorm camp out and of course there's flooding and the low lying areas there's flooding and in order to combat that you can build these huge concrete drainage ditches. That are just massive and you may never that was a 50 year storm event that happened and in terms of recurrence interval just that was the one place in the city it happened and right there. One of the worst spots but you know we could have a huge concrete ditch running down rocky branch and which is unsightly and not great for the environment and runs dry most of the time but it's you know has a little bit of water trickling through it. Or you can try to address it with things like MLK Park and what we want to do in Maxi Greg Park which is stream restoration build a little bit of storage and then through planning and and different measures to encourage pervious pavement and less runoff and you know what you'll never be able to design for the 50 year storm event. But you can minimize the impact of a 50 year storm event by some of those softer measures that are far better for the environment I believe far better for us as citizens to enjoy walking by a natural stream. It's been beautified at the bank, you know restored rather than these, which you might see in Las Vegas which are these, you know, or somewhere out West these large concrete ditches so the recurrence interval we described in this 50 year storm events but seems like the 50 year event or the 20 year event are happening a lot more frequently right now and in that's troubling and but so we've got to try to design infrastructure to address that. Bill mentioned, and he does have a lot of character Matt and he is a character bills personal friend of mine. He's a he's a good guy but you know sharing greenways where you've got sewer or storm drainage easements and we're trying to do that. So that people can enjoy a healthy lifestyle and get out and enjoy the environment while we're keeping you know access to our infrastructure available. The scenario planning and thinking differently is something that is very always at the forefront of my mind I started my career with city of Columbia is the waterworks superintendent about six months before the flood of 2015. I was at the canal water plant when that thing happened that most of us can't seem to forget and have been involved in the negotiations to to rebuild the canal, but it has been absolutely paramount for us as a city and as a utility to to build that back a lot better than we were in October of 2015. It's been characterized as a thousand year flood but that thing that happened can happen again we've got to be prepared for that exact same occurrence that could happen anytime. And so in being prepared doesn't mean having more Chinook helicopters to drop sandbags. It means having complete resiliency and so we've we found some some FEMA grant money to build a basically a redundant intake and take water directly from the river. If needed to serve our customers so that if something did happen to our canal system, we wouldn't have this emergency and folks out of water. But we just had never thought about it had not thought like that as a utility or a municipality before that that thing happened but I can promise you we think about it now and we're planning different. I'll just chime in from the state level. So there is the South Carolina Office of Resilience that is working on a state resilience plan as we speak. So they are looking at flooding that's their first thing is to look at you know what's flooding is happening and what can we do to be resilient and be prepared so that we're not in the situation we were in in 2015. It's a big focus of their work and in some of the on the citizen level some of the citizens that I've spoken with. I'll speak with them on energy but then they get into flooding and they were mentioned that one of the things that they needed was that the ditches just needed to be cleaned out and cleared and that that system needed to be redone because that was a problem for them. That situation was a hurricane came through and they had flooding after that because the ditches were that had been dug hundreds of years ago just hadn't been maintained. So that's one of the things that's a concern from citizens among the flooding front and then just speaking with them on energy. So after the flood or after the hurricane, a lot of times are out of the powers out. So we're looking at critical facilities and look in the energy office we are looking at critical facilities and thinking okay and the energy world but can we do to have things for them so that they can get the power back on and provide that water for those citizens during that time before they can get their own power on and then looking at citizens with home health problems and can we provide some devices for them to have somebody that might need an oxygen tank or that needs some type of other device to keep them alive. And then we have some citizens they just want to generate their own electricity because they might stay at home during a hurricane and then after the hurricane they're out of power. So what can we provide for those communities that have that desire and want to maybe that maybe can afford solar or storage. What can we provide and what kind of programs can we develop for those communities. Okay, thank you. So we just have a few more clips that we're going to go over but the next one is talking about biking and walking in the communities. And so we're not going to take a clip look desk. So we're going to send us like sorry Statler the city of Columbia planning administrator is showing that transforming our streets may be a slow process but it can happen and what that actually means for the community itself. So this is a picture of the show. This is a Jermay Street from a National Geographic article 1984 Jermay Street was named for the worst streets in America. I don't have time on supporting this. That's the corner of the sea on the board. But I think what it talks about is just what it shows us is it takes a long time, you know, just to see some of these come to light. I think that if it's a plan the Green Street bridge something I get excited about because I saw the plan happen and now it's part of the infrastructure We don't plan for today. We don't plan for tomorrow. We plan for the future. So it's just something we have to keep in mind in terms of a vision for walking the bike we really have to think long term. Something may not seem like it makes sense today or tomorrow. But if we're thinking about how our city is going to live in 20 or 30 years, you know, it really does matter. So as a transplant from Michigan, I've only seen Jermay Street look a certain way and so that that clip is very interesting to see what it was. I can remember how long ago to what it currently is. But I like what she talked about really getting to the crux of sustainability, not just, you know, the resources that we have today. But how are we planning for the future. And so this idea, which was mentioned earlier about thinking long term. And so what are your ideas about that as we're looking at, you know, we've talked about resiliency. We know we have, you know, the different events that can take place preparing for that. Just what are your thoughts about the long term planning in general and all that comes with it. We know planning isn't free. We know changes the infrastructure isn't going to happen without some type of funds or resources and so just that long term planning for what could happen or hopefully for prevention just what are your thoughts. I see, go ahead, go ahead, Clint. I'll start Dr. Warren that the, you know, it is the long game and the vision you paint the vision and our city planning staff done a good job with Columbia Compass, and working with walk bike planning. But the connectivity, you need all the pieces to work, even though you've got that long term plan. If any, any of those links breaks down, then it really doesn't work. And I think one of the things that we struggle with in Columbia is we've got these wonderful neighborhoods, but the connectivity of them in these great areas of our city. But the connectivity, whether it's public transit or whether it's biking and walking trails is something that we really need to improve upon. So, I think how we communicate that plan and that vision is so critically important so that we don't have a community that may say, yeah, that sounds great but when it comes time to do it. In their little area in their backyard. No, we don't want you to drop that travel lane and put in a bike lane. We like having our four lanes instead of two lanes and bike lanes, even though the traffic studies might show. Yeah, this makes a lot of sense to do this is a great opportunity. How we do that outreach and communicate is vitally important because, again, if any of those links is broken, then the connectivity piece is not really there and becomes dangerous for folks that are trying to commute to maybe downtown to work on a bike. So, I think something that we've really got the focus on doing well is communicating that vision and communicating that overall vision and how each particular, you know, spoke in the wheel is important. And let's not just not do this, because maybe I don't really like that. Let's think about the total collective and people thinking that way and show them the vision I think they become a lot more supportive of what you're trying to do overall so that's a long game. It's, it's, it's very difficult to do but but critically important that we do that so we don't end up with these gaps throughout. Okay, I'll just chime in and say yeah I agree that is long game and the resources need to be there to implement you know we do planning. We do a lot of talking and talking and planning and meeting. And the implementation part is the hard part because a lot of time the funding isn't there to move forward. You need people to come to the table to move something forward whether it's through legislation or if it's through a committee or you know if it's through the energy office we need money to, to make it happen. So, it does take time and you have to be patient and wait for the right thing everything to come together to make it happen. And that patients can sometimes people to go what happened. So, it is a long game. I mentioned one other thing Dr Warren the building on what Stacy said that you just have to be creative sometimes we were looking at bike lanes for Calhoun Street, and do a little bit of a road and that's a project that we had some Richland County funding for. And, but as we looked at it we needed to really do some major work on Calhoun Street, and some, you know, reclamation work and repaving rather than grinding and striping. And so, we looked at various funding sources and we were able to apply for some of the state gas tax money through our county transportation committee and fill that delta so that we could do something really good that will be proud of on Calhoun Street. It's a road diet it's bike lanes, it's new pavement it's new markings and we're going to be real proud of it, and we were on the cusp of maybe not being able to do that because the grinding and restriping the road just wasn't a good enough condition for that to be something that we would be proud of. And so, we really had to think out of the box and turn over the couch cushions and rocks try to find the extra dollars to make it happen. But thankfully, they were there and county transportation committee came through the extra dollars for us so that was an example of a spoke or a link that would have been broken had we not been able to get some other assistant. Okay. And I think this idea of, you know, who are the different spokes on this wheel really gets to the last clip that we're going to take a look at. And so in this one, it was a roundtable discussion at the end of the conference and so we had again the keynote speaker Dr. Chow is talking about building core coalitions to support change, and that really gets to the core of having all of the individuals, you know, the municipalities, the institutions, the communities coming together for the greater good to solve these solutions and so we'll take a look at this. Excuse me this final clip that talks about collaborations. So my thought is that data gets here and we've seen a little bit of what you are working with. You need power. Power. So how do you do that. So there's, there's a coalition building that you talked about. Absolutely. I would not. And the power for what is the question needed campaign. It could be something like co less everybody around a campaign, and that could be justice 40 could be something kind of singular, as opposed to just everything, but something singular that you can begin to show you've got all of these organizations behind on all of these institutions and individuals and that you can show up as, you know, not as a lobbyist and lobbying, but a constituency that really cares about whatever that that thing is. The second thing I would say is that I would bless the man that government radical and figure out your corporate strategy. It's going to be here pretty much long term they all have ESG and SDIs and all these things that you know they are now beholden to, and wanting to commit they all have grant money. They all have purchasing power spending power. I really have a full strategy. I have a corporate procurement strategy around sustainability. Most of them already have a climate. I do some research to get your students to really figure what's, you know, none of that good. You see what's what's happening there and then maybe your campaign is to work corporates, get them on your side, and they become a part of your power team to hit up your state so they'll listen to corporations. So just a couple of threads going through about you just can't do one offs and, you know, you have to find something that's going to be sustained over time and as you, you know, you pick up your nets, you start getting some more, so, you know, start maybe small but then keep building until you really become a part of your tax. So in this, excuse me, in this particular clip, Dr. Fair, excuse me, Dr. Fairchild talks really about the idea of coalition building and really having this coalition kind of come together on maybe one single or major issue and so we know with this particular conference we were talking about climate change and the things that can be done or need to be done. But what are your thoughts about this idea because we talked about it for, you know, the better, better part of an hour about we can't really solve any of these issues as silos alone, there's going to have to be, you know, efforts on multiple parts and so just what is your thought about this idea of the coalition building and what potentially could be that single issue or maybe a few issues that they could coalesce around. I could probably go first on this. I, Dr. Fairchild is just so smart and she's so strategic and she's done this for so long and I really, I've thought a lot about that wrap up session a lot over the last few months and thinking about well what kind of what is the next step where to go from here, and I have some ideas about that. You don't want to do that now do you. You want to share at least one or just a little snippet. Okay, well the little snippet is so like what what's something that's going to and I like this idea that you know you need to be building coalitions kind of getting people around kind of a central idea. And it seems to me like a central idea that's powerfully unifying has to do with the infrastructure investment and jobs act. It's a ginormous piece of legislation historic legislation $1.2 trillion of investments in our nation's infrastructure. Everybody likes this. I mean this is this is something that's powerfully unifying right that can that can turn allies out of all kinds of different people, because if all of this money is going to be spent and updating the infrastructure and all of the stakeholders who stand to benefit from that who become winners and that who then can become allies with one another around trying to really optimize the benefits that come out of this, this piece of legislation. And in our particular political climate here in South Carolina and Columbia that to me sounds like a winning issue to to mobilize and organize people around something that's really going to bring together business community government agencies the public like this is this is definitely like a really unifying thing where we can really build coalitions. I'm sorry Stacy or Clint any thoughts. I don't have any thoughts on a particular item I don't know if I can necessarily speak to that because of my role, but I do agree with her comments that everybody doesn't need to come together and we do that speaks volumes so I am really helpful for the infrastructure funding. I know that cities going to get some specific funding for energy efficiency conservation block grant. So, I'm hoping that you all be able to use that I know a big benefit hopefully they can come from this is helping residents with whether rising their homes are making that infrastructure or their structures, more efficient to, I guess I just said issue that is something that has a wrong as a spot that that needs some more funding. Yeah, Stacy, you make a great point and when you think about, I can't remember the percentage of dwellings within Columbia that are rentals but it's really really high. And so how do you incentivize the landlords to make those investments. That's something that we need to work on collectively. I think engaging the, you know, we talk about the city government can do this the county government and we need to work together to do the university needs to do this but I know we haven't talked as much about the business community and engaging them and she speaks to that a little bit. And I've y'all heard the, the mayor and some of our city council members say Columbia is open for business you know there's a big drive for economic development and to be business friendly and that's great. That's also an opportunity to be interfacing and dialoguing with the businesses about how we used to accomplish green is good for business. Right. And so how to how to be green and I was able to attend the ribbon cutting ceremony for Mark Anthony brewing which is not in the city but it's right outside the city and it's our biggest water and sewer customer that we have. Before they make white claw and they're all about making a lot of white claw beverages and cannon those and turn into profit, but the, at that ribbon cutting ceremony the president of the company talked about sustainability, and being friendly to the environment and treating the employees well, and he. They have installed, and it was quite expensive I wish I had memorized the figures, but they installed a system to capture every bit of carbon that will be released from that facility. They can read it and use it to recarbonate or to carbonate their beverages that they're making. So, you know, he called it the, the space X of a brewery, and the technology that's being used in that brewery, and that facility is amazing and, and then what they're doing to to recapture the business was pretty cool and you know it's something they didn't have to do, but they made that investment to do that so. And I don't know what I don't know how that business case looks long term, but I think they recognize that's the right thing to do, and so it seems to be working well for engaging the business community and learning from what others are doing is important that's going to be, if you're going to build a team, at least in Columbia right now you got to include the business community in that and get their backing and be successful. And that actually goes right into some of the questions that we actually received from the viewing audience and so thank you for those of you who are watching us live and have posted some of your questions and so to the latter part of what we talked about, and I'll kind of paraphrase here. The question is how do we circumvent or oppose the greenwashing that could be used for those industries or maybe those in the business sector. We can potentially be polluting but are trying to capitalize off of you know using catchphrases or different things to kind of maybe lessen the impact of what they're doing. And so obviously as we talk about having collaborations having coalitions working together, you know, being talked about you know different things that could be done. So that's one of the issues that we can put into play, but how do we kind of ensure that our players are truly working on the bed or working on behalf of the city and the citizens in the right way so it's not just okay. We know we have a focus on climate or climate resiliency are our actions truly aligning with that so I said a lot but it's just essentially how are we going to hold ourselves accountable. So players and this how will we hold them accountable, or how can we hold them accountable. Sorry I was muted. I think about just in terms of economic development and our recruitment of industry or commercial development. So as we're looking at as the Midlands region and what types of businesses do we want to recruit and what's the environmental record of the businesses that we're looking to recruit the whoever asked the question is right on point about some of the the masking that happens I think about these. I mean obviously a water quality and software protection. And you think about some of these forever chemicals the performated substances that we can only measure. We only have the technology to measure some of those chemicals. There's a whole lot more out there that we can't measure and it seems like and I read articles nationally where they're these polluting industries that got how to measure one particular compound what else top using that one and use another one that accomplishes the same thing we just can't measure for it yet. And so from a regulatory standpoint that becomes very difficult for you know agencies like the heck to regulate, but I think from a policy standpoint as we look at making ourselves available making our community available for industry to come we ought to be thinking about what is their environmental record. What's a record for sustainability and you know how do they look. When we look at other installations and they have across the nation and one of their, what's their posture there. That's the first thing that comes to mind in terms of how to attack that move forward. I would say some of that too is just having the knowledge of what you know somebody may say they are doing something, but being educated yourself and knowing what to look for. And then also some local governments have programs where they recognize businesses that are doing things. So, for example, the Midlands has a green business on recognition initiative. So just the local government could require their businesses to be a certain level of efficient, you know, require that these buildings be built to a certain standard require these businesses to report their sustainability measures report the industries that they send out report the recycling report their energy, and that be just required for those businesses so there's different things that can be done. It's just getting that on the books. Okay, and one final question slash comment that was made. And anyone could feel free I know Stacy you talked about it is in reference to the green bank. And the comment was the green bank effort needs broader grassroots building which we have not necessarily done well with with NGOs in South Carolina. And so if anyone says here whoever will like to kind of maybe speak to that you know the, how good a green bank could be, if it's going to be efficient or effective. Sure, so I'll speak to just where we are with that concept right now. So right now we're just looking at the feasibility of a green bank and we have talked to a lot of stakeholders from communities to government to state agencies to businesses to you name it. So we've tried to talk to all the different people, different sectors in the state to find out where the gaps are, and what kind of programs are needed. So that's where we are now and then after that on the very portion come out this summer as well maybe August I think, and after that then we'll look and see okay so how should that take form in South Carolina and then where do we come from. So we are, you know, at the beginning of it so I don't know who put the question out there feel free to reach out and, you know, we'd love to talk to you because we're still at that point where the, you know, we're talking to stakeholders. So we'd like to hear all the different ideas out there I don't know if we'll have enough funding for everything. But you know we'd like to get started somewhere and make sure that we're meeting those needs. Well, as we began to wrap up but we're not done just yet we are coming up on 730 but there's some additional information that we want to share but Clint Stacy and Matt Thank you so much for giving your perspective perspective on the different sessions that took place during the conference. And so at this time that I think you want to share a little bit about what has been on the back end of the conference and so obviously we had the two days where we had a lot of information sharing. A lot of that coalition building but something great actually has come about as well with a couple months later so if you would like to share please feel free. Yeah, so in that last session that you showed that clip from me in my screen share up here. In that last session. We were asking the question where do we go from here right like what are the next steps, what's logical way forward and that that clip was really great to kind of set the stage for this like you need to build around like kind of a central issue that unifies support. So I built a grant proposal around that idea for the and Johnson Institute which had funded the original climate ready Columbia and fortunately they have granted me a multi year commitment to renew and extend the grant. And I want to talk about a little bit about kind of where it's going and it's building on what we decided in that kind of wrap up session. So, you know, the ideas we want to take advantage of these unifying opportunities and kind of one of the big conclusions of the conference is that one of the biggest opportunities is this infrastructure investment and job act. So at the conference you talk about all these great ideas all these things you want to do weatherize buildings and new construction techniques but of course all of that costs money, and it's usually really hard to get that. And this is why it is so exciting that the ii j a has been passed because it is such an historic investment in our infrastructure. And included in that in that bill is all sorts of resources that will help us respond to the climate crisis clean energy EV transportation infrastructure improvements for severe weather and climate change energy efficient buildings and retrofits and so all of this could be funded through the ii j a and furthermore it provides opportunities to make progress on one of the big themes of the conference, which was environmental justice and equity. So the ii j a is being enforced in light of this important executive order the justice for the executive order which says that at least 40% of the benefits of federal investments in climate and clean energy must go to disadvantage community so this is another opportunity to make progress. The ii j a resources available to local communities include competitive grants, and these grants are not just kind of mandated formula funding being given to State Department of Transportation kind of stuff. There are granting opportunities for cities for counties for nonprofits for tribes. There's research grants for universities and colleges, and then there's also on the implementation side, there, there's opportunities here for local businesses to enter into into contracts and implementation of the bill of the law. So the next stage goal of climate ready Columbia is to secure ii j a resources to support our local response to the climate crisis to advance environmental justice and to strengthen the resilience of local communities. And the way that we're going to be doing that is by partnering with the energy foundation in facilitating a network of potential beneficiaries of ii j a opportunities this is government agencies higher education businesses advocacy organizations. And so this is already started with that electric vehicles information session. I know, many people on this on this call we're there for that so this is part of that activity and climate ready Columbia will be focusing on facilitating a subset of that network. And the subset we're going to be focusing on is potential ii j a beneficiaries who operate at the municipal level so city and county governments universities, small businesses, and we'll begin with the midlands midlands region. But we want to make those resources available to other municipalities. So what we'll be doing with the network is providing information about ii j a opportunities. So hey there's there's a grant that you could potentially apply for city of forest acres, or there's opportunities for local contracting work. And then we can provide matchmaking opportunities for network affiliates to collaborate. And we can provide technical assistance for securing ii j a resources so for instance if somebody wants to apply for one of these grants, but they don't know how to get started or they need to be hooked up with somebody who has the capacity to write these sorts of grants. Then we can we can step in and try to provide that technical assistance. More information on all of that is coming soon but if you would like to get more information. Join the network and you can do it by clicking on this link and I think they put it in the YouTube page description this link just click it just a couple quick questions. If you don't know what your interests are you can be included in the network and then we'll will continue to give you information about how those ii j a benefits can can be benefiting us here to help us accomplish our goals. Well that's awesome thank you for sharing mad and it's great that you know after the year or so of planning that took place for the conference that this opportunity has come about and so we can hopefully see some great things come out of that. And so that wasn't the only great thing that has happened. There's also something taking place with the city of Columbia so we can get that slide up as well I'll share a little bit of information so our viewing audience can also have another site that they can go to to get more information. I'm not sure if I'm going to see it on my end so if someone could just let me know now I do. Um, so we have the urban heat island map mapping so the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration which we know is Noah has selected the city of Columbia in Richmond County to participate in a national and international urban island mapping initiative. The reason is to better understand and guide action to produce health, health risk, encourage economic development and improve overall quality of life in the region. This funding will support necessary equipment, organizational efforts and data processing of the mapping project. We have over 160 square miles of Columbia and Richmond County together. And it's also going to fund the installation of stationary temperature and humidity sensors to monitor the urban heat island effect through the summer. So this project will produce a publicly available report so it's going to be great we can get some feedback after all this data has been collected. And it's also going to be digital mapping data showing variations in temperature and humidity for the region that can be used to improve quality of life in many ways. And so one of the great things about this initiative is that it really has us looking at citizen scientists because there's an opportunity for you as just an ordinary citizen to become involved. So the heat mapping is going to take place on Saturday, August 6. And so it does require volunteers. And so you will be needed to participate throughout the day. So for more information, if you go to the link that's posted, you can get more information about actually what's going to take place. And if you want to sign up to be a volunteer for that day, you will have the opportunity to do so. And so we definitely encourage you to sign up to be a volunteer if there's others that you know will be interested to share this information as well. So we definitely make, we definitely encourage that. So thank you Justin if you can bring that down. So it's very encouraging that again after a year of planning for the conference we have seen all of these different initiatives to take place and so we definitely encourage all of you who are watching or will view this later that if you are interested in becoming involved. So there's a lot for you to do. We've talked about the coalition building or the emphasis that has been put on municipalities and institutions, as well as our business partners but there's definitely a role for the regular citizen so as Clint has talked about those different folks in the wheels, it does include the the everyday citizen as well. So again, Matt Clint Stacy thank you so much for giving your perspectives on the conference we thank you for the work that you're currently doing in your respective areas. Before we wrap up I just open the floor if there's any additional comments or ideas that you would like to share. Again I just thank everyone. Sure can. Thank you so much for moderating and thank you CPAC for putting this on and for all for all of the hard work that you all do and Clint and Stacy you guys are awesome just thanks. I agree thank thank congratulations everybody congratulations to you Matt on the ground I think that's fantastic news and pleasure being with you all tonight thanks for putting this on. Yeah, I'd also like to express my thanks for the opportunity and everyone here this I think it's a great session and I'm ready to keep it going. All right well thank you all. And again for all of you who are watching live or either viewing this is the quarterly webinar for CPAC and so we look forward to the next one where we're sharing more information with you about ways in which we're addressing climate change and the great communities that are taking place and so have a great evening and we'll see you on the next webinar. Good night.