East Hill Notes: Town-gown conference, a focus on sustainability

By Gary Stewart

 

On an annual basis, Cornell’s Office of Community Relations sponsors a regional town-gown conference on shared campus-community interests.
The focus of last week’s well-attended gathering in downtown Ithaca was sustainability, led by the presentation of the 2018 Cornell University Partners in Sustainability Award, a.k.a. the CUPSA.

This annual recognition puts a well-deserved spotlight on individuals and teams who make notable town-gown contributions to sustainable development and social equity in and around Ithaca.

Previous CUPSA winners included the Tompkins County Climate Protection Initiative, Ithaca Neighborhood Housing Services, the Town of Caroline and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).

Earning this well-deserved recognition last week were Ithaca Carshare ithacacarshare.org and Bike Walk Tompkins bikewalktompkins.org.

Ithaca Carshare, now in its 10th year, is a membership service offering 24/7 self-serve access to fuel-efficient vehicles on both campus and in the community.
“Cornell is proud to subsidize annual memberships for students, faculty, and staff, many who are now rethinking the car-owning habit, while saving money and contributing to a healthier planet,” said Malina.

 

Bike Walk Tompkins is a program under Ithaca Carshare and has taken the lead on bringing a bike-share program to Ithaca as part of its Blueprint for Better Bicycling program.

Bike Walk Tompkins and the City of Ithaca are partnering to bring 200 bicycles to the community for a new dockless bike-share program launching this month.
“This is a welcome and laudable development in our bike-happy college town,” said Malina.

Other highlights of last week’s town-gown conference were a series of diverse presentations including:
* The Localizing our Renewable Energy Future initiative – led by the University at Buffalo- that’s achieving clean energy goals in partnership with the City of Buffalo and Erie County.
* A focus on successful community-based decision touching on shared interests, outreach, and trust led by Cornell’s Community and Regional Development Institute.
* Lessons learned from town-gown projects that engaged communities at the grassroots level, including Dryden solar and Enfield wind, with inputs from town supervisors.
* Clarkson University’s collaboration with the Village and the Town of Potsdam and the DEC’s Climate Smart Communities Program.
* An overview and update on Cornell’s Lake Source Cooling Project that has successfully reduced Cornell’s reliance on fossil fuels.
Keynoting last week’s conference was Pete Lopez, Regional Administrator for the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Lopez’s responsibilities include overseeing EPA interests in New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and eight tribal nations.
Prior to joining the EPA, Lopez served as a member of the New York State Assembly.
Audience members asked questions on everything from remediation efforts on South Hill’s Emerson site to downtown’s Gun Hill/Ithaca Falls neighborhood, as well as recovery efforts in Puerto Rico, Lopez’s birthplace.
“The EPA’s important work of protecting human health and the environment is contingent on the fostering of community and government partnerships at the local level,” said Lopez.
“By working together, municipal government and local organizations can more effectively and efficiently address challenges of sustainability that directly impact community wellbeing.”
In short, once again Cornell’s annual town-gown conference reflected the best of collaborative work on some of the most important issues of our era, from urban Buffalo to the North Country and points in between, including Tompkins County.

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East Hill Notes are published the second and fourth Mondays of each month in Tompkins Weekly. Gary Stewart is associate vice president for Community Relations at Cornell University.