How does a candidate for Mayor respond to environmental issues? By promising to erect an air filter at the city limits? By forbidding pollution of White River by Hamilton county residents? Most environmental problems just don’t lend themselves to local solutions. To make matters worse, scientific debate rages over the causes…
How does a candidate for Mayor respond to environmental issues? By promising to erect an air filter at the city limits? By forbidding pollution of White River by Hamilton county residents? Most environmental problems just don’t lend themselves to local solutions. To make matters worse, scientific debate rages over the causes of pollution and the efficacy of proposed solutions, often making action and inaction equally problematic.
That said, there are a number of (relatively)non-controversial steps the next Mayor can take to improve the environment we share:
- Urban sprawl and inadequate mass transit were recognized as environmental problems in 1978, when the city adopted a policy encouraging development where the infrastructure was already in place. The next Mayor needs to take that growth policy seriously, and to develop innovative incentives for so-called "smart" growth.
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- Composition of the Air Pollution Board should be periodically reviewed,
to insure a fair balance between pro-environment and pro-economic development forces.
- Incentives should be provided for hooking up to the sewer system.
Nearly a third of Marion county homeowners are on septic systems.
- The overflow from combination sewers–those containing both sewage and
stormwater–has been recognized as a local environmental problem for over thirty years. It is time to address it.
- It is also time to get serious about recycling. While the mass burn
facility needs adequate trash to fuel its operations, and that need limits what the city can do to some extent, we can and should do more to encourage recycling.
- It isn’t glamorous, but code enforcement remains a potent municipal tool to reduce environmental hazards and unsafe living conditions, from faulty furnace emissions to airborne asbestos. Other cities have expanded their code enforcement activities and upgraded the educational and technical requirements for staff positions; early reports suggest a substantial environmental return on those modest investments.
- Our most troubling local environmental issue is without doubt the widespread presence of lead in the center city. Nuvo Newsweekly has devoted considerable coverage to this issue lately, and its conclusions are largely confirmed by officials at the Board of Health and environmental experts at IUPUI. Childhood lead poisoning leads to numerous problems, most notably mental retardation. Even in less severe cases, a child’s cognitive abilities may suffer irreversable damage. Local health officials have made valiant efforts to educate center city residents about the danger, forming partnerships with neighborhood and community organizations to raise awareness, but their resources simply have not been adequate to the task.
The cost of eliminating lead is high, but the cost of further inaction would be much higher: continuing school failures, escalating public health costs, and a widening gap between the quality of life of the poor and everybody else.
Maybe we can’t control acid rain or even the effects of el Nino, but when you begin thinking about it, there’s plenty for the next Mayor to do.