Ecocity Cleveland January 1995
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POINT' ·ln$iCle·· PAST THE seedSOf:NT~~~~~~:ovement OF NO. RETURN? o From mastodon.s to maple syrup: ~ The prehistoric landscape ofthe.·Cuyahoga Bioregion o Unfunded mandates are greatly .exaggerated . o S)ripping interestsrequired to help' . testorethe Cuyahoga River o Re-examining the.connections jJetween. sprawl and infrastructure o Bicycle news ' o Bath residentsorgarnze for open space Cleveland needs.regional strategies .. o to stem urban decline Bioregionai Calendar, EGoCity Digest It's taken ·Greater Clevelanders many years to overcome their collective inferiority -.0 complex and begin to call themselves the "Comeback City." So it was hard to listen · GooClWords to David Rusk .when he came to town in December and said that Cleveland may very . well be "past the statistical point of no return. II we. have never.Ie.med; Rusk, the former mayor of Albuquerque, NM, has spent the past few years studying which American cities are succeeding or failing, based on mea~ures of we have forgotten, or poverty and racial segregation. He has found that healthy cities are those with . thafihe environment is the b.sis fot aU life metropolitan governments or other regional approaches for sharing responsibility for and for aU production. urban problems. Failing cities, like Cleveland, have been isolated by their Rather than being an interest competing surrounding suburbs. with other interests for attention, Speaking at the Northeast Ohio Areawide Coordinating Agency and the City Club, Rusk ·said that Cleveland's lIluch-heralded downtown developments--- . it is in reality the playing field Gateway, the Flats, North Coast Harbor~are making it "a great p'lace for a yuppie on,which all interests compete. lawyer to live. II But such developments have not, and will not alone, rev.erse the ...-,Stephen V iederJ1lan city's alarming slide into urban oblivion. Jessie Smith ;Noyes Foundation Continued on p. 8 HOME AT ECOCITY I Mission Too depressing? EcoCity Cleveland is a nonprofit, tax-exempt, educational organization. Through the publication of the "Your stories were so depressing. I felt guilty because this,horrible doom of Ec,oCity Cleveland Journal and other programs, it will destroyed ecosystem is approaching, and I don't have the energy or will to stimulate ecological thinking about the Northeast Ohio region (Cuyahoga Bioregion), nurture an EcoCity help,more than I do ... " So wrote a woman in Geauga County to explain Net\vork among local groups working on urban and why she was not renewing her subscription to EcoCity Cleveland. environmental issues, and promote sustainable ways to 'meet basic human needs for food, shei.ter, ' It was an unusual letter. Most ~f our reader~ renew their subscriptions productive work and stab le commun.ities. and seem to find our stories useful and stimulating. So the woman's Board of Trustees plaihtive tone unnerved me. I could sympathize with her sense of being lll.avid Beach) Director, EcoCity. Cleveland overw'helmed, for we all feel that. But is EcoCity really so depressing? Robert Staib, Cleveland Division of the Environment Phil Star, Center/or Neighborhood Development, CSU Don't we cover a lot of positive Chris Trepal, The Earth Day Coalition things people are doing to protect and restore ecosystems , Advisory Board Deborah Alex·Silunders,.J\1inority Environmental Assoc. in OUf bioregion? And even Thomas Bier, CSU Housing Policy Research Program when we do write about all the JalJ1es Bissell, ·Cleveland Museum ofNatural History Diane Cameron, Natural Resources Defense Council bad stuff, don't we try to point Anne Chaka, Union ofConcerned Scientists the way toward understanding Edith Chase, Ohio Coastal Resource Mgt. Project Lee DeAng~lis, Environmental Careers Organizatiop and solutions? Joho Debo, Cuyahoga Valley National Recreation Area We try to. 'And this issue is a good example. It deals with some ofthe Lois Epstein, Environmenial Defense .Fund Stuart Greenberg, Environmental Health Watch most depressing trends in Greater Cleveland-growing poverty and racial Lynne Hannah, Northeast Ohio Greens isolation as the inner city is left behind by sprawling suburbs. But it also Soreo Hansen, interGraphic Engineering Ser.vices Kim Hill, Sierra Club points the way toward a new movement-a network of anti-sprawl ' Robert Jaquay, Cuyahoga County Planning Commission constituencies- that could push for regional solutions. David Knapp, United Labor Agency "I ,can only vote," the woman went on in her, note. "Please cover Susan Lacy. Churches Acting Together for Change and Hope (CATCH) people/politicians/programs that you either discover, devise or develop for Craig Limpach, Wildlife biologist which I could vote." Elaine Marsh. Friends ofthe Crooked River Mary O'Shea, The Food Co-op Okay, here are some questions for politicians about the key issues facing Nonnan Robbins, CW,RU Program for the Environment our region ..Will they support some form of regional governance? Will they Jerome Walcott. Commission on Catholic Community Action speak up for the creation of low- and moderate income housing in all Roberta Wendel. Friends o/the Black Riv~r communities? Will they support tax-base sharing between wealthy and poor Organizations listed for identification only. cities? Will they work to establish urbim growth boundaries to steer Articles in EcoCity Cleveland do not necessarily reflect the views of bo~d members, ol~ough thcrc's a good chance they do. development into existing urban areas? Will they develop regional plan's to • protect open space, watersheds and significant natural areas? Will they The EcoCity Cleveland Journal is published monthly at change our transportation system to reduce the need to drive cars? 2841 Scarborough Road, Cleveland Heights, Oli 44118, . Cuyahoga Bioregion. telephone/fax (216) 932·3007. Unlcss Our former subscriber may not fmd many local poliiic,ians willing to otherwise noted, all articles and photographs are by David Beach. Submissions from others are welcome, but please call champion such issues. After aU, they aren't elected to represent the region fi(st. We cannot be resp,onsible for unsolicited materials. Copy as a whole. They generally have more parochial concerns. deadline is the 15th of each month . Readers are encouraged to use the information in EcoCily But I hope she ,can fmd th~ time and energy to ask th'e questions. And I Cleveland. Just call for permission to reprint articles. After you're finished with your copy the newsletler, pass it on to hope the questions inspire her to gefinvolved in one of the many .of friends or recycle it. [fyou are a regular reader, please organizations----our civil society- working for cbange ~ubscribe. Supported by grants from the George Gund and Nord around the bioregion. Our collective future depends on it Family foundatioris, subscripti ons and individual donations. - David Beach Printed at Orange Blossom Press in Cleveland on ·100% post-Consumer waste recycled paper using soy~baseo inks. Editor © 1995 Ecodty Cleveland 2 EcoCiTy ClEVElANd 0 January 1995 COSTS AND BENEFITS '''Unfunded mandates" greatly exaggerated As the new Republican majority in complaints about unfunded mandates are Sarokin's figures are based on a new Washington sets about to dismantle many greatly exaggerated. "The conventional analysis of a 1992 report on of the environmental protections' wisdom is all wrong," says the report's environmental spending by Ohio achieved during the past 25 years, one of author, David Sarokin. "Local municipalities (a report·coordinated by . their slogans is I!unfund~d mandates." It's communities afe paying tens of dollars the city of Columbus' and published by the notion that Washington requires per person, not thousands of dollars ~s is the Ohio Municipal League). This Ohio costly environmental improvements at often cited. Overall , the costs are very report has been a principal source of cost the state and local levels without . reasonable given the improvements in infonmition in debates on unfunded providing funds to pay for them, and thus environmental quality thathave mandates and has fueled the national creates unwarranted burdens. occurred." movement to revoke' such mandates. But a new report by the Washington The new analysis of based Public Data Project says that information reveals: • The Ohio report is not based . on actual spending, but on projected costs to the year CPR for the 200 i . The Ohio cities were essentially guessing.what their future costs would be . Cuyahoga • Estimates were based on worst-case scenarios, and It's the dead zone of the Cuyahoga impacts, and so far their response bas been probably bear little relationship to River-the stagnant, dredged, navigation less than enthusiastic. They are saying, actual levels of spending . channel that winds 5.6 miles through the "You want us to pay how much to save The Ohio report made costs appear Flats of Clevehmd. During part of the year some fish?!" higher by calculatin g them for the water in this stretch of the riveibas According to Ohio EPA's Bob Wysenslii, households and per decade, instead little or no oxygen to support aquatic life. "11's the same response we used to get from of for indivduals per year. Thus, a industrial' dischargers in the early days of Multiple sewer overflows dump or&anic modest cost of $25 per person per pollution whiclireduces dissolved oxygen the Clean Water Act. They're not year for cleaner water could be levels,.and the physical configuration of accustomed to enforcement." translated to the much more daunting the deep channel permits little aeration. To gerthe attention ofthe shippers and figure of $1 ,000 per household per 'During the past two years, the Ohio EPA the Army Corps ofEngineers (after more and members of the Cuyahoga River than a year of fruitless meetings), Ohio decade. Remedial Action Plan (RAP) have EPA is playing its trump card. It is Not all Ohio cities participating in analyzed this probl~m with computerized 'withholding permission for the Corps' the Ohio Report shared the high models of water flow and chemical annual Cuyahoga dredging project until the degree of concern about unfunded changes.