What is "self sustainability"?

This op-ed post below comes from Alan Willard, a life-long resident of the Blue Mountain Area and an active participant in several community revitalization and conservation efforts. He's also the most active community member when it comes to using this blog, so he has inspired us all to set up some new "community bloggers".

What is a community blogger? Someone from the Blue Mountain area (Glencoe, Wilseyville, West Point, Railroad Flat) who contributes a post to this electronic message board/public forum on a regular basis to share news, views, announcements, and more.

During the Up from the UnderStory project (Feb-June 2008), there were 9 youth who were community bloggers. But they've moved on, as is usual when a youth media project wraps up! So now we have the space, the know how, and the ability to use this medium to continue dialog and action when it comes to community revitalization.

Interested in being a community blogger? If so, respond by clicking on the "comments" link below and tell me some more! If you've never blogged, we can show you how. It's actually easier than you might think!

Here's Alan's piece. Let us know what YOU think about sustainability and community blogging!


What is "self sustainability"?

I guess it’s not so much that we don’t know what it is, it’s that we fear what it might mean. In order to be self sustainable it may be true that we will have to be happy with less stuff. We may have to be happy with less traveling in our family car. It may help to get better at growing a garden in the summer and winter. It maybe an idea to learn what a pressure cooker is all about. We may have to relearn why the sewing machine was out all the time in our parents or grandparents house. Self sustainable might mean buying expensive clothes not because they’re the latest fashion but because they’re well made work clothes made by local people who are trying to make a living. After running a sewing machine myself for the last few years I know I wouldn’t want to sell a pair of jeans that I made for much less than $50.00, and I sure as hell would be repairing them until it’s no longer possible.

In addition, working to design communities to be compact, with employment, stores and bus or other public transportation within walking or biking distance will help everyone just from an efficiency point of view. Working to create bike friendly roadways in our rural area is a challenge but a necessary piece of the puzzle. Zoning needs to take into account these issues. Mixed use zoning including residential, commercial, and light industry can go a long way toward reducing commutes and energy consumption. Mixed residential including lofts, apartments, duplexes, and individual homes all equally interspersed will prevent gentrification and keep taxes lower for everyone. Building departments, contractors, and owners with all eyes focused on efficiency, low energy use, green design, and easy maintenance will help support a structure of self reliance. In that same vane very efficient water design, such as composting toilets, gray water systems, drip systems and rain water catchment will help all of us to cut down on water bills and the need for extensive and very expensive reworking of public water systems. Include solar hot water, passive solar, and PV systems on and in structures including homes and business’s and as we go down the road our communities will be net producers of energy there by bringing that cost down as well. You can see the trend. Reducing the overall cost of living and keeping our dollars withing our community as much as possible is all part of self reliance.

Energy, especially fuel for our vehicles and machinery, is one of the most compelling factors in a goal of self reliance. Finding ways to make energy locally in a grass roots way will be a huge challenge that has to be addressed first and foremost in my mind by utilizing agricultural and other bio waste for creating bio fuels such as vegetable oil, bio diesel, and ethanol. Let me repeat, fuel from organic bye-product. We want our agriculture to concentrate on food production using what’s left over to produce fuel. One example might be thinning excess brush and small trees for fire safety along our roads and around vulnerable structures, chipping this material, then using it to make wood alcohol for fuel. After that process make the remaining material into pellets for pellet stoves. I have no illusions that any community can make all the fuel it needs in this way. Because we can’t fill all our fuel needs doesn’t mean we shouldn’t create a fuel production infrastructure to help cut down on our reliance. I don’t see it as an all or nothing situation. The more efficient our equipment is and the less driving we do the closer we can come to filling a good percentage our fuel and other energy needs.

Self sustainable may mean working with community organizations to create child and elder care. Having the ability to deal with youth in a pro-active way will be essential to any self reliant community. Dysfunction is a part of all communities that is often manifested in teen and preteen behavior. A youth center that can deal with all aspects of youth, family and community interaction could be at the epicenter of a vibrant, healthy and inspired citizenry. By the same token a local elder center that can deal with helping our elders take care of themselves and handle those hard to do chores and other issues will help close our care giving circle. Homelessness is a little talked about issue in our area but is with us. With foreclosures and the general economic downturn in our and many other communities managing it on the local level will become integral to a goal of self reliance.

Local economies that depend on many sources of employment from many different kinds of local small business will always be a challenge and supporting our local business’s, especially food production, will be essential to self-sustainability. Balancing this need with maintaining the value of our natural environment will have to be in the forefront of any planning process.

Our local, rural forest environment and the watershed protected and maintained by that forest is our life blood and needs to be jealously guarded. As a forest interface area it is our responsibility to do what we can to address the issue of global warming by preventing deforestation. Part of being self reliant is to take on this obligation giving us the opportunity to say to the world that we are not going through our lives with our eyes closed to the devastation going on in our back yard.

Another aspect to a self reliant community may be a decision by the citizens to recognize the contributions of various non-profit organization to the well being of the community as a whole and agree to help pay to keep those organizations viable. Volunteer fire departments, youth centers, elder centers, theaters and the arts, parks and youth sports fail without financial support. Self sustaining towns self tax in order to keep these services going.

Of course all of this is an opinion. I’m sure I’ve left out details and I welcome other points of view....lets talk.