By John Burgeson, Connecticut Post, Bridgeport
Mar. 6--BRIDGEPORT -- Mayor Bill Finch on Friday took the wraps off a major environmental and economic "greenprint" initiative, which aims to get the city and its residents on the road to environmental sustainability by 2020.
At the same time, Finch announced that the Burroughs-Saden Building, the main branch of the Bridgeport Public Library that dates back to 1927, will get a $3.03 million energy-conserving retrofit that will include new windows, boilers, a "green" roof, air-conditioning systems and other features designed to enhance energy efficiency.
The money would come mostly from "energy-performance contracts" in which the city would enter into an agreement to improve efficiency in which the improvements are paid over time, typically 10 years, through the savings on energy bills. Other money for the project would come from a federal Energy Block Grant and the United Illuminating Co.'s Conservation Fund. The library project might began as early as this summer, the mayor said.
"This will save taxpayer money and will reduce our carbon footprint," Finch said in unveiling his 44-page "BGreen2020" initiative, which includes everything from getting storm runoff out of the sanitary sewer system to promoting urban farming.
Other highlights of the BGreen 2020 plan include:
Making sustainability part of the school curriculum.
Establish green building standards.
Create pocket parks and community gardens on blighted, vacant lots.
Improve waterfront access for city residents.
Develop initiatives to boost mass-transit use
Get the city's residents on board with efforts to recycle, save energy and reduce storm runoff with the use of rain barrels.
But the most important facet of the wide-ranging BGreen plan, the mayor said, is the emphasis on developing a new economy centered on green businesses and training of so-called "green collar" workers, or those who would work in the various parts of the energy-conserving and alternative energy industries.
The BGreen 2020 report paints a grim picture of Bridgeport -- and an even less appealing view of what the future might hold if nothing is done.
It points out, for example, that the Connecticut's heavy reliance on property taxes to raise revenue for schools and other expenses is a model that doesn't work for Bridgeport because of the city's tiny 16.5-square-mile footprint -- half the size of the typical suburban town -- combined with the fact that 33 percent of properties in the city are tax-exempt.
Jobs have been on a slow, steady decline for decades, and there are only 45,000 jobs for the city's 76,000 workers.
The city is also peppered with 85 so-called brownfield sites that would require expensive environmental cleanup if they were to be developed. Most of these are lots on which factories once stood before the era of environmental regulation. Another 208 lots have leaking underground storage tanks -- called LUSTs in the trade.
Rising sea levels caused by global warming are also having effects already on the Park City's shoreline, and these will only get worse. The report estimates that in another 10 years, tides will run 5.1 to 8.3 inches higher than they do today. By 2080, these figures will jump to 11.2 to 35.5 inches.
Poverty is also rampant. Average household income in Bridgeport is below $40,000, about half of the average for all of Fairfield County. And the people who do have jobs often work in places that don't offer health insurance.
Finch said that changing the way the state is organized politically, with its 169 separate municipalities "all doing their own thing," needs to be changed, with a far greater emphasis on regional government for both economic and ecological reasons.
Finally, Finch said that the city could easily absorb another 25,000 residents and "significantly more industry," which would, in essence return Bridgeport to its glory days of the 1940s and 1950s.
"Bridgeport can grow sustainably within the existing grid," the mayor said. He pointed to the success Portland, Oregon, has had with its environmental-oriented efforts, noting that Bridgeport could replicate much of that success, too, if it goes green.
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