Melissa Checker, who not long ago wrote a great article on green collar job creation in the South Bronx, has another bang up piece in the Gotham Gazette, this time about another of our favorite NYC environmental orgs: WEACT. Here is but a glimpse:
In 2006 Mayor Michael Bloomberg invited WEACT founder, Peggy Shepherd to participate on his Sustainability Advisory Board and help draft PlaNYC2030. Shepherd and her organization saw a golden opportunity to ensure that the plan addressed justice issues.
One example is the city’s Million Trees Program. According to Corbin Mark, WEACT has “been very focused on … trying to make sure we get as many of those million trees as possible planted in northern Manhattan. … The more trees we can get planted – and hopefully they grow quick and fast and big and tall — the more we are able to offset the heat effect that we have going.”
Another of PlaNYC’s strategies to offset the “urban heat island effect” is to encourage green roofs, roofs that are at least partially covered with vegetation to absorb storm water, reflect sunlight and insulate the building. To launch that effort, WEACT is raising funds from private donors for its “From Tar Beach to Green Roofs” initiative to create green roofs all along 125th Street. It plans to start with some of the public buildings, including two schools where students will be involved in the design process.
WEACT also intends to capitalize on PlaNYC2030’s attention to greening buildings through retrofitting. Here again, the plan offers the group an opportunity to further long-standing goals of educating Harlemites about indoor toxins such as lead paint, mold and rat poison.
But seriously–get thee over there and read the whole thing. WEACT is one of those orgs that every New Yorker should know about, but too few do.
[Photo from WEACT]