Sept 25: Sustainability Salon on Preserving Pittsburgh's Forest

As global climate disruption intensifies, more and more people are learning the importance of  biodiversity and natural ecosystems to mitigate climate change -- and for resilience to climate impacts like heat waves, flooding, and landslides.  And we are gaining understanding of the threats to this resilience, both from climate change itself and from unchecked human development.  

Join us for the 116th Sustainability Salon, as we explore the co-benefits of urban trees, threats to Pittsburgh's urban and peri-urban forest, the ins and outs of municipal land designations -- and ways that citizens can influence that process.  The second part of this Urban Forest series will be in February, on Forest Restoration.

This month, there will be a bonus track between 3 and 4, if there’s a critical mass of early folks.  Vivienne Shaffer (former director of the Rachel Carson Homestead, now at the Children’s Museum) has been looking at another challenge to tree preservation involving construction projects (even green infrastructure projects) and street trees.  She’s not available after 4, but offered to lead a discussion about this starting at 3.  

Hart Hagan is an attorney, activist, radio host, and environmental educator in Louisville, Kentucky who thinks a lot about how climate change relates to water and biodiversity.  He's chair of the Louisville chapter of Wild Ones, an organization dedicated to promoting native plants (see below for our own fledgling chapter).  Hart will share insights on the importance and co-benefits of urban trees, especially on steep slopes.  

The Pittsburgh neighborhood of Hazelwood, diverse and hilly, is known for a lot of firsts.  The first Hungarian church, and the first First National Bank, in the U.S.  The modern game of Bingo was invented there.  And fittingly, the oldest residence in Pittsburgh (dating from 1784) is there, too.  That stone house has recently been renovated into a traditional Scottish pub, the Woods House (named for its first resident, John Woods) -- so far, so good! -- but now the same developer that brought about that project wants to take a patch of actual woods, adjacent to the Hazelwood Greenway, and cut down the trees in order to build modular housing, capitalizing on the real-estate boom expected in conjunction with the high-tech R&D facilities starting up in the former J&L Steel Mill No. 19 (originally a WWII munitions plant).  However, Hazelwood has plenty of vacant land, as well as existing housing in need of rehab or rebuilding -- would it make more sense for the city and the developer to direct their attention there, instead?  

Matt Peters, a Hazelwood resident and longtime forest activist, is administrative coordinator and editor for Heartwood, co-founded the Allegheny Defense Project, serves as a local Stormwater Ambassador and Tree Tender, and is Community Gardens Manager for the Hazelwood Initiative, a community development corporation in the neighborhood.  Matt is gathering allies for a campaign to stop this development project, and aims to reform the way that the City deals with its land into the future -- a system-wide assessment of lands and lots held by the City and the Urban Redevelopment Authority, and to help Pittsburgh find ways to meet the goals laid out in its Climate Plan by increasing forest cover (and establishing continuous canopy where possible.  

Tiffany Taulton is adjunct professor of environmental justice at Duquesne University’s Center for Environmental Research and Education, and Director of Community Initiatives for the Hazelwood Initiative.  In February, HI began a planning process for the restoration of the Hazelwood Greenway after receiving a grant from The Trust for Public Land as part of its 10-Minute Walk to a Park campaign.  Administered through the OnePGH Fund, the grant serves both as a tool for increasing equitable access to greenspace and as a pilot program to show how funding public greenways can enhance a community’s climate resilience.  In the context of the COVID crisis, access to high-quality greenspaces for all communities has taken even greater significance in terms of public health.  Tiffany will share the steps that HI and its partners have taken to improve the Hazelwood Greenway and what lies ahead.  

Churchill Borough is a residential community just east of Pittsburgh, and also faces big changes -- this time by Amazon.  The modern-day behemoth hopes to turn the site of a former Westinghouse R&D facility into a 2.9 million square foot distribution warehouse, felling some 1400 mature trees, regrading the hilly campus, destroying wetlands, and eliminating a Native American trail.  The loss of 100 acres of green space to impermeable surfaces will transform the watershed, and huge retaining walls are likely to be unstable.  The warehouse will require hundreds of tractor-trailer trips each day, with attendant noise, traffic congestion, and diesel emissions -- and is surrounded by homes and schools.  A new grassroots organization formed in response to this threat, called Churchill Future.  Churchill resident and activist Sandra Fox will share progress so far, what comes next, and ways you can get involved.

And some good news -- another large parcel in Churchill, the former Churchill Valley Country Club, is being turned into a greenway.  The organization taking the lead is the Allegheny Land Trust, which facilitates the preservation of land (protecting 3300 acres so far, in 33 municipalities).   At the same time, they're working in Garfield to convert a former farm to community green space through a collaborative process.  Alyson Fearon, Senior Director of Community Conservation and Resiliency at ALT, will share what's happening at Healcrest, and talk about ALT's work protecting greenways and green spaces.

On February, we'll continue our walk through the woods and take a look at forest restoration.  

A few other items of note:  

•  Climate Strike!  On September 24th, Sunrise Pittsburgh and lots of other folks are taking to the streets as part of a global march for intersectional climate justice.  Starting in Oakland (Schenley Plaza) and heading downtown to the City-County Building.  Noon to 3 p.m. on Friday the 24th -- more information here! 

•  The big march planned to begin on September 25th from Beaver (where Shell's ethane cracker plant is nearing completion) has been postponed to next year due to COVID concerns.  We'll still be doing a smaller march in October;  if you're interested participating or helping with either, please fill out this form! 

•  On October 7th, the Allegheny County Medical Society will focus its annual Community Impact Gala on childhood asthma, raising funds to support the development of a comprehensive treatment and prevention program for children with asthma in the Mon Valley.  A number of awards will be presented during this virtual event, including yours truly.  Please consider attending, and supporting this worthy cause!  

•  Speaking of climate and air pollution (as we often do), conventional lawn care produces something like 5% of the air pollution in the U.S., as well as considerable greenhouse gas emissions and runoff that pollutes our waterways.  Larger plants, especially natives, would instead sequester carbon, need less maintenance, hold more water in place when it rains, increase biodiversity, and benefit the local ecosystem in many other ways.  Wild Ones is a national organization promoting native plants and environmentally-friendly landscaping practices;  there's a new chapter starting up in our region!  Email Tamara for more information.  

•  We cover a lot of important topics at Sustainability Salons.  If you're looking to get involved in any of them, feel free to connect with me (email with "salon" in the Subject is always a good method) and I can probably find a good match!  I also often post job opportunities on the Resources side of MarensList.  

Talks and discussion will run from 3 p.m. (usually 4 p.m.) to 7:30 or so on Zoom (sadly, no potluck supper these days).  You're welcome to join the call for informal conversation after 3 p.m. (today, about protecting street trees from construction), and we aim to start the main program right around 4.  If you're new to Zoom, you may find my Zoom Reference Guide helpful.  If you RSVP via Eventbrite, you'll receive the Zoom registration link right away.  If you're not already on my Eventbrite list, please email me (maren dot cooke at gmail dot com) with salon in the Subject line to be added -- and let me know how you heard about salons!

For the uninitiated, a Sustainability Salon is an educational forum;  it's a mini-conference;  it's a venue for discussion and debate about important environmental issues;  it's a house party (if there weren't a pandemic) with an environmental theme.  Each month we have featured speakers on various aspects of a particular topic, interspersed with stimulating conversation, lively debate, delectable potluck food and drink, and music-making through the evening (though the potluck and the music are on hiatus during the pandemic, so you're on your own for the delectables).

Past topics have included climate modeling, approaches to pipelines, pipeline hazards, the legacy of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the judiciary and fair elections, consumption, pandemics and air,  election law and activism, air quality and environmental justice, social investment,  local economies, the economics of energy, mutual aid networks, ocean health, the rise of the radical right, the back end of consumption, approaches to activism on fracking & climate, air quality, technology, and citizen science, single-use plastics, election activism, election law, whether to preserve existing nuclear power plants, advanced nuclear technologies, passenger and freight trains, consumption, plastics, and pollution, air quality, solar power, youth activism, greening business, greenwashing, the petrochemical buildout in our region, climate/nature/people, fracking, health, & action, globalization, ecological ethics, community inclusion, air quality monitoring, informal gatherings that turn out to have lots of speakers, getting STEM into Congress, keeping Pittsburgh's water public, Shell's planned petrochemical plant, visualizing air quality, the City of Pittsburgh's sustainability initiatives, fossil energy infrastructure, getting money out of politics, community solar power and the Solarize Allegheny program, the Paris climate negotiations (before, during, and after), air quality (again, with news on the autism connection), reuse (of things and substances), neighborhood-scale food systems, other forms of green community revitalization, solar power, climate change, environmental art, environmental education (Part I & Part II), community mapping projects, environmental journalism, grassroots action, Marcellus shale development and community rights, green building, air quality, health care, more solar power, trees and park stewardship, alternative energy and climate policy, regional watershed issues, fantastic film screenings and discussions (often led by filmmakers) over the winter with films on Food Systems, Climate Adaptation and Mitigation, Plastic Paradise, Rachel Carson and the Power Of One Voice, Triple Divide on fracking, You've Been Trumped and A Dangerous Game, A Fierce Green Fire, Sustainability Pioneers, films on consumption, Living Downstream, Bidder 70, YERT, Gas Rush Stories, and food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, food, and more food (a recurrent theme;  with California running out of water, we'd better gear up to produce a lot more of our own!).

Coronavirus update:   As you know, people in Pittsburgh and around the world are sequestered at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  Social distancing is still the rule for most Americans.  That's a bit of a misnomer, though -- we need physical distancing to flatten the curve, but technology now allows for rich interactions even so!  I believe that community is one of our greatest strengths, so in March as events began to be cancelled, I hosted the first virtual Sustainability Salon via Zoom teleconference -- rather than gathering our usual 50-80 people in a contained space.   It went quite well (even engaging participants from hundreds of miles away), and we're looking forward to June's salon!  Please be sure to RSVP (via email with "salon" in the Subject: line, or via Eventbrite) so you'll receive the sign-on information.  

If you haven't been here before, you may enjoy checking out our roof garden and solar installation (and now apiary!) as well as the many other green and interesting things around our place.  If interested folks are online and everything is working smoothly by around 3:30, perhaps I can conduct a virtual tour.

And if you like to make music or listen to homemade music, think back to our evening sings -- we typically ran the gamut from Irish fiddle tunes to protest songs to the Beatles, and a fun time was had by all.  Folks would bring instruments, and/or pick up one of ours.  Conversations would continue through the evening, as well.  With a virtual event this is less likely to happen, but we can share music by turns, reminisce, chat online, and look forward to the post-COVID era!