BY EVA MAYS
The Morgantown Municipal Green Team has served as an advisory body to the city council and the city manager since 2007.
The group seeks to guide the city towards ecologically sound policies, programs and development.
Each member of the Green Team provides different expertise, including analyzing and interpreting data, developing eco-friendly plans for the city to follow, completing special projects and carrying out educational opportunities.
“The city has been appreciative to have this volunteer-based source of technical information that serves to improve the wellbeing of Morgantown,” said Mark Brazaitis, a board member of the Green Team since 2016.
The group has had some success since its initiation, including encouraging the city to sign the Paris Agreement, the international treaty that was negotiated at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference near Paris, France. Morgantown City Council voted to adopt and support the environmental goals laid out in the Paris Agreement in 2017.
Energy consumption is an increasing area of concern. Technical experts on the Green Team make recommendations to the city on how municipal facilities can reduce costs or use of fossil fuels, such as by installing LED lighting to replace incandescent bulbs.
“While it ties into saving money, it’s also good for the environment,” said Brazaitis.
In the future, the Green Team hopes to see the city’s maintenance equipment switched from gas-powered to electric, as many other cities have done in recent years. The group also seeks to identify city property that could be outfitted with solar panels, to further reduce Morgantown’s reliance on fossil fuels.
One of the focuses of the Green Team is to support alternate modes of travel to combat the Morgantown-area traffic, which negatively impacts both human moods and the environment.
“We would like to offer people a more green commute,” said Brazaitis. “We have wonderful parks. We need more public parks, and we also need ways of connecting those parks so that people have the option of riding their bikes or walking through a park to get where they need to go, rather than traveling on our narrow, sidewalk-less streets.”
Morgantown has suffered from flooding in recent years, which is thought to be caused by climate change. The Green Team plans to combat this with ecologically sound wastewater management. This would involve several measures, including increasing vegetation, decreasing impermeable surfaces such as parking lots and using rain barrels.
The Green Team hopes to determine the feasibility of implementing a municipal composting facility in Morgantown. Such facilities, which are cropping up throughout the U.S., collect organic solid waste such as food scraps and yard clippings and convert it into compost. In Morgantown, these materials are currently sent to landfills where they emit significant amounts of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas.
The Green Team welcomes new members.
“All you have to do is contact the group through the information on the city’s website and come to a meeting. We’d be delighted to have you as a member or to hear from you about concerns you have relating to environmental issues,” said Brazaitis.
The Green Team’s meetings are at 5:30 p.m. the first Monday of each month and are open to the public. There is time allotted on the agenda for comments from citizens.
Citing COVID-19 concerns, the meetings are currently held on Zoom, but the group may return to in-person meetings. Citizens can get more information about the meetings by emailing mtowngreenteam@gmail or sending a message through the group’s Facebook page found at https://www.facebook.com/MTownGreenTeam
