Greening America’s Capitals

Henry Brewer

Green Project Resource Center

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Region 6

Background

  • In 2010, EPA launched its Greening America’s Capitals program, a new technical assistance program to help state capital cities design more sustainable communities.
  • The goal of Greening America’s Capitals is to help state capitals develop a vision of distinctive, environmentally friendly neighborhoods that incorporate innovative green building and green infrastructure to create sustainability models for other cities.
  • EPA sent letters of invitation to mayors of all 50 state capitals, plus D.C., and received 38 proposals.
  • This assistance was a new project of the Partnership for Sustainable Communities between EPA, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (also known as HUD) and the U.S. Department of Transportation (also known as DOT).
  • Proposals were reviewed by EPA, HUD and DOT staff.
  • In September 2010, EPA announced Little Rock, AR as one of five capitals selected to receive this technical assistance.
  • The main focus of each Greening America’s Capitals project is a 3-day onsite design charrette which includes public meetings and focus sessions with community, private and public stakeholders.
  • Technical assistance from Regional EPA, HUD and DOT staff should be sought prior and during the charrette in order to ensure grant and loan program eligibility requirements are met; and to facilitate discussions with state counterparts.
  • The final deliverable for each community is a highly conceptual report that cities and states can use to showcase and implement design concepts.
  • Following the charrette, EPA Region 6 Water Quality Protection Division (SRF, §319 and GI programs) and the Brownfields Program hosted a webinar with the City of Little Rock to discuss potential EPA-State resources which the city may be eligible and interested in applying for. This helped Little Rock secure a $1.6 million NPS grant ($900K Federal and $700K State/Local Match) and Brownfields Revolving Loan Fund (RLF) grants.This led to an extra $100 million of leveraged investment in downtown Little Rock.
  • Clearly, Little Rock, Arkansas has done an outstanding job of implementing the Greening America’s Capitals charrette design concepts.
  • I should emphasize the charrette must include environmental qualitybenefits (vs just focusing on quantity or anecdotal benefits) in order to be eligible to apply for EPA grants and loans.
  • Most, if not all, of these grant and loan programsare state-run. Therefore, cities will have to work with their respective states in order to apply for these limited funds.
  • At this time I’d like to introduce Dr. Marsha Guffey with the City of Little Rock, Arkansas.