The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has created an Office of Sustainable Communities to encourage communities to take an integrated approach in making environmental, housing and transportation decisions.
The initiative is one of three steps the EPA is taking to support community-level sustainability measures
EPA also launched a pilot grant program in New York, Maryland and California to guide the use of clean water funding. The Pilot Technical Assistance Program for Sustainable Communities will encourage states to use their Clean Water State Revolving Fund loan program to better support communities that adopt sustainable strategies, like transit-oriented, mixed-use development.
And a second pilot program aims to clean up and redevelop contaminated sites, known as brownfield sites, in coordination with communities’ efforts to develop public transportation and affordable housing.
Together, EPA, HUD, and DOT have selected five pilot sites across the country where there is a convergence of public transit and the need for affordable housing. Cleaning and reusing this land and providing new housing choices is expected to create green jobs and new economic opportunities.
The five sites selected for the Sustainable Communities Partnership Pilots are the Fairmount Line in Boston; the Smart Growth Redevelopment District in Indianapolis; the La Alma/South Lincoln Park neighborhood in Denver; the Riverfront Crossings District in Iowa City, Iowa; and the Westside Affordable Housing Transit-Oriented Development in National City, Calif.
The initiatives are part of the work EPA is doing with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Department of Transportation through the Interagency Partnership for Sustainable Communities. The partnership is focused on ensuring that housing and transportation goals are met while simultaneously protecting the environment, promoting equitable development, and helping to address the challenges of climate change.
In a separate release, EPA said 35 midwest communities have joined its Community Climate Change Initiative. Launched in 2009, the Initiative calls on communities to join one of six EPA climate change partnership programs: Energy Star Challenge, WasteWise, WaterSense, Combined Heat and Power, Green Power Partnership, and Landfill Methane Outreach Program.
These programs offer free resources to help communities address climate change while protecting human health and the environment, enhancing local economies, and reducing energy costs.
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