Countdown to 1.5 Episode 3 – ‘Time for Green Infrastructure’
Local Activists’ take on stormwater management Pt. 1
Welcome to the third episode of "Countdown to 1.5," a podcast about the environmental justice movement. For this audio report, Public Square's engagement editor, Esther Paul, spoke to Nicole Miller, co-chair of Newark DIG (Doing Infrastructure Green). The organization which started in 2013 is a coalition of community organizers using Green Infrastructure to improve resiliency to flooding and quality of life for Newark residents.
This story was produced as part of the Northern New Jersey Media Collaborative Project "Stormwater Matters," a project focusing on stormwater management solutions in the state.
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
Narrator: PODCAST TRANSCRIPT
Narrator: In the US, scientists first sounded the alarm in 1988, when climatologist James Hansen testified before Congress about the dangers of climate change. And since then, humans have emitted higher levels of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which has resulted in rising global temperatures, extreme weather, and disappearing lands. We now face a dire goal to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels – a goal that seems unattainable due to the tremendous political will and curbing of fossil fuel emissions required on the part of all nations.
Will we stand to meet the challenge? To begin answering this question, 'Countdown to 1.5' zooms into the impact of global warming at the community level.
I'm your host, Esther Paul. In this episode, ‘Time for Green Infrastruture’—Local activists’ take on stormwater management, PSA will explore the impact of flooding in three low wealth and overburdened communities that are pushing their municipalities to mitigate flooding— Newark, Paterson and Camden. We’ll hear from Nicole Miller, co-chair of Newark DIG, which stands for Doing Infrastructure Green. The organization which started in 2013 works on stormwater issues.
Nicole Miller: Newark DIG is a coalition of partners. We have partners from all over the spectrum and we have community partners which are really the backbone of the organization. It really started kind of like a municipal action team where the municipality really wanted to bring together diverse stakeholders on a particular topic, this topic being stormwater, and really work together to bring different groups together so that we could try to combat the city's combined sewer overflow problem. And that water unfortunately goes untreated, oftentimes into the Passaic River or the Elizabeth River. Or it could in cases, like Hurricane Ida, and even less volatile storms, it could backup into the streets or into people's homes and basements. And this is very common, it happens a lot of times in the East and South ward. And these are issues that are really unacceptable. And we've decided to work together to try to combat them.
Narrator: How do you combat them?
Miller: Mostly using green infrastructure as our first line of defense because it has so many benefits but also advocating for other water infrastructure upgrades.
Narrator: What is Green Infrastructure?
Miller: So really what they are is they're engineered solutions that mimic nature, ultimately to slow down water.
Narrator: Does Newark DIG come under the city government or do you partner with Newark?
Miller: We are actually separate which puts us in a great position. We are separate from the city government but we have partnership with the city government. They can't do everything by themselves. And we can't do things without the municipality. So really working together, ideally, we can maximize, everybody's effectiveness.
Narrator: What about your staff? Are they paid or all volunteer?
Miller: We are all volunteers and that's been the case for a long time—all 10 years. So thankfully, we have, because of grant opportunities, been able to provide stipends to assist with some of our Green Infrastructure Reformers. So that's one of our groups that go out and do work in the community.
Narrator: What about resident involvement?
Miller: Our residents make up our GI Reform team. And they also are our ambassadors. So we have a great team of people who are out on the street who we've been able to engage with and teach and educate about those issues and the power to say, “Hey, you see this problem? Come and let us know and we will let the folks at the municipality know.” And it has worked out well because we know that they have turned around, I've gotten reports from people who took pictures of the water sewer team after a report with me about an issue saying “Oh, I saw them cleaning up. Oh, I saw this being taken care of.” And so that's the kind of relationship that we want the community to have with their water and sewer department. Often these kinds of systems are under the ground, they go unnoticed unless something has gone wrong. And so we really want people to make sure that they're part of the solution, keeping them maintained.
Narrator: Awesome. Can you tell me about any of your current projects?
Miller: Actually we just got funded by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection to do a project by the City Plex 12. We’re calling it the Fairmont Green Streets program. And so our first plan was to do something on the City Plex property itself, we just need to coordinate that with the property owner, but then along the green streets, there's a vacant property across from that building. There's a school just adjacent to that. There's low line areas that frequently flood and it's right at a major intersection at Springfield Avenue and Bergen. And so we want, the plan is to do green streets program. We got funded for $1.2 million, actually to do that. And if we can have this big sort of demonstration project, we can draw a lot of attention to green infrastructure, its benefits and its usefulness throughout the city.
Narrator: Well, thank you for joining us, Nicole. PSA will publish a three part series beginning in Newark on the role of local community activists in implementing green infrastructure in stormwater management. Until next time, this is your host, Esther, signing off. On behalf of everyone here at Public Square Amplified, thanks for checking out the “Countdown to 1.5” podcast.
Credits
Music:
“Rise and Shine” by Audiobinger is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
“State of Mind” by Audiobinger is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Produced by Esther Paul