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Monday, October 17, 2011

Environmental Health, Sustainability, and Land Use Planning - A Perfect Trifecta


Come catch a vision of how Environmental Health, Land Use Planning and Sustainability are integrally related.  Learn how a local Environmental Health Division played a significant part in working with Planning Department staff to assure that the local comprehensive land use planning update (LPlan 2040) would have a stronger sustainability focus than in the past.  Environmental Public Health staff were actively involved in the process, including:
  1. Presenting to the Planning Advisory Committee on the relationship between land use planning and public health, with emphasis on air quality, hazardous materials, sustainability, multi-modal transportation, and designing our community to increase physical activity.
  2. Presenting at a Sustainability Town Hall, highlighting how the LPLAN 2040 land use plan would influence Energy & the Environment, Public Health & Safety, Air Quality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions, and Social Connectedness.  These are the key elements of a sustainable community. 
The process to create LPlan 2040 was guided by a citizen advisory committee consisting of members from the City-County Planning Commission and other community representatives. Health staff invited Planning staff to present to the Board of Health on several occasions to educate our Board on the interconnectedness between health and land use planning and sustainability.

Health Department Air Quality staff worked with the Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) Technical Committee on the transportation plan.  As planners determined what the future transportation network could look like, EPA's latest computer modeling software called MOVES (Motor Vehicle Emission Simulator) was used to determine potential air quality impacts.  This model estimated what the emissions of hydrocarbons (VOCs), nitrogen oxides (NOx), carbon monoxide (CO), and particulate matter (PM) as well as greenhouse gases based on the planned future transportation network.

The result was a comprehensive land use plan (LPlan 2040), which clearly described the impacts that land use has on environmental and public health, and how they impact the  sustainability of our community.
Posted by Unknown at 3:45 PM
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