Policy
Edgewater Environmental Coalition
Policy Platform
This below description reflects the Edgewater Environmental Coalition’s policy platform document to serve as a community advocate on environmental issues. It represents what we stand for to inform the positions and efforts the organization supports as well as what we want our elected officials to do as economy and community benefits are inextricably connected to these environmental actions.
Read our comprehensive document here, our focus areas here, and our coalition topics here.
CONSERVE AND EXPAND NATURAL AREAS
Principles: Restore, maintain, and expand native habitat
Practices: Continue Beach Stewardship programs, tending, seeding and planting.
Protect wildlife and native habitats.
Extend Parkways for Pollinators.
Build the Last Four Miles of the lakeshore trail.
MAINTAIN AND IMPROVE WATER QUALITY FOR ALL
Principles: Protect the lake. Ensure clean potable water. Deal responsibly with wastewater and stormwater runoff.
Practices: Protect beachfront using strategies that mimic natural systems. Eliminate lead water pipes.
ENSURE GOOD AIR QUALITY
Principles: Improve air quality by changing those practices that degrade it, both indoors and outdoors
Practices: Promote transit, walking and biking.
Control pollution generators, ensuring environmental justice and permitting. Mitigate point sources: cars, trucks and gas leaf blowers. Promote best practices in indoor air quality.
EXPAND GREEN WASTE TREATMENT
Principles: Reduce, re-use, recycle, compost
Practices: Make sustainable waste management widely accessible. Coordinate with the municipal waste strategy.
Promote and support local waste diversion projects by business and nonprofits
INCREASE GREEN ENERGY
Principles: Hasten the clean energy economy. Decarbonize.
Practices: Support Chicago Climate Action Plan.Increase neighborhood wind, solar and geothermal. Retrofit and insulate; create tool sharing initiatives - for renters and owners. Democratize ComEd and Rein in IL Gas Utility Overspending.
Principles and Practices
for the Natural Environment
MAKE NEIGHBORHOODS GREEN
Principle: Maximize trees, flowers and art
Practices: Continue to plant trees and flowers,
Expand Parkways for Pollinators, Support Edgewater Garden. Control idling vehicles. Install permeable pavement.
PRIORITIZE STREETS FOR PEOPLE
Principle: Make cars lowest priority in transport hierarchy
Practices: Maintain sidewalks,
Expand and enforce bike paths; discourage idling vehicles. Expand traffic calming, especially on busiest roads
PROMOTE GOOD URBAN DESIGN
Principle: Maintain Edgewater's historical character
Practices: Continue existing pattern, avoiding sprawl on commercial corridors, and encouraging infill. Create inviting community spaces, indoors and out. Engage the community in zoning and funding decisions. Increase public art.
RETROFIT AND BUILD GREEN
Principles: Respect Edgewater’s land & community by building for the future and respecting the past
Practices: Use recycled and green new materials. Replace lead pipes. Pursue funding to support green retrofit initiatives. Reduce percent of household income spent on energy bills.
MAKE EDGEWATER'S ECONOMY GREEN
Principle: Grow a model sustainable economy.
Practices: Promote companies that make green products,
Use recycled and local materials. Build solar parking lots. Encourage businesses to use sustainable practices. Support green job creation/ training by establishing pilot green job projects.
SOLIDARITY
Principle: Following the lead of BIPOC and EJ communities, acknowledge the wrongs of the past and seek to right them in the future.
SUSTAIN A JUST AND TOLERANT NEIGHBORHOOD
Principle: Promote tolerance, care and justice for all
KEEP EDGEWATER SAFE
Principle: Support economic and social justice to increase peace and reduce crime
GROW A BETTER FUTURE
Principle: Invest in education at all levels to strengthen the next generation
MAINTAIN THE HEALTH OF THE COMMUNITY
Principle: Ensure that all our neighbors have access to physical and mental health services
CHAMPION ECONOMIC EQUALITY
Principle: Make certain that all people have secure incomes and decent housing
GOOD GOVERNANCE, TRANSPARENCY, AND ACCOUNTABILITY
Principle: Collaborating openly within the organization and ensuring elected reps and representatives of the community engage thoroughly and openly.
Principles and Practices
for the
Human
Environment
Principles and Practices
for the
Built Environment
Listing of government policy at the city, state, and federal levels
that meaningfully impacts the environmental sustainability of Edgewater.
Chicago Policy
Holistic climate and economic legislation that phases out fossil fuels and promotes renewables in the energy sector, extends energy efficiency and green building programs, supports disadvantaged communities affected by fossil fuels and the transition from them, and more.
Year:
2021
Level:
state
Status:
adopted
EEC position:
support
Establishes a Board bringing together agency heads, arborists, community leaders, and elected officials to coordinate efforts and discuss ways to sustain and grow the City’s tree canopy. It will identify opportunities to supplement public funds with private donations, increase public education, and recommend needed changes to City laws.
Year:
2021
Level:
city
Status:
passed
EEC position:
support
Resolution declaring a state of climate emergency that threatens the health and well-being of Chicago's inhabitants and environment, resolving to allocate funds to promote urgent climate action, and calling on state, federal, and international governments to follow suit.
Year:
2020
Level:
city
Status:
adopted
EEC position:
support
Executive Order adding Illinois to the U.S. Climate Alliance and committing it to advance the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement. Assigns IL-EPA as the lead agency to coordinate the state's climate policies, including reducing GHG emissions by 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025.
Year:
2019
Level:
state
Status:
signed
EEC position:
n/a