The City of Trenton, in partnership with Isles, is undertaking the CARE project as part of the Trenton Green Initiative. By encouraging broad public participation, CARE empowers the community to identify, define, prioritize, and take action on the environmental issues that impact them the most.
This project, funded by a US EPA CARE Level 1 grant, adds an important grassroots element to the discussion about Trenton’s environmental health. Trenton’s CARE project kicked off in May 2009 and, based on current funding, will wrap up in March 2010 with the completion of an action plan to address the environmental health issues identified by the community as of the greatest concern. The action plan will be used to apply for a CARE Level 2 grant, with the hopes of securing funding to continue the CARE project and implement the action plan. However, even without CARE Level 2 funding, the goal of this project is to build on the partnerships developed during the CARE process in order to take action on the environmental health issues facing the city.
Since May 2009, a significant amount of work has been completed under the CARE project.
- Community Working Group: Isles convened a Community Working Group (CWG) to provide grassroots leadership for the CARE project. The CWG includes 25 community members who are community leaders, are members of neighborhood civic associations, sit on advisory boards to the City, are professionals working in the environmental health or related fields, and/or are members of City government.
- Public Meetings: The CWG held a series of public meetings during October, November, and December 2009 to solicit input from the community about the environmental health issues they are most concerned about. These meetings were like fact-finding missions; there was no agenda other than to hear what the community had to say. Meetings were held in each ward of the City, and one meeting was conducted in Spanish. The meetings revealed that the Trenton-wide community is largely concerned about similar issues – abandoned buildings, litter, traffic, air pollution, and water pollution, to name a few of the issues most often repeated.
- Surveys: Surveys in both English and Spanish were distributed around the city, at City Hall, and online to allow people who could not attend the meetings to give their input.
- Environmental Health Issues: Responses gathered during the public meetings and from surveys were collated into the Trenton CARE environmental health issues list. The CWG grouped these issues into 23 main categories of issues. For instance, concern about particulate matter caused by diesel exhaust was included in the category of Air Pollution; concern about stormwater runoff was included in the category of Water Pollution.
- Issue Profiles: Of the 23 main issue categories, the 12 that were raised most often by the community and/or that the CWG deemed could most readily be addressed were chosen to be studied in depth. The CWG is creating issue profiles, or white papers, about each of these 12 issue categories that will define the issue and present how it effects Trenton. This task is currently ongoing. The issue profiles will be finalized on January 8th and communicated to the public shortly thereafter. It is important to note that the CWG and the CARE team recognized that not all issues can be addressed at once. All of the community input that was given has been acknowledged and is appreciated, even if not all of the issues can be addressed through this process or at this time.
Next steps for the project are critical, as we look ahead to the implementation phase.
- Issue Prioritization: The issue profiles are intended to help the public understand the severity of the environmental health issues they identified so that they can make an informed decision about which issues should be prioritized for action. On January 30th, the CWG will hold a city-wide public meeting at Mercer County Community College, Kearney Hall, to work with the public to rank the 12 issues. For more information or to register for the meeting, call Isles at 609-341-4732 or visit www.trentoncare.com.
- Action Plan: With community priorities in place, the CWG will develop an action plan for addressing those issues identified as the highest priorities.
- CARE Level 2: The action plan will form the basis for the City’s CARE Level 2 grant application, which will be submitted in March 2010. Continued CARE funding will be sought to support implementation of the action plan. The result of this work will be self-sustaining, community based partnerships that will continue to improve human health and local environments now and into the future.
For more information or if you would like to get involved with Trenton’s CARE project please call Isles at 609-341-4732 or visit the Trenton CARE website at www.trentoncare.com.
