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Kootenay governing crew sold on summit

Thirteen members of local governments put heads together in Castlegar
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Trail Councillor Gord DeRosa feels overall health could improve with certain energy consumption cuts.



It was a meeting arranged a couple of months back and Castlegar had been chosen as the location.A group of 13 gathered to try their luck at reaching consensus on a number of green topics. The event was called the West Kootenay Climate Leadership Summit, held on Tuesday, March 27.

Rising to the summit was a group of 13 comprised of mayors, councillors and regional district directors from across the West Kootenay.The mandate of the summit was to "establish a climate action peer network, share challenges, inspire others and determine ways to work together on their common goals of reducing energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and ultimately saving money."

"It was definitely worthwhile," recalled Castlegar Mayor Lawrence Chernoff. "We talked about energy and we talked about waste and water." He added that time was spent during the three hour session discussing options for larger communities helping their smaller counterparts. Group purchasing of infrastructure items, increasing economies of scale was also looked at according to the Castlegar mayor.

A group-buying plan was touted for the retrofitting of streetlights, for example, switching to more efficient LED models.Those attending related their experiences in regard to waste and water issues.Silverton councillor Leah Main reported that "The Village of Silverton has developed the highly successful electronic waste recycling on its own initiative because it needed to be done."

Trail councillor Gord DeRosa brought up the point of how trimming power use could help in more ways than one."From automatic door openers to escalators," said DeRosa, "we're all out of shape."The host was quite pleased in describing the the summit, and Lawrence Chernoff indicated on March 30 that the momentum would soon be maintained.   "We're going to meet again at the AKBLG (Association of Kootenay Boundary Local Governments) coming up in April," he concluded.