Educating Local Governments and Communities about the Environment

AWARE Colorado

What is AWARE Colorado?
Quite simply, it's a statewide program to educate local decision makers about the impacts of land use choices on water quality. 

Why was the program started?
To help protect Colorado's water and natural resources from polluted runoff through innovative land use strategies.

How does AWARE do it?
Education. Education. Education. AWARE provides planners with research-based, non-advocacy material so they can better consider water quality impacts when making land use decisions.

http://www.awarecolorado.org

Water Protection Toolkit for Local Officials
 

More Resoucres...

This Is Smart Growth

This publication shows how communities can turn their visions, values, and aspirations into reality, using smart growth techniques to improve the quality of development. Thirty-two Smart Growth Network partners - national organizations representing housing, environmental, community design and development, public health, transportation, local government, and other interests - have approved or endorsed This Is Smart Growth.

http://www.epa.gov/smart
growth/tisg.htm

Getting to Smart Growth: 100 Policies for Implementation

The policies and guidelines presented in this primer have proven successful in communities across the United States, and range from formal legislative or regulatory efforts to informal approaches, plans, and programs.

http://www.epa.gov/smar
tgrowth/getting_to_sg2.htm#1

Getting to Smart Growth II: 100 More Policies for Implementation

This primer provides states and communities with policy options that can be mixed and matched to fit local circumstances, visions, and values, and highlights steps that the private sector can take to encourage more livable communities. This document follows the format of the first volume, but with an entirely new set of 100 policies and more examples and case studies.

http://www.epa.gov/smart
growth/getting_to_sg2.htm#1

What Is Smart Growth? A Smart Growth Fact Sheet

A brief summary of smart growth basics, including the ten smart growth principles.
- Fact Sheet

http://www.epa.gov/smart
growth/pdf/whtissg4v2.pdf

(2 pp, 101 K, About PDF Files)

Protecting Water Resources with Higher-Density Development

Helps communities better understand the impacts of higher and lower density development on water resources. The findings indicate that low-density development may not always be the preferred strategy for protecting water resources.

http://www.epa.gov/smart
growth/water_density.htm

Growing Toward More Efficient Water Use: Linking Development, Infrastructure, and Drinking Water Policies

Focuses on the relationships among development patterns, water use, and the cost of water delivery, and includes policy options for states, localities, and utilities that directly reduce the cost and demand for water while indirectly promoting smarter growth.

http://www.epa.gov/smart
growth/water_efficiency.htm

Protecting Water Resources with Smart Growth

Growth and development can have adverse effects on water resources, including loss of woodlands, meadowlands, wetlands and increased polluted run-off. Increases in impermeable cover and vehicle traffic also can negatively impact water quality and quantity. To address these and other impacts, local governments are developing smarter approaches to growth. They are looking for, and using, policies and tools that enhance existing neighborhoods, improve schools, protect drinking water, and provide attractive housing and transportation choices.

http://www.epa.gov/smart
growth/water_resource.htm

Schools for Successful Communities: An Element of Smart Growth

Explains why and how communities can employ smart growth planning principles to build schools that better serve and support students, staff, parents, and the entire community.

http://www.epa.gov/smart
growth/schools.htm

Teaching Smart Growth at Colleges and Universities

Colleges and universities can help local governments with technical ability, and intellectual and institutional resources. In particular, faculty members, including adjunct faculty, in applied programs often can organize courses that give students hands-on experience in helping communities meet their environmental, economic, and other goals.

http://www.epa.gov/smart
growth/courses/

Solving Environmental Problems Through Collaboration: A Case Study of the Sustainable Environment for Quality of Life

Summary of how this successful multi-party organization works to resolve environmental concerns related to rapid growth in the Carolinas.

http://www.epa.gov/inno
vation/collaboration/seql.pdf

(PDF 2pp, About PDF Files)

Choosing Our Community's Future: A Citizen's Guide to Getting the Most Out of New Development

Focuses on the visioning and planning efforts that set the stage for smarter growth and how citizens can engage and make suggestions for better growth and development through collaborative stakeholder meetings and workshops.

http://www.epa.gov/smart
growth/communitys_future.htm

Creating Great Neighborhoods: Density in Your Community

Highlights nine community-led efforts to create vibrant neighborhoods through density, discusses the connections between smart growth and density, and introduces design principles to ensure that density becomes a community asset.

http://www.epa.gov/smart
growth/density.htm

Green Building

A

s the environmental impact of buildings becomes more apparent, a new field called green building is gaining momentum. Green or sustainable building is the practice of creating healthier and more resource-efficient models of construction, renovation, operation, maintenance, and demolition. Research and experience increasingly demonstrate that when buildings are designed and operated with their lifecycle impacts in mind, they can provide great environmental, economic, and social benefits.

http://www.epa.gov/greenbuilding/

Community Cultural and the Environment: A Guide to Understanding a Sense of Place

The Guide offers a process and set of tools for defining and understanding the human dimension of an environmental issue.
It gives leaders in government agencies and in nongovernmental organizations and tribes (such as directors of watershed groups,
public health officials, outreach coordinators, environmental educators, and environmental justice workers) technical tools for more effectively working with the public on environmental protection efforts.

http://www.epa.gov/CARE
/library/community_culture.pdf

(PDF 293 pp, 10mb, About PDF Files)