I don’t recommend this if you’re driving a car but New Year’s is a great time to look back while you’re moving forward. As I look back over 2009 I can see we’ve made significant progress.

Oak Harbor [1] powered City Hall with “green power.” Altogether, Whidbey Island customers exceeded PSE’s Green Power Challenge [2] by adding 1,017 new green power customers. That’s a 58 percent increase which means that PSE will give us $25,000 for a new solar project.

Project Porchlight recruited over 100 volunteers who went door to door giving away 5,300 energy efficient CFL bulbs in Oak Harbor. Ace Hardware [3] hosted one of PSE’s Rock the Bulb [4] events where 1,260 Oak Harbor households traded incandescent bulbs for over 12,000 new CFLs for free. These bulbs will save over $21 million on energy bills, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions equal to taking over 10,595 cars off the road for a year.

The Puget Sound Starts Here campaign was perfectly timed with the new Oak Harbor Storm Water Ordinance which gives the city some authority to enforce storm water protection measures. A citywide public awareness effort was supported by regional TV, radio ads, and posters from the Puget Sound Partnership. A new street banner, placemats in local restaurants, displays at city hall and a survey included with utility bills conveyed the message. Rain barrels were given away for the top ten survey scores.

Each year, I schedule a new series of monthly Sustainable Living Seminars. This year we’ll offer them at City Hall on the second Tuesday of each month at from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. You can attend a workshop or see it broadcast Island-wide on channel 10. For more information call 279-4762.

• View article as a PDF [5].
• source: Whidbey News-Times [6]