GreenWheaton Honored With Civic Assocation of the Year Award

The environmental group GreenWheaton was honored last week as "Civic Association of the Year" by the for its work in trying to make Wheaton a more environmentally friendly and inviting place.

"Getting this award is really quite flattering," said GreenWheaton's president, Beth Chaisson, who accepted the award from the MCCAB on Wednesday at the 27th annual Wheaton & Kensington Chamber of Commerce Community Awards Banquet.

L. Blaine Charak, the MCCAB chairman who presented the award, said in a statement that GreenWheaton was honored for its "dedication to applying environmentally friendly building and planning techniques to downtown Wheaton and surrounding neighborhoods."

GreenWheaton was cited for multiple achievements, including planting a Rainscape Garden in the Wheaton Triangle, advocating for pro-environmentadditions to the Wheaton Sector Plan, and trying to bring "green" elements to the new Wheaton Volunteer Rescue Squad building on Georgia Avenue.

Chaisson welcomed the award as something that could help enhance the group's public profile at an important time, just as it is in the process of trying to become a nonprofit organization, a designation aimed at helping it raise funding to advance its goals.

Since it was formed about two years ago, GreenWheaton, which has a core group of six to eight very active members and over 60 members on its Internet group site, has been working as a joint subcommittee of the Wheaton Redevelopment Advisory Committee and the Wheaton Urban District Advisory Committee.

Its mandate was to help those committees put pro-environmental building and planning techniques in place in downtown Wheaton and the surrounding neighborhoods. Focusing on public education and outreach to create more environmentally conscious consumers in Wheaton, GreenWheaton is hoping to improve air and water quality and the connection between downtown and its neighborhoods, make the downtown more accessible for pedestrians and bicyclists, and support local businesses.

But while GreenWheaton has had successes, members also found that their advocacy was restricted by the group's inability to raise funding, and by its role as a subcommittee working within a multi-layered, slow-moving governmental structure.

As a nonprofit, it hopes to have a bigger impact because it will be able to solicit tax-deductible donations and be a stronger, outside voice for "green" policies in Wheaton, said Chaisson.

"If you have money, you can hire people and do projects," she said. "We do have a good voice now. Obviously it could improve, and hopefully it will with the nonprofit."

The group may take organizational ideas from similar groups such as GreenBethesda and GreenSilver Spring, and is now in the process of seeking people to serve on its board of directors.

Leah Haygood, a member, said the organization differs from other pro-environment groups that are often seen as anti-development because GreenWheaton is working in an area that desperately needs more green space and other environmental improvements. New development is actually welcomed as a means of getting better practices in place, she said.

 "Downtown Wheaton is so poor in terms of concrete and stormwater and lack of trees and green space that, really, it is only through redevelopment that we can get it into a different kind of model," Haygood said.

 Several members of GreenWheaton stressed that some of the downtown's new "green" aspects should be visible  -- in other words, going beyond energy efficiencies in buildings -- so Wheaton can serve as a model for good environmental planning in a downtown space. In this regard, Wheaton has a real opportunity, said Haygood, because other redeveloped downtowns, including Rockville and Silver Spring, have not stressed environmentalism as part of their makeovers.

Some options for visibly green improvements include planting more trees along walkways; creating a "green" wall on a new parking or other structure; erecting large recycling bins for bottles and cans, which now frequently spill over from regular trash cans; collecting and filtering rainwater on site; and installing QR barcodes at points of interest so passersby can tie into web sites via cell phones to learn about what they are seeing.

"We look forward to Wheaton as an urban greening oasis and model," said member Kathleen Michels.

Ed Murtagh, a member, stressed that the group hoped downtown would have "a lot more vegetation" when it is redone but that landscaping also be functional, helping, for instance, with stormwater collection or in creating habitat for pollinators.

"We want to make sure the landscaping does more than look pretty," he said.

GreenWheaton also hopes to have impact beyond the downtown redevelopment.

Another priority, members said, is to put into practice some of the ideas put forth by University of Maryland graduate students, who a couple of years ago produced a study on making Wheaton's restaurants more environmentally friendly. That would involve educating restaurant operators on options such as reducing their costs of waste hauling through recycling or composting, and providing information to consumers about "green" restaurants.