Sustainable Development with a Local Focus: Sustainable Londonderry


Sustainable Development with a Local Focus: Sustainable Londonderry	.
Peter C. Lowitt, AICP	Author Info

Abstract

Sustainable Londonderry is the story of a community with three superfund sites, five orchards, two interstate exits and a regional airport and how the theme of sustainable development weaves these disparate elements together. The end result includes an Ecological Industrial Park, the municipality participating in ISO 14000 training and efforts to preserve the communities original sustainable economic development base, its agriculture.

Londonderry, New Hampshire

Londonderry is a suburbanizing community of 22,000 located in Southern New Hampshire, just 40 miles north of Boston. Chartered in 1722, Londonderry grew from a sleepy agricultural community of 2000 in 1960 to its present size when interstate 93 was built in the early 1960s. Londonderry's agricultural heritage came under assault as one of the fastest growing communities in New Hampshire during the past three decades. Rapid uncontrolled growth has brought its share of problems to this region. Malls sprawl where apple orchards once grew. Town infrastructure such as schools, police and fire have been striving to "catch-up" yet are not properly scaled to population size. Today the community continues to grapple with growth related issues. The Chinese character for crisis also represents opportunity and the community is poised to harness the potential offered by its two interstate exits, its role as host of the rapidly expanding Manchester Regional Airport, and its infrastructure investments which make it among the largest fully serviced industrially zoned areas in Southern New Hampshire.

Lesson's learned

Londonderry had three superfund sites (Tinkham dump site, Auburn Road Site, and the Radio Beacon site). With no sales or income taxes in New Hampshire, property taxes have had to bear the brunt of paying for cleaning up these sites. Citizens have spent upwards of $13 million to correct these problems. Having experienced the environmental and economic impact of the negative sides of development , residents are now mobilizing to preserve the remaining agricultural heritage and promote appropriate and well- planned development. A number of initiatives resulted from these lessons which were recently recognized by the State of New Hampshire with the award of the first ever Governor's Municipal Pollution Prevention Award.

SWAC

The efforts of the Solid Waste Advisory Committee (SWAC) are geared towards promoting source reduction in homes and businesses. Residents are educated on how to reduce waste at the source through shopping to reduce packaging, reuse of materials, backyard composting, Londonderry's recycling program and educating on household hazardous waste (HHW) to promote non-toxic alternatives.

The newest SWAC program is the Master Recycler program. Volunteers from the community receive training in five topics, waste reduction, recycling processes, composting and HHW with a final session on how to provide community outreach. Each Master Recycler then receives a Travel Box containing resources such as a composting display, samples of recycled products, non-toxic cleaners and informational brochures to distribute. The Master Recyclers then uses the Travel Box and is invited to residents homes to educate at Home Eco-parties. A host will open his/her home to the Master Recycler and invite members of the neighborhood to attend. A checklist will then get the residents thinking about how they can change their habits to generate less waste and to choose non-toxic rather than toxic products. This could be a simple as using a cloth bag at the supermarket or borrowing a tool from a neighbor rather than buying one. Evaluations are completed one month after the Eco-party to continuously manage and make effective changes in the program.

The SWAC also offers a municipal composting program to promote backyard composting. The Town offers compost bins at wholesale, provides plans for making your own, and distributes information on vermicomposting. The Londonderry Drop Off Center also provides free composting facilities for Londonderry residents for their yard wastes.

The SWAC is also supporting a Recycling Consortium for Londonderry businesses through the Londonderry Chamber of Commerce and WasteCap of New Hampshire. The consortium will help small businesses who often have difficulty implementing a successful recycling program due to low volume of materials, lack of storage space or inadequate access to recycling markets.

Londonderry also promotes a "buy recycled" procurement policy to promote the reuse of recycled materials. Londonderrys Buried Treasure Waste Reduction Guide is made entirely of recycled content and in order to reduce waste is compiled in a three ring binder to make updates and additions without republishing. The Town departments purchase recycled paper, and the SWAC is promoting reuse through the sale of shopping bags bearing the "Londonderry Recycles" made from a recycled PET at wholesale.

DPED

The Department of Planning and Economic Development has spearheaded a number of sustainable development initiatives. The 1995 Town of Londonderry Orchard and Open Space Preservation Program and the 1997 Town of Londonderry Master Plan have put into place a number of programs and funding mechanisms to preserve the communities original sustainable economic base, its agriculture. These programs include dedication of current use penalty taxes towards the purchase of the communities preservation priorities as listed in the above referenced plans (in its two years of operation this program has raised over $250,000); designation of the roads bordering four orchards in the center of town as a State of New Hampshire Scenic and Cultural Byway, known as the Apple Way, and an accompanying signage program; new cluster and back lot development ordinances which penalize development in areas of special interest as identified in the master plan and reward the use of appropriate development in sensitive areas. The Town has successfully applied for funding from the Department of Agriculture's Farms for the Future Program to purchase development rights to some of our orchards and Town Meeting has voted to set aside $750,000 to serve as matching funds to leverage other grants and gifts for this purpose.

Our new growth management ordinance measures whether or not the community is maintaining a sustainable growth rate, one commensurate with the communities' ability to provide the public facilities necessary to support our growth. Londonderry was one of the first communities in Southern New Hampshire to adopt a comprehensive impact fee program to help fund these needed facilities. In addition to these programs the Department has initiated the development of an ecological industrial park with a private sector partner. This, in turn, has lead to the community being selected by EPA as one of nine governmental entities to participate in an ISO 14000 training program. Londonderry hopes to serve as a model for other communities contemplating ISO 14000 training and certification. Another Londonderry innovation is the creation of a Transportation Management Association in conjunction with the City of Manchester to serve airport area businesses transportation needs and lessen congestion on local streets. In an area with 3% unemployment the community has used this organization as an economic development tool to attract businesses to the area while ensuring them that their employees can make the transition to their new location.

Ecological Industrial Park

In 1993 the Town acquired the unbuilt later phase of an existing industrial park for failure to pay back taxes (100+ acres). The site is adjacent to an existing company, Stonyfield Farms Yogurt, which enjoys a well deserved reputation for socially and ecologically responsible business practices. In early 1995 the Town was approached by Stonyfield for assistance in locating a plastics recycling plant on our property which could use Stonyfield's grey water to clean its plastic. Recognizing a great idea, the Town and Stonyfield began to investigate this concept where one firm's waste stream is another firms raw materials. The more we learned, the more intrigued we became and Town and Stonyfield hired the Conway School of Landscape Design to develop a concept plan to develop the site as an Ecological Industrial Park (March, 1996). An advisory board was formed in Summer of that same year and a vision statement developed that fall. The park is currently under a Purchase and Sale agreement form a private developer to buy and develop as an ecological industrial park.

EIP: A Model of Sustainable Development

Eco-Industrial Parks offer a new paradigm for an antiquated system. There is mounting concern that the traditional linear system of industrial processes whereby resource based inputs are mined, processed and dumped in concentrated form into the air, water and soil, threatens future generations. The linear model is based on the assumption that resources are limitless and "waste" an inevitable and acceptable consequence. Although there is great disagreement as to the earth's carrying capacity and resource base, most will agree that neither is limitless. Applying the awareness of finite resources and the concern for providing for the needs of future generations has led to a new paradigm of a cyclical industrial system whereby industrial processes model natural ecosystems. Resource efficiency, eliminating the concept of waste by turning it into food for another part of the system, and functioning on current solar gain are integral principles of industrial ecology.

Environmental and cost benefits to industrial systems, operating under this new cyclical ecological approach include: reduction in virgin material input, reduction in pollution (output), increased systemic energy efficiency, reduced systemic energy use, reduction in volumes and costs of waste, and increase in amounts and types of process outputs that have market value.1 Put another way, industrial systems operating under the EIP concept will result in the reduction and elimination of air, water and soil pollution, solid and hazardous waste and decreased mining of the Earth's resources, as well as cost savings.

The Vision

The Stonyfield Londonderry EIP is evolving out of a deep understanding of the principle of sustainability. The EIP Vision Statement (1996) states, "The Eco-Park recognizes as its primary function developing systems and processes which minimize the impact of industry and business on the environment, improve the economic performance of the member companies and strengthen the local economy. Through modeling the Park's industrial systems on natural ecosystems, decreased environmental impact will be realized." The vision statement identifies six key principles: sharing a common mission through long-term partnerships, accountability, striving for continuous improvement and innovation, land stewardship, serving the local community, and serving one another.

Covenants

The Town and the EIP Advisory Board made a conscious decision to utilize covenants as an enforcement tool for assuring that the park is developed as an ecological industrial park. The use of existing tools and existing zoning is designed to make the park easily replicable for use as a model. Covenants are a commonly used vehicle for privately regulating business and industrial parks. The EIP adds an ecological element to this traditional business sector tool. The covenants mandate that all EIP tenants develop an Environmental Management System, track resource use, set environmental performance goals, perform third party ecological audits, and report progress to the Park Association ( a self management board to be composed of park tenants, the developer, town, citizen and environmental representatives). Practices that will be incorporated into the covenants affect all media including standards for decreasing the business' impact on air, water, and soil, ecological auditing for continuous environmental improvement, environmental goal setting, input and output management and sharing, inter-firm collaboration, energy efficiency, water conservation, product stewardship, environmental reporting, stakeholder accountability, facility design and material use, Design For the Environment, and restorative activities. The Park management structure enforces adherence to the legally binding covenants to assure continued compliance in fulfilling the mission of the EIP and protecting the site from environmental degradation. With the park under a Purchase and Sale agreement with a private sector developer the advisory board has required the developer as a condition of the P&S to review the Town's draft covenants and provide new covenants that are both ecologically and economically efficient and acceptable to the advisory board. It is hoped that this 'market' testing should make for a more viable EIP concept.

Stakeholder Involvement

The attached chart (Figure 1) illustrates the numerous linkages developed by the community and its advisory board. This project represents a hitherto unprecedented alliance of business, community, academic and environmental interests in the State of New Hampshire.

Evaluating Success

The bottom line will be EIP business' performance. An audit based analysis of the companies economic and environmental bottom line will be provided on a regular basis and will be used to measure success. The Town set a goal of two new tenants by the end of 1998 and is well on its way to achieving that goal. Our other goals include being a successful model for other communities, realizing that the first eco-park will probably not be as good as the second. Londonderry is committed to initiating the process and beginning to develop a more sustainable tax base.

Sustainable Londonderry

Public relation firms and marketers sell their product by telling a story. Just think about those adds on TV. The State of New Hampshire has undertaken a new marketing program entitled, "New Hampshire, we have a story to tell". Londonderry's story is about developing market niche in the world wide market place. It is about a community learning hard lessons and resolving not to let it happen again. It is about listening to what a community wants - clean industry- and working to provide it.

Footnotes

1 Gertler, Nicholas, Industrial Ecosystems: Developing Sustainable Industrial Structures, 1995. Mr. Gertler is a member of the EIP advisory board.

Peter C. Lowitt, AICP
Director of Planning and Economic Development
Town of Londonderry, New Hampshire