Want to make complex sustainable initiatives easy? Create a simple guide as a solution.

Philly has seen success for its Green City, Clean Waters initiatives, and there are initiatives across the river to make GSI more accessible.

New Jersey Future recently released a new Green Infrastructure Municipal Toolkit to provide information on how towns and cities can plan, implement and sustain green stormwater infrastructure.

Why is this project a priority?

According to the NJ Future website,

For the past few years, New Jersey Future has worked with a few municipalities to integrate green infrastructure into local planning, policies, regulations, and programs. Albert Kelly, mayor of the City of Bridgeton and immediate past president of the New Jersey League of Municipalities, urges his fellow elected officials to take green infrastructure seriously. “You ignore problems like pollution and flooding at your peril,” he said. “Working with community partners, you can make real, visible progress. Your constituents can see the work, and they appreciate that you’re paying attention to problems that affect their quality of life.”

The Green Infrastructure Municipal Toolkit features practical advice and extensive resources organized in three basic categories – plan, implement and sustain – to help users navigate the site and approach the overall topic in a systematic fashion. While the primary audience for the toolkit is local elected officials, other important audiences include planning board, environmental commission and green team members, municipal engineers, planners, administrators, and public works superintendents, and local environmental advocates.

The toolkit should prove useful to municipalities just getting started with green infrastructure, as well as to those already familiar with GI. Direct links to Sustainable Jersey actions illustrate a variety of ways that planning for and installing green infrastructure can translate to Sustainable Jersey points toward certification. The toolkit was developed in consultation with the Green Infrastructure Municipal Toolkit Advisory Committee, a group of more than 20 municipal leaders and experts who gave generously of their knowledge, insight and time.

See the toolkit and learn more information over on NJfuture.org.

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Julie Hancher is Editor-in-Chief of Green Philly, sharing her expertise of all things sustainable in the city of brotherly love. She enjoys long walks in the park with local beer and greening her travels, cooking & cat, Sir Floofus Drake. View all posts by Julie Hancher