Champions of Change Blog

Ecolibrium

Jodi Slick is being honored as a Champion of Change for her efforts as a Community Resilience Leader.

Disasters are indiscriminate foes. For individuals, disasters don’t care if you have been diagnosed with cancer, are underwater on your mortgage, or plan to retire next week. For communities, disasters don’t wait until you’re ready, and they don’t come with an instruction manual.

I’ve witnessed the pain and frustration of disaster victims and recognize the years of difficult rebuilding ahead in our communities. If we are to build resilient communities, we need design thinking, integrated strategies, and strong partnerships to both mitigate the causes and adapt to the effects of climate change.

Climate change is real. The costs are high. The time to invest in resiliency is now.

My climate resiliency story began in 2008 when I attended an emergency meeting of community organizations to discuss the “heat or eat” dilemma many in our community faced during the winter. With an old housing stock, a very cold climate and an ever expanding energy affordability gap, it seemed that just triaging resources for the upcoming winter wasn’t enough.

I realized we needed to address the current emergency and also create integrated solutions that would make us more resilient to future energy price fluctuations and economic downturns. At that time, I was Executive Director of a social enterprise that led the implementation of green standards in low-income homes, and we were working on a national demonstration project that incorporated solar thermal systems into deep energy retrofits of foreclosed and blighted properties.

As much as I took pride in the work we were doing, I was bothered by the fact that our impact would be ten times greater if we were also increasing investments in weatherization and insulation for leaky homes. That fall, I assembled a cross-sector collaborative that created the Duluth Energy Efficiency Program (DEEP) and in 2011 founded Ecolibrium3 to administer DEEP and develop other community sustainability initiatives.

Ecolibrium3’s DEEP program helps residents of all-income levels by assessing their homes, prioritizing improvements, bundling available financial resources, contracting with trained and qualified companies, and conducting quality assurance through our one-stop shop. In our first two years, we helped more than 600 households complete efficiency upgrades, saving an average of $646 annually, and reducing GHG emissions by four tons per home.  Over 65 percent of our participants complete advanced energy efficiency measures. DEEP is nationally recognized as an innovative, community-scale model for residential energy efficiency.

Building the DEEP process, however, is only the first part in our two-part story of community climate resiliency. The second part began after a 500-year rain event flooded the City of Duluth and seven counties in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin last summer. Ecolibrium3 had no experience in disaster recovery, but it was clear to me that the processes, capacity and cross-sector partnerships we built to bring energy efficiency to scale were the type of resources a community would need to rebuild. Without a FEMA Individual Assistance Declaration, and the infrastructure and funding that would have come with it, a local solution to provide recovery infrastructure became even more important.

When the Ordean Foundation chose to invest in flood recovery for low-income households, we rapidly retooled DEEP to meet these needs. Ecolibrium3 began reconstruction management weeks ahead of federal and state programs with a two-step process designed to dovetail with other disaster assistance. First, we helped families meet immediate winter preparedness needs of electricity, hot water and energy efficient furnaces using a bridge loan while residents waited for SBA or state assistance.

Once traditional disaster assistance was received and the bridge loan paid back, we reinvested the funds as a grant to complete advanced energy efficiency and flood mitigation measures that could not be covered by the disaster loans. Ecolibrium3’s flood-recovery model established standards for rebuilding that emphasizes energy efficiency and is saving some households more than $2,000 a year on heating costs. In addition, applying our third-party contract management system and extensive list of vetted contractors resulted in quicker rebuilding while protecting residents from post-disaster fraud.

Through Ecolibrium3’s work, I’ve learned that disaster recovery is a long and messy process. We still have families in need and it is essential that we find additional resources to help our region recover. It is equally important that we continue to invest in resilience by building community capacity and stronger systems before disasters strike.

Our climate mitigation and adaptation work would not have been possible without the dedication of the Ecolibrium3 staff and board, collaboration with the City of Duluth, support from the Ordean Foundation, Duluth Superior Area Community Foundation, Duluth Local Initiatives Support Corporation, US EPA Climate Showcase Communities, US DOE, MN Division of Energy Resources, MN Housing Finance Agency, and Freshwater Future, as well as the strong utility conservation programs available in our community through Minnesota Power and Comfort Systems.

Jodi Slick is Founder and CEO of Ecolibrium3.

Hope and Sustainability for Our Coastal Communities

Rebecca Templeton is being honored as a Champion of Change for her efforts as a Community Resilience Leader.

I grew up in a bayou community in south Louisiana where so much of daily life centers around one of our nation’s most productive estuaries. I remember taking shelter as a child in my grandparent’s home as a hurricane approached our community. My maw maw (grandmother) sat me down and explained why I was safe and told me about the lines of protection we had from the approaching hurricane.

She told me that before the hurricane reached our home, it first had to travel over the barrier islands, which would slow down the hurricane. She then told me that the marsh was like a sponge that soaked up water and energy from the hurricane. Only after the hurricane passed over these parts of our environment would it reach us as a weaker version of what it was.

While I may not have understood concepts that mean so much to our lives today like climate change, sea level rise, and storm surge, I knew, even from an early age, that a healthy environment helped to protect me and my family.

Fast forward to today, when climate change, sea level rise, and subsidence causes Louisiana to lose 16 square miles of wetlands, our natural flood protection, every year. This is roughly a football field every 38 minutes, much of it in my beloved Terrebonne Parish. According to NOAA scientists, this is not just the highest rate of land loss in the United States but possibly the globe. All of this is further complicated by living in an area facing enormous social vulnerability due to high poverty, where families have limited means to rebuild after a disaster.

We continue to experience stronger and more frequent extreme weather in southern Louisiana, as evidenced by Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav, Ike and Isaac. Our community has not only had to find ways to rebuild lives, businesses, and homes, but also to adapt to a more dangerous and vulnerable future. More homes in my community have flooded from what were once considered weak hurricanes and tropical storms.

When I was a young girl, I remember the vastness of the marsh land behind our family home. Now there are just clumps of marsh surrounded by water. It is evident that the habitat is changing. Where we once caught bass, a freshwater fish, my son now catches red fish, a saltwater fish. The environment has changed. There is less of it around me, and the impact of this is huge. These are big challenges, each too large to tackle alone. They require collective action as a community. 

As our wetlands vanish, so do our culture, communities, livelihoods, and the natural hurricane storm protection provided by our coast. It is vital to acknowledge that the impacts of coastal land loss are occurring not because we live in or moved to an inherently flawed environmental system, but because our environment has been altered and manipulated. We are suffering the consequences of global issues like climate change and national issues like Mississippi River flood protection and dredging of canals for energy and commerce.

We founded Bayou Grace Community Services to engage both our local and national community to advocate for solutions. We want our communities to move from vulnerability and possible extinction to survival, resilience and sustainability. Louisiana coastal land loss affects not only our local communities and our state. It is an environmental issue that impacts the entire nation.

I joined Bayou Grace in 2009 and now serve as its Executive Director. After Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Bayou Grace was formed with the mission to restore the Barataria-Terrebonne Estuary by mobilizing participants in restorative projects, advocacy, and education. Bayou Grace participants develop a complex understanding of Louisiana coastal land loss and how restoration benefits the entire nation.

Bayou Grace’s Louisiana Estuary Experience, a co-operative five day volunteer program with the Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program hosts over 250 volunteers annually. Volunteers aid in the restoration of our environment and participate in classroom/laboratory education at the Louisiana University Marine Consortium. Program participants educate others and advocate for restoration after involvement with Bayou Grace.

Volunteers also engage with local community members at community dinners via our Building Community Resilience through Community Dinners project. These community dinners are an opportunity for local residents to engage with government and NGO coastal restoration decision makers and leaders. As one local resident writes:

"…. I am a lifelong resident of Dulac, Louisiana. … [Bayou Grace] keeps our Bayou community informed on the many issues concerning coastal restoration and protection through their community dinners. I and other community people feel more informed on issues affecting our Bayou than ever before through attending these dinners."

Both local residents and national volunteers help create advocacy tools through our Why Should We Save Coastal Louisiana? photo project. Since 2010, over 800 local and national participants have been photographed with their answers to the project question: “Why should we save coastal Louisiana?” Many of these advocacy photos have been exhibited at art studios and museums, and have been used to create a project companion book, a book we now work to get into the hands of government and agency leaders who can have an impact on decisions made about Louisiana coastal restoration.

Bayou Grace and other coastal partners participate on Oxfam America’s Coastal Communities Initiative Campaign. We attend parish, state and federal meetings and conferences and educational workshops. This, combined with outreach, enables Bayou Grace to gain community, scientific and academic perspectives on land loss and restoration and to develop advocacy talking points in the best interest of our communities.

I am deeply honored to be selected as a Community Resilience Leader Champion of Change. This award represents not only my work, but the work of every out-of-state volunteer, every staff member and every community resident who has chosen to become engaged in the issue of Louisiana coastal land loss and restoration.

My hope is that all of our work will lead to thoughtful, holistic restoration and protection measures that balance the needs of our local community, their livelihoods and our environment. The lessons we learn in coastal Louisiana are a chance for our nation to prepare and learn how to tackle these challenges as more and more coastal communities are impacted by a changing climate and rising seas.

Rebecca Templeton is the Executive Director of Bayou Grace Community Services.