While cities too often bypass forward thinking–or any thinking– in their quest to improve their economies and communities, there are some refreshing exceptions. In Rochester, where for many decades there existed (like in most of the rest of the country) near total disconnect about the correlation between old housing stock, sprawl, poverty, students unready or unable to learn, and crime, there emerged several years ago an amazing coalition of government, non-profits, agencies, and individuals that went directly at the deep roots of the community’s ills.
In 2002, the Coalition to Prevent Lead Poisoning brought together a diverse group that set a very ambitious goal for their collaborative work: eliminating childhood lead poisoning in Monroe County by 2010. Each member of the Coalition understood clearly all the tragic consequences childhood lead poisoning was causing in children and the community (including permanent brain damage and learning disabilities, impulse control problems and subsequent violent behavior, titanically expensive problems in the economic, education, health, safety systems, etc.). They also understood that such a pervasive scourge could be solved by getting the community to prioritize and activate the technological fixes for the problem, which are so simple, despite the overall problem being so huge.
Now it’s 2010, and the Coalition to Prevent Lead Poisoning and the responsive community have reduced childhood lead poisoning in Monroe County by an astonishing 80%. This accomplishment earned the Coalition a prestigious EPA Environmental Justice Achievement Award for 2009. There’s still a ways to go, but not only has the Coalition to Prevent Lead Poisoning showed that a community can quickly and effectively vanquish an “impossible” problem; it has saved thousands of lives and possibly a whole community as well.
You should definitely read more about this. Click the links!
http://www.urmc.rochester.edu/news/story/index.cfm?id=2710
http://www.epa.gov/compliance/resources/publications/ej/awards/2009/cplp.pdf
nd all the other myriad goops of life.