By JAN McLAUGHLIN
BG Independent News
The city’s 300-page sustainability plan took two years to write. Now Bowling Green officials are trying to decide which bite-size pieces should be tackled first.
Monday was the first meeting this year of City Council’s Sustainability Committee, made up of chairperson Bill Herald, Kathleen Dennis and Mark Hollenbach.
The committee heard from three citizens suggesting their priorities, and was pleasantly surprised that their recommendations were similar and jibed with council’s sustainability priorities set for 2026.
Jim Evans, a Bowling Green geologist who worked on the city’s Climate Action and Resiliency Improvement Plan, encouraged council to focus on mitigation efforts involving energy and water, plus five climate threats of urban flooding, droughts, tornadoes, winter storms, and heat waves. Mitigation can prevent a crisis from happening, or at least reduce its effect or duration, he said.
Evans suggested the three top priorities for council to consider are to:
• Promote having a back-up water supply (Lake Erie or a municipal well field). The immediate need is an engineering study of the feasibility of connecting to Perrysburg, Rossford, or Oregon through the Northwestern Water and Sewer District pipeline distribution system, including the capacity of pipelines and pump stations.
• Promote a back-up power supply using a “distributed (virtual) power plant” approach where energy is collected by rooftop solar (residents and businesses), stored in battery storage units, and accessible to municipal utilities through demand-response agreements and smart electrical connections. “I firmly believe Bowling Green needs to promote rooftop solar,” he said.
• Establish resiliency centers (cooling centers or warming centers) with appropriate capacity, supplies, equipment (such as generators), and assigned staffing. This information has to be public knowledge, he said, because in a true crisis people need to know what to do and where to go when lives are at stake. “You cannot hold information until the last minute,” Evans said.
Next to speak was David J. Neuendorff, who acknowledged that some city officials may think “Jim Evans is a pain.” But Neuendorff said the city is lucky to have someone with Evans’ knowledge.
Neuendorff shared Evans’ priorities of connecting with other public water systems, hardening the city’s electric power, and providing resiliency centers for city residents. The Climate Action and Resiliency Improvement Plan was made to be used, he stressed.
“Unless you do something with it, it’s meaningless,” he said.
Joe DeMare was next, and added his support for making Bowling Green’s electric grid more resilient by encouraging more solar power in the city.
“The City of Bowling Green keeps taking opportunities and turning them into liabilities,” DeMare said, referring to his ongoing battle with the city about utility fees for rooftop solar users. He suggested that council use its authority to pass legislation making it illegal for the city to “penalize solar power with extra fees.”
Dennis was pleased to hear the citizen suggested priorities aligned with City Council’s goals.
“I feel that the city is starting to address some of these concerns already,” such as the plans underway to create a connection with Toledo water for emergency situations, she said.
Dennis agreed with Evans’ recommendation that the city consider 500-year flood plains, rather than 100 years, when making flood mitigation plans. She suggested that the city look at how other communities are providing resiliency centers. And she cautioned that some goals will be a “big lift,” but that the city can do better at being transparent.
Also at the committee meeting, Rose Drain said the city’s goal of updating subdivision regulations could have ways to incorporate green infrastructure into new subdivisions.
And Penny Evans-Meyer asked about the possibility of using the senior center as a resiliency center during extreme heat and cold. The basement is designed to function as a tornado shelter, Jim Evans said.
Herald said another sustainability meeting will be scheduled, during which a final priority list for the year could be established.
