Covington will consider the establishment of a climate action task force following the recommendations of the Green Umbrella Regional Climate Collaborative, which presented to the Covington City Commission on Tuesday. “We know that local governments in particular are on the front lines of grappling with extreme storms, air quality challenges and tons of other issues that I know constituents bring every day,” said Green Umbrella’s Senior Director of Programs and Climate Strategy Savannah Sullivan. The collaborative is a network of organizations working to tackle environmental problems in the tri-state area.
Covington, along with Milford and Oxford in Ohio, were founding member cities of the collaborative. The collaborative provided the city with am expert fellow, Elese Daniel, embedded in the city to advise on various environmental issues. Daniel’s fellowship ended this month, and she also addressed the commission on Tuesday.
Get the news when you want to with our email newsletters The Daily LINK - Every morning The Weekend LINK - Saturdays The Sports LINK - Mondays at noon Sign up Sullivan talked about the costs associated with climate and weather-related disasters, showing a map from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showing various natural disasters around the country last year. There were a record 28 billion-dollar disasters in the United States in 2023 . “Last year, we had almost $30 billion in disasters, and they are concentrating in our region of the country,” Sullivan said.
A map of the U.S. plotted with 28 weather and climate disasters each costing $1 billion or more that occurred between January and December, 2023.
Map provided | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration “While FEMA and other U.S. agencies can step in to support some of the recovery, at the end of the day, local governments bear a pretty significant burden of this recovery,” Sullivan said.
To drive home this point, Sullivan displayed figures from a 2022 report from the Ohio Environmental Council that estimated the future costs local governments might incur due to climate change. The report itself only focused on Ohio, but they could be used to approximate costs in Kentucky as well, given its proximity to Ohio, Sullivan argued. Table provided | The Ohio Environmental Council Daniel highlighted existing programs within the city aimed at addressing environmental problems, such as updated lighting in city parking garages, the Keep Covington Beautiful initiative, enhancements to Austinburg Park, the city’s various waste management and recycling programs, as well as flood mitigation measures for the Peaselburg neighborhood secured as part of the Brent Spence Corridor project.
Still, said Sheila Fields, Covington’s solid waste and recycling manager, who worked closely with Daniels, “One of our struggle points; there’s just not enough capacity.” In other words, the city before the fellowship lacked the expertise to meaningfully coordinate around environmental issues. One of the benefits of Daniel’s fellowship, Fields said, was that she was able to provide the know-how to city staff to better horizontally integrate sustainability efforts, plan projects and generally be more environmentally conscious.
To that end, Daniel proposed a climate action task force consisting of 10 to 15 people from various sectors of public life, including business, academia and community organizations. “I think that there’s opportunity for a climate action task force to be created,” Daniel said, “a group, a body of folks that are oriented around creating a plan for the city when it comes to climate action and environmental and sustainability initiatives.” The task force would be tasked with creating a so-called Covington Green Playbook in 2025 that “would identify measurable and achievable environment and sustainability goals, across city departments, in collaboration with internal and external stakeholders,” according to the collaborative’s presentation.
Some other suggested measures included greening the city’s fleet, increasing energy-saving measures in city facilities, landfill diversion and recycling programs, stormwater mitigations and increasing the city’s tree canopy. “I think if you create this task force that they would be creating this plan, which would be able to save you money and get you money when it comes to bond ratings and reviews and being able to apply to grants that require some sort of plan,” Daniel said. Mayor Joe Meyer said the city would take the recommendation into consideration.
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