Monaca in Beaver County becomes a model of sustainability
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Monaca borough manager Mario Leone.
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The Beaver County river town of Monaca -- with 6,000 residents, if that -- had good reason to respond to the call for municipalities to take a how-sustainable-are-you test earlier this year.
To almost every question in Sustainable Pittsburgh's checklist of things municipalities are doing to save more, waste less and develop -- even reinvent -- themselves sustainably, Monaca was one municipality in about two handfuls that could answer yes.
Borough manager Mario Leone had done his homework.
Monaca further stood out by being small and working-class. Based on the stereotype that being "green" is for the well-off, most municipalities making progress are ones you might expect to. But Mr. Leone -- whose borough's total budget, including water and sewer systems, is about $4.6 million -- says sustainable practices work at every level.
"It's simple economics, and the environmental and social benefits follow hand-in-hand," he said. "It's truly a no-brainer."
With majority support from the 10-person council in four years on the job, Mr. Leone has gotten grants and other funds to make comprehensive system overhauls and a multi-borough project to turn former industrial sites into a 41-acre bike and pedestrian link to the Montour Trail.
On his watch, the borough initiated paperless council meetings, single-stream recycling, efficiency measures in the fleet and upgraded zoning to allow windmills.
"My kids tease me a little about the windmills," he said one day in his office on Pennsylvania Avenue, his red knit shirt stitched with the Monaca Indian logo on one side and "Mario" on the other. During a run for county commission in 2007, he appeared with a LED lightbulb in one hand and a windmill in the background. "A newspaper called me Don Quixote, and I said to the reporter, 'But Don Quixote was against windmills.' I'm for them.
"To talk it today is so different than it was four years ago. Now everyone's talking it."
But not everyone's walking it.
In January, Court Gould, executive director of Sustainable Pittsburgh, shopped the test -- the sustainable communities rapid assessment -- to councils of government and planning bodies in order to reach all 551 municipalities in 10 counties. It is not a real test; there are no grades or rankings. It is a tool for governments to use as a basis for improving.
First Published July 3, 2011 12:00 am
