As the first “Sustainability Manager” in Grand Rapids history, Corky Overmyer will get to define his job and chart a course for his successors. Lucky him.
The term “sustainability” refers to a set of practices that help assure the long-term success of an organization or, as in this case, a community, by integrating economic with environmental and social realities. Think of it as ensuring survival. Sustainability managers, or directors, however they are termed, are being appointed increasingly in local governments, in higher educational institutions, and in large corporations throughout the United States and Canada. Grand Rapids recently selected Corky Overmyer to be one of this group, and coordinate the local community initiative.
After eleven years at the helm of the City’s Environmental Protection Services Department, Corky undoubtedly has the passion and the credentials to take up the challenge here. But it’s reasonable to inquire more specifically, just what it is that he will have to do, and what resources he will have available to help him. The answers are, respectively, a lot; and, not many.
A lot, because it will be his job to grapple with some of the most intractable problems faced by cities in America today, from climate change to environmental toxins to energy prices to water pollution and scarcity, even extending to social and quality-of-life issues. He will have to make use, not just of broad-brush strategies, but of minor operational details and tactical approaches as well.
And not many, because once his replacement as director of Environmental Protection Services is anointed, Overmyer will be a manager without a staff and without a budget. With characteristic openness, he admits ruefully that he will have little more than an office and a desk to get started.
Charting a New Course for GR
Fortunately, or unfortunately as the case may be, the agenda for a sustainability manager tends to be so daunting that a staff and budget may not be that great an advantage, or the lack of them comparatively very alarming.
Consider all the ways in which the economic, social, and environmental imperatives come together in city operations: areas of interest to the sustainability manager will necessarily include the administrative intricacies of environmental management, a host of benchmarking and sustainability measurement tasks, water quality and water conservation issues, biomass (composting operations, combustion processes, community gardening), materials management (finding sources of recycled materials and outlets for recyclable waste in local industry.), toxics and purchasing protocols, energy alternatives, climate change, facilities, health issues, and citizen and departmental awareness – just to name a few.
One might think twice or three times about accepting a job offer like that. But being a sustainability manager for a large municipality like Grand Rapids also implies the opportunity to work at the epicenter of urban experimentation and creativity, at a time when we need all the creativity we can get. One suspects that Overmyer might have the chance to quietly make some very far-reaching decisions about how City life and government will look here twenty or thirty years from now.
A Characteristic Can-Do Attitude
Today’s cities confront the future with all the orderly confidence and composure of pins in a bowling alley. The problems are huge, and come rolling at you swiftly from far away. Take climate change, for example. Barely an academic footnote thirty years ago, climate change now realistically threatens big impacts: imagine downtown Manhattan turning into part of the Atlantic Ocean within the lifetime of our children. Imagine western Michigan changing from an apple-growing, cherry-growing heartland into a place that might more conveniently grow okra, or cactus, or malaria mosquitoes instead.
Averting that order of change will place new demands on Americans, which urban services and leadership will help us to meet. “Climate change is my number one issue,” Overmyer says. That is essentially because climate change intersects the toughest technical, social, political and educational problems with the most dire consequences of failure. It asks us to decide quickly, how to conserve, how to manage, how to regulate, where to invest, and what new technologies and customs to advance.
Meanwhile, led by such national destinations as Seattle and Portland, it is our cities that provide almost all the current leadership on climate protection today, and will almost certainly develop many of the most practical and potent recipes for our successful response to the global warming crisis – assuming, of course, that we are successful.
One of the great things about Grand Rapids is its readiness to compete with enthusiasm and without rancor, in tough circumstances. Corky is a natural exponent of this instinct. Are we forced to reduce our output of carbon dioxide? Then let’s lead the nation in carbon dioxide reductions. Are we better off reducing our purchases of toxic products? Then let’s support the emergence of local production of nontoxic alternatives, and generate eventual cost savings and collateral benefits. Let’s promote and motivate. Let’s inspire.
Overmyer shares with the Mayor and others a vision of opportunity for Grand Rapids to take a leadership role in the sustainability bonanza – pioneering best practices and incubating new businesses that will produce new, “green” products and services; and, not incidentally, achieving remarkable quality of life for its citizens.
It takes more than vision, however. And you always have people who didn’t inherit the vision gene. I hope that not much time elapses before Grand Rapids is able to put money and staff into its sustainability program. Exciting as the inward vision is, it will be more exciting when we see it happening before our eyes.
Photographs by Brian Kelly - All Rights Reserved
Photographs:
City Wastewater Treatment Facility
Corky Overmyer - photo courtesy of Mr. Overmyer
A roof garden traps rainwater run-off and typifies Grand Rapids' momentum toward sustainability
Kent County Recycling Plant and incinerator