New Haven Independent

There, on Monday, 100 people gathered to celebrate and honor an individual, a non-profit, and a business in New Haven which have contributed over the last year to a “lasting public health or environmental benefit.”
Grant was celebrated for three decades of tireless activism, beginning with the founding of Freddy Fixer, a community recycling and environmental program in the Dixwell neighborhood, and including his work advocating for the cleaning of Beaver Pond; for the sound barrier at Farnam Court, and, most recently, for the halting of the re-start of the English Station power plant in Fair Haven.
“A city is defined both by its places and its individuals,” Mayor John DeStefano said at the awards ceremony. “In New Haven we have East Rock and West Rock, and we also are extraordinarily fortunate to have another rock for the environment, Ed Grant.”
The non-profit winner of the Green Award was the New Haven Ecology Project, coordinated by Oliver Barton and headquartered at Common Ground High School. The Project is an umbrella organization for many environmental initiatives in the city, including the founding, in 1997, of Common Ground, an environment-themed college-prep charter school for 135 ninth to twelfth-graders, of which Barton is the director, and on whose very green and leafy campus the ceremony was held. The New Haven Ecology Project changes the way schoolchildren and the public view the environment through programs that support organic food farming, sustainable land management, and healthful living initiatives.
In accepting his award from the mayor, Barton reminded his audience -— filled with students destined for the environmental professions —- that while New Haven is benefiting from the mayor’s Livable City Initiative, “we also must think of ourselves as part of a ‘livable planet initiative’ as well.”
While being realistic about how much yet remains to be accomplished, especially in clearing the New Haven air of asthma-causing particulate matter, Barton was positive about recent legislation in Hartford addressing air quality issues through, among other measures, regulating diesel fuel quality and the allowable idling time of buses.
“In this first year of these awards,” said mayoral assistant Kate McAdams, “while the competition in the non-profit category was intense, there was no winner in the business category, primarily because the newness of the awards led to an insufficient number of nominations.”
Nominations, which can include self-nominations, numbered about 25 in all three categories this year. There were four judges, including McAdams, Alderman Yusef Shah, environmental activist Lee Cruz, and Jane Coppock, an assistant dean at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Coppock reminded your reporter that an amazing 17 percent of the city of New Haven is green. That is a remarkable preserved endowment of park land for a city of New Haven’s size, not to mention three rivers and a major harbor.
The theme of Monday’s gathering was the increasing recognition New Haven has been receiving as an environmental leader for efforts ranging from free parking downtown for hybrid vehicles to the establishment of some of the highest standards in the nation for renewable energy use. “We are the sum of our people,” DeStefano declared, “and if New Haven is a leader in this area, and we are, it is by virtue of the beliefs, energy, and commitment of time by our finest environmental citizens.”

The awards presented to Grant and to Barton and the New Haven Ecology Project included a large framed map of New Haven’s green spaces; an official proclamation presented by Alderman Sergio Rodriguez, and, best of all, a commitment for a tree to be planted and named in the honor of each recipient at the location of his choosing.
“I’m going to have mine,” said 83-year-old Grant, “near Beaver Pond.” Grant was instrumental in securing funding for the recent clean-up of the pond.
Still more work needs to be done, and Grant, elegant yet frail from a recent illness, charged the students in his audience with the responsibility to carry on. “I hope to see sufficient progress over the next two to three years,” he said, “so that young people can one day soon canoe and fish in that water.”
If the dreamers are also doers like Edward Grant and Oliver Barton, it will happen.