When city leaders in Chicago, Rome, Athens, Bangkok and Sydney dimmed their lights one night last month to highlight the threat of climate change, the lights in Charleston burned as brightly as ever.

And though at least four West Virginia mayors have joined more than 800 of their peers across the country in pledging to cut greenhouse gas emissions during the next five years, Charleston Mayor Danny Jones has not.

It's not that Jones is anti-environment. He says he has other priorities.

"I have no problem with these green initiatives," Jones said. "I wish them well," he said of the mayors of Fayetteville, Morgantown, Oak Hill and Shepherdstown who signed on to the Kyoto Protocols although President Bush has not. And he pointed out environmental efforts within his administration.

"My first priority should be law enforcement: make it safe and clean," Jones said. "My sustainability effort is the effort to fight crime. And I think we've made significant progress there."

Sustainability is a hot topic these days. In city halls, state capitals, corporate boardrooms, lots of folks are jumping on the bandwagon. It's become a "very popular buzzword used around the world today to characterize an approach to some of the biggest problems facing our species," city planning director Dan Vriendt wrote recently.

But what does it mean? Ask 10 people and you'll like get 10 different definitions. In general, it refers to efforts to conserve the world's resources for future generations - such as fighting global warming. But there's more.

Three pillars of sustainability

"Sustainability has three pillars - environmental impact, economic development and social justice/well-being," said Troy Stallard, a Charleston businessman and civic volunteer. "The idea is you need all three for sustainability. If you don't have economic development, you have trouble. If you don't share across races and classes, you're not sustainable."

During recent months, Stallard has been urging city leaders to adopt a formal sustainability program, as many other cities have.

"Sustainability needs effort from top down and bottom up," he said. State, federal and local governments can provide top-down leadership, and money, "for sustainability projects and education for the citizens. No individual is going to solve global climate change.

"At the same time, the citizens have to elect leaders who support sustainability. The citizens have to demand sustainability.

"Two things have to happen. Sometimes they mesh, sometimes they don't."

A member of the Charleston Land Trust and head of its Riverfront South subcommittee, Stallard convinced Land Trust members several months ago to support his sustainability initiative. The next step: City Council.

"The Land Trust is fully behind the city adopting a sustainability plan," said Tom Lane, head of the Land Trust and president of City Council. "The game plan was Troy and I would make a presentation to City Council at an appropriate time. I think the time is now.

"We anticipate that a visceral reaction to it will be that it will cost money and it will call for impractical things to be done. We feel that's an incorrect assessment, that in the long run you can save money, you get better construction and you apply better policy.

"It will be our intent to sit down with the mayor personally and members of the administration and persuade people, that this is good policy, that the city should adopt a sustainability plan and should be a leader."

An inventory of city efforts

Lane and Stallard might get a warmer reception in the mayor's office than they expect. Jones said the city is already taking some "green" initiatives. When he tapped former East End Main Street manager Mary Alice Hodgson as an aide late last year, he asked her to inventory those efforts.

Hodgson said she has been meeting with department heads as she learns her way around City Hall. "Some of them are already doing things, and maybe not putting a label on it," she said.

"For example, the Street Department is putting energy-efficient bulbs in street lamps. They save money and, because they last longer, there's less labor because they don't have to be changed as often.

When city leaders in Chicago, Rome, Athens, Bangkok and Sydney dimmed their lights one night last month to highlight the threat of climate change, the lights in Charleston burned as brightly as ever.

And though at least four West Virginia mayors have joined more than 800 of their peers across the country in pledging to cut greenhouse gas emissions during the next five years, Charleston Mayor Danny Jones has not.

It's not that Jones is anti-environment. He says he has other priorities.

"I have no problem with these green initiatives," Jones said. "I wish them well," he said of the mayors of Fayetteville, Morgantown, Oak Hill and Shepherdstown who signed on to the Kyoto Protocols although President Bush has not. And he pointed out environmental efforts within his administration.

"My first priority should be law enforcement: make it safe and clean," Jones said. "My sustainability effort is the effort to fight crime. And I think we've made significant progress there."

Sustainability is a hot topic these days. In city halls, state capitals, corporate boardrooms, lots of folks are jumping on the bandwagon. It's become a "very popular buzzword used around the world today to characterize an approach to some of the biggest problems facing our species," city planning director Dan Vriendt wrote recently.

But what does it mean? Ask 10 people and you'll like get 10 different definitions. In general, it refers to efforts to conserve the world's resources for future generations - such as fighting global warming. But there's more.

Three pillars of sustainability

"Sustainability has three pillars - environmental impact, economic development and social justice/well-being," said Troy Stallard, a Charleston businessman and civic volunteer. "The idea is you need all three for sustainability. If you don't have economic development, you have trouble. If you don't share across races and classes, you're not sustainable."

During recent months, Stallard has been urging city leaders to adopt a formal sustainability program, as many other cities have.

"Sustainability needs effort from top down and bottom up," he said. State, federal and local governments can provide top-down leadership, and money, "for sustainability projects and education for the citizens. No individual is going to solve global climate change.

"At the same time, the citizens have to elect leaders who support sustainability. The citizens have to demand sustainability.

"Two things have to happen. Sometimes they mesh, sometimes they don't."

A member of the Charleston Land Trust and head of its Riverfront South subcommittee, Stallard convinced Land Trust members several months ago to support his sustainability initiative. The next step: City Council.

"The Land Trust is fully behind the city adopting a sustainability plan," said Tom Lane, head of the Land Trust and president of City Council. "The game plan was Troy and I would make a presentation to City Council at an appropriate time. I think the time is now.

"We anticipate that a visceral reaction to it will be that it will cost money and it will call for impractical things to be done. We feel that's an incorrect assessment, that in the long run you can save money, you get better construction and you apply better policy.

"It will be our intent to sit down with the mayor personally and members of the administration and persuade people, that this is good policy, that the city should adopt a sustainability plan and should be a leader."

An inventory of city efforts

Lane and Stallard might get a warmer reception in the mayor's office than they expect. Jones said the city is already taking some "green" initiatives. When he tapped former East End Main Street manager Mary Alice Hodgson as an aide late last year, he asked her to inventory those efforts.

Hodgson said she has been meeting with department heads as she learns her way around City Hall. "Some of them are already doing things, and maybe not putting a label on it," she said.

"For example, the Street Department is putting energy-efficient bulbs in street lamps. They save money and, because they last longer, there's less labor because they don't have to be changed as often.

"The maintenance crews at City Hall are using green cleaning products. The mayor asked them to do that. All the offices are recycling paper. There are bins in City Hall.

"All these little steps lead to giant leaps," Hodgson said. "I think we have to identify what's been done. If there's going to be a plan, this is how you start."

Hodgson might add some more items to her list, based on an informal Gazette survey:

"A lot of it has to do with compatibility and ease of maintenance," said assistant director Bill Shanklin. Last year, for example, he chose dogwoods, redbuds and hollies for the Riverfront South beautification project along MacCorkle Avenue. Most were grown close to home.

"I don't like to go to Georgia or Tennessee. Preferably in-state or if it can be grown within our locale - 200 miles of here. They've been grown under local conditions and there's less shock. There's less maintenance ... and they're less susceptible to disease."

"In the future, if someone downtown has a gutter that discharges directly into a storm sewer, we're going to have them change it to a lower-impact method. A rain garden, a retention area, a wet pond - we did that at Appalachian Power Park - or a rain barrel.

"If a new subdivision is going in, we want to make sure they're not causing problems downstream. That's the kind of thing we're looking at.

"The overall goal is to make sure we don't put pollution back in our streams and try to alleviate some of the flooding problems."

"One example, when doing the East End Renewal Plan we used some sustainable principles. We required buildings along the commercial strip of Washington Street to be built up to the streetfront, to have a large percentage of glass and don't allow long blank walls along the sidewalk.

"You need to keep a pedestrian engaged. There's a whole science to it. When you're out on Corridor G, that's a hostile environment compared with Capitol Street."

"Then it was brought to our attention there is an energy audit program and grants available" through the state.

Molgaard, president of the state city managers association, will make a sustainability presentation at the group's meeting Wednesday in Clarksburg.

"We don't have a concentrated plan around sustainability just yet," he said. "It's something that comes up in conversations a lot. We've found we're doing a lot already because it makes sense in terms of cost saving."

"Even without using the word, we've obviously been preaching and practicing this. It goes from our EcoDwell House [a demonstration "green" home in the East End] to our focus on historic preservation and into our walkable communities effort we did last year."

State leaders will focus on the topic during a conference in Charleston May 7, she said. According to the Web site of the West Virginia Environmental Institute, "Sustainable Communities and the New Economy" is the title of the group's annual environmental conference, to be held at the Marriott hotel.

"I think what's becoming clear is a lot of us are doing it," Salisbury said. "We're just not calling it that."

That may not be quite enough, at least in some minds.

"Charleston's doing a lot of things," Stallard said. "A lot of different people are doing different things. The mayor's FestivALL has a lot of sustainable elements - making the city attractive for young people.

"The mayor does a lot in economic development, trying to get more jobs and development. In that sense he's pushing sustainability.

"What I think he's missing is a systematic approach in pushing that into every facet of city planning. I really think there needs to be a mind-set, so you're always thinking of sustainability in virtually every facet of the city."

To contact staff writer Jim Balow, use e-mail or call 348-5102.