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Sustainable Community Case Study: An Assessment of EPA’s Sustainable Development Plan for Stella, Missouri
Citation:
Hansen, V. Sustainable Community Case Study: An Assessment of EPA’s Sustainable Development Plan for Stella, Missouri. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC, EPA/600/R-14/445, 2014.
Impact/Purpose:
The purpose of this report is to document a planning process that EPA used in Stella, Missouri from 2006-2007 to help the community make sustainable decisions.
Description:
In 2006, citizens of Stella, Missouri asked the EPA for technical assistance in demolition and site remediation of an abandoned hospital; and how to redevelop the site to help the community be more sustainable. EPA Region 7 teamed with EPA Office of Research and Development (ORD) to provide this assistance. Region 7 addressed issues related to the deteriorating hospital while ORD sought to help stakeholders in Stella make sustainable decisions regarding the site and community. Typically, sustainable land use decisions require understanding the systems that sustain human life or communities and the impacts of those decisions on systems so land use decisions can be placed in context and supported by intact and functioning systems. ORD offers land use models and tools that might help align decisions with systems, but Stella lacked the resources to interpret or to apply them. Therefore, ORD researchers sought to find a simple and more accessible way for Stella and other communities to make short-term decisions within a long-term context. It did so using planning theory. Planning enables decisions that meet specific objectives within sets of criteria, such as zoning and building codes. Planning could also be used to make decisions that improved a community’s long-term outlook if it had criteria related to maintaining intact and functioning social, economic and natural systems. In 2006-2007, the EPA helped Stella envision its future by expressing its preferences; identified the systems contexts within which decisions could be made; and applied them at the community scale. The result was a community plan that provided an array of choices and options that would enable the community to meet its needs while maintaining the integrity of the systems that make human life and communities possible. This report covers the period of planning from May 2006 to its presentation in May 2007, and the community’s progress in implementing the plan through January 2014.