The Blog

Employing Soil and Water Conservation in the Urban Setting

Soils not only help sustain us and provide a foundation for our development, they play a crucial role in water retention and management.

As the City of Buffalo continues to demolish homes, it is important to understand the environmental impacts of vacant land in the city.

Open space can either assist with the natural flow of water, or act as a sheet for erosion.  Simple treatments, such as those utilized in agriculture, and Low Impact Development (LID) can help mitigate the impacts of heavy rain: soil erosion and excessive storm water in combined sewers.

The goal of this project is to demonstrate several soil treatments and monitor the flow of water into storm drains.  This will help develop the case for post- demolition site treatments other than the current practice of adding clay and stone.

The Asarese-Matters Recreational Center (AMRC), is a haven for youth from the West-side of Buffalo, NY.  Owned and operated by the city of Buffalo, the AMRC serves an average of 125 youth daily.  The AMRC is located in the West-side of Buffalo, home to many of the 1,000 refugees relocated to Buffalo each year with as many as 70 languages spoken.

The center provides a safe environment for all youth in this extremely diverse and underserved community.  Many of these youth look to the staff and volunteers of the AMRC for help with school work, a friendly ear, or even a game of basketball. In addition to organizing after school activities that encourage the West-Side community’s youth to engage in active learning, volunteers and staff of the AMRC provide youth with opportunities to become self-sufficient and self-sustainable.

Bicycling is a universal activity cherished throughout the world.  It is an affordable and sustainable way of transportation allowing the act of bicycling to reach a broad spectrum of individuals.  One can choose to be a bicyclist for health reasons or environmental reasons or perhaps they simply can’t afford a car.  Bicycling can be recreational or a practical means of transportation.  No matter the reasoning, it is clear that riding a bike can be beneficial to us all.

We are hoping to reach out to the large spectrum of students, faculty, staff and community members in the SUNY Fredonia area by providing bicycle education, repair and rentals.  We recognize the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and see bicycling as a perfect way to do so.  We plan to achieve this through a series of educational workshops regarding bike repair along with free SUNY Fredonia bicycle rentals.

We believe all three of the action steps in the Shared Agenda from the WNY Environmental Alliance are met with this project:

1. Preservation and restoration of our regional environment through the collaborative bicycling project between SUNY Fredonia, Spoke Folk and the Dunkirk-Fredonia communities by providing a zero emissions form of transportation.  This means that less oil will be consumed, eliminating some of pollution that reaches our ground water and creek water through run-off.   Also fewer emissions will be emitted in efforts to restore our air quality.
2. Mobilizing the public and policymakers to improve the environment will be addressed as we encourage the public to use bicycles as a primary means of transportation.   Also we intend to strengthen an already existing petition to the village board to install bike lanes in the Fredonia area.  We hope to motivate policymakers to install bike lanes in regard to the safety of its bicyclists.
3. Strengthen environmental organizations is achieved by strengthening the bicyclist culture at Fredonia.   Since bicycling is widely practiced we will be able to network will a variety of people with different interests.  Therefore we will be able to strengthen our environmental movement by pointing out the environmental aspects of biking to individuals who may not have considered the environment beforehand.

Niagara University students would like to enhance their college experience and service-learning education through the creation and sustainment of a campus community vegetable garden.  Niagara University already advocates a service-learning curriculum that encourages student involvement in the Niagara Falls community.  A campus community garden, however, will allow the students to bring service-learning opportunities to the University, addressing a lack of student-community participation occurring on campus.

Students and local community members will construct raised vegetable garden beds and rehabilitate the current greenhouse located at the current DePaul Science Building.  The greenhouse would serve as an indoor location to grow seedlings and conduct educational programs on gardening and plant biology.  The raised vegetable garden beds located outside would provide a location to transplant seedlings from the greenhouse and conduct outdoor gardening techniques.  By using the greenhouse in conjunction with the outdoor garden beds, harvest time for vegetables can be managed to occur before the end of the academic semester.  In this capacity, the garden can be utilized to its fullest functions before students vacate campus for academic recesses.

There are multiple goals to the creation of a campus community vegetable garden.  Educationally, the garden will serve as a “microscopic service-learning lab” where students may educate each other and community members on healthy eating, self-sustainability and provide food for the community at-large.  The “microscopic service-learning lab” would consist of the campus community vegetable garden and greenhouse where the vegetables will be seeded, grown, and harvested.