Troy Moon, Sustainability Officer for Portland, Caitin & Nick Aceto, d/b/a Aceto Landscape Architects Winners This Evening.
Julie Wormser, VI of Boston Harbor Now, was Keynote Speaker at Event.
Nick and Caitlin Aceto, d/b/a Aceto Landscape Architects, Portland, earned first place tonight in a competition for the ‘Bayside Adapt Challenge’ – one of five submissions to the competition. The couple won $1,000.00 for their accomplishment.
Nick, from Portland, originally, studied at Colorado State University where he met Caitlin, studying landscape architecture as well. She’s from near Chicago..The married couple returned recently to Portland, where Nick has “Italian” family members. The award money will be used to help furnish their newly purchased home in Libbytown. “People think that we just design gardens, but we look at the entire city as a garden,” said Nick.
Julie Wormser, VP of Boston Harbor Now, a non-profit organization that works with the Boston government, gave an overview of the recent history of flooding in the area. The review began with super storm Sandy in 2012 and the factors that contributed to it. New England is getting more rain as other areas are getting less of it, she said. It’s also getting more heat and more fluctuations than other areas as well. But the better news came when she outlined the steps that Boston is now taking to live with water, rather than being threatened by it. She said that building a wall was one option, but that it would fall eventually – the mention of a “wall” brought sustained laughter from the crowd of about fifty (50) people cognizant of President Trump’s effort to build a wall along the country’s southern border.
But Wormser, who was educated at Swarthmore College and Harvard, did remind participants not to try to do everything today and that protections can be built into local zoning codes.
“Storm water management and climate change resiliency are critical to our ability to adapt. We can adapt. We just have to find a way to collaborate and determine what climate change adaptation means for Portland. I feel hopeful that we can do this,” said Doug A. Roncarati, Jr,, storm water program coordinator, Public Services Department, Portland, following the event held at the Portland Public Library.
Laura Cannon, vice-president of the Bayside Neighborhood Organization and a member of the Bayside Adapt working group said: “This was inspiring. It was nice to see a lot of creative thinking. The last meeting (December) was data oriented which is very important and we need imagination along with data to address the challenges ahead.”
The event was catered by Fork Food Kitchen. The National League of Cities funded the Challenge with a generous donation of $10,000.00 according to Cooper Martin, Program Director, for the Sustainable Cities Institute at the Washington, DC based League.
Please see previous post herein for more background information on the event.