By David Dodge and Scott Rollans
Driving down Alex Taylor Road in Edmonton, you feel like you are descending into a secret urban hideaway, nestled along the flats of the beautiful North Saskatchewan River. The community of Riverdale, however, makes no secret about its passion for sustainability.
“We’re standing in the middle of a sustainability project which speaks to the bigger sustainability ambitions of the Riverdale Community League,” says Raquel Feroe, director of sustainability for Riverdale Community League.
We are chatting beneath a canopy with 28 solar modules on it. The system functions as an 8.7 kilowatt solar gazebo, a stage for Riverdale events, and a shade area. To our left is a community garden, along with a community league rink shack with solar on the roof.
Riverdale Community League. Photo David Dodge GreenEnergyFutures.ca
“We’re standing here amongst a food forest of cherries and apples and Saskatoons and gooseberries,” Feroe continues. The permaculture bed is to our left, and in front of that are 24 community gardening plots.” explains Feroe.
Sustainability brings in the volunteers
Feroe is part of a growing movement of sustainability enthusiasts in Edmonton’s community leagues. The city has 157 community leagues, each a unique community-driven volunteer organization with locally elected boards. Riverdale Community League’s initiatives include soccer programs, a daycare, and a badminton league in the local school.
In 2005 Riverdale wanted to do something to help the environment, so they held a visioning session.
Raquel Feroe and Deborah Robb at the Riverdale Bee Hotel a place for lone bees to hang out in the garden. Bees are declining due to habitat loss, pesticide use and climate change. Photo David Dodge GreenEnergyFutures.ca
“Riverdale Community League had an (energy) audit done in 2005, and as part of that process we were working with Shantu Mantu and Godo Stoyke (of Carbon Busters),” says Feroe. “They encouraged us to do some community visioning. …We had a league meeting that was very well attended, by 25 people or so, and we had the discussion of how ambitious we wanted to be as a community on our carbon journey.”
After discussing the energy audit, the group brought in the big guns: volunteers!
“We just had a pizza party and got people changing out lightbulbs. Then we bought our way to carbon neutrality with energy offsets through Bullfrog Power. And then, as we took time to work on grants and to learn more about solar, we started installing solar systems.”
They got started with help from the Solar Energy Society of Alberta, and then hit the jack-pot when they applied for an Eco-City grant, an innovation fund run by the City of Edmonton and the Alberta Eco-Trust Foundation. That allowed them to build the gazebo solar array, which now saves the league about $1,000 a year.
Riverdale goes public with sustainabiltiy
The league is also working to get other Riverdalians on board, by setting up a website (sustainabilityinriverdale.org) to encourage area homeowners to become more sustainable.
Learn more: Sustainability in Riverdale website
“There have been three other individual households that are have done solar,” says Feroe. “There have been people that have done the city’s EnerGuide Spot the Difference program to look at more energy efficiency in their own homes.”
Feroe has even helped the Edmonton Federation of Community Leagues run their Green Leagues program, which promotes energy efficiency and solar power for other leagues.
Community leagues often struggle for volunteers, but not this one, says Feroe. “Sustainability initiatives bring people out of the woodwork. Our sustainability team had a cap at 12 people, and that’s huge for so many people to be involved in a community league committee.” Other leagues report similar volunteer enthusiasm.
Eco-City supporting innovation in sustainability
After Riverdale’s success with the Eco-City initiative, Feroe now volunteers with Eco-City to evaluate other funding applicants. The day we were at Riverdale Community League, Pat Letizia from Eco-Trust and Mike Mellross from the City of Edmonton were on site to announce the latest round of grant recipients.
Riverdale is just one of many sustainability projects supported by the Eco-City grant program offered by the City of Edmonton and EcoTrust Alberta.
They handed out $240,000 supporting nine projects. “There were church groups. There was a community league group,” says Feroe. She was particularly excited about a grant for the Bissell Centre , an Edmonton organization that helps people overcome poverty. “All the savings they are going to generate from having efficient operations are going to be plowed into serving more people in the community and generating more interest in solar.” Check out the list of 2018 Eco-City grant recipients.
Clearly, Riverdale’s passion for sustainability has overflowed the river banks and is inundating Edmonton as a whole.
