Statement on Coronavirus COVID-19 and Sustainable Solano Workshops and Events

Mar 13, 2020

 

UPDATE: APRIL 1, 4:45 PM: Sustainable Solano has halted all in-person events until further notice. You can find a list of Community Resilience Resources here and upcoming online events here.

UPDATE: MARCH 18, 6 PM: In light of the latest “shelter at home” guidance, we are postponing all events through April 7.

We are aware of the heightened concern in Solano County and throughout the Bay Area about the spread of coronavirus and have been keeping a close eye on the news and releases and recommendations from Solano Public Health on the best ways to keep our workshop attendees, participants, staff and volunteers safe during this time of uncertainty.

To that end, we will be postponing and rescheduling all of our events planned through April 7.

We will constantly be monitoring the latest guidance to make decisions on events planned after April 7 and will provide updates as needed.

We know this is a time of uncertainty and fear. We appreciate that you are continuing to be involved within your community, while respecting the need to protect those who are most vulnerable to this disease within our communities. We hope you can join us at a later date for these workshops and others. Together, we are stronger.

We will update any changes to these plans based on the latest guidance and the local and state level.

Resources:

Find COVID-19 information and guidance from Solano Public Health here

You can find all COVID-19 guidance from the California Department of Public Health here

Visit the Solano County Public Health Facebook page (@SolanoCountyPH) for regular COVID-19 updates

Register for Alert Solano to receive emergency alerts on your favorite mobile device, including COVID-19

 

Sustainable Solano Offers Farm-to-Table Cooking Classes Featuring Specialty Crops

Mar 10, 2020

 

Cooking classes highlighting how to prepare seasonal, local food in healthy dishes are coming to Solano County this year, starting with a class March 18 in Benicia. The second class will be April 4 in Fairfield.

Sustainable Solano, a nonprofit organization that has been working to build community interest in local food, plans 88 cooking classes around Solano County in the next two years. These cooking classes include those for the general public taught in the community as well as those taught through employee wellness programs, and are part of Sustainable Solano’s larger vision to create an environmentally sustainable, economically viable and socially just local food system in Solano County.

The classes highlight local specialty crops, which include fruit, vegetables, beans, tree nuts and culinary herbs.

Class participants also will learn about CSAs, or Community Supported Agriculture, during the classes. CSAs create a way for community members to buy a share of the harvest directly from local farmers. Customers pay a set amount and receive a box of seasonal produce or other farm products in return. Such arrangements help farmers receive a greater share of the money paid, bring customers fresh, local produce and promote health, community and the local economy.

At the Benicia class, participants will get a brief tour of the existing CSA Center at Heritage Presbyterian Church, while participants in the Fairfield class will learn about the area farms that will be delivering to the new CSA Center planned at The Lazy Barn.

Stay tuned for more cooking classes coming soon at SustainableSolano.org/events and by subscribing to the Sustainable Solano newsletter here.

 

Here is information on the first two classes:

Farm-to-Table Cooking Class

6-8 pm, March 18

Heritage Presbyterian Church, 1400 East Second St., Benicia

$10 per person/$15 for two people

Join Sustainable Solano’s Local Food Program Manager and chef Stephanie Oelsligle Jordan for a lively demonstration cooking class that celebrates spring ingredients and supports local farmers. Take a brief tour of the Community Supported Agriculture Center in Benicia, then learn tips and tricks for storing ingredients and cooking seasonally from a CSA box. Using Solano-grown specialty crops, Chef Steph will prepare an Asparagus Salad with Sesame-Tangerine Vinaigrette, Sautéed Radishes and Spicy Quick-Pickled Vegetables. Generous tastings and recipe packets included!

To register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/farm-to-table-cooking-class-and-csa-tour-tickets-97672223249

 

Farm-to-Table Cooking Class

11 am-12:30 pm, April 4

The Lazy Barn, 735 Texas St., Fairfield

$10 per person/$15 for two people

Join Sustainable Solano’s Local Food Program Manager and chef Stephanie Oelsligle Jordan for a lively demonstration cooking class that celebrates spring ingredients and supports local farmers. Come see which Community Supported Agriculture offerings are coming soon to The Lazy Barn, plus learn tips and tricks for storing ingredients and cooking seasonally from a CSA box. Chef Steph will prepare an Asparagus Salad with Sesame-Tangerine Vinaigrette and Sautéed Radishes and highlight the health benefits of these Solano-grown specialty crops. Generous tastings and recipe packets included!

To register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/farm-to-table-cooking-class-and-csa-demonstration-tickets-97673230261

 

Funding for promotion of specialty crops through cooking classes was made possible by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Agricultural Marketing Service through grant AM190100XXXXG008. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necesssarily represent the official views of the USDA.

 

Bioneers Experience Both Personal and Profound

Feb 3, 2020

By Gabriela Estrada and Kassie Munro, Program Managers

Gabriela Estrada (left) and Kassie Munro (center) at Bioneers. Photo by Santa Cruz Permaculture

Though there are many conferences out there, few present a balance between seemingly opposing concepts: the old and the new, the indigenous and the futuristic, science and spirit, and even fewer invite us to look deep back to the past and far into the future. Bioneers does just that. While shifting one’s focus to all of these different directions can make one’s head spin, in the end it becomes clear that considering all of these viewpoints is necessary to create the world we want to live in tomorrow. After all, to be pioneers of a better future, we must also be historians of our planet’s storied past.

Bioneers is an innovative nonprofit organization that highlights breakthrough solutions for restoring people and planet. Founded in 1990 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, by social entrepreneurs Kenny Ausubel and Nina Simons, Bioneers acts as a fertile hub of social and scientific innovators with practical and visionary solutions for the world’s most pressing environmental and social challenges.

This 30-year-old event showcases a variety of speakers including authors, artists, scientists, Native American leaders and activists, and youth activists all ready and inspired to create a new world that works for everyone. They aim to create a “revolution from the heart of mother nature.” The conference was a combination of music, youth leadership, art, activism, social justice, environmental education, women leadership, ecological medicine and environmental conservation.

The conference began early on Friday morning with a drumming set and a performance by Climbing PoeTree, which immediately marked the tone of the next three days — a celebration for mother earth. It was difficult to choose only one workshop for each of the allotted time periods. How does one possibly choose between a conversation with Stuart Muir Wilson about Permaculture & Ecological Social Justice, an earth connection herb walk, a panel titled The Ground Beneath Our Hearts, among so many others? As we had an opportunity to connect with other attendees, it became clear that we were not alone in this dilemma, battling the constant fear of missing out on something important in another workshop. To the best of our ability we very purposefully divided up the workshops that were of most interest to not only us, but to the organization and the work we do at Sustainable Solano.

Fortunately the Bioneers organizers had guiding themes for each day which helped us to focus in on key messages and walk away from each day with tangible insights.

Here are some reflections on our favorite speakers from each day:

Day 1: Grief, Love and Power of Independent Media

Kassie: Terry Tempest Williams gave an enlightening talk about erosion to start the morning, not only as a powerful force in nature but as an alarming reality in America today. She urged us not to turn away from the devastating erosion we are witnessing to our democracy, science, compassion and trust — but to think of it as a force of evolution and creation rather than destruction and undoing, as we see it happen in nature when the elements create some of our most treasured natural wonders through forces of erosion, like the Grand Canyon. She instilled a mood of hope for what the future could look like, which is so important to keep alive in challenging times.

Gabriela: My favorite speaker of the day was Jerry Tello, who reminded us that stories are powerful reminders of the things we forget about ourselves, and that the work we do is healing — as such we need to remember the sacredness of us and that when those who hurt us heal, we heal. After his talk, not one eye was left dry. His incredible ability as a storyteller reminded us that we need to be grounded in the work we do because it is so much bigger than ourselves.

Day 2: Climate Justice and Resilience

Kassie: Saturday had a number of standout speakers for me. As a fan of both Bill McKibben (co-founder of 350.org) and Paul Hawken (author of Drawdown), it was exciting to hear them speak in person and embody their action-oriented, revolutionary, yet practical, vision for the future of our country and how to get there. I was also surprisingly moved by Valarie Kaur and her Revolutionary Love approach to transformation, likening the revolution needed in our world to that of childbirth and urging us to view labor as a form of love. All of these speakers reminded me that there is a path forward to a world that works for everyone and to stay dedicated to working toward that vision.

Gabriela: On Saturday I was captivated by a panel talk on Building Resilience in a Climate Changing World. The panel spoke about projects and strategies that have been deployed in our coastal, rural and urban communities in an effort to increase resiliency in those communities. They invited us to think about reversing climate change, not stabilizing it, and to make the climate change crisis message reliable to create collaborative solutions.

Day 3: Regeneration

Kassie: On the last day of the conference, I was thrilled to see Demond Drummer as one of the final keynote speakers. Demond is the co-founder of New Consensus, a nonprofit that helped drive the creation of the Green New Deal by supplying research and policy proposals to the deal’s political advocates. After two days of discussion centered on all of the systems-level changes that are needed in our country, it was extremely inspiring to hear from someone who is driving this work at the highest level. It can be so daunting and overwhelming at times to dive deep into all the challenges we are facing as a nation and as a planet, so to learn about his work advancing these ideas and values toward national-level action was a wonderful message to end the conference on. While we may not be able to change everything we would like to, that should not deter us from driving forward the things we can.

Gabriela: Sunday’s workshops focused on cultivating a culture of regeneration, from hearing Casey Camp-Horinek (councilwoman of the Ponka Tribe of Oklahoma) about the story of interconnectedness to a panel about Bridging Divides: Co-creating a Culture of Belonging. What stood out to me about this workshop was the new model that the panel speakers proposed: To move forward we need to create a model that would bridge the many divisions and polarizations that divide us. We need to create a culture of belonging.

It’s difficult to express in writing how powerful and moving these speakers were, so luckily you can find some of the keynotes here if you would like to listen for yourself.

Attending Bioneers for the both us was a tiring and intense experience, yet a very interesting one. The conference offered a space to learn from each other — from seeing art inspired by the environmental movements we are a part of to connecting with like-minded individuals from all over the country and the world.

The enormity of the conference and diversity of the topics covered felt a bit overwhelming at first, but in retrospect underscores a unique element of the conference — no two people will have had the same experience. You can feel this energy everywhere at Bioneers: that we are all here together yet every individual is living their own personal experience and that is what makes this complex world so dynamic and beautiful.

Community Will Gain Knowledge, Guide Solutions in Listening Circles

Feb 3, 2020

By Gabriela Estrada, Listening Circles Program Manager

February will mark the beginning of Sustainable Solano’s first Listening Circle sessions. For the next five months, I will be facilitating up to 10 Listening Circles in central Solano County (Fairfield, Vacaville and Suisun City). A Listening Circle is our attempt at finding community-guided solutions to community issues/problems. The goal is to not only strengthen community knowledge and participation, but to get active buy-in from community members into the solutions since no solution is sustainable without community input and interest. For the last few months, I’ve been busy analyzing and comparing data from the California Environmental Protection Agency’s CalEnviroScreen 3.0 and California Department of Public Health Nutrition Education and Obesity Prevention map to learn about the different environmental hazards in central Solano County and the population characteristics and socioeconomic outcomes. The goal was simple: to understand the environmental pollution burdens and compare that to population characteristics to find neighborhoods that might have a need for green infrastructure support. But what is green infrastructure? Green infrastructure is a resilient approach to managing climate impacts that provides many community benefits, including reducing and treating storm water at its source while delivering environmental, social and economic benefits. 

This new project came about when we as an organization realized that the California Environmental Protection Agency’s CalEnviroScreen 3.0 does an excellent job mapping communities that are disproportionately burdened by pollution, but like any cumulative data source, this methodology has its limits. In Solano County, only South Vallejo received the Disadvantaged Community Designation, which gives this area the highest priority for all state green infrastructure funding such as from Prop 68 and for most private foundation grants. However, working on the ground, we saw a great need for green infrastructure programs in multiple neighborhoods and communities across the county. Prop 68 was approved in 2018 with the goal of three kinds of projects: conservation efforts, new parks for struggling communities and water needs. These funds currently fund a lot of these types of community greening projects.

Here are some examples of how we can use a deeper dive into the data to identify communities that would benefit from such projects:

Environmental Pollution Burdens

Exposure Indicators

In Vacaville, for example, the measurement for ozone is the highest in all of Solano County. Why this matters is because when inhaled, ozone reacts chemically with many biological molecules in the respiratory tract. Similarly, drinking water contamination in Vacaville and pesticide use is the highest in the county. Fairfield traffic density by far exceeds any other city in the county. Traffic density has been known to have an effect on respiratory health, especially for those in sensitive populations, such as those who have asthma or cardiovascular disease. Diesel particulate matter, which has known carcinogens, such as benzene and formaldehyde, is recorded in Fairfield at 25.18kg/day and in Suisun City at 24.1kg/day. This is important because very small particles of diesel particulate matter can contribute to health problems including heart and lung disease and lung cancer.

Effects Indicators

Additionally, groundwater threats are almost as high in Suisun City and Fairfield as they are in Vallejo. CalEnviroScreen 3.0 shows groundwater threats in Suisun City and Fairfield as a couple of the highest in the county. Shockingly, there are 20 cleanup sites in Fairfield and 19 in Vacaville, the second and third highest in the county respectfully. Cleanup sites are places contaminated with harmful chemicals and need to be cleaned up by property owners or government. These sites pose risks for nearby residents because the contaminants can move off-site and impact surrounding communities through groundwater plume migration or windblown dust. Some studies have shown that neighborhoods with cleanup sites are generally poorer and have more people of color than other neighborhoods. Fairfield has a high number of hazardous waste facilities and hazardous waste generators, such as recycling, treatment, storage or disposal facilities by registered hazardous waste transporters. When it comes to solid waste sites and facilities, such as landfills or composing facilities, there is a disproportionately higher number of facilities in Suisun City at 17 facilities — the highest number in the county.

Population Characteristics

Sensitive Populations

There are some population characteristics worthy of note in Central Solano. Fairfield has a high asthma rate, just below the rate of Vallejo. Low birth weight, which has been correlated with increased risk of later health problems and increased infant mortality, is the highest in the county in Fairfield.

Socioeconomic Factors

The census tract with the highest linguistic isolation, at 18.4% of households not speaking English, is in Fairfield. This lack of language makes it harder for members of these communities to participate in local decisions. Additionally, Fairfield shows a few tracts with poverty rates above 54%. The housing burden in Fairfield is at 35.5%, meaning that many low-income households are highly burdened by housing costs.

While each city has its own unique set of needs and challenges, doing work on the ground, you soon realize that there is a high need for green infrastructure projects that help address environmental issues in smaller neighborhoods within each city. We are excited to begin this work and hold sessions with community members to ensure that they are aware of this environmental health information. A clear goal is to not only provide information that will support their lived experiences, but to also provide tangible tools as well as projects that they might want to bring to their communities and would like to participate in and support on. This is a chance to have community members be at the center of proposed solutions that will lead to a healthier and more resilient community.

At the end of all the Listening Circles, we will then hold three presentations (one in each city) where I will present to the community the analysis and proposals that came out of the Listening Circles in an effort to create a feedback communication loop within the community to ensure that residents know the results and are aware of any next steps or projects.

Community engagement and community knowledge are at the center of this project. As someone who grew up in Solano County, it has been a real privilege to be able to work within my community to make it healthier, thriving and more resilient.

Be on the lookout for future updates!

The Listening Circles program is funded through Cal EPA. Learn more here!

Sustainable Solano Brings New Waterwise Food Forest Gardens to Benicia

Jan 22, 2020

Workshops, new workforce development programs create new opportunities

Sustainable Solano, a local nonprofit with work in sustainable landscaping, community gardens, building a local food system and bringing these skills to the public and students, is transforming a Benicia garden through a series of workshops that will teach participants how to capture rainwater, how to properly use greywater from the laundry machine in the garden and the importance of selecting plants that work together to create a healthy, fruitful, waterwise food forest garden.

Land and Water Caretakers Course

Sustainable Solano has offered similar workshops throughout the county through its Solano Sustainable Backyards program funded by the Solano County Water Agency. New to this Benicia project is inclusion of the Land and Water Caretakers course participants, who have been involved in the design of the project as part of their instruction on sustainable landscaping. This is the first year of the new Caretakers certification course offered by Sustainable Solano through Benicia Adult Education. Students will be part of the hands-on work of installing this demonstration food forest garden and then use their knowledge from class and skills from the hands-on work to inform creating a garden design for another Benicia home.

Liberty High School internship program

In addition to the adult education program, Sustainable Solano is leading an internship for interested students at Liberty High School to learn about a whole systems approach to problems, including designing for a sustainable landscape. These students will follow a similar program to the adult education class and will also work toward a Caretakers certificate. Local experts will talk to students about everything from water conservation to composting and healthy soil. Travis Credit Union will provide personal finance and small business finance instruction for both of the Caretakers courses.

Sustainable Solano is actively working to bring other leadership and workforce development programs to the county in the coming months. These programs are funded in Benicia through the second amendment to the Valero/Good Neighbor Steering Committee Settlement Agreement. Republic Services also supports the Caretakers program, and the adult education Caretakers course public workshops are funded through the Solano County Water Agency.

Opportunities for Students and Property Owners

These programs create not only opportunities for those looking to learn more about sustainability and practical skills, but also for local property owners. Homeowners can fill out a Sustainable Landscaping Interest Form to see if their property might fit the needs of various programs. As the leadership and workforce development program grows, Sustainable Solano is particularly looking for sites in Benicia that would benefit from removing water-hungry lawns.

 

Media information:

Contact:

Allison Nagel

allison@sustainablesolano.org

805-512-0901

(The attached photos are of the Land and Water Caretakers class (adult education) testing the soil and starting to prepare the garden. They can be used with credit to Sustainable Solano.)