(Montgomery County, PA – August 7, 2020) – The Municipality of Norristown is excited to announce that it will be collaborating with several other local communities, the Montgomery County Planning Commission, and the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission in the development of a climate action plan for the Montgomery County region.
Organized by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI) using funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, the Local Climate Action Plan Cohort is a FREE program that is designed to assist municipalities in identifying and managing the risks of climate change. Participating communities will be teamed up with local college students from around the Commonwealth to produce greenhouse gas emissions inventories for local governments, calculating current emission levels, and draft a plan to reduce emissions and manage climate change impacts.
“Climate change is much bigger and more impactful, both in severity and scale, than any individual issue local communities face today,” stated Norristown Council President Derrick Perry. “By partnering with our neighboring municipalities as well as county/regional planning agencies to develop a regional climate action plan, Norristown will be participating in a focused effort to pool resources to identify and address wide-spread issues resulting from the growing climate crisis.”
The year-long program is slated to begin this fall with municipal/student teams undertaking most of the preliminary data collection and analysis. Public meetings and online surveys will be conducted in early 2021 to engage community members and other stakeholders across Montgomery County.
Norristown is participating in this effort as part of the Montgomery County Consortium of Communities, an association of municipal governments in Montgomery County. Although the Consortium of Communities is leading the effort and participating in the program on behalf of its member municipalities, all communities in Montgomery County are welcome to participate in the regional climate action planning process.
