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Rhode Island Community Selected for Smart Growth Technical Assistance

Release Date: 07/11/2005
Contact Information:

Contact: David Deegan ([email protected]), EPA Office of Public Affairs, (617) 918-1017

For Immediate Release: July 11, 2005; Release # dd050706

Boston -- Aquidneck Island, R. I. is one of only five communities nationwide selected by EPA to receive assistance from a team of private sector national experts in planning for future growth.

The island's planning commission and municipalities, along with the U.S. Navy, recently completed a redevelopment master plan that aims to protect environmental quality by preserving natural ecosystems and promoting growth in established centers. The Aquidneck Island Planning Commission is seeking assistance to confirm that the plan's goals are aligned with municipal codes and ordinances so that the communities can carry out their vision for the island.

EPA will work with ICF Consulting to organize multi-disciplinary teams to provide Aquidneck Island with tools and resources to find innovative ways of sustaining environmentally-sensitive growth and economic progress.

"Smart Growth means development that serves not only the economy, but also the community and our environment," said Robert W. Varney, regional administrator of EPA's New England office. "It's about being good stewards of our communities and of our rural lands, parks and forests. It's about ensuring that the best of the past is preserved, while creating new communities that are attractive, vital, and enduring."

Aquidneck Island was selected in a competitive process initiated earlier this year, when EPA offered its first request for applicants for "Smart Growth" implementation assistance. The new program responds to a growing number of requests for technical assistance regarding smart growth. Fifty-six communities from 28 states applied. The other four communities selected along with Aquidneck Island are in Maryland, New Mexico, Wyoming and Idaho.

Besides offering future rounds of assistance under this program, EPA will continue to offer informal help to community leaders when requested, speak at community events when possible and appropriate, make its research and publications widely available, and offer grants both to communities for technical assistance and to organizations for research and publications that will help improve development practices.

EPA's Smart Growth program encourages development that protects environmental resources and human health, expands economic opportunity, and creates and enhances the places that people love. EPA's role in smart growth at the community level is to provide information about best practices that have worked in other communities and reduced the environmental effects of development.

The other communities selected are: College Park, Md., Taos, N.M., Cheyenne, Wyo. and McCall, Idaho.

For more information on the five communities selected this year, see: https://www.epa.gov/smartgrowth/sgia.htm .

More information on EPA's Smart Growth program is available at: https://www.epa.gov/smartgrowth/about_sg.htm .

Related Information:
Smart Growth Implementation Assistance Program
About Smart Growth
Smart Growth Strategies for New England