This meeting of the Providence City Council's Sustainability Committee, held on April 20, 2026, focused on two resolutions and a detailed presentation from the Department of Sustainability. The committee discussed sustainable stormwater funding, state-level building benchmarking legislation, and the city's progress on building energy reporting and decarbonization. Council members and staff highlighted significant achievements in energy efficiency, electrification, and renewable energy, while also addressing challenges such as utility rate structures and the need for dedicated funding mechanisms.
So can you please read item one into the um record? I don't know one resolution to promote sustainable and effort funding for stormwater and single management. Awesome. So we um I think Councilman Davidson and I both put this uh resolution forward earlier this year. Um, recognizing the great work that uh city um under the leadership of uh director Jalen Cruz has been doing on stormwater, knowing that there is um an increasing issue with stormwater in our city, increased flooding, increasing access to climate change. Um this is saying that we want to work together with the city's sustainability department uh options available to address uh storm or issues and best practices from similar size similarly size cities and potentially and most likely to use it for translator this session um to address those challenges. So this just is a resolution. Um cross the community presentation on that in her court or supportive of it and work with it later, please forward on this steps. I uh I just would like to add as a newcomer to this process. It was just incredible to come into such great work having already been done. Absolutely responsible to work. Quite a bit. We've seen sick holes, like if you want to take it since we're sick holes that happened. There were there, yeah, and along Bobton Boulevard, there were sinkholes and there are um at least two houses in two sewage entered as a result of the top same. I know the uh scrolls come up with both and non-works in one proximity of what replacement. Yeah, so in the report that the task force put out, there are some wall park um numbers, but I know the department of sustainability is working with the consultant called Raf Tell us to like look through different options for how we would fund that and talking about different school because some of them will be you know that the agent infrastructure replacement, some of it would be all kind of green infrastructure to like better absorb the water because they go and want to be consultations on the spotlight. Or there's an area that's like really overpaved, right where all these houses and sewage issues there's not she potentially might take waste that paything as infrastructure's worth it's not so this is for people who may or may not be familiar. This is where Butler and Blackstone intersect, or like in black still becomes like a one-way on each side on the south or the end of it, and that whole area is at the end of a watershed, all of the water in the area comes literally one, but everyone could one house, you know, in that neighborhood. And they have had repeated floods, they've got erosion in their backyard, it's been a very big deal. So the initial plan that the city developed in conjunction with the Blackstone uh park services to as well mentioned to establish a large area of read infrastructure using plants and so we can reuse to divert and absorb the stormwater. However, and then in a moment where I've really planning, um, the department of public work pointed out that many of the pipes underneath that area compromised hold the wrong size. There's one place remember this is the place where we need stormwater diversity votes, and right there there's a place I believe where pipes go from 60 inches to 40 inches and back to six, they just like all kinds of like poor, like just you know, poor planning or just patchwork sort of work being done over the years. So what's happening now actually is the city is first replacing the underground infrastructure that is happening now on our board, and I really want to bring a lot of attention and energy to it. We're going to be setting up a tour for anybody who wants to participate, and all council members will be invited to be able to sort of take a look at this area to see the great work that DPW is doing to replace those pipes, and then demonstrating what it's like for different parts of the city, DPW and clerks in this case to work together with an independent nonprofit to coordinate and get all this work done. Very excited about it. But I think the real important thing to note is before we do anything above the ground, and we can it's important to look underneath the ground. It's really why we to be able to find a way to above that part. In this case, it's small enough. I'm able to find the bug board, but that's not sustainable. Yeah. Also on a show note we have as part of the task force process leading up to it. The city's achievement of engineer Frank Hoffman did a map of all the underground infrastructure across the city, which we hadn't had before, and so we can see all the like stormwater pipes, all the sewage pipes, all the combined pipes, and actually know where things are because we reports this you have no idea what's in the ground. So he mapped all that out, and that's all I think that's all online now. But yes, it's all online, yeah. You can type in your address and see like what it's like. Um so that was also a really black problem because city's still old here. Cool. Good job. Other questions. Yeah, so first we'll prove the transmission, but then um Priscilla and her team are working with the consultant um and we'll work together collectively across the capsule and the administration to develop an ordinance that would figure out how we can start the house as well. So that would be presented to the council. Uh just a question. So we would be the first um municipality in World Island to do something. We're potentially gonna be the first municipality, but I think we're also talking with important and meriting with the at the same time. So there was a question like oh, should we raise to me first? And then um it was also like maybe we could all pull hands to do it together. So we've been in conversation with the director of uh resiliency and DPW for your work about that. She's like a resiliency director, and then also they're CW director. Yeah, they like combined. So we're also in conversation with our C if there's like a holding hands version.