 Kane County's Healthiest Cities & Counties Challenge Initiative
'Give Kane a Voice' project aims to heighten community engagement
The Kane County Health Department received a 2-year grant in 2016 from the Aetna Foundation to launch its Give Kane a Voice project, which aims to increase community engagement throughout the county, and to begin to shift the KCHD's activities from typical outreach activities toward community engagement, which aims to empower citizens. The project began by creating three community councils in Aurora, Elgin, and Carpentersville. Residents attending committee meetings discussed how to improve the health of their communities, identified focus areas based on the unique situations in their communities, and developed action plans for achieving their objectives. The Aurora committee has selected healthy food and recreation activities as its priority, Carpentersville has selected healthy eating, and the Elgin committee has selected communications. While they receive support from KCHD staff, activities undertaken by the committees are freely selected by committee members. Kane County was one of 50 communities selected as finalists for Phase 2 of this grant. After a site visit by an evaluation team in August of 2018 which represents the contest's national advisory group, the best project will receive a $500,000 prize, and four runners-up will receive $50,000.
For additional information and the committee meeting schedule, visit the Health Department's project webpage. Questions can be directed to the Health Department's Grants Management Specialist, Paul Cofer.
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Kane County Expands Hazardous Waste Program
Geneva residents now eligible for home collection program
The County of Kane and the City of Geneva have partnered to provide Household Hazardous Waste (HHW) collection to the residents of the City of Geneva, starting immediately.
Between late-2013 & mid-2016, the City of Geneva contracted independently for a home collection service to provide their residents with this highly convenient service for disposing of HHW in a responsible manner. However, in late-2016, the City had to cancel the program because the vendor they had been working with was no longer providing that service. Partnering with the County has enabled them to reinitiate the program.
The City, the County, and the County's new vendor, US Ecology are all excited to be able to offer this exceptional service to Geneva residents once again. The program is for residential customers only, and no business materials will be collected.
A full list of acceptable and unacceptable items can be found on the County's Recycling website at countyofkane.org/recycling. Residents can schedule a collection by calling 866-373-8357 between 9am and 6pm Monday to Friday, or by emailing curbside@usecology.com.
View the program press release or visit the Kane County Recycles Household Hazardous Waste page for further details. Questions can be directed to Recycling Program Coordinator, Jennifer Jarland.
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Soil, Food, Water and Composting Summit
Summit to focus on collaborative dialogue addressing key sustainability sectors
Summit Purpose: To bring together leaders and practitioners working on soil quality enhancement, water quality protection, sustainable agriculture/local food, food recovery and composting to learn more about the connectivity between issues and explore opportunities for collaborative work that lead to soil conservation and enhancement, increased water quality, greater availability of local food for local consumption, increased waste diversion, composting and food recovery, and economic development opportunities.
Summit Speakers:
Program agenda is being finalized, and will include keynote and breakout session speakers from Fresh Taste, Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, Biocycle, Illinois Farm Bureau, US and IL EPA, USDA, Greater Chicago Food Depository, Kane County, Liberty Prairie Foundation, Illinois Environmental Council, City of Chicago, Solid Waste Agency of Lake County, Illinois Stewardship Alliance, Pink Energy Group, Illinois Food Scrap Coalition, Save Our Soils, Will County Soil and Water Conservation District, and more.
The event will also include a Collaborative Dialogue Session at the end of the day and a Ted Talk-like "Idea Share" in the morning featuring selected applicants pitching fundable "across-silo" project ideas that achieve outcomes in the areas of water and soil quality; local, sustainable food; food recovery and composting. Summit Outcomes: - Increased learning across topic areas
- Understanding of points of convergence across issues
- Tangible policy, project and program ideas that lead to collaborative work
Summit Audience: Universities; Soil and Water Conservation Districts; EPA; Composting stakeholders/advocates; Local, sustainable food and agriculture and composting stakeholders/advocates; Farmers; Food Recovery leaders/advocates; IDOT; Golf Course operators; Environmental organizations; Water quality protection advocates; Municipal and county governments; State legislators; private sector leaders; funding agencies.
Summit Sponsors:
Visit the registration page to sign up or contact Jen Nelson, Program Manager at Seven Generations Ahead, f or more information.
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Free Stormwater and
Site Planning Webcast
Kane County hosts the October webcast presented by the Center for Watershed Protection
This FREE webcast is open to all municipal staff and environmental partners. Participants will earn credits (2 PDHs or 0.2 CEUs) for attending. Please feel free to bring a bag lunch to the webcast.
October's topic will be:
Bringing Better Site Design into the 21st Century
Published in 1998 as a consensus-based process for changing development regulations, the Center's Better Site Design Handbook outlines 22 model development principles for site design that act to reduce impervious cover, conserve open space, manage stormwater at new residential and commercial development sites; and reduce the overall cost of development. Much has happened in the world of stormwater and site planning in the 18 years since the release of the handbook, including technical and regulatory advances that have changed how stormwater is managed and sites are developed. To respond to this need, the Center recently revised the handbook and related support products to reflect the latest in stormwater management technology and regulations such as MS4 permits, provide different versions of the COW for different site situations, update the supporting research, case studies, model code/ordinance library and more!
Wednesday, October 18th
12:00 pm-1:30 pm
Kane County Government Center
719 S. Batavia Ave. in Geneva
Building A, Room 126 (1st floor)
If you plan to attend, please RSVP to Cecilia Govrik at 630-208-8665 or govrikcecilia@co.kane.il.us by Wednesday, October 11th so that handouts may be printed in advance.
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