Mark recently answered the Sierra Club's Questions, seeking their endorsement. Read what he has to say.

Sierra Club Questionnaire

1.     What is your background in working on areas of environmental concern?? Please be specific.? Be sure to include any environmental issues in public policy with which you have been involved.

I have always been concerned with environmental issues.? While serving as the Speaker of the Student Congress 1999-2000, I was heavily involved in lobbying the University against a proposed enrollment increase of nearly 10,000 students over the next eight to ten years.? Specifically, I was responsible for rejecting a nominee as Chairperson of the Student Advisory Committee to the Board of Trustees who was advocating for this increase.? My concerns about this student population increase then, as now, focused on the extremely negative impact such growth would have on Chapel Hill ? an increase in automobile traffic, a building boom that would accompany the growth, and the consequent effects this would have on air and water quality as well as loss of the few remaining wooded areas and open fields on campus.? As I explain below, even a more moderate increase in enrollment of two to three thousand will present Chapel Hill with an environmental crisis.?

As a student leader, I also worked diligently to make the University more pedestrian friendly.? I worked with both the Town and the University to bring sidewalk and crosswalk improvements to the dangerous intersection of Country Club and Ridge Road.? In addition, I led the Student Congress in lobbying the Dept of Transportation and Public Safety to develop traffic calming and pedestrian safety improvements along Manning Drive.? While at UNC, I worked to improve the walk-ability of campus in an effort to decrease the reliance on the automobile.

2.     What are the major environmental problems facing Chapel Hill?? What are the obstacles to solving them?? What ideas and commitments do you offer?

Unquestionably, the greatest environmental difficulties facing Chapel Hill involve the expansion of the University over the next decade.? As you are aware, the University expansion will bring thousands of students and hundreds of new faculty and staff to our community.? Their presence will create challenges associated with their impact on transportation, as well as air and water quality.? The University estimates that the expansion on the main campus alone will result in 10,000 new automobile trips per year. The University still has yet to address the impact of the 25,000 or more new faces that are predicted to occupy the Horace Williams tract.? Presently, despite the University?s assurances, no adequate solutions have been proffered to address this enormous growth and the adverse impact on our environment that it will most surely bring.

The current relationship between the University and Town make finding solutions very difficult.? I will bring to the Council an understanding of the University?s negotiation methods, and I will work to preserve Chapel Hill?s commitments to environmental preservation.?

I support the experiment with fare-free busing coming in 2002 and am committed to making it a permanent fixture in Chapel Hill.? I also support bus service expansion to meet increased demand and to provide a real alternative source of transportation that will be available when citizens need it.?

The increase in the amount of impervious surface, and the storm water problems that will accompany it, also present a challenge.? If a development is going to increase storm water run-off, presenting a flooding and water quality problem, the development should be not approved until there is an adequate and effective mitigation plan in effect.? This includes UNC and their expansion plans on Horace Williams and in neighborhoods adjacent to downtown and to Morgan Creek.

3.     Given the federal government?s failure to act to curtail global warming, does local government have a responsibility to take action?? If so, in what manner?

Of course local governments have a responsibility to take action.? An individual?s choices ? public transport vs. private automobile, producing tons of garbage vs. recycling, reusing, and purchasing items with less packaging, and conserving energy vs. wasting energy ? have an enormous impact on greenhouse emissions and global warming.? Because global warming is in large part a result of the individual decisions of billions of people, local government must show leadership.

Specifically, local governments should make policy decisions focused toward curtailing global warming in areas related to planning and development, transportation, and waste management.

?        Town facilities must be energy efficient and should include passive solar features.

?        The Town should follow the example of other communities around the country, such as Lenexa, Kansas, and create a ?paperless? town government.

?        Require developers to ?build green? by incorporating passive solar features in their homes and offices, use recycled building material, re-use grey water, and recycle construction waste rather than landfill it.

?        All Town vehicles, including buses, should use and adapt existing and emerging advances in energy technology.

?        The Town must continue to develop our greenways, bikepaths, and sidewalk infrastructure to decrease dependence on the automobile.

?        Cluster development so as to retain as much open forested space as possible.

?        Provide incentives for Town employees to use alternative transportation methods.

?        Resist road-widening projects that only invite more people to drive ? i.e. Weaver Dairy Rd.

?        Support the million solar roofs project.

?        Do what it takes to bring the University back to the table to develop employer/employee housing to encourage pedestrian and bicycle commuting.

?        Plant more trees (not just these fad-ish pear trees), to provide shade, filter pollution, and stabilize soil and storm-water run-off.