Environmental Protection

By Jason J. Zaleska

Protect Swissvale's Parks, maintain, and clean our local enviornment for future generations.

In my opinion it is important to be practical with our environmental ideals in these tough economic times. But no matter how great our economic uncertainty is, nothing give us the license to ignore the environment altogether. We need to always do our best to protect and preserve this fragile planet we share with all life and life yet to come.

Leading by example, I feel my family and I live green yet practical lifestyle. We compost when we can and recycle most of our household waste at Construction Junction. We have been organic home gardeners since we moved to Swissvale and I telecommute to the office 2-3 days a week. Though my wife and I always feel there is room for improvement we do our best to minimize our environmental impact on the planet as a family.

In my role as vice chair of the Swissvale Planning Commission I have been working hard to protect and preserve our environment with our Green Ordnance Initiative. Swissvale's Green Ordnance Initiative is a program I lead that reviews existing ordnances for outdated regulations and codes that may conflict with home owners and business intergrading green technology into their property. We also hope to setup guidelines so that the technology is used safely while keeping the language clear and simple in order to not discourage the community from pursuing green improvement projects.

The enviornment is and always has been a primary concern for me. I understand that we can not and should not protect everything but we need to protect what we can and then some to ensure future genrations a safer, cleaner and bountiful world to live in.