OS Teams up with OKC Emergency Management

Last year’s Urban Heat Island Mapping Campaign underscored the importance of partnerships and collaboration to mitigate the many effects of extreme heat. On Aug. 13 and 14, the Office of Sustainability, in collaboration with the City’s Office of Emergency Management, hosted an Extreme Heat Tabletop Exercise facilitated by representatives from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and supported by National Weather Service (NWS) staff. 

Tabletop Exercises are often part of emergency management training; like a workshop to stress-test systems, but in a no-pressure environment. About 70 people attended the two-day event, including first responders, emergency managers, transit officials, local, regional and statewide government officials, community service and disaster response providers and science researchers. There were three primary goals for our exercise:

1. Better understand extreme heat, heat risk and the risk vulnerable populations face;
2. Improve communication with our community partners, other local government officials and within our own departments; and
3. Recommend both short term (1-2 years) and longer term (10-15 years) solutions at individual-, community-, and city-scales. 

The short-term actions stemming from the exercise include adding more shade structures to public places, customizing heat alerts for improved outreach and refining the language we use to ensure our messages are consistent. Long-term actions include prioritizing green space in urban planning, adding more shade trees and incorporating heat awareness into K-12 education, similar to existing information on severe weather risks and how to prepare for it.

Thank you to the NOAA and NWS staff who helped us design and prepare for the exercise. A special thanks to NOAA Deputy Administrator Jainey K. Bavishi for her role in setting the context of why these exercises are important and recognizing Oklahoma City for efforts toward improving resilience to climate effects like extreme heat.

Image (above): NOAA Deputy Administrator Jainey K. Bavishi addresses the audience at the Heartland Heatwave extreme heat tabletop exercise held in mid-August. Photo by NOAA staff.

Want to learn more about the Urban Heat Island and Extreme Heat?

OKC partnered with 18 community, academic and government organizations to help recruit more than 250 'street scientists' to gather data for the Urban Heat Island Mapping Campaign last summer. Check out our campaign web page here to find out how and why we did this community science experiment and the results and recommendations. Our Extreme Heat page is here and is focused on identifying vulnerable people and ways to prevent heat illness and injury. 

Learn more about who's at highest risk to extreme heat on the National Integrated Heat Health Information System's website, Heat.gov.

Sign up here to be added to our Sustainability Volunteers list and please spread the word to others who might also be interested.

Tuesday, Oct. 29 | 8:15 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Rose State College, 6420 SE 15th St., Midwest City, OK 73110

The 10th annual event by the Oklahoma Compost and Sustainability Association (OCASA) features successes from local initiatives and highlights other cities' efforts to incorporate food waste into compost facilities. Breakout sessions include education and outreach strategies, campus compost successes, national food waste strategy, challenges in the composting infrastructure and more.

OCASA members get discounts on conference registration and memberships including an organization-branded T-shirt and one cubic yard of compost (delivery fee not included). Visit the website for more details and to register.

Image by OCASA.

School districts can now apply for EPA rebates to for up to 50 school buses that use electricity, compressed natural gas or propane. Applicants for electric buses can also apply for rebates to cover the charging equipment needed.

EPA has prioritized funding for several school district types, including those with high needs, in low-income areas, in tribal territories and in rural areas. Funding varies based on priority and school bus type, with more available for electric school buses and charging infrastructure. 

The agency is accepting applications for the 2024 Clean School Bus Rebate Program until Jan. 9, 2025 at 3 p.m. CST. Find out if your district is eligible by reading the rebate program guide. The funding is part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law of 2021, also known as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Image by Mackenzie Ryder/Pexels.

Hongwan Li, Ph.D., her colleague Changjie Cai, Ph.D. and their students celebrated a National Science Foundation grant to study how electric buses could be used as backup power in case of emergencies. The funding brings together several partners with interest in electric buses, including Shawnee Public Schools, two career tech schools, Oklahoma Gas & Electric Co., ACOG, INCOG, other researchers at Oklahoma State University and Tulsa-based electric school bus manufacturer IC Bus.

Li and Cai study air quality and air pollution at the University of Oklahoma's Health Science Center in the Hudson College of Public Health. (They were also important partners in our Urban Heat Island Mapping Campaign last year!).

Image (above right): Changjie Cai (left) holds the school bus intercom while standing next to Hongwan Li while stopped during a tour on an electric school bus around OU-HSC campus. Photo by: Andrew Craig/OU-HSC.

Have you ever wondered how environmental laws are enforced? The EPA is charged with protecting human health and the environment, which includes civil and criminal penalties for violators.

It recently re-issued the EPA Civil Enforcement Fact Sheet to help the public understand how civil enforcement works. Read the PDF here or visit the web page.

Keep in mind, the EPA has granted an individual state the ability to enforce portions federal laws, called primacy. For example, Oklahoma has primacy over Safe Drinking Water Act (delegated to the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality) related to some underground injection wells that inject non-hazardous waste deep underground and also over disposal wells that inject wastewater from oil and gas operations (delegated to the Oklahoma Corporation Commission).

Image by US EPA.

Funding for Sharps Collection

The Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality is teaming up with a local and national organizations to increase medical sharps collection, that is, a syringe with a needle attached used for medical purposes, like administering prescriptions such as insulin or allergy shots. These important devices that can be dangerous if not disposed of in a specific sharps container.

The Oklahoma Meds & Sharps Disposal Committee (OMSDC) and the Product Stewardship Institute are joining DEQ to promote the initiative to expand infrastructure needed to safely collect medical sharps. Five $2,000 stipends are available for organizations to create or support collection. Funding is granted on a rolling basis until all the funding is dispersed. Download the stipend application here; contact Hanz Atia at hanz@productstewardship.us for questions.

OKC Zoo Preschool

The OKC Zoo recently opened a licensed Nature Explorers Preschool for children ages 3 through 5 in an safe, supportive environment that encourages discovery, experimentation and connection through play in and with nature. Visit okc.zoo/preschool to learn more.

Image by OMSDC.