Oakland County Commissioner Jim Nash, Democratic candidate for Oakland County Water Resources Commissioner (WRC), announced his campaign platform focusing on the sustainable development aspects of the Water Resources Commissioner’s office.
The WRC, formerly known as the Drain Commissioner, plays a vital role ensuring our drinking water and recreational waters are healthy and protected from pollution.
Commissioner Nash will focus his attention on several aspects of sustainable development. Sustainability focuses on the long-term triple bottom line: economic growth, environmental protection and social equity.
Mr. Nash has concentrated on sustainable policies since first running for office in 2002. He introduced green building to the Board of Commissioners in 2005 and worked to pass resolutions supporting it in Oakland County. He also helped organize the Regional Partnership for Sustainability, a cooperative committee between Oakland, Macomb, Wayne Counties and Detroit.
Jim has been a member of the Southeast Michigan Council of Governments since 2005, working on sustainable policies. Over the last year Jim has served on the R-Path committee, a regional bi-partisan committee representing five Southeast Michigan counties and Detroit, in support of legislation creating a regional mass transit authority.
Jim organized and hosted 6 Annual Green Building Workshops since 2006, bringing governmental, academic and industry experts together with county and local community planners and officials to help them develop their own green efforts. These efforts have paid off with reduced energy costs and sustainable energy development, largely thanks to federal stimulus dollars.
Jim has been a member of the National Association of Counties’ (NACo) Green Governments Committee for four years, and lectured at a national green infrastructure conference. Jim worked with the Governor’s Climate Action Council, SEMCOG, the US Green Building Council (USGBC) and the Engineering Society of Detroit (ESD) on green building issues. He was also Chair of the Sierra Club Southeast Michigan Group from 2003 to 2005.
As Water resources Commissioner Jim will continue his long term regional sustainability efforts; working with local communities, regional governments, our excellent colleges and universities and private organizations like the USGBC and ESD. Together we can find a way to solve the storm water issues affecting our water quality; through collaboration between local community planning and engineering agencies, the business and construction communities and homeowners. We can limit runoff using water conservation and runoff mitigation programs developed by the USGBC Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program, planning for low impact development through SEMCOG and our regional water officials and by educating homeowners about the benefits of rain barrels and water gardens.
Jim will lead efforts to develop a regional program to turn now useless waste water flow into an innovative system of hydro-power generation, creating a stable hydroelectric power supply with no environmental impact. Using Oakland County companies and engineers, this pioneering green power supply will create jobs, produce sustainable energy and reduce the need for future polluting power plants. New developments in alternative energy are happening every day and Jim will always seek new possibilities to make Southeast Michigan a national leader in this important emerging sector.
Commissioner Nash takes seriously the responsibility to protect our water resources, drinking and recreational, across the county. New State fracking * leases could threaten the purity of these waters by increasing the likelihood of accidental release of poisonous chemicals and salts, through infiltration or blowouts. As WRC, Jim will support a moratorium on fracking around our spectacular Oakland County lakes and throughout the aquifer that supplies our wells, unless proven state of the art precautions are developed and water testing is instituted around all drilling sites. Jim is organizing a Town Hall meeting on fracking, 6 to 8 pm on September 12, at the Board Auditorium, 1200 N. Telegraph, Pontiac.
For more information regarding Jim’s bio, sustainability, fracking, alternative energy and other issues, and to see Jim’s county-wide bi-partisan endorsements, please visit his campaign website: www.votejimnash.com.
“Conservation is a great moral issue, for it involves the patriotic duty of ensuring the safety and continuance of the nation.” President Theodore Roosevelt
Our water Our Future
*high pressure injection of up to 4 million gallons of water per well, out of our aquifer, mixed with salts and many unidentified caustic chemicals deep into the earth to release natural gas.
Source: Oakland County Commissioner Jim Nash