The New Canaan Environmental Group is holding what is being billed as its most important environmental forum ever.
The symposium to be held from 2 to 5 p.m. on Saturday October 27th at the Lapham Community Center will feature two presenters – Dan Burden and Denise Savageau.
Denise Savageau
In its June 18, 2001 issue, Time Magazine (http://www.time.com/time/innovators_v2/civic_leaders/profile_burden.html) identified Dan Burden, the Environmental Group’s keynote speaker, as one of the six most important civic innovators worldwide in his efforts to create better places to live, work and play.
Mr. Burden currently serves on the Florida DOT “Greenbook” Committee to draft standards for traffic calming.
He was instrumental in developing traffic calming programs in Florida cities such as Bradenton Beach, Gainesville, Key Largo, South Miami Beach and West Palm Beach; and cities across the country such as Austin, Texas; Asheville and Charlotte, North Carolina; Boulder, Colorado; Honolulu, Hawaii; Lansing, Kalamazoo and Traverse City, Michigan; San Diego and Santa Monica, California; and Seattle, Washington.
Mr. Burden has photographed and examined walking and bicycling conditions in over 1400 cities worldwide. In 1994, under the auspices of the United Nations, he served as a bicycle consultant in China.
In his travels, Mr. Burden has not “found one (community) where designing for the car has made it a successful place. Indeed, the most successful villages, town and cities in America are those designed before the car was invented, and where the least tinkering has been done since.”
Mr. Burden is likely the most nationally recognized authority on “walkable” communities and bicycle facilities and programs. His command of disciplines and issues include street design, traffic calming, public safety, bicycling and greenways and has allowed him to develop a holistic vision for creating healthy communities, which are pedestrian and bicycle-friendly.
In 1996, Mr. Burden founded and serves as Executive Director of a non-profit Florida-based consulting firm called Walkable Communities, Inc (http://www.walkable.org/). Mr. Burden has completed 140 week-long community, or transportation design charrettes and serves as one of the main instructors for the National Highway Institute course on Bicycle and Pedestrian Facility Design, which is directed at traffic engineers, planners and community developers.
Walkable Communities, Inc. recently merged with Glatting Jackson Kercher Anglin, (http://www.glatting.com/), the prestigious community planning and design firm with over 150 professionals – including the eminent traffic-calming guru, Walter Kulash - and offices in Orlando and West Palm Beach, Florida and Atlanta, Georgia.
Prior to that Mr. Burden served for 16 years as the Bicycle and Pedestrian Coordinator at the Florida Department of Transportation. It is during this period, actually when Mr. Stowe, the Environmental Group president and New Canaan Party candidate for First Selectman, stayed with his wife Lys Burden and daughters in Tallahasee, Florida during his 1993 cross-country bicycle ride that Mr. Burden and Mr. Stowe first spoke. Twenty years earlier, as a budding National Geographic photographer, Mr. Burden led his wife Lys and another couple on a bicycle journey starting in Alaska. Dan and Lys Burden ended their participation in the bicycle journey in Panama when Mr. Burden became ill, but the other couple rode all the way down to Argentina.
The once-in-a lifetime bicycle ride encouraged Mr. Burden, his wife – then based in Missoula, Montana - and thirty others to organize Bikecentennial, a mass cross-country bicycle ride from Astoria, Oregon to Washington, D.C., which took place in 1976 to celebrate the nation’s bicentennial. After that historic ride took place, Mr. Burden created the Bicycle Federation of America in 1977 and served as its director for two years.
Mr. Burden has penned two books, Street Design Guidelines for Healthy Neighborhoods (1999) and Streets and Sidewalks, People and Cars: the Citizens’ Guide to Traffic Calming published by the highly regarded Local Government Commission Center for Livable Communities (http://www.lgc.org/center/).
Mr. Burden holds a B.S. in Forestry and a Masters in Interpersonal Communication from University of Montana at Missoula.
Mr. Burden will commence his presentation at 2 p.m. with a compelling series of Powerpoint photographs and take questions at 3:30 p.m.
Ms. Denise Savageau, will follow Mr. Burden, at 4 p.m.
Ms. Savageau has served as the Conservation Director for Conservation Commission in the Town of Greenwich for ten years. Serving in that capacity. Ms. Savageau works to protect the natural and cultural resources in the Town of Greenwich. These resources include water supply and open space protection, brownfield development, fisheries restoration, wildlife and watershed management, which includes flooding threats from the Town’s watercourses, such as the Byram River.
Ms. Savageau is a trained facilitator at the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection’s Environmental Education Programs and she has worked to train educators at Audubon Greenwich, Soundwaters and the Bruce Museum. She organizes a yearly conservation lecture series for the Garden Education Center of Greenwich.
Ms. Savageau formerly worked as District Manager for the Hartford County Soil and Water Conservation District, where she provided technical assistance and education to local officials, farmers, and residents in 29 municipalities in Hartford County.
Mr. Stowe first came to know Ms. Savageau while he served on the Environmental Council of Stamford Board. Ms. Savageau is highly regarded in environmental circles across the State of Connecticut.
Ms. Savageau holds a B.S. in Agricultural Economics with a concentration in Environmental Economics and Natural Resource Management. Her husband Michael Aurelia is a professional wetlands scientist.
Ms. Savageau will discuss the importance of having separate Conservation and Inland Wetland Commissions and the role the Conservation Commission overseeing flood control, stormwater and watershed management. She will elaborate on stormwater-related issues from a water quality and water velocity perspective and spell out potential best management practices.
With the recent flooding in New Canaan, her presentation is certainly topical.
