Coventry, Connecticut

COVENTRY, CONNECTICUT Since being implemented in the mid-1990s, the process has preserved a significant of open space and present- ed opportunities for Coventry to con- nect that open space with parks, lineal trails, and greenways. “That equates to healthy living activities,” says Trott. “If you’re able to connect a residential subdivision via walking trails to a neigh- borhood park, then you’re encouraging more people to use that park.We’ve been very fortunate to be able to execute a lot of these subdivisions in that manner.” With an eye toward tomorrow, Coven- try has firmly committed itself to invest- ing in sustainability and in alternative energy solutions. The town’s Solarize Coventry program makes it less cost- ly for residents to go solar through a group purchasing program. Thus far, 75 households have used it to install solar equipment. Coventry also has applied for funding to implement a “micro-grid” system utilizing natural gas to power its high school, middle school, town hall, school administration building, radio-communication-fire station, police station, and 80 units of elderly housing. “If the energy goes out, we can run for two weeks on our own power sourc- es,” says Elsesser. “It’s a combination of natural gas and all the solar that we have. We have solar on every school building; we have solar carports at the town hall; and we’ve done an amazing amount of solar throughout the community.That ‘mi- cro-grid’ project,we’re really excited about it because we’ll be able to go off-grid and use natural gas, combined with batteries put onto our solar system, to keep going.” Coventry also implemented a commu- nity energy purchase program to enable residents to buy alternative energy through outside vendors from their utility company,with group pur- chasing locked in at low rates for participants. “We continue to run energy fairs,” says Elsesser. “We have EV charging stations and run EV cars in our fleet.We’ve converted our streetlights to LED and have actually become a direct import- er of solar lights for our parks, importing lights from China at a third of the price compared to local options. And we’ve run a whole series of energy seminars and are signed up with a pro- gram called CPACE for commercial properties that allows them to pay the town for their loans for energy upgrades.Those are some of the energy initiatives that we’ve done.” As a result of such initiatives, Coventry has been named a Connecticut Clean Energy Community and also received the U.S. Department of Energy’s SolSmart Gold Award for the town. “I think the bottom line is we are kind of unin- tentionally sustainable,” says Elsesser.“We just did it because it was the right thing to do, kind of before people started talking about sustainability.We were just doing our jobs and then suddenly looked up and said,‘Wow,we’ve got a big list here.’The lesson people can take from us is just start doing some- thing instead of feeling that you have to have this giant plan and scope of work. Just start.” 800.286.2469 www.fando.com Connecticut • Maine • Massachusetts New Hampshire • Rhode Island • Vermont Creating Works of Life in Coventry since 1998 Live Play We create works of life where you... Work PREFERRED VENDORS n Fuss and O’Neill www.fando.com n Teleflex Medical www.teleflex.com & we are a global leader in Join us! Career opportunities at www.teleflexmedicaloem.com Medical companies across the world depend on us for everything from raw materials to components to sutures to finished medical devices. sutures fibers 1295 Main Street, Coventry, CT 06238