Gary Fuller: Opelika to celebrate Earth Hour 2008

By: Gary Fuller Guest Columnist | Opelika Auburn News
Published: March 25, 2008

On behalf of the Opelika City Council I’m pleased to announce that our community will participate in Earth Hour 2008. From Chicago to Sydney to Tel Aviv, cities and countless individuals around the world will turn off the lights for one hour at 8 p.m. on Saturday as part of a global event created to symbolize this important fact: each one of us, working together, can make a positive impact on climate change.

Turning off the lights for just one hour demonstrates how easy it is to adjust the way we lead our lives to help stabilize our climate. It represents a great “first step” in educating ourselves about how to be energy conscious and “wise stewards” of this planet we live on.

The City of Opelika has already been moving towards our pledge of becoming a “Cool City” in a number of areas. We have four recycling drop off locations and have been testing an expanded curbside recycling program. Our goal is to expand the curbside effort to include the whole community.

President Jerry Teel is leading the charge to make City Council meetings “paperless” and the administration is currently at work on this effort. Opelika Light & Power receives regular updates from ENERGY STAR and we pass this information on energy savings on to our customers through the city’s website, www.opelika.org, and other publications. We recently completed our project to change all our traffic signal lights to LED bulbs. These bulbs last 10 times longer than regular bulbs; they are noticeably brighter and will save the City some $10,000 to 15,000 each year in electricity costs.
I encourage citizens and businesses of the City of Opelika to participate in this event by simply turning off your lights for just one hour, starting at 8 p.m. on Saturday.

Earlier that day I hope you and your family will attend “Garden in the Park” at Municipal Park. My thanks to Bill Trant, Shirley Flora and all the great leadership of Keep Opelika Beautiful for presenting this wonderful event.

At 10 that morning, we’ll have the official re-opening ceremonies for the Rocky Brook Rocket and there will be com-plimentary rides until noon. The Rocket has been idle for a few years but thanks to some great volunteers and the financial support of the Opelika Rotary Club our train will be back on track.

Gary Fuller is mayor of Opelika.