Northern Arizona University
OP-T2-2: Local Offsets Program

NAU has created a program of Community Based Action Research Teams. One of these teams is the Weatherizaion and Community Building Action Team or WACBAT. This has been a partnership between the Program in Community, Culture & Environment’s Sustainable Environments and Engaged Democracy (SEED) Freshman Learning Community and the Master of Arts in Sustainable Communities (SUS) and Friends of Flagstaff's Future (F3). Students work in a collaborative network, exercising leadership to weatherize homes as well as cultivate community relationships and capacities for environmental stewardship more generally. This project focuses on working with Flagstaff’s private and public sectors in organizing people in Sunnyside and Southside (Flagstaff’s two poorest neighborhoods) around house weatherization and retrofitting. Team members work with the City, County, NACOG (the preexisting retrofitting and weatherization providers here in Flagstaff), as well as community centers and private sector energy efficiency firms, to increase awareness of and education about these opportunities. The team also works directly with people in the installation and documentation of these weatherization and retrofitting projects. The most important part of this effort is working with the residents on increasing their awareness and creating a culture of environmental stewardship within Flagstaff in an economically sensible way. This project reduces Flagstaff’s carbon footprint, generates economic savings in gas and electric bills that enhance affordability, and lays the ground work for advancing sustainable economic development in the greater Flagstaff region. WACBAT attracts environmentally minded students, faculty and staff who want to start making an environmental difference now. Two exciting accomplishments this past year included a WACBAT 10-10-10 event with 350.org that signed up Flagstaff residents for $639,000 dollars worth of home energy retrofits, and successfully lobbying to the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) for a $2.7 Million dollar revolving loan fund for future work through Unisource.