Green Options

Last week, I posted about the tremendous relocalization efforts of the small town of Willits, CA. Earlier today, I had the chance to speak with Liam UiCearbhaill, the Operational Facilitator for Willits Economic LocaLization (WELL), the Willits relocalization group, about a variety of topics, including WELL’s community involvement, current projects, and future plans.

What is your specific role in the WELL organization?

My title is operational facilitator. I perform a number of functions, but the real focus is to help things happen. We try really hard not to be too possessive of any project. We look around the town and see who is already doing something good in a particular area and find ways to help them, and we look where nobody is doing anything and try to find ways to get things started. By using that approach, a lot has happened. There’s an alliance of groups that gets together to do grant writing, for instance.

How did you get involved in WELL?
I moved to this area about 5 years ago because I could perceive there was a problem [environmentally]. As I looked around, this looked like the most survivable area for this stuff I saw coming down the pipe. I was thinking of the environmental catastrophes I saw coming down the horizon, not necessarily peak oil. When WELL started up, it was pretty obvious to me that this was something I needed to get involved in.

A few summers ago, I had the pleasure of spending some time in Willits, CA. This small, progressive town in Mendocino County harbors one of the best relocalization efforts in the United States, if not the world.

“Relocalization” is the idea that communities should produce food, energy, and goods locally. The movement developed in response to peak oil and climate change concerns, and may just be our best hope for surviving our current environmental crises.

The Willits Economic Localization organization (WELL) was founded in 2004 by a concerned local climate scientist named Jason Bradford. While the organization started out by showing the peak oil film “The End of Suburbia” (an excellent film that I highly recommend), it soon expanded its efforts into a number of areas, including business, education, energy, food, and health.

Despite the small size of Willits, WELL has made incredible strides towards its goals in the past few years.