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Some heroes work hard everyday doing quality work for their communities. There are many environmental consultants who are today's unsung heroes. We've chosen to highlight Brett Hulsey and Bill Redding as representative of these everyday heroes.

Award winning conservationist Brett Hulsey has launched a firm, Better Environmental Solutions, to promote practical, real world solutions for cleaner air, water, and building better, safer communities.

“Our goal is to make it easy to be green,” said Hulsey. “Better environmental solutions save lives, jobs, money and just make sense. Better Environmental Solutions will highlight and expand all the environmental progress we are making in Wisconsin and across the nation.”

Bill Redding is an agent for the firm specializing in community outreach and Mississippi River restoration issues.

They are focusing on helping flood victims recover from Katrina and other disasters. The two recently returned from a Katrina recovery workshop sponsored by the Louisiana Environmental Action Network.

“We gave them a message of hope. Our experience during the 1993 Upper Mississippi River floods and others show that it is hard but we will get through this and will build better, safer communities,” Redding said. After those floods, the duo worked with President Clinton, FEMA Director James Lee Witt, state and local governments and groups to move 13,000 homes and businesses out of floodplains, and restore more than a half a million acres of wetlands. Subsequent flood damage in those areas was reduced more than 90%. This was the most successful flood protection effort in U.S. history, for which Hulsey was given the FEMA Distinguished Public Service Award in 2000, the first time this as given to a person from a non-governmental group.

“Better Environmental Solutions is about protecting communities and restoring wetlands and floodplains. The reason they call them floodplains is that it’s plain that they flood. Wetlands are going to get wet. Don’t build there if you don’t have to,” said Hulsey.

The group is developing a computer program that will calculate how many acres of wetlands or other natural habitat are needed to store a given flood or reduce a hurricane storm surge.

Other Better Environmental Solutions include:

• Implementing the Wisconsin Climate Change Action Plan to cut greenhouse air pollution by 70 billion pounds a year, create 8,500 new jobs, save consumers $490 million in energy bills, and cost little to implement.
• Smart Growth analysis showing efficient development saves tax costs, farmland and cuts air and water pollution.
• Promoting cleaner fuels like biodiesel to reduce our reliance on risky foreign oil and cut cancer-causing pollution in our communities.
• Promoting cleaner energy like the MG&E West Campus Cogenerating Facility. Together Hulsey and Redding have more than 50 years experience with successful campaigns at the local, state, and national level.

Bill Redding is the former president of the Mississippi River Basin Alliance, Clean Water Action board member, long time Sierra Club Midwest Representative, and was the Director of the Coalition for the Environment.

Brett Hulsey is a former Environmental Policy Advisor to President Clinton, was an Energy Conservation Advocate in the Carter Administration, and coordinated the Sierra Club’s Challenge to Sprawl Campaign. He authored more than 20 reports on clean water, safe air, land use, and transportation issues and helped pass the Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act of 1996, Great Lakes Critical Programs Act, Michigan Scenic Rivers Act, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, and many others.

All tolled, Hulsey has worked to pass legislation that protected our drinking water, cut pollution by billions of pounds, and created more than 150 million acts of new parks, refuges, scenic rivers, and restored more than two million acres of wetlands and farmland.

Contact them at www.BetterEnvironmentalSolutions.Com, Info@BetterEnvironmentalSolutions.Com or call 608-238-6070.