The First Unitarian Universalist Society of Marietta received $500 as a runner up in the Interfaith Power and Light 2022 Cool Congregations Challenge for the Sacred Grounds Fort Street Pollinator Habitat project. (Photo Provided)

MARIETTA — The First Unitarian Universalist Society of Marietta is among 12 national Interfaith Power and Light 2022 Cool Congregations Challenge participants awarded a $500 runners up award.

The annual contest accepts applications from congregations around the United States that address global warming by reducing carbon footprints as they create models of sustainability in their communities.

The society won the Sacred Grounds runner-up award for its Fort Street Pollinator Habitat project. Spearheaded by the congregation’s Green Sanctuary Committee, the congregation was supported by Marietta city officials, Fort Street neighbors and private individuals and received funding from the Dupont Clear Into the Future program.

The project is located on the west side of the Muskingum River bank.

Dawn Hewitt, committee chair, congratulated the congregation on winning the award.

“Kudos and big credit especially to Rebecca Phillips, Andrew Clovis and all those who put time, energy and muscles into our Riverbank project,” she said.

Over 2020 and 2021, the society and volunteers worked with project leader Rebecca Phillips to salvage heritage plantings in honor of earlier caretakers along with existing native plants before laying down black plastic to suppress invasives.

Additional native plants were added in May following the plan developed by Clovis, the project designer, GSC member and master naturalist. A second phase of planting was done last fall.

A drip irrigation system was added to access the city’s generous provision of water to the habitat. Volunteers monitored the garden through the winter while anticipating the arrival of spring growth.

“FUUSM and the other national winning congregations are casting a vision for the kind of world in which they want to live, and then carrying out that vision with practical actions that make a real difference in creating lasting solutions to climate change,” said the Rev. Susan Hendershot, president of Interfaith Power and Light.

The Cool Congregations Challenge shows people of faith are united by concerns about climate change and are taking action with or without support of government policies. The winners provide strong moral role models for their communities and their activities have a ripple effect with people in their own homes.