SAN ANTONIO – Rose Levy said San Antonio feels hotter every summer.
“It’s very, very warm,” Levy said. “People walk around a lot here, and the kids walk from school. It’s just too dangerous.”
That’s why she showed up to the city’s Cool Neighborhoods Program open house in District 3 on Monday night. And she was not alone.
Dozens of people attended the first of three meetings to share their concerns about heat rising across San Antonio. The city is projecting temperatures to continue to spike, and that’s why it’s looking to its Cool Neighborhoods Program for solutions.
“We’re trying to make sure that residents are able to sustain and just get through these hot summers,” Leslie Antunez, the senior municipal sustainability manager at the Office of Sustainability, said.
The program follows up on the city’s Cool Pavement Pilot Program, which launched last summer. In the first phase, city crews paved ten streets with a cooling treatment to reduce heat in neighborhoods. Now, in phase two, the city is looking to continue these paving projects and add other heat mitigation measures.
“It’s a whole city approach to making sure that we can get through summers a little easier,” Antunez said.
Those measures could include cool roofs, new trees, shade structures, or water features. Antunez said the city is focusing on phase two in city council Districts 2, 3, and 5 because UTSA data shows these as the hottest districts in San Antonio.
The open house for District 5 is set for Saturday at 10:30 a.m. at Memorial Library, and the District 2 meeting is scheduled for next Tuesday at 6 p.m. at the Carver Library. An online survey is available for people unable to attend these meetings. It can be filled out here.
To track what roads the city plans on paving with this cooling treatment, click here.