Green Broad Ripple organized an Earth Day symposium that was held at the Indianapolis Art Center. Frank Basile moderated the event.

"Welcome to Earth Day 2007 - a new day dawning," said Frank. "Appropriately, I want to begin this afternoon with a poem called New Day.

"I think that really does speak to what we are going to be talking about today."

Frank gave a brief background on the Green movement in America. He said that it is important to act locally to help the environment. Acting locally is the subject of this Earth Day gathering.

Four speakers gave presentations on the Green movement. Jennifer Roberts spoke about the first Green library in Indiana, the Ohio Township Central Library. Andrew Bender spoke on the first Green community in Indiana, Coffee Creek Center. Timothy Method presented the Indianapolis Department of Public Works' Green vision for Indianapolis. The final speaker was Cortellini, who described his design for the first Green building in Broad Ripple, Ripple Flats @ 6310. I was only able to stay though the first two presentations.

Jennifer Roberts showed many examples of building Green and making buildings sustainable though examples from the Ohio Township Central Library.

Andrew Bender showed the plans for Coffee Creek Center, where preserving the environment is built into the community's design. Andrew started with a map of the Mississippi river basin that shows how things that we allow to get into the water system will eventually end up in the Gulf of Mexico.

"It would be so much easier if the consequences of what we do had an immediate nature," said Andrew. "The idea of Coffee Creek is to be responsible for every drop of water that falls on the land - 640 acres. The plan was to improve the site without having any impact of the surrounding areas."

There was a brief question and answer period after each presentation. At the end, there was a drawing for two tickets to see Al Gore's presentation on April 24, 2007.