The Chatham Environmental Forum (the Forum) was established in the early 1990s to provide a venue for discussing environmental issues challenging the Savannah-Chatham area community. Since its inception, the Forum, with a balanced membership from the business, governmental and environmental communities has been quietly assisting Chatham County in tackling some of the area’s most challenging environmental issues.

Over the past 20 years, the Forum has addressed complex issues. These include:

• Making recommendations on the Air quality in the Savannah area and its potential impact on community cancer rates,
• Assisting the Metropolitan Planning Organization in developing the state’s first Water Supply and Management Plan, targeting the long term protection of the Floridan aquifer as the area’s primary drinking water source,
• Recommending in the late 1990s the establishment of a Stakeholder Evaluation Group(SEG) for assessing potential environmental impacts of the proposed Savannah Harbor deepening,
• Developing a plan in 2007 to assist the County in becoming the “Greenest County in Georgia,”
• Using the JoIN Plan, developed by the Forum, the County attained a $300,000 federal grant for reducing the carbon footprint of Chatham County government.

The Forum will be using part of this grant to assist Chatham County in conducting a Greenhouse Gas assessment to further reduce the County's carbon footprint.

Like a three-legged stool, The Forum membership includes a broad cross-section of the community with equal representation from the business sector, governmental bodies, and environmental advocacy groups. For each issue undertaken by the Forum, the final analysis has been a consensus product based on the best available science with recommended solutions that all sectors within the community could support.