Durango has a new plan to track its reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and its consumption of resources while providing regular updates to the public about those efforts.
Durango City Council adopted the new plan at Tuesday’s City Council meeting.
Marty Pool, sustainability manager for the city, said the new plan places a stronger emphasis on strategy and outlining big-picture principles and objectives than the city’s former plan that was adopted in 2015.
The plan is a reference for city departments, businesses, nonprofits, individuals and community organizations, Pool said.
“It takes a little bit of a higher level look at sustainability and is designed to guide communitywide sustainability overall,” he said.
Progress will be tracked across five sectors: water; energy; transportation and development patterns; consumption and waste; and natural systems and ecology, Pool said. Conversely, the 2015 plan had 10 different categories and nearly 200 specific actions for efforts toward sustainability, he said.
“It (the 2015 plan) guided a lot of great work over the years, but I would say in the update there’s a stronger emphasis on strategy and outlining overarching principles and calling out key objectives,” he said.
The plan also takes a deep-dive look at indicators that show the city’s and community’s progress on specific actions in pursuit of sustainability. Those include greenhouse gas emissions, total energy and water consumption, and the total amount of waste being sent to landfills, Pool said.
“We’re committed to measuring those, and every year we can look at how we’re doing and what’s working and what’s not,” he said.
A working group consisting of city staff and community members involved in public lands, forest and water issues, as well as agencies such as La Plata Electric Association, provided feedback that helped draft the plan, he said. The city also hosted a survey and six public workshops to collect more information from the community at large.
“We see so much (about) the impacts of the changing climate right now,” Mayor Barbara Noseworthy said. “And so there is an urgency to really address this and to ensure that our community is as resilient as possible.”
She said the new plan is modeling efforts being made by the international community to reduce the carbon footprint on a global scale.
“So it’s looking at the long-term needed change but at an incremental level,” she said. “What have we done over the past two years? What’s feasible to try to achieve in the next three to five years?”
A major request from the public is to see commitment and progress on resource conservation, the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and resiliency in the face of climate change, Pool said.
“How are we going to manage a reduced water supply?” he said. “How are we going to manage a longer, more intense wildfire season?”
The previous plan called for annual year-end reports on sustainability progress. Those will continue with the newly adopted plan. But more reports will be released throughout the year under the new plan, Noseworthy said.
She said updates on sustainability progress will be posted to the city website “regularly” and that she thinks the new plan will supply a sturdier feedback loop of information between the city and the community.
Although the city can provide services and infrastructure and write codes and policies with sustainability in mind, making real strides toward sustainability takes a communitywide effort, Pool said.
To further aid that effort, Durango is launching green business certification and grant programs, he said.
Green Durango Grants is a new program that will provide $1,000 to $5,000 to community members and organizations that wish to launch programs that agree with the city’s new sustainability plan, Pool said. Applications will open in mid-June.
More information is available at durangogov.org/sustainability.
Green Business Certification is another new program developed by the city and Four Corners Office of Resource Efficiency. The program provides “guidance, financial incentives, and recognition for businesses looking to reduce their resource consumption and be more sustainable,” Pool said in a news release Wednesday.
More information is available at fourcore.org/programs/green-business-certification/.
One major priority the 2022 sustainability plan highlights is the two-part reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and the increase in renewable electricity generation, which the city initially committed to in August 2019.
Currently, the city’s goals are to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to half the levels found in 2016 and to generate half of all electricity from renewable sources by 2030, according to the final draft of the plan.
By 2050, the city aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 100% compared with 2016 levels and to generate all electricity from renewable sources.
Energy consumption and transportation emissions account for 92% of Durango’s measured community emissions, according to the final draft of the plan. Those two sources of emissions will be the primary targets of efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in coming years.
The plan also seeks to build Durango’s resiliency for expected climate change impacts to the region, which are warming temperatures, drought and wildfire, and extreme weather events, according to the final draft.
In managing resource consumption and attempts to mitigate climate change effects, the city is also prioritizing health and well-being by reducing pollution; equity is another priority to ensure that quality-of-life advantages gained by following the sustainability plan will benefit the whole community, according to the plan.
cburney@durangoherald.com
