BY SHANNON BLAIR
Member
Los Alamos County Environmental Sustainability Board
The monthly Los Alamos County Environmental Sustainability Board (ESB) was held last Thursday, May 16. The board received an overview presentation on the Department of Public Utilities (DPU) Water Plans from the County’s Water and Energy Conservation Coordinator Abbey Hayward.
Hayward covered the five water plans the County updates and utilizes in their water planning and conservation efforts (DPU Guiding Water Plans, Source Water Protection Plan, Non-Potable Master Plan, Long-Range Water Supply Plan, and Water & Energy Conservation Plan).
All plans are available on the Los Alamos County Website and I encourage all residents to review them. Water conservation starts at the home and can be as simple as saving pasta water to use for watering and ensuring that you are following water rule W-8 by watering outdoors no more than 3 days a week (no watering on Mondays!). There’s even financial incentive to water your lawn less as LAC utilizes a tiered pricing structure for water use to encourage responsible usage. As the Southwest moves into potentially another dry summer, all residents should do their part to conserve water (Source: National Weather Service Climate Prediction Center)
ESB also discussed the Climate Action Plan (CAP) Community Workshop that was held April 2 in Council Chambers and on zoom with 25 residents in attendance. The goals of the workshop were to review the CAP, begin understand what actions residents support the most/least, and identify implementation actions. CAP actions have been bucketed into six different focus areas including Building and Energy, Transportation, Materials and Consumption, Natural Systems and Water Resources, Community Resilience and Wellbeing, and Cross-cutting.
I am particularly interested in the Building and Energy focus area as it includes actions focused on increasing energy resilience and promoting local renewable energy. I see both of these as vital steps in the road to net-zero and am encouraged by the recent Foxtail Flats Solar and Storage agreement the County has entered. ESB is also particularly invested in the Transportation focus area, as we have a number of members with electric vehicles (EVs) and electric bikes (e-bikes) and are invested in seeing safer more accessible biking infrastructure in the community.
In the interactive polling portion of the workshop, specific actions such as “Incentivize electrification retrofits” and “Electric equipment replacement at burnout” were identified as highly supported, while other actions like “Establish an energy benchmarking program for commercial buildings” were least supported. The presentation and summary of the meeting is available on the county’s CAP website along with additional information regarding the study. The draft CAP will be presented to Council on July 9 and ESB and the County’s Sustainability Manager Angelica Gurule will continue to solicit public feedback through for one month.
The board heard updates on the Sustainability Office budget for the County’s next fiscal year starting July 1. The budget, adopted by council April 29, includes $1.5 million for the Sustainability Office, a huge increase from last year’s budget of $50k. This includes funding for EV charging infrastructure, development of a community wide EV infrastructure plan, transitioning the County fleet to EVs, general educational outreach, one new staff member to help with project implementation, and CAP implementation.
The board also receives monthly updates on the County’s diversion rates (that is, the percentage of recyclable/compostable material diverted from the landfill). In April, nine trucks of recycling and nine trucks of yard trimmings were diverted from the landfill reducing greenhouse gas emissions by roughly 505 tons. If you have questions about what can be recycled or how to dispose of materials, you can download the RecycleCoach App and input your questions. Don’t forget to utilize the Yard Trimmings bin (tan bin) for this type of waste. If you would like a Yard Trimmings bin for your house, please contact the Environmental Services division (solidwaste@lacnm.com).
ESB continues to discuss and prioritize community outreach events and plan to attend the Summer Concert Series and Farmer’s Markets throughout the summer. The next Seed Library event will be June 1 from 2-3:30 p.m. at the upper Rotunda at the Mesa Public Library with a discussion on “Climate-ready Trees” by Marisa Thompson and the next Bee City meeting is 4-5 p.m., June 18 at PEEC (more information can be found on the PEEC website). The two new Level 3 Fast Chargers for EVs (at the White Rock Visitors Center and Municipal Building) will be available for use May 29.
We are also recruiting new members for the board! If you are interested, I encourage you to attend a meeting and apply here. ESB is a vital board in the community and our role will grow in importance as the county begins to implement the CAP.
The next ESB Meeting is 5:30 p.m., June 20 in Council Chambers. All ESB meetings are held in person and on Zoom. We are also available for feedback and suggestions at esb@lacnm.us.