HomeMy WebLinkAboutCFE Minutes 041017Orange County Commission for the Environment
Meeting Summary
April 10, 2017
Solid Waste Management Administration Building, Eubanks Road, Chapel Hill
Present: Lynne Gronback (Chair), Bill Kaiser (Vice Chair), May Becker, Jeremy Marzuola, Jeanette
O'Connor, Alan Parry, Sheila Thomas-Ambat, Marshall Gray, Matt Crook
Absent: Lydia Wegman, Rebecca Ray, Peter Cada, Alex Nicodem, Bill Newby
Staff: Tom Davis, Brennan Bouma
I. Call to Order – Gronback called the meeting to order at 7:31.
II. Additions or Changes to Agenda - Bouma gave an update on the CFE Facebook page setup.
III. Approval of Draft Minutes from March 13, 2017. Gray motioned to approve the minutes as written.
O’Connor seconded. Minutes were approved unanimously.
IV. CFE Annual Work Plan Discussion with BOCC – Kaiser discussed meeting with BOCC on March
28th concerning CFE Annual Wok Plan. CFE officers met with BOCC on March 28th to provide the annual
update on the CFE workplan. Kaiser and Bouma presented to the BOCC highlighting the CFE’s work on
hydrilla, and ongoing series of educational articles.
V. Carrboro Climate Action Plan Update- O’Connor led discussion concerning Carrboro effort.
O’Connor also serves on the Carrboro Climate Task Force whose work began in 2014. They worked
together for 2 years with staff to create the plan, meeting at least once per month.
Created a 2 part plan: 1.) The town works to control mitigate their own operational footprint; 2.)
Citizens will organize and work on specialty areas which would have a larger impact. They are now
moving into the next phase of monitoring goal progress. One specific focus area is how to create
incentives for renters/owners to become more efficient and reducing the carbon footprint.
Randy Dodd was the person who managed the final plan. Helped to coordinate the subgroups.
Gronback asked about the diversity of the Task Force. The Task Force had good gender diversity, but
not racial or socioeconomic diversity. The Aldermen are hoping that additional and more diverse input
can be gathered in the next phase. Gronback mentioned that school Parent-Teacher Associations
(PTAs) could be a good idea since they are often diverse and the structure is already in place.
Not much input from businesses on many items, but there was one recommendation that focused on
business interests in the final version.
Took a lot of guidance from ICLEI, and wrote it in a very accessible way so that it would be most
useful.
50% GHG reduction per capita by 2025 is a bold goal, but it is arguably attainable. Energy efficiency
and fuel economy standards are going.
Town will lead by following through on 2014 commitment, and leave room for community to use this
plan to move other recommended initiatives forward. The education component will be the harde st
component.
Town has adopted the plan and has asked the Task Force to wait while they work on hiring additional
staff to help move these initiatives forward.
A large hurdle for Carrboro is that many of their residents are renters and they have less co ntrol over
their home’s efficiency. Another hurdle is the large proportion of English-as-a-second-language
residents.
Crook offered the idea that Carrboro’s model plan might be picked up by other municipalities.
Kaiser asked about how the Task Force divided up the work. The group initially broke into committees
and came up with a category and tangible recommendations under that category, and then they
volunteered to write the sections.
Randy Dodd wrote the introduction and unified the formatting and assembled all the pieces.
Becker asked what feedback the plan has gotten from the public. The Town sent out a survey which
had a good response and had several forums in Town Hall associated with other events. Many people
also emailed Randy Dodd with comments.
The biggest push-back was from the Save Bolin Creek group about the recommendation to finish a
greenway to connect through the Town.
VI. Orange County Climate Resilience Assessment – Bouma led discussion of Regional Effort:
In June of 2016, Sustainability Managers from Cary and Durham invited other local government
sustainability staff from Orange County, Wake County, Chapel Hill, and Raleigh to attend initial meetings.
Monthly meetings were held at TJCOG to convene potentially interested project partners to discuss
shared interests in assessing the resilience of the core of the Triangle. The County Sustainability
Coordinator and Emergency Services staff participated to assess possible benefits to Orange County. A
proposal was solicited and has now been received from The National Environmental Modeling and
Assessment Center (NEMAC) to complete a joint resilience assessment which would cover the 7 local
governments. NEMAC is a national center based in Asheville that wrote the "U.S. Climate Resilience
Toolkit" for the Federal government.
This assessment would use the information and public input from the comprehensive plans and
hazard mitigation plans of all participants, and model likely impacts of severe weather events and
other hazards within the context of a rapidly changing society and climate.
Funding is available to complete the first two phases of the six phases proposed and the remaining
funding has been requested in the FY18 budget.
Once vulnerabilities are assessed and strategies are created to increase resilience they can then be
incorporated into the County’s FEMA-mandated mitigation plan.
VII. CFE Committee Break-out Sessions -
Air and Energy Committee Meeting Notes:
The Air and Energy committee will continue to monitor the proposed budget cuts at EPA and the
possible impacts on Orange County.
Becker discussed an interest in ensuring that the CFE maintained its focus on reducing food waste.
As there have recently been two educational articles on climate change written by Vice-Chair Kaiser
and endorsed by the entire CFE, the Air and Energy committee will focus its outreach on website and
Facebook page content.
The green building item was also discussed, along with Chapel Hill’s pilot incentive program and the
legal restrictions on incentives. The committee decided to specify that green retrofits are just as
important as new construction and may focus on commercial development as there is likely to be
more impact in that sector.
The committee desires to keep all existing priorities on the list and to add two related priorities that
will be the specific focus for the upcoming year (numbers 1 and 2 below):
Air and Energy Resources Committee Priorities: (Becker, Parry, Crook, Newby, Nickodem)
1. Review Carrboro’s Climate Action Plan and related actions and assess their applicability and feasibility
to Orange County operations and residents.
2. Survey grants that other local governments in NC are leveraging to work on environmental and
sustainability projects and assess their feasibility Orange County.
3. GHG Emissions Inventory – Consider whether it is feasible and worthwhile to conduct a
comprehensive update of the County 2005 greenhouse gas emissions inventory.
4. Green Building – Help the County develop an incentive program for green construction/retrofits.
5. Climate Change – Educate county residents about climate change, alternative energy sources and
efficiency, and steps to reduce their (and County government’s) carbon footprint.
6. Energy Efficiency – Partner with Piedmont Electric Membership Corp and/or Duke Energy to take
advantage of USDA program for low-interest loans for energy efficient upgrades for its
members/owners.
Water Resources Committee Meeting Notes:
The committee agreed that they had completed their previous action item to conduct a literature
review of maintaining stream buffers to protect water quality, aquatic habitat, and biodiversity. It was
removed from their list.
They also agreed Priority 3 concerning Water Supply will be the main priority for this year and that
Cada and Kaiser may write a news article about it.
Beyond that priority, Thomas-Ambat will brief the CFE about action item #4 below:
Water Resources Committee Priorities: (Cada, Ray, Thomas-Ambat, Kaiser, Gray)
1. Hydrilla Treatments – Continue to educate the public about hydrilla and other invasive species of
concern; continue to monitor chemical treatments to assure they are not harmful to rivers. (Status:
Ongoing, periodic reporting from Tom)
2. Surface and Ground Water Quantity & Quality – Increase the collection of data for surface and ground
water quantify and quality; increase public education so it might lead to more funding for data
collection. (Status: Unchanged)
3. Water Supply – Continue to educate county residents about our water supply and what steps can be
taken to improve/maintain quality and quantity of future water supplies. (Status: Unchanged)
4. Identify key entities and agencies involved in regulating and managing water resources.
Land Resources Committee Meeting Notes:
Land Resources Committee Priorities: (Marzuola, O’Connor, Wegman, Gronback)
1. Food Waste - Work with Solid Waste Administration to support and encourage composting throughout
Orange County.
2. Native Plant Habitats - Renew collaboration with NC Botanical Garden and others to identify
significant roadside habitat for native plants; then ask NCDOT and other utilities to eliminate the use
of herbicides to manage vegetation in those special roadside habitats.
3. Native Landscaping - With the goal of educating homeowners and businesses on reasons to choose a
diversity of regionally native species for landscaping and other ways to promote biodiversity, we will
seek out partners and try to make opportunities for education and funding known to the community.
4. Write articles for publication or posting related to the following topics:
a. County Parks that are open and discussion of Summer Events;
b. Explaining and highlighting environmental impact report of Durham-Orange Light Rail;
c. The relation between land use and alternative energy generation.
VIII. Updates and Information Items – Information on the following items was provided:
a) Continuing Action Items from previous CFE meetings, including: SOE 2019 Planning, CFE
Facebook page,
b) DEAPR Earth Evening event, April 28th, 2017,
c) Clean Energy and Air Op-Ed,
d) “Climate Change Reality” Mailing,
e) CFE Climate Change Articles,
f) WaPO Climate Change Article
IX. Adjournment- Kaiser motioned to adjourn, Thomas-Ambat seconded. Meeting adjourned at 9:45 pm.
Summary by B. Bouma, AMS Staff
Next meeting: May 8, Richard Whitted Building, Hillsborough