This Friday, November 1, is the last day for Ulster County residents to participate in a survey organized by the county’s Department of the Environment to determine priorities for its Climate Action Plan. If you weren’t able to attend the Open House hosted last week at SUNY New Paltz, this is your chance to offer input to county leaders as to where they would best focus resources in order to meet regional and statewide climate goals. To offer your two cents, visit https://participate.ulstercountyny.gov/community-climate-action-plan.
The website also supplies a wealth of information about 15 potential initiatives that the county is considering. These represent the current phase of a complex process triggered at the state level by passage of the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (a/k/a Climate Act) in 2019, which set goals to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions statewide to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 and then to 85 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. Ulster County had already established a baseline GHG emissions inventory in 2018, and updated it in 2022 in response to the statewide campaign. The county achieved silver-level certification for compliance with statewide climate goals by 2021.
In January 2023, as soon as she took office as county executive, Jen Metzger issued Executive Order 1 officially establishing countywide emissions reduction targets aligned with the Climate Act’s parameters. The county had completed a Government Operations Climate Action Plan in 2019 that recommended actions for reducing emissions from government facilities and operations. Metzger’s Executive Order included 13 directives to put that plan into motion. The county proceeded to strengthen its Green Fleet Policy, adopt a more stringent Sustainable Purchasing Policy and create the first County Decarbonization Fund in the state: an $18 million reserve to improve energy efficiency and reduce fossil fuel use in government buildings, among other actions.
After assessing community-level emissions across different sectors, including transportation, residential energy, agriculture and solid waste, the next step in this process is to establish strategies – a Community Climate Action Plan (CCAP) – that will facilitate reductions beyond the level of official county activities. We’re now in the design phase of that plan, which is being partially funded by the Climate Smart Communities Grant Program, Title 15 of the Environmental Protection Fund, through the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. The lead agency for the project is the Ulster County Department of the Environment, with Barton & Loguidice, DPC, acting as its engineering consultant.
So far, the prioritization process has gone through several levels, with the 47 initiatives first brainstormed reduced by a technical advisory committee and local focus groups to 26, and then down to 15 by vote of the county’s Environmental Management Council. At the Open House, a “poster gallery” was set up for attendees to peruse, with a separate poster describing each initiative and its components. Besides summarizing the actions that might be taken in each category, the posters rated the initiatives based on potential for reducing emissions, cost and equity implications. Attendees were encouraged not only to read the information provided, but also to provide feedback by sticking colored dots on the initiatives they considered most important, and by posting comments on sticky notes.
The initiatives as currently proposed are grouped under the headings of Support for Business GHG Emissions Reduction; a Local Food Systems Sustainability Initiative; Technical Support for Municipalities; Construction and Demolition Waste Management; Support Countywide Diversion of Organic Waste; a Sustainable Ulster Workforce Innovation Center; Climate Resiliency Hubs; Climate Action Education and Outreach for Residents; Public Transportation Service Improvements; Bikability and Walkability Improvements; Public Transit Infrastructure Improvements; a Renewable Energy Infrastructure Planning Study; Brownfield Cleanup and Redevelopment; an EV Charging Station Planning Study; and Parks, Trails and Conservation.
According to the most current GHG inventory, 54 percent of the emissions in Ulster County are generated by transportation. Unsurprisingly, at the Open House event, the posters with the most “priority” stickers tended to be the ones related to creating alternatives to automobile dependency. HV1 asked Dennis Doyle, director of the Ulster County Planning Department, how the county might tackle the problem of access to public transit being thinly distributed across such a wide area. Doyle said that a study on the topic of route optimization would be released by the county’s Transportation Council in mid-November. Noting that the decision to eliminate fares on UCAT buses was putting additional financial constraints on the county’s ability to expand bus routes, he suggested that “microtransit” approaches, such as a “demand response” service to provide rides on request from people’s homes to the nearest bus route, might be one partial solution to the access problem.
Also on hand at the October 24 Open House, as part of a presentation on CCAP by Jaymie Breschard of Barton & Loguidice and Department of the Environment representative Michelle Gluck, was County Executive Metzger herself. “Many of the solutions to climate change also have other benefits for our communities, like improving public health, reducing energy costs and expanding access to public transportation,” Metzger noted. “This is a community-driven plan, and we want to hear from our residents about the climate solutions they would like to see the County government prioritize.”
According to the CCAP team, “The final initiatives will be mapped out within the plan with funding sources, key partners, initiative elements, cost and an implementation timeline to ensure projects and programs come to fruition.” Breschard projected that a draft CCAP would be completed by mid-November and ready for public presentation in early December. “We’re in the homestretch,” she said.
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