Chaffee County is beginning the development of a county-centered sustainable development plan.
The Sustainable Development Plan (SDP) will establish strategies and tactics through which the County will fulfill both short-term and long-range sustainability commitments and related deliverables as outlined in the 2020 Chaffee County Comprehensive Plan. It will also incorporate key recommendations and prioritized actions from other local needs assessments and advisory plans.
According to county sources, the SDP will ultimately reflect the substantial public input and major values-driven themes that elevated measurable sustainability efforts and identified the numerous targeted actions that were included within the 2020 Comprehensive Plan.
County administrative staff have been working with the Greater Arkansas River Nature Association (GARNA) to investigate the sustainability-focused aspects of the 2020 Comprehensive Plan, prior to formally framing the SDP. These adopted goals will form the starting scope for the County’s SDP. The county staff has also been working with GARNA to finalize the regional recycling needs assessment and update the County waste diversion plan, which will also help inform the SDP scope.
The county is planning a facilitated planning session on October 1 to line out the framework through which the SDP will be developed and enacted and to establish the Plan’s initial focus areas. These preliminary areas are anticipated to include water, waste, energy, transportation, building/development, food systems, natural environment/lands, community resilience, and social impacts. The County Plan will also draw heavily on the work already invested into recent local guiding documents including the Salida Climate Action Plan, Chaffee Clean Energy Plan, and Chaffee County Waste Diversion Plan and from regional and state plans while emphasizing county-wide actions that are complementary to and aligned with current and future strategies, community programs, and policy opportunities.
Following that initial planning meeting, the county will provide a recap of the public opportunities for input and involvement, including workgroups for each topic of the draft plan. The workgroups will drive how the SDP scope and actionable goals are built out.
Interested individuals can get involved by signing up for the County Sustainable Development Plan distribution list at https://bit.ly/ChaffeeSustainabilityPlan.
I find it odd that you would use a recycling container as the photo for this article since the commissioners have stated they have no plans to re-initiate a county-wide recycling plan
Recycling and sustainability are connected. It is true the free service was suspended because Angel of Shavano had to leave the recycling business because it was no longer financially viable.
At the moment, recycling is being provided by the waste management companies operating in this county: https://arkvalleyvoice.com/for-now-market-based-solutions-for-chaffee-recycling-services/. That does not mean that this is the only solution for the county, or the final solution — it is what the county agreed to do in the interim.