Tucson Standard

The Pima County Board of Supervisors recently voted in approval for staff to create a new Climate Action Plan for County Operations.

In a 4-1 vote, the board approved the Action Plan that overrides the current Sustainability Action Plan for County Operations (SAPCO), a recent release from Green Valley News said. The SAPCO was created to reflect the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, with goals such as reducing carbon emissions by 26-28%, reducing county-facility potable water use by 15% and reducing landfill waste by 20%.

“We’re not doing that badly, overall, but we’re not moving quickly enough,” Linda Mayro, director of the Pima County Office of Sustainability and Conservation, said in the release. “Out of the critical targets, we’ve seen advances in five of those targets (out of nine)...where we’ve fallen down, and this is typical of Arizona frankly, is in our water target and in our materials waste going to the landfill, as well as a decrease in use of preferred products.” 

Mayro noted that everyone needs to make coordinated efforts that go a step further than educational initiatives.

“I believe those ‘big fixes’ adopted in 2017 are still valuable, I think we just need to evaluate where we are in actually implementing those strategies…how quickly some of those can be implemented, and if they are making slow progress today, what are the impediments,” she said in the release.

Mayro also commented that her team will reconvene to analyze the issues at stake.

“We’re going to go back to the drawing board, if you will, and start assessing what those strategies should be, the return on investment, how much investment is necessary, and what costs are we saving in the future from flood or fire or some other consequence that the community might suffer as a result of climate change,” she said in the release.