The Summit County Council's regular session on Wednesday includes two or three items related to the environment.
The council, meeting at the Richins Services Building, will start a discussion at about 2:45 on management of the forest and of watershed resources. Later, they will also return to discuss a proposal from the governor's office, to petition Washington D.C. for a change to its Roadless Rule.
County Manager Tom Fisher said the county is considering a proposal, from the Kamas Ranger District, to mitigate fire hazards by clearing out deadwood and holding controlled burns.
Later on, at about 3:45, the Council will get a presentation from Summit Community Power Works.
"They’re a group that we work with very closely to promote reducing the amount of energy we use in the county. They’ve hooked up with Utah Clean Energy as their parent organization and so we’re working both on the local level and with a state-wide group.”
He said they're working with the county's Sustainability Coordinator on what's called the "Challenge Website."
"Our sustainability group with Lisa Yoder has worked closely with Summit Community Power Works to put this challenge together which is a web-based subscription challenge that you can get on to help you reduce the amount of energy you use or the greenhouse gasses that you emit from your daily life. I signed up for it last week. Got on there and went through the process and got credit for the things that I’ve already done in my household and some suggestions of things that I can do further in order to not only save money but also the main effort of reducing the amount of energy that we use in our house.”
Later in the agenda, they will get a presentation on the Wattsmart Community Energy Plans, where the county is working with several partners.
"This planning effort was contemplated right when the county set out its goals for renewable energy in county operations and in the entire county. It started right after that. It’s a collaboration between Rocky Mountain Power, Summit County, Dominion Energy, Park City Mountain with Vail is in there as well as Mountain Regional Water as some of the bigger users of energy in the county. They’ve come together to build a plan of how to look at large commercial energy users, small and medium businesses, neighborhoods, HOA’s and how to promote not only to get all of those groups to reduce the amount of energy that they use but then how do we promote renewable energy and especially electric vehicles in order to reduce that carbon footprint over time.”
