Summit County Sustainability

In this episode of This Green Earth Summit County’s new sustainability director Emily Quinton joins Nell and guest Co-Host Recycle Utah's Executive Director Carolyn Wawra to share a little bit about her background and the outlook for Summit County’s upcoming sustainability work.

Summit County has now purchased and installed a new smart electric vehicle charging station network.

Summit County Sustainability Manager Lisa Yodder says the county is installing the stations as part of the council’s sustainability plan. Yodder says the stations were put in first and foremost for the county’s electric vehicle fleet. Right now, the county has just two electric vehicles, but more are on order as the county retires older vehicles and opts to replace them with electric.

Park City and Summit County councilmembers celebrated the signing into law of House Bill 411, the Community Renewable Energy Act, Monday. The Earth Day event came hours before Utah Gov. Gary Herbert’s ceremonial signing of HB 411, along with a number of other clean air and energy bills. 

Summit County has recently been recognized for its efforts at Sustainability. At the same time, county officials are pursuing one of their major Green goals on Capitol Hill.

The county’s Sustainability Coordinator, Lisa Yoder, said that an online publication, Business Review, contacted her for an article about the county’s goal of moving government operations, residents and business to renewable electricity by the year 2032.

The Summit County council received their annual sustainability report on Wednesday. The report touched on topics from the county’s landfill to its vehicle fleet.

The report was presented by county sustainability director Lisa Yoder.

As council chair Kim Carson noted, one interesting item was that the majority of the county’s emissions come from its landfill.

For the final Local News Hour of 2016, Leslie Thatcher speaks with Scott Loomis, director of Mountainlands Community Housing, reviews  the past year of affordable housing developments and a look ahead at 2017. Lisa Yoder, Summit County Sustainability manager, discusses the county's  waiver of  solar building permit fees, and other sustainability items. Brent Christensen with Ice Castles  talks about  today's opening at the Homestead today at the Homestead and Park City planner Kirsten Whetsone talks about the new Ivers Tunnel Building at Silver Star that was dedicated yesterday.