“This is a survival guide”: Alachua County Commission discusses Climate Action Plan

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – During the evening session of the August 26 meeting, the Alachua County Commission discussed the County’s Climate Action Plan.

Plan will be ceremonially approved at the County’s Climate Festival on Nov. 15

Environmental Protection Director Steve Hofstetter said he was not looking for a motion at that meeting, but he proposed a “formal approval” of the plan at a future Commission meeting and a “ceremonial approval” at the County’s Climate Festival on November 15. He said he used the word “approve” rather than “adopt” because all of the action items require action by the Commission before they are enacted, and he also wants the document to be “fluid,… a document that kind of adjusts to the information we receive, with the concerns that are being raised.”

The plan currently has eight chapters, but Hofstetter said there will be a ninth chapter, the Circular Economy chapter, which will focus on economic and workforce development opportunities.

In a presentation lasting over two and a half hours, Resiliency Specialist Jennison Kipp laid out the 264-page plan with 180 action items, beginning with the purpose statement: “To guide, develop, and cultivate environmentally, socially, and economically resilient strategies and solutions to climate change for the whole community.”

Kipp: “It’s getting increasingly challenging to survive and thrive [in the climate that’s here today].”

Kipp began, “I think everyone here today knows… the realities of climate change. It’s not something into the future that we’re looking at. It’s here today… It’s bad, and there are no easy solutions, but there’s hope… It’s getting increasingly challenging to survive and thrive [in the climate that’s here today].”

Kipp said Alachua County is the first inland Florida county to develop a Climate Action Plan, “so this can serve as a model for other inland communities and our neighboring, adjacent counties.” 

Target: reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% from the 2009 baseline by 2050

The climate target, Kipp said, is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% from the 2009 baseline by 2050.

Kipp said the primary threats “to our community here are extreme heat; heavy rainfall; sea level rise, [which] is a core root of climate migration… We are receiving migrants from neighboring counties and coastal counties throughout Florida who already have been migrating into Alachua County.”

Kipp continued, “We know extreme heat is one very real way that we are already feeling climate change today. Last year, globally, was the hottest year on record, that’s from the World Meteorological Organization.”

Kipp: “The number of extremely hot days are projected to increase ten-fold by the end of the century in Alachua County.”

Kipp showed the chart above and said, “We’re seeing the same increasing trends… The number of extremely hot days are projected to increase ten-fold by the end of the century in Alachua County.” Kipp did not provide a source for the chart, but the Climate Action Plan states, “The average daily maximum temperature is projected to increase by approximately 6°F by the end of the 21st Century. The project data also show that the number of extremely hot days will increase by ten times by 2100.” Both statements are sourced to the Alachua County Spatial Vulnerability Assessment Report, 2024.

Kipp also said, “Another new piece… is the number of billion-dollar-plus disasters that have affected Florida since 1980… Last year, there were 11 billion-plus events that affected Florida — eleven — and in total, the cost of just addressing those 11 events in 2024 exceeded $200 billion, so it makes economic sense to do this, as well.”

Click here to read the Climate Action Plan, and click here to submit comments. 

In response to a question from Commissioner Anna Prizzia about how the Climate Action Plan would “inform the way the County goes about the budgeting process and strategic priorities for the various departments,” Hofstetter said, “It’s kind of like your strategic guide… It is not a legally binding document, like a Comprehensive Plan.”

Chapter 1: Agriculture and Food Security

The purpose of this chapter is to ensure the continued viability, sustainability, security, and accessibility for all to the food system in Alachua County in the face of climate change and to promote locally produced foods and goods to reduce food distribution impacts, reach those most in need, and promote local economic benefits.

The key goals of this chapter are to strengthen local food systems, build on workforce and entrepreneurship programs, incentivize the use of local organic waste compost as fertilizer on agricultural lands, build a local food system culture, and expand protection of agricultural lands. The priority action items are shown below and include protecting 30% of Alachua County land and waters through acquisitions and conservation easements within five years (the “30 by 30” goal).

Chapter 2: Energy Security and Efficiency

This chapter’s goal is to accelerate progress toward net zero greenhouse gas emissions by transitioning from non-renewable energy fuels, purchasing from renewable energy sources, and increasing energy efficiency in buildings and infrastructure.

The key goals of this chapter are energy efficiency and conservation (“to maximize the cost efficiency as well as social responsibility”), electrification (“promote energy independence through electrification”), renewable energy (“become an institutional leader in renewable energy adoption”), and energy infrastructure resiliency. 

Kipp: The goal is “100% of the energy being purchased or produced for County facilities by solar photovoltaics by 2030.”

Kipp said the goals get back “to all of our infrastructure and assets that are becoming increasingly vulnerable to climate impacts.” She added that the goal is “100% of the energy being purchased or produced for County facilities by solar photovoltaics by 2030, so that’s not far off. Yeah, it’s an ambitious goal.” 

Kipp said energy security “is something that’s a challenge every day, not just during the compounding extreme storm events that we’re facing.”

Chapter 3: Flood Management and Infrastructure

The purpose of this chapter is to reduce the impact of flooding and extreme weather events on citizens, businesses, and critical infrastructure by developing a multidisciplinary plan and action strategy to maintain a resilient community.

The key goals of this chapter are improving physical stormwater and flooding infrastructure, expanding stormwater planning, expanding stormwater and flooding policy, and improving flooding communication. 

Chapter 4: Heat & Health

The purpose of this chapter is to build collaboration and advance awareness and capacity to address climate-related public health impacts and implement solutions that improve community health outcomes.

The key goals of this chapter are increasing citizen awareness of heat and heat-related illnesses, increasing the number of cooling centers in Alachua County, preventing the spread of vector-borne diseases, and using crisis center phone lines to increase County preparedness and understanding of the psychological impacts of climate change. 

Kipp said vector-borne diseases “are increasing in frequency and type as climate change is shifting our climactic zones, and then [our goal is to increase] the preparedness and the capacity for the Crisis Center to respond during these climate-exacerbated, you know, extreme events.”

She said staff’s “wish list” includes night-time shelters for extreme heat, along with two new cooling centers and shuttles between cooling centers and emergency shelters. 

Commissioner Marihelen Wheeler asked how the County protects the workforce from heat: “You know, we’ve got farmworkers. We’ve got builders.”  

Commissioner Mary Alford pointed out that local governments are preempted by the State from establishing regulations about that, and Commissioner Anna Prizzia said they could “educate employers and employees on the best management practices around shade, water, rest, like, those things. So we’re preempted from regulating it, but we’re not preempted from educating and promoting it and incentivizing that.”

Alford agreed that education is important, but “I think we should start by putting our own employees on the list. On the hottest days of the year, you know, do we have coolers? Do we have ice? Do we have all those things on our trucks?”

Alford: “One of the presentations that I did was at Oak Hammock, and… some of those folks have seen such change in their lifetimes, and they are just mentally devastated by it. And a lot of our young people are just saddled with so much dread about their future that it’s hard to think about.”

Alford continued by saying that when she talks to groups about this plan, this chapter leads to the most discussion, “and a lot of it is because of the climate despair that people are having… One of the actions that I think we should embrace is adding mental health strategies for dealing with climate disruption into some of our events, maybe even having a Climate Summit that deals with mental health, because I do believe that this is actually a huge, huge problem. One of the presentations that I did was at Oak Hammock, and… some of those folks have seen such change in their lifetimes, and they are just mentally devastated by it. And a lot of our young people are just saddled with so much dread about their future that it’s hard to think about.”

Prizzia liked the idea of incorporating mental health issues into the County’s events, and Alford said, “You know, they have that at some conferences now, like a retreat room where you go and you… decompress, gain your mental health back before you go deal with more horrible things.”

Settings for air conditioning

Chair Charles Chestnut IV suggested educating the public about keeping the air conditioning at a certain temperature “so that it doesn’t overload the system,” and he mentioned a recent hot day when the power went out in his neighborhood. He continued, “I admit I’m the guilty party, too,” so Wheeler asked him what temperature he set his system at, and Chestnut responded, “Well, that day I had it at 65.” Everyone laughed, and Prizzia said he should “start by example.” Chestnut said his neighbors said they did the same thing, “so I just knew that everybody in the neighborhood did it.”

Kipp said it was a “great question,… and I don’t know what the answer is, except that it’s complex… It’s getting to that awareness and education and understanding how you’re affecting your community with your individual choices, but also not guilting people into feeling like they can’t turn the air conditioning down if they’re uncomfortable in their own homes.”

Alford said there’s “so much misinformation… around air conditioning… There are newer products out there that, for much less money, can keep people comfortable in their homes that, you know, aren’t central heat and air, that put a lot less work on the grid, that manage humidity so much better.” She added, “I’m thinking [about] mini splits… If your big air conditioner isn’t keeping up, you can install a mini split… Some people install them, and they find out, during the shoulder months of the year, they don’t even run their central heat and air, and people have cut their bills in half… You could do the same thing with a window unit, although it’s not as efficient… I see people go and spend all this money on a brand new air conditioning system,… and their bills don’t go down. Sometimes they do, but sometimes they go up, and it hurts my heart, but they don’t have that background information.”

Prizzia suggested having events every quarter or twice a year that are “framed around a specific issue, like energy efficiency in your homes… Sometimes climate change is the topic, but it’s more specific to how people can manage their homes.”

Chapter 5: Land Use & Transportation

The purpose of this chapter is to increase housing density while conserving undeveloped land and maximizing transportation choice to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change impacts. 

The key goals are to acquire metrics for developing timelines and targets for all the action items in the chapter; increase sustainable land development practices; implement and expand Transportation Mobility Districts; increase the use of electric vehicles and supporting infrastructure; develop an integrated network of natural, historic, and scenic routes; strategically plan bicycle and pedestrian routes; increase bicycle safety; increase pedestrian-bicycle safety for students; assist mass transit providers with planning; investigate the possibility of rail transportation systems in Alachua County; and promote online and remote work for Alachua County residents.

Prizzia said she was interested in the better use of open space, and she suggested that there might be a way for the County to manage open spaces within developments “to get more advantageous use out of them.”

Alford asked about shade for pedestrian and bike paths, and the response was that the County tries to place trees along roads, which would also shade pedestrian and bike paths, but utility easements sometimes prohibit the placement of trees. Alford said, “I will say that the needed footprint for utility installations is grossly overestimated in many cases… I think that is something that we should add because it is a strategy.”

Alford on utility easements: “We have seven utilities in our county. We can start talking to some of them, and if we can get one of them to bend, then we have leverage for the others.”

Prizzia agreed, “It’s aspirational, but at least opening those conversations again…,” and Alford said, “We have seven utilities in our county. We can start talking to some of them, and if we can get one of them to bend, then we have leverage for the others.”

Commissioner Ken Cornell said this chapter keeps him up at night: “One of our primary reasons for doing this is coastal migration — like, they’re coming here… I think we should add sustainable and resilient future land development, because we have to prepare for not only people, but the change in the climate.” He said they needed to start thinking about a county-wide transit system. 

Chapter 6: Natural Resources & Conservation

The purpose of this chapter is to protect, restore, and properly manage natural areas, trees and landscapes, and conservation lands in Alachua County while enhancing their resilience and improving their capacity to support climate adaptation and carbon sequestration.

The goals of the chapter are to continue the protection of environmentally significant lands, review land stewardship practices to increase climate resiliency, increase the tree canopy retention percentage, update the specimen tree list, consider potential tree permit changes, develop a community/urban forest management plan, create resilient landscapes through sustainable landscape practices, and develop more climate- and resilience-related maps.

Prizzia: “We have a limited amount of land left on our planet, and if we want to protect our land and conserve our land, we have to have a strategy, and our strategy is urban densities in the areas where services exist, to provide efficient services for people and protecting the natural resources that allow us to live on this planet.”

Prizzia said that creating visuals to communicate the goals would help the County “have the hard conversations with people: ‘Why are you increasing densities around my neighborhood? Why do I need to have a multi-family apartment complex next door to my single-family housing? Why are you allowing ADUs in single-family neighborhoods?’ Well, this is why — because we have a limited amount of land left on our planet, and if we want to protect our land and conserve our land, we have to have a strategy, and our strategy is urban densities in the areas where services exist, to provide efficient services for people and protecting the natural resources that allow us to live on this planet.”

Chapter 7: Waste Management & Resource Consumption

The purpose of this chapter is to ensure high-quality waste management services to Alachua County residents and minimize the amount of waste directed toward landfills and the environment.

The goals of the chapter are to establish a solid waste reduction goal and adopt a resolution on zero waste, increase the amount of accessible opportunities for the private sector to reduce waste, increase resident and commercial opportunities and accessibility for composting, and expand recycling programs and opportunities within the county.

Kipp said this includes “revising future contracts and franchise agreements with collections and processing vendors so that it includes — again, there’s the word requirement — but also incentives for addressing Zero Waste and developing partnerships with the private sector to implement a larger-scale reuse program.”

Referring to the Florence landfill, Cornell said he wanted to bring up “the 800-pound elephant in the room that we’re not talking about in this area… I just think about our [Construction & Demolition] (C&D) facility that’s located in the wrong place, and so I feel like we need to have a goal of relocating that facility, closing that facility, finding the right place to put our C&D waste that’s not in conflict with East Gainesville, and I didn’t see that in here.”

Alford: “We really need to have a lot of education about [Zero Waste], because people don’t get it. We alienate people with it… Maybe this is an opportunity to come up with a term that nobody else has come up with yet, that’s even better.”

Alford said, “We could really expand this chapter.” She said when she talked to groups, they “did not understand what Zero Waste was. They found Zero Waste to be such a scary thing and such an unattainable goal, but they didn’t understand the definition of Zero Waste… We really need to have a lot of education about it, because people don’t get it. We alienate people with it… Maybe this is an opportunity to come up with a term that nobody else has come up with yet, that’s even better.”

Prizzia suggested changing “Zero Waste” to “Circular Economy” — “because I think the Circular Economy piece is really what we’re trying to get to,… where it’s not really waste, right? It’s only waste if it’s wasted, and we’re trying to not waste it. We’re trying to create a space where everything is a feedstock or an opportunity to use it in a new or different way.”

Prizzia: “There’s going to come a time, I promise you — it may not be in your lifetime, it may not be in my life, but we will be mining our landfills. It’s going to happen. We’re going to run out of fossil resources, and we’re going to end metal resources and other resources.”

Prizzia continued, “There’s going to come a time, I promise you — it may not be in your lifetime, it may not be in my life, but we will be mining our landfills. It’s going to happen. We’re going to run out of fossil resources, and we’re going to end metal resources and other resources, and in some countries, it’s already happening out of unfortunate necessity to make money and find metal… I think as resources become more scarce, we’ll realize their value a lot more.” She said she believed that transporting the waste out of the county is better than burning it because “once you burn it, it’s gone forever, and it becomes carbon and goes into our atmosphere.”

Cornell also supported changing “Zero Waste” to “Circular Economy.”

Kipp said another possible title for this chapter would be “Resource Recovery, because it’s closing that loop, or Circular Economy.” She said staff is currently working on the Green Industries chapter or Circular Economy chapter “that really ties all this together and gets to what that triple bottom line is.”

Chapter 8: Water & Aquifer Protection

The purpose of this chapter is to protect Alachua County’s aquifer, springs, and surface water resources by implementing integrated water quality and conservation strategies and making infrastructure improvements to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change.

The goals of this chapter are to reduce water use (by reducing landscape irrigation and improving consumptive use permitting), increase water quality and quantity, and increase water efficiency in new development (by establishing new development requirements).

Kipp said, “This chapter wins the prize for the most action items… And here are the priority action items for one year and five years… Requiring within one year — and here’s the word ‘require’ again — but requiring the use of soil amendments in new construction for residential and commercial landscapes through the Landscaping Code in order to increase the adoption in unincorporated areas. Second, finalize and implement an LID (low-impact development) checklist for new development projects.”

Kipp said it will be important to go through the Low-Impact Development checklist with project applicants “very early in the cycle, because that’s where you can be creative about actually doing it and implementing it in a cost-effective way that’s aligned with the requirements.”

Model neighborhood within 5 years

Within five years, the County intends to complete a model neighborhood that applies the principles of the New Yard Pattern Book for Florida’s Sustainable Single-Family Homes, ideally with the use of native vegetation and no permanent irrigation or fertilizer use. 

Prizzia said, “What I appreciate about this chapter is that I feel like it highlights the opportunities that exist beyond our regulatory boundaries, which I think is important. It’s important for us to understand where we have, not just the ability to apply regulations or incentives or opportunities or education, but where we have the opportunity to have dialogue with our other institutional partners and have influence or conversations and dialogue about the ways in which we need to change.”

Prizzia said she thought the County’s Water Resources Department has been effective at “having conversations with the Water Management Districts, with DEP, with our landscapers… We’ve gotten a lot of results doing that and being that collaborative partner that just keeps coming to the table and braving those hard conversations again and again and again, not taking no for an answer, but just keeps trying to find new ways to… finally maybe get to yes, or at least get to maybe.”

She said she hoped staff would think about issues the County is currently preempted from regulating, “but we could still have conversations and work with our lobbyists… to have those dialogues. That’s why we have lobbyists, right?”

Prizzia said that Adams Homes, the developer of the recently-approved Newnans Lake project, might be a willing partner for the Model Neighborhood. She concluded, “I’m excited about this chapter. I think it hits on all the cylinders.”

Alford said she would like the chapter to offer Florida Water Star certification as an option because “it’s a great way for a developer to get down that road of more sustainable building practices without a lot of costs or even real effort” if they’re not installing landscape irrigation. “The hard part about Florida Water Star is the irrigation part of it, and if you take the irrigation part of it out, and you’re installing all native plants in your yard, then you’re three-quarters of the way there.”

Commissioners thanked staff for the chapter, and Cornell said, “We’ve got, you know, a statewide leader that other counties look to in Stacie [Greco] and her department, when it comes to action plans and what we’re doing.” 

Concluding discussion

Cornell concluded by saying, “I view the Climate Action Plan as one of the most nonpartisan things that exists at every level, and so I am grateful that our community has made this a priority… We are definitely doing what our community is instructing us to do, and I really do think that we should be touting it every chance we get — not running from it, but talking about it, again as a nonpartisan thing… Sustainability isn’t just an environmental priority; it’s economic common sense. The cost of inaction will be much greater than the cost of [sustainability].”

Cornell read from an article in The Independent Florida Alligator about the closing of UF’s Office of Sustainability: “While UF may hope to live in a world without a climate crisis, hope is not a plan. Now is the time to learn, educate, and advocate for sustainability, because climate change is not a partisan issue. It’s a matter of life, health, and justice.”

Cornell said the County should seek State money to help fund the action items, “and the State should fund these items and fund them throughout the state.”

Alford said when she talks to others at NACO conferences, “one of the things I talk about is the Climate Action Plan, and it’s amazing the number of counties that aren’t doing this, and so I’m just proud of our County and our staff and this whole thing — it’s really forward-thinking.” She said that although some of Florida’s coastal counties have a plan, “I don’t think they’ve done it … as well and as thoroughly as we have… I couldn’t be any prouder… It’s just an amazing document.”

Prizzia said that when she was the first Coordinator and second Director of UF’s Office of Sustainability, “the word was ‘sustainability,’ then it was ‘resiliency,’ and really, it’s about survival. I mean, really, this is a survival guide, like, if we want to stay on this planet as human beings, we need a survival guide. Because whether you believe it’s human-caused or not, the climate’s changing.”