Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: City of Fayetteville is the first municipality in Arkansas to be awarded a Gold certification in the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Cities rating system. We're going to talk about that in this week's edition of the Know the News podcast.
Hi everyone. This is Dave Perozic, managing editor of the North West Arkansas Democrat Gazette, and I'm your know, the news host. This week, we do this podcast to preview some of the stories our reporters are working on right now that we plan to publish in the next few days. And our focus this week is a story Fayetteville reporter Stacey Ryburn is doing on Fayetteville's Gold lead certification and what that means for the city.
Joining me in our studio, I'm pleased to welcome Peter Nierengarden. He's the City of Fayetteville's. Environmental director. Peter, I really appreciate you being here.
[00:00:57] Speaker B: Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: So, first of all, can you give me and our listeners a brief description of what you do for the city?
[00:01:05] Speaker B: Sure. So I've been with the city about eleven years now, and I oversee the city's sustainability department, which is a small department. Two folks underneath me there, they do policy and program work around sustainability initiatives and quality of life initiatives. We've done work on urban agriculture, on invasive species. We've done a lot of work around energy and energy policy. We managed installation of two large solar arrays at the city's two wastewater treatment plants in 2009.
So a lot of work in the broad sense of sustainability. And then I also oversee the city's recycling and trash collections division. So we have about 57 folks that do all the collection and processing of trash recyclables and compost for the entire city of Fayetteville and manage that facility down in southeast Fayetteville.
[00:02:03] Speaker A: Very good.
As I understand it, there's something called the US. Green Building Council, and they have standards for environmentally friendly buildings, and buildings that meet those standards can be Lead certified. Lead being the acronym for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design. Am I right so far?
[00:02:29] Speaker B: That's correct, yes.
[00:02:31] Speaker A: And then in addition to doing designations for buildings, they also do certifications for cities and communities.
And Fayetteville achieved the gold certification. Yes, correct.
[00:02:47] Speaker B: That is accurate.
[00:02:48] Speaker A: And that was this year.
[00:02:49] Speaker B: Yep, that was earlier this year. They do certifications on neighborhoods. They also have a certification program under the US. Green Building Council called Sites that's for outdoor landscape architecture projects. The city also happens to have the first Sites Silver awarded project in Arkansas, and that was the Lower Ramble project. We were awarded Site Silver for that project earlier this year.
[00:03:17] Speaker A: Okay, so tell us about how did that happen for the city wide thing, Gold certification? How did that happen?
I imagine didn't happen overnight.
[00:03:33] Speaker B: No, it didn't. In fact, the US. Green Building Council's involvement with Lead for cities, they actually acquired a previous rating system that the city had certified under in. I want to say, it was about 2016 called sites called Star Communities. And so Star Communities was a sustainable tools for assessing and rating communities. It was sort of a standalone system that had a number of different categories transportation, energy, water, et cetera.
We were a three star community under that rating system with a plan for recertifying after a five or six year period. And then that system was acquired by the US. Green building, council. They rebranded as Lead for Cities to somewhat match and tie to the rating systems that they already had for buildings and neighborhoods.
And so when it came time to recertify, we obviously began working on this new Lead for Cities certification. And there was some translation, some of our old Star Communities elements that we had submitted on and data and performance and policies and programs that we had translated over directly to Lead, some did not. So there was a fair bit of work on the part of our sustainability department staff to put together sort of all the list of metrics, the data, the policies, the programs that we have in place to satisfy the Lead criteria. And we also had a ton of help from a number of different divisions and departments across the city of Fayetteville to help us sort of track down and collect all of that data and information that was required for that submission.
[00:05:27] Speaker A: Okay.
And there are four certification levels. I want to make that clear right there's.
Just plain certified and then silver, gold and platinum.
[00:05:42] Speaker B: That's correct. Yeah. My understanding is under this 4.1, which is the latest Lead for Cities rating system, there are four Platinum communities worldwide, and then there's 38 Lead Gold Communities worldwide. And so we're one of those 38 worldwide gold communities.
[00:06:07] Speaker A: So what does it mean for the people of Fayetteville? I guess, in other words, what impact does it have on the residents knowing that, well, this certification?
[00:06:22] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, since we're the only city in the state of Arkansas, I think we can take a lot of pride in the fact that our community is on par with leading communities around the world in terms of sustainability, in terms of how well we're doing on preserving open space and preserving parks, how well we're doing in the transportation area and sustainable transportation systems, how well we're doing in terms of energy and greening our energy supply and reducing our community carbon footprint, how high a quality life we're able to enjoy in the city of Fayetteville. And so I think it's something that our community can be proud of, that we're as sustainable as some of the leading cities in the globe.
[00:07:21] Speaker A: The city scored 68 out of a possible 110 points in the rating system.
So Gold is great, but there's 68 out of 110 implies there's still plenty of room for improvement.
Do you see areas where Fayetteville can definitely improve? Is it feasible? Does it matter to you?
[00:07:49] Speaker B: Yeah, we see the remaining points that were left on the table, so to speak, as being beneficial as part of a gap assessment for our community, exactly as you said, where can we do better? We certainly see the transportation sector as one where there is opportunity for improvement.
When the city adopted our Energy Action Plan in 2018, we did a carbon footprint analysis and we looked at our existing carbon footprint and where we could make improvements. And since 2018, we've seen a lot of reduction in our community wide carbon footprint in the energy sector, but we really haven't moved the needle much in the transportation sector. So we really see transportation as an area for focus going forward.
We see fleet and vehicle electrification and the carbon footprint reduction that will come with that as a big opportunity for us.
We see as the city grows and we add more density and trips become shorter and more convenient to do by biking and walking. And with Micromobility, we see that also as a way of reducing our carbon footprint in the transportation sector.
So that's definitely one area where I think as we work on completing now our update to our 2018 Energy Action plan, which is going to be a climate action plan that we're nearly complete with right now. Out of that adoption of that climate action plan, I see transportation as being a big focus for further carbon emission reduction for the city.
[00:09:33] Speaker A: Do you get much interest from neighboring cities in your initiatives on this front at all? Are you fielding calls or I'm just wondering what the more regional interest is in copying perhaps what you're doing?
[00:09:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I think when it comes to individual initiatives, we certainly see interest in neighboring communities in northwest Arkansas and across the state.
When it comes to, for example, food waste composting, commercial food waste composting, communities interested in that recycling, transportation, individual transportation initiatives such as micromobility definitely here from our neighboring communities. When we look more broadly at the lead for cities assessment and taking on a larger sort of initiative like that, I think where we begin to compare ourselves and see more interest from our neighbors, we have to look out a little bit further to peers such as college towns in other states or other large cities across the Southeast.
That's where we see other communities completing a lead for cities assessment.
[00:10:59] Speaker A: Are there cities out there that you particularly admire in terms of what they're doing?
[00:11:07] Speaker B: It depends on the initiative, I think, in terms of where we look. But certainly we look at Austin, Texas. We look at Columbia, Missouri. Lawrence, Kansas. Atlanta, Georgia.
We look at other cities across the Midwest for guidance on vehicle electrification, fleet electrification, for waste reduction, for energy supply, and greening their energy supply. It just depends on the initiative. And so what we do is try to find a similar ish city that's had success in that area and if know potential to emulate their success, then do so and lean into whatever that initiative might be.
[00:11:57] Speaker A: We're going to pause for just a minute. We'll be right back with Peter Nearingarden after this brief message.
[00:12:03] Speaker C: If you're enjoying this podcast, consider a newspaper subscription to the northwest Arkansas democrat gazette or the river valley democrat gazette. We have a special offer for our podcast listeners, so visit Nwanline.com podcast 23 to get started. You can also click the subscribe button on our websites, nwanline.com and Rivervalleddemocratgazette.com, or call us at 479-684-5509 and be sure to say that you're a podcast listener. Now back to the show.
[00:12:34] Speaker A: Is being a Lead certified city something that only city employees have a hand in affecting, or is it something that everyday citizens can play a role in influencing that?
[00:12:52] Speaker B: Yeah, well, city employees definitely, by and large, did the work to make the submission possible. But the measurement of the Lead for Cities assessment is the entire community. So it certainly reflects the behavior and the choices and lifestyles of our entire community. So what sorts of choices are we making relative to vehicle trips? And how many vehicle miles traveled are citizens in Fayetteville traveling on average? What is the waste production of the entire city of Fayetteville residents and businesses? What's the water consumption for the entire city?
Definitely it's a community wide assessment. And so our citizens and our businesses and our visitors share in this success and should celebrate it with us.
[00:13:49] Speaker A: And to be considered a city that is environmentally friendly, I imagine that requires an investment of financial resources over time.
And I guess my question would be, does attaining the standards set by the Green Building Council necessitate spending a lot of money?
[00:14:13] Speaker B: It's a great question, and it can depend on the area where the initiative might be focused. For example, the city has invested millions of dollars in active transportation infrastructure across the city bike lanes, trails, lighting for those facilities, sidewalks. So that obviously costs money to do that. But what's often not recognized is the benefit and the savings that can be recognized by not having to necessarily widen that highway or make that overpass larger. Because we've been able to reduce the number of vehicle trips associated with that initiative in other areas, such as energy supply. The city invested almost a million dollars in solar installations at our two wastewater treatment plants. But then there was energy savings over the first four years of the project that repaid that initial investment. And now once we've repaid that initial investment, we're saving money going forward. So it did take money to invest, and we had to have the foresight to do that in the beginning, but in the long run, it'll actually save us money. So we try to look to initiatives that will do that. They may have some upfront capital investment needs and costs associated with them, but if we take that long view, they'll save us money, we're trying to do that right now as we assess fleet electrification and looking at our fleet of city vehicles. So where can we invest? And oftentimes those electric vehicles do cost a little bit more on the front end, but the cost of electricity as a fuel source versus gasoline as a fuel source is cheaper. So the operating cost of that vehicle will ideally be less over the lifecycle of that vehicle purchase.
[00:16:17] Speaker A: So, quick quiz. How many city vehicles are there in Fayetteville?
[00:16:23] Speaker B: Do you know how many total city vehicles are there?
It depends how you want to define vehicle, but roughly, we've probably got 500 Ish vehicles.
That's everything from sedans all the way up to construction equipment and garbage trucks. So it's a lot of vehicles. We have a big footprint, and many of those large construction vehicles don't get very good gas mileage.
[00:16:55] Speaker A: This is your life's work, and I've asked some questions that I thought were pertinent, but maybe you have some information that you like to share that I haven't asked you about. Is there anything that you want to mention that I failed to ask you?
[00:17:12] Speaker B: Think, you know, buried in this assessment, some things that our community can be really proud of are, and I think this is near and dear to a lot of hearts in Fayetteville is the city's commitment to green space and open space and parks. We scored highest in that natural system and ecology area. And I think that's really a reflection of our investment in open space and just the ethos that we have in Fayetteville that really values those types of spaces and preserving those lands such as Mount Sequoia, such as Mount Kessler, Lake Fayetteville, Lake Sequoia, other places like that that provide open space and recreation for our community. I think also our community can be really proud in the reduction we've seen in our carbon footprint in the electricity consumption space. Our investment in solar at our wastewater treatment plants reduced the city government operations carbon footprint by two thirds by essentially offsetting our two largest electricity using facilities, those two wastewater treatment plants. And it's something a lot of cities have asked us questions about. How did we do that?
And so I think it was a big success for us and something for us to really be proud of.
[00:18:37] Speaker A: Fiera, I really appreciate your time here and learned a lot. Thank you for answering our questions.
[00:18:46] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I certainly appreciate having the opportunity to come speak with you today. It's exciting to be able to share this achievement with you all and with folks in our community. So thank you very much.
[00:19:01] Speaker A: For more on this topic, catch Stacey Ryburn's story publishing this weekend in the Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette. Let me share with you a brief preview of some other stories we have coming your way over the next few days.
The Northwest Arkansas Land Trust has set a goal of securing 10,000 acres that would be protected from future development.
Ron Wood will have that story.
Common Ground, Arkansas, a nonpartisan nonprofit group that sought to reduce partisan tension in the legislature by focusing on shared interests, has gone inactive, according to its former president and founder, Doug Thompson reports.
Education reporter Al Gaspeny has reported previously on the Bentonville School District donating land to provide housing for some of its teachers. Al will have a story on a similar initiative underway in the Austin, Texas, school district. In Van Buren, the city council just signed off on a new ordinance that addresses problems caused by some dogs in the city. Thomas Asente has that story.
And in Fort Smith, the city's police department is launching a new tool aimed at strengthening relations with the community. Monica Brick reports on that on Sunday's. WhatsApp section is the best place to find out what's happening, arts and entertainment wise, in our region? Among other things. This Sunday you can read about The Tina Turner Show coming to the Walton Arts Center, A Christmas Carol at theaters Squared, Greg Morton's Comedy Show and the Magical Lights Adventure at the Washington County Fairgrounds, Sports fans, we've got you covered as well. Catch our reporting on this weekend's showdown between Benville and Fayetteville High schools for the Class Seven A football title. We'll also have coverage from this weekend's NCAA volleyball tournament at Barn Hill Arena featuring Arkansas Stephen F, austin, Florida State and TCU.
All this and more will be available to our subscribers on our tablet and smartphone apps and on our websites, nwaonline.com and Rivervalliedemocratcazette.com.
Thanks as always, for listening. Know. The news is a weekly podcast brought to you by the newsrooms of the northwest Arkansas democratic gazette and the river valley democrat gazette. Again, I'm Dave Perozic, your podcast host this week. Have a great weekend and until next Friday so long.
