Table of Contents

Green Stormwater Infrastructure

The city’s comprehensive plan highlights green stormwater infrastructure as an initiative within the Water and Environment section. It provides several recommendations including using green infrastructure over gray infrastructure, monitoring projects to determine plants that are most appropriate for the climate, using green infrastructure to improve community aesthetics, and exploring the use of permeable surface parking lots to reduce runoff and parking lot surface heat (Initiative 5). The comprehensive plan describes the benefits of green infrastructure and how it relates to other initiatives in the plan.

Solar Energy

The city's Comprehensive Plan addresses solar in several areas. The plan establishes a set of "catalysts" that includes Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Generation (p. 32). Within the chapter on Water and the Environment, an initiative on Air Quality recommends that the city explore the use of alternative energy, including solar (p. 92). In the plan's Energy chapter, the first initiative is to promote community-wide energy efficiency and renewable energy production (pp. 98-100). One of the four components of the city's strategy is renewable energy production; the city will work with energy providers to increase and encourage local investment in renewable sources, and it will explore incentives for renewable energy technologies. Another component is increasing the efficiency of new buildings, and the plan recommends working with developers to orient new buildings with optimum solar orientation and southern roof exposures for solar panels. The second initiative calls for the city to lead energy efficiency and reduced emissions efforts, and one recommendation is to explore renewable energy generation opportunities, such as using public open space areas as possible locations for wind and solar energy generation (pp. 102, 106). The third initiative calls for a smart grid, with a similar recommendation of exploring the use of public open space as possible locations for renewable energy generation sites, and the plan notes that a smart grid can better manage solar and other renewable energy sources (p. 108).