Alexandria adopted its Eco-City charter with great fanfare in 2008 along with a promise: The charter would be renewed in a decade. That deadline has now come and gone with no plans to update it. In 2009, members of the City Council approved an Eco-City action plan along with another promise: It would be renewed in five years. Once again, city officials breezed through that deadline. The promised annual progress reports happened for a while, but city officials haven’t released one since 2016. For some members of the Environmental Policy Commission who were part of shaping Eco-City a decade ago, the broken promises and missed deadlines are frustrating.
“Frankly, I feel like the last four years of leadership were caught up in other dramas,” said Danielle Fiedler, who was chairwoman of the commission when Eco-City Alexandria initiative was adopted. “If you’re going to have this environmental action plan, you should be updating the short term action items. Those should be revisited every five years in order to stay on top of this.”
The last decade has offered a mixed picture for the city’s environmental health. Alexandria continues to dump more than 10 million gallons of raw sewage into the Potomac River every year, although city officials now have a plan after state lawmakers threatened to withhold money from city schools in 2017. Energy use in city government facilities has increased 11 percent since 2012, reflecting a tension between growth and conservation. Alexandria currently purchases renewable energy credits equivalent to 60 percent of its energy use, although the city manager’s proposed budget calls for 100 percent by next year. And then there’s that charter revision that never happened and an action plan that city officials are just now getting around to updating.
“You don’t accomplish things by making a list and putting them on the shelf,” said former Del. Rob Krupicka (D-45), who helped create Eco-City Alexandria as member of the Alexandria City Council. “You accomplish things by making a list and then constantly revisiting it.”
THE IDEA OF Eco-City Alexandria began with a strategic planning process back in 2007, shortly after the United Nations concluded that the rise in global temperatures was the result of greenhouse gas concentrations. When the Alexandria’s action plan was adopted in 2009, Alexandria was one of a handful of cities across the country that had created its own plan for dealing with climate change. The timing worked well for Alexandria because when the global economy tanked, city officials had a ready-made list of shovel-ready projects that qualified for federal stimulus money. Plans to install solar panels at Beatley Library, for example, were fast-tracked for funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. “In Alexandria, we recognize the quantity and sources of energy used by local government, businesses and residents affects our environment and quality of life.” said then Mayor Bill Euille during testimony to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in the summer of 2009. “Local governments play a critical role in improving energy efficiency, shifting the country to cleaner sources of energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.” Source Of Information
