New staff, new structure, new goals shape Hailey’s environmental efforts
By Eric Valentine
When former Hailey Mayor Fritz Haemmerle announced he wouldn’t be seeking re-election, he held what he coined a town hall / open mic to let potential mayoral candidates address the public. No one declared their candidacy that day, but multiple residents as well as a small coalition of local students declared that climate change—and their city’s impact on it and from it—was of utmost concern.
By the time of the next election, Martha Burke declared her mayoral candidacy, ran unopposed and made it clear from day one that as long as she was mayor, Hailey would be on the cutting edge of eco-friendliness. Enter Rebecca Bundy, the city’s newly hired resiliency coordinator—a moniker that purposely means something different than “sustainability” coordinator.
“Sustainability is about capping emissions, setting limits about what the planet can handle. Resiliency includes adaptation, energy independence, and preparing for a future where conditions may be different,” explained Bundy.
Bundy says she hates to be pessimistic about climate change, but she says, realistically, humans aren’t going to do enough to avoid a 1.5-degree Centigrade rise in Earth temperatures. According to NASA’s Global Climate Change reports, a 1.5-degree Celsius warming will mean about 14 percent of Earth’s population will be exposed to severe heat waves at least once every five years. At 2 degrees of warming, that jumps to 37 percent.
What does it mean for the Valley? Bundy says one of the most critical things for us would be reduced snowpack in the mountains. And that means far more than less lucrative ski seasons; it means less available water, too.
“We’re going to be dealing with the effects of whatever we don’t achieve,” Bundy said.
Is There Any Good News?
Bundy is a longtime Valley architect who is known for building one of the first Gold Award residential homes in Ketchum—a designation given by the entity called Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), which certifies buildings as eco-friendly and sustainably designed. She says the approach Mayor Burke is taking to make sure Hailey does its part is going to be effective.
“It’s about cultural change,” Bundy said.
Not just the kind of cultural change where youth organizations like W.A.T.E.R. (We Appreciate The Earth’s Resources) lead efforts to eliminate single-use plastics from all local events. And not just the kind of cultural change that sees families do “meatless Mondays” since our food chain is a major impact to global warming. But, rather, the kind of cultural change where every city decision, from how to enforce building codes to which fleet of vehicles to buy, has some level of resiliency oversight.
Burke organized the resiliency committee to include the heads of every single city department. So, no longer is it a third party coming in and providing external recommendations. Now, it’s the head of each department vetting their projects and purchases and policies for their level of carbon footprint.
“Mayor Burke has basically made her (environment) team internal,” Bundy observed. “If we want to have a positive impact on this, it has to pervade your entire organization.”
The resiliency committee is only a couple of months under way, so right now the team is still compiling data and drawing up game plans. However, outreach has begun to coordinate with all the jurisdictions around the Blaine County region so the carbon footprint reduction efforts and global warming contingency plans are as seamless as possible. For instance, Bundy sits on Ketchum’s sustainability board, and an elected official from each jurisdiction throughout the county is invited to Hailey’s resiliency committee meetings.
In 2020, Bundy said the group will present the city council with a list of eco-friendly benchmarks and the action plans required to achieve those goals. She said the city already has a robust and progressive set of building and energy codes, but there’s always room for revision, especially when it comes to enforcement.
“There will be short-term and long-term items to consider, and we’re putting together a set of policies that shows the city is ready to lead by example first,” Bundy said.
What Can You Do About It?
Bundy said one of the most effective perspective shifts would be if people, especially anyone building a new project, realized an eco-friendly development is not a more expensive development. Bundy, who also has her city planner certification, says that any cost increase on the front end is nominal and that the ROI (return on investment) in doing things like solar installation is significant.
“Retrofitting a building to have solar power can be costly,” Bundy explained. “Setting up a building to be able to run solar now or later, not so much.”