SW Colorado's Sustainability Hub

Our mission is to promote sustainability in Southwest Colorado through facilitation, communication, and community collaboration.


To get involved with sustainability activities in La Plata County and the surrounding community, please check out our current project areas:

Smart Energy • Education & Outreach • Local & Regional Policy • Food & Agriculture • Sustainable Local Economic Development • Community Collaboration


Connect with Us:

Durango Green Drinks

Submitted by Elsa Jagniecki on Sat, 05/12/2012 - 10:39am
Posted in

SASCO and Local First Host Durango Green Drinks

Durango Green Drinks This Monday!

Monday, May 14, 5:30 to 7:30 at the Himalayan Kitchen

The status of LPEA-City of Durango franchise agreement that did not pass – how does this affect the progress of renewable energy in our community?

  • Drop by for conversation on local and international sustainability issues, including -
  • Bag It Durango
  • Sustainability beyond Durango ... Shanta Foundation volunteers will be on hand to talk about sustainability initiatives in Myanmar
  • Outcome of LPEA Board May election

Durango Green Drinks (DGD) happens every SECOND MONDAY from 5:30 - 7 PM at different local businesses around Durango.

SASCO in the Community in Spring, 2012

Submitted by Elsa Jagniecki on Sun, 04/29/2012 - 6:17pm
Posted in

Spring has Been Busy for SASCO in the Community

On top of our usual Durango Green Drinks (every second Monday), ongoing Bag It Campaign, and our Smart Energy Committee promoting clean energy candidates for the current La Plata Electric Association (LPEA) Board of Directors Election -  we hosted our first annual Sustainable Living Film Festival with the help of many local organizations, tabled at the 4 Corners Green Living Expo and recently hosted a 350.org Globa

SASCO Endorses Four Clean Energy Candidates for LPEA Board—Please Vote!

Posted in

Next Friday, on April 20th, our local electric cooperative, LPEA, will be sending out ballots to all 30,000+ members. That means that you, or many people you know, will have an unprecedented opportunity to contribute to real change on the LPEA board by voting in this election.
 
This year, SASCO is endorsing four local candidates—one in each LPEA district—who have been active in trying to encourage more local renewable energy in our region. If you don't already know them, you can click on the links below to see a video of each candidate talking about the campaign. (Click here for a district map.)

Kirsten Skeehan, District 1 (Archuleta County)
Bruce Baizel,District 2 (South and West La Plata County)
Britt Bassett, District 3 (Durango)
Heather Erb, District 4 (North La Plata County)

The LPEA ballots will be mailed out on Friday, April 20th, and must be filled out and mailed back by May 10th.

To learn more from the candidates about the details of this election, watch the video below:
 

Op-Ed: Still taking cues from California

Submitted by Erich Bussian on Mon, 04/02/2012 - 9:21pm
Posted in

Posted:   04/01/2012 01:00:00 AM MDT

By Erich Bussian. This article originally appeared in the Denver Post on April 1, 2012


There is a war going on here in Durango — a war of words that seems to embody the political schism in this country that grows ever wider and more virulent over time. It is being fought almost daily in the letters to the editor section of The Durango Herald, and it revolves around banning single-use plastic shopping bags.

Supporters of a bag ban point to a litany of environmental and health reasons: plastic is forever, it is toxic, it kills millions of animals, yada, yada, yada and all true. The biggest evidence of the perils of plastic are the ever-growing, continent-sized plastic gyres in all the oceans, which in some places contain a ratio of plastic to plankton — the building block of the marine food chain — of 9 to 1. Local proponents maintain that what is bad for our oceans is bad for our land.

Not everyone agrees. Some view banning plastic bags as an assault on our God-given American freedom. For some in La Plata County and beyond, a bag-ban ordinance exposes Durango for what it is becoming: a new Boulder, the offspring of the People's Republic, spreading Marxism and laying the groundwork for the United Nations' takeover of the rural West.

Durango, however, represents the demographic shifts that have been in motion for a very long time: the latest bridgehead for the social, political and economic evolution of the American West. An evolution that isn't any more finished today than it was in 1900 or 1990.

Recap: Peegen Hanrahan, Special Presentation - "New Era for Renewable Energy"

Posted in

On March 14, 2012, Pegeen Hanrahan, the former mayor of Gainesville, Florida, visited Durango to discuss "how La Plata County can become the renewable energy leader of the Southwest, develop good jobs, and grow our local economy."

Slides from the presentation are available for download below.

As mayor, Hanrahan made Gainesville a national leader in solar energy. Florida ranks above California, the U.S., Japan, and China in per capita installed solar PV. Gainesville went from 0 to 7.3 MW of installed PV in less than three years!

A registered professional engineer, Pegeen Hanrahan was term-limited in 2010 after 12 years of elective service and two terms as Mayor of Gainesville, Florida. In that role, she sparked a solar CLEAN program (also known as a feed-in-tariff), making Gainesville the first city in the U.S. to implement this solar funding process. Her presentation shared the lessons from the Gainesville Regional Utilities, the electric utility whose feed-in tariff solar policy has brought over 7 megawatts of solar to the city's 125,000 residents. The raw number puts Gainesville among the world leaders in solar installed per capita, beating out Japan, France, and China (and besting California, which has 32 kilowatts per 1000 residents).

The vist was sponsored by CLEAN La Plata - Clean Local Energy Accessible Now

Syndicate content