Alachua County (Gainesville) Wants To Take On Climate Breakdown; The Problem Is That It's Located In Florida
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Alachua County sits squarely in north-central Florida, with several hours of interstate buffering residents from coastlines and the nearest big cities, Orlando and Jacksonville. On the day of the summit, downtown Gainesville — the city at the county’s center — bustled with weekend traffic. The city is home to the University of Florida, and some of its 60,000 students were biking to brunch, while others joined throngs of orange-and-blue clad tailgaters in front of the football stadium. The university is the county’s largest employer, and its progressive influence radiates throughout Gainesville and its 150,000 residents. Leave the city, and the bohemian coffee shops and pride flags vanish, replaced by boiled peanut stands, billboards advertising fireworks, and “Make America Great Again” lawn signs. A little farther, and the Spanish moss-draped canopies of live oak trees give way to farmland and pine forests grown for timber. In this perimeter lie the county’s eight other towns, with populations ranging from less than 1,000 to nearly 10,000.
Regardless of where Alachua County’s 285,000 residents live, climate change is expected to upend their daily lives. According to the county’s climate vulnerability assessment, finalized this summer, the next century will likely bring a litany of disasters, from intensified hurricanes to long periods of drought. An upswing in extreme rainfall events could flood large swaths of the low-lying region, which is built around wetlands. By the end of the century, residents can expect a heat index, a measure of temperature and humidity, of over 130 degrees Fahrenheit for more than a third of the year.
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The state law with arguably the most potential for kneecapping the county and city’s plans was passed in 2023, when DeSantis signed a measure that overhauled Gainesville Regional Utilities, or GRU, the largest utility in Alachua County. The measure took control of the public utility from the City Commission and gave it to DeSantis’ hand-picked GRU Authority board. It also mandated that the city’s utilities be managed with only financial benefits in mind, rather than considerations like climate change and affordability. “We can’t control our climate action initiatives unless we control our power source,” said John “Ronnie” Nix, a recently retired energy conservation specialist and member of the local citizen climate advisory committee, which works with the city and county’s Joint Water and Climate Policy Board. Gainesville Regional Utilities provides gas, electricity, and water to nearly all of Gainesville. In 2021, 72 percent of that energy came from natural gas or coal. Nearly all the rest comes from a controversial biofuel plant. “We can’t do it without GRU; we need to make it work with GRU,” he said.
The utility’s new CEO, Ed Bielarski, eliminated its office of sustainability and reliance a week after the board appointed him in June. Since then, the utility has stopped sending a representative to attend the county’s climate meetings. The board has also reduced incentives for residential solar energy, and cut the utility’s usual contribution to the city budget — typically millions of dollars that fund essential services — by more than half.
During the November election, Gainesville’s voters overwhelmingly backed a ballot referendum to return the utility back to the city, with 72 percent in support. Because the GRU Authority board had challenged the referendum before the vote, a judge is expected to rule in mid-December on whether the city can act on the results. Even if the referendum doesn’t stick, Nix is hopeful that the citizen committee’s efforts to maintain a good relationship with the utility will be successful. A spokesperson from GRU did not respond to a request for comment.
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https://grist.org/politics/alachua-county-gainesville-climate-agenda-florida/