Holiday Greetings from Your Natural Resources Committee Co-Chairs

By Roberta Gastmeyer and Jay Rosenbek

We hope this brief overview of the Natural Resources Committee’s education and Advocacy for 2021 finds you and your family well and with other reasons for reflection and celebration.

Our efforts and successes are due in large part to Roberta Gastmeyer’s joining the committee as Co-Chair in May. As many of you know Roberta is a long-time, effective environmental activist and she brings the skills and endurance one can only learn by acting.

It took the two of us to replace the former NR Chair, Julia Reiskind, whose death created a void in our community that no single person can ever fill.

So how did the two of us, with hours of help from committee members, do? We think pretty good and hope that Julia would agree.

At our monthly meeting, we got education over the year from three guest speakers. Heather Campbell, Florida Program Director for Solar United Neighbors Florida outlined the concept of energy as a service, one of several alternative revenue strategies for utilities. Stacie Reese, Director of Resilience for Madison, Wisconsin reviewed that city’s efforts to move to renewable energy and otherwise increase the city’s resilience. Megan Walker, Chair of the Citizens Climate Advisory Board, reviewed that Board’s first year accomplishments and future direction.

The committee also provided public education in the form of four opinion pieces in the Gainesville Sun, two in support of utility size solar arrays, one on the necessity of moving the city from natural gas to renewable energy, and one questioning the proposed gas-fired central energy plant proposed for the University of Florida.

Advocacy, however, was our consuming interest in 2021.

• We completed a Study and Action Proposal in support of renewable energy and in opposition to GRU’s advertising of natural gas as “clean” and their use of rebates for customers switching to or adopting natural gas. Upon Board approval we launched a program of resistance to both. GRU has dropped “clean” from its advertising and the committee’s opposition to the rebates continues.
• We advocated for the City Commission’s joining the ICLEI-sponsored Race To Zero which they have done.
• We questioned the University of Florida’s plan to build a gas-fired Central Energy Plant and brought our concerns to the Board of Trustees and the UF Infrastructure Committee. In this effort we collaborated with a variety of local individuals and groups, and it appears that the university is pausing its effort while more data are collected.
• In collaboration with the state NR group, we are evaluating pending state legislative actions and actively supporting bills that are environmentally friendly and opposing those that are not.

We plan even more robust actions in 2022, but for now, it is time to rest and reflect.

Jay Rosenbek, Co-Chair; Roberta Gastmeyer, Co-Chair