Senior Program Services Coordinator, Lane County
 

Lane County's Climate Action Plans were adopted in three phases over three years. I was hired in February 2023 to help us achieve some of the 84 recommended actions and strategies contained in those plans, which is a tall order.
 
However, the passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) in 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in 2022 by Congress have resulted in unprecedented levels of federal funding either directly available through competitive federal grants or passed down through the State competitive grantmaking.
 
Lane County staff in many departments and divisions have been working feverishly to identify these funding opportunities, matching them with the goals outlined in our Climate Action Plans and other key County plans, and collaborating with key partners to apply for these competitive funds. This work has taken precedence over calculating reductions in County and Community greenhouse gas emissions.
 
Highlights of our accomplishments so far:

CAP 1: Internal Operations GHG Reduction
The main driver of emissions is the County’s landfill which accounts for the largest portion (77% in 2021) of direct greenhouse gas production. The approval of the CleanLane Resource Recovery Facility by the Board in December 2023 to divert organics from the landfill will make the most significant impact on reducing direct emissions. The facility will process residential garbage, commingled recycling, and organic waste to produce marketable recycling commodities and biogas for transportation. It will divert over 80,000 tons of material from the County’s landfill annually and can serve as a regional recycling hub for southwest Oregon. The mitigation of methane from Short Mountain Landfill will be the equivalent of taking 20,000 cars off the road for the next 25 years.

CAP 2: Community GHG Reductions
In 2023 Lane County submitted a joint application with the City of Eugene for $15 million in Department of Transportation (DOT) funding under the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure (CFI) Community Grant program to install electric vehicle charging stations in low-income disadvantaged areas of the metro area and along the Highway 126 (East and West) and 58 corridors. Our application was rated “qualified” in Round 1 but not selected due to the huge demand for funding. We are allowed to have our Round 1 application reconsidered and are now working on a slightly revised Round 2 application, based on feedback from DOT, due at the end of August.https://www.transportation.gov/rural/grant-toolkit/charging-and-fueling-infrastructure-grant-program

Community Resilience
Lane County and LCOG were awarded a DOT PROTECT Grant recently in 2024. This grant provides $5.4 million to support an all-hazards vulnerability assessment of the surface transportation network, plan for and designate emergency transportation routes, develop nature-based solutions, bring top prioritized projects to 30% design, create a resilience data visualizer tool, and develop a resilience improvement plan for Lane County transportation infrastructure.
 
These are just a few of our activities to implement the actions contained in the Climate Action Plans. See here for the full update to the Lane County Board of Commissioners for full details.