Orange County NC Website
<br /> <br />• Sustainability Program: <br />o Triangle Regional Resilience Partnership: The Triangle Region Resilience Partnership (TRRP) is a <br />cooperative partnership between Orange County, the Town of Chapel Hill, the City of Durham, <br />Durham County, the Town of Cary, and the City of Raleigh, with administration assistance from <br />Triangle J Council of Governments. The Sustainability Coordinator and the Emergency <br />Management Coordinator have pulled together a core team of staff from the departments of <br />Aging, Social Services, and Planning to join them in representing Orange County in the creation <br />of a regional resiliency assessment over the past year. The project team is using a five-step <br />process guided by UNC Asheville’s National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center <br />(NEMAC). Once complete, this assessment will identify stressors, both climate-related (e.g. <br />storm events, extreme heat) and non-climate related (e.g. population growth, affordable <br />housing), and the vulnerabilities of certain regional assets to those stressors. This will inform <br />local planning and action to increase Orange County’s resilience in a time of rapid change. <br /> <br />o Orange County Commuter Options (OCCO) Program: The Sustainability Program is directing the <br />work of the County’s first Transportation Demand Management (TDM) Coordinator in <br />partnership with Orange County Public Transportation, based on an annually renewable grant <br />from the Triangle J Council of Governments. The TDM Coordinator’s full time role is to reduce <br />traffic congestion and improve local air quality in Hillsborough and at all County facilities. The <br />TDM Coordinator manages the County telework program, a carpool ride-matching service, a <br />GoPerks incentive program, and the planned subsidized bus pass program. <br /> <br />o Accessibility Barrier Reduction: Managing the implementation of action items identified in a <br />comprehensive accessibility assessment of County facilities and sidewalks in partnership with <br />the County’s Human Rights Specialist and disability support groups. Presented as the keynote <br />speaker at the Disability Awareness Council’s 2017 ADA Anniversary celebration. <br /> <br />o New No-cost EV Charging Stations: The County has installed 2 additional electric vehicle <br />charging plugs at the Seymour Senior Center in Chapel Hill to relieve high-demand for two <br />existing stations. This was done at no cost to the County as the result of a successful $10,000 <br />grant application from Duke Energy. Since their installation, these new plugs have been used <br />133 times, enabling Orange County residents and visitors to displace more than 3000 gasoline <br />miles. This charging capacity was added to the County’s award-winning network of 16 Level 2 EV <br />chargers and 2 DC Fast Chargers that the County provides to further support the adoption of <br />clean-driving electric vehicles in Orange County. <br /> <br />o Orange County Car Share Shared Vehicle System: Developed a low-cost method to reserve, <br />track, and maintain a new shared County vehicle pool, leveraging existing technology. <br /> <br />o Sustainability Internships: Successfully recruited and managed the work of two additional UNC <br />interns, providing green job training for young professionals. To date, 5 sustainability interns <br />have added more than 800 free staff hours to amplify the work of the Orange County <br />Sustainability Program. <br /> <br />o Fuel-Saving Technology Grant Projects: County staff has collaborated on 2 grant projects <br />piloting innovative propane bi-fuel systems and idle-reduction battery backup units, increasing <br />the resilience and decreasing the emissions of 7 ambulances, 10 Sheriff's vehicles and 5 <br />Environmental Health Inspector vehicles. Each year these projects save approximately 65 tons of <br />CO2 and other emissions. <br />4