Story County hosted a public meeting to gather input on an Operations Climate Action Plan aimed at keeping county services running during worsening weather and reducing greenhouse-gas emissions from county government operations. The session, led by consultants from EA Engineering and county planning staff, described the hazards the county will analyze, summarized a government-operations greenhouse-gas inventory, and invited residents to complete an online survey.

The plan focuses on operations under the Board of Supervisors’ 2022 Climate Resilience Leadership Strategy and will examine county-owned buildings, fleets and employee commutes rather than community-wide emissions. "The Story County government wants your perspective on actions that can be taken to improve the resilience of the County government operations," said Chris Anderson, a consultant with EA Engineering. Leanne Harder, Story County planning and development staff, said the Go Green team — originally started in 2008 and reactivated in 2022 — asked for the plan after the county directed staff in 2024 to issue a request for proposals and engage a consultant to prepare an operations-focused climate action plan.

Why it matters: County officials said the plan is meant to identify priority actions and costs to reduce service interruptions (for example, closed roads, inaccessible facilities or delayed emergency response) and lower the county’s contribution to greenhouse-gas buildup. The consultants emphasized that the plan will document where county operations are vulnerable to weather and provide the Board of Supervisors with options ranging from low-cost operational changes to capital investments.

What presenters outlined

Hazards and operational impacts: The consultants listed hazards carried from the county’s multi-jurisdiction multi-hazard mitigation planning process and added others after staff consultation. The hazards discussed were blizzard and winter storms, flash floods, river flooding, tornadoes and high wind, increasing summertime humidity and heat (including heat-index days), drought, changes in season length (plant hardiness zone shifts and thaw/freeze timing), rain-on-snow runoff, and worsening air quality from smoke and pollen. For each hazard the presentation noted typical operational impacts: closed or slow roads, temporarily inaccessible buildings or parking, impaired emergency response, damage to buildings or county vehicles, stress on trees and parks, higher HVAC loads and utility costs, and health risks for outdoor employees.

Trends and uncertainty: Presenters said some hazards (flash flooding, heavier extreme rainfall, river flood return levels and summertime humidity/heat-index exposure) show clearer increases in frequency or intensity in recent records or model projections, while others (tornado frequency, blizzard frequency) are less clearly trending over the next 25 years because such events are rarer and require longer records to discern trends. The presentation attributed heavier rainfall trends and return-period shifts to regional analyses and cited streamflow work for the South Skunk River as an example where projected future return-period floods are higher than historical values. Presenters also noted that air-quality days and summer humidity have increased and will affect outdoor workers and building filtration needs.

Greenhouse-gas inventory and priority sources: The consultants said Story County commissioned greenhouse-gas inventories for government operations for 2010 and 2020 (performed with UNI’s Energy Center) and that the inventory attributes roughly 40% of current operational emissions to building energy, about 45% to county vehicles (the fleet), and roughly 14% to employee commutes. The presentation showed a business-as-usual projection that assumes continuing grid decarbonization (notably wind and solar additions by Alliant Energy and the City of Ames) and improved vehicle efficiency; presenters said those changes alone could reduce county operational emissions by roughly 10% by 2030 and about 15% by 2040 under the assumptions used in the slide set.

Candidate actions presented: The slide deck and survey list a range of options ordered roughly from lower to higher cost (approximate categories given as under $100,000 to over $1 million). Examples for flood and access resilience: improved floodproofing of doors and openings, stormwater drainage and localized retention (rain gardens), creating open-space wetlands, raising bridge/road elevations and, where needed, increased emergency-response staffing. Wind/tornado resilience options included additional tornado-safe rooms, selective tree removal near buildings, and structural wind-load upgrades. Winter/resilience options included enabling work-from-home capacity and expanding snowplow capacity. Heat and humidity responses included increased tree canopy, designated cooling centers, reflective roofing and window coatings, building efficiency upgrades, and on-site generation (generators or solar arrays) to reduce peak electricity demand. For greenhouse-gas reductions, options included alternative fuels (E85, biodiesel), fleet replacement with hybrids or electric vehicles during normal replacement cycles, operational policies such as one day-a-week telework, purchase agreements for community solar or wind, geothermal and HVAC efficiency upgrades, and tree-planting or other natural carbon-storage measures as possible offsets.

Public input and next steps: Presenters repeatedly asked attendees to complete the online survey (estimated 15–20 minutes) and to report specific local impacts or events in the chat or survey. Leanne Harder said the comments and survey responses will be forwarded to the Board of Supervisors to inform the plan. No formal motions, votes or funding decisions were taken at the session; the meeting was an input and outreach event.

Limitations and clarifications: Presenters emphasized the plan’s scope is county government operations only, not community-wide emissions. Several technical points shown in the presentation were described as projections or model-based expectations rather than settled facts (for example, projected changes to return-period flood levels or humidity trends). The presentation referenced tools and products used to define hazards and trends (for example, National Weather Service warnings, the NOAA drought monitor, USDA plant hardiness zone data and local streamflow analyses) but did not record formal legal or budgetary commitments during the session.

What to watch: The Board of Supervisors, the Go Green team and selected consultants will use the survey and recorded comments to develop a recommendation that will return to the Board for further direction and any decisions about program or capital funding. Residents and county employees who want to influence priorities were asked to use the survey link or QR code shown during the meeting.