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City staff reports 2024 progress on Greater Lafayette Climate Action Plan; annual report to be released on Earth Day
Summary
City presenter summarized 2024 implementation across four focus areas, reporting 41 of 71 actions (58%) initiated region-wide and listing community events, partnerships and specific accomplishments.
Clara, a staff presenter for the Greater Lafayette Climate Action Plan, told the West Lafayette City Council on March 3 that the region made measurable progress on climate actions in 2024 and that a combined annual report for Lafayette, West Lafayette and Tippecanoe County will be released on Earth Day.
Clara said the 2024 effort advanced 41 of the plan's 71 actions (58%) across four focus areas: energy use in the built environment; transportation; agriculture and forestry; and water, wastewater and solid waste. She cited partnerships and community events as central to the progress and highlighted specific accomplishments: Green Fest drew about 125 attendees and 10 participating organizations; regional "Detrash the Wabash" events removed more than 6 tons of trash from the Wabash River; the region hosted a McKinney Climate Fellow, Annabelle Prokopy, who developed a community food-waste diversion map; and the cities joined the EPA's Sustainable Communities Accelerator Network for technical assistance on resiliency hubs.
On energy, Clara said West Lafayette expanded solar outreach through Solar United Neighbors sessions and approved bids to install solar on five city-owned buildings. On transportation, the city added three hybrid vehicles to reduce fleet emissions and helped open the Sagamore Parkway Trail in partnership with Lafayette, Tippecanoe County, INDOT and the Indiana Department of Natural Resources. The parks and sanitation departments experimented with brine alternatives using local distillery byproducts for winter maintenance, Clara added.
Clara also said AmeriCorps park allies and local nonprofit partners ran more than 15 invasive-species removal workdays in 2024 and helped plant more than 80 trees across West Lafayette parks. In waste-management work, the city assisted the Tippecanoe County Solid Waste Management District with two e-waste events that collected about 183,000 pounds of e-waste in 2024 and helped establish five vape-disposal drop-off sites.
Councilors asked for more trackable metrics: one councilor asked if industries and Purdue were active partners; Clara said staff regularly confer with Purdue's Office of Sustainability and have been engaging some local industries such as Caterpillar and Evonik. Another councilor asked about tracking waste diversion and program participation; Clara said data-sharing limitations with private waste contractors make some measures difficult but that the Go Greener Commission and the county can provide more specific counts for certain programs.
Clara said the plan's 58% figure was tied to the original modeling that informed the plan's targets, and staff expect an updated 2024 greenhouse-gas inventory later in the year to better quantify emissions impacts.
The city will continue implementation in 2025 and invited the public to participate in partner events and future planning updates.
