Amidst Saturday’s Earth Day festivities, a South Dakota group held a rally for more sustainability in the city of Sioux Falls.
The South Dakota affiliate of the nonprofit environmental group 350, along with other groups, met at Fawick Park and marched to city hall in protest to changes made to the Sioux Falls sustainability plan.
The plan was introduced by a 30-member committee last year and an implementation plan was agreed upon in December. On Feb 23, the Mayor’s office replaced the plan with a draft framework. Frustration led to Saturday’s demonstration as many organizations and community leaders joined SoDak 350 in their march to City Hall to make their voices heard.
“The mayor’s office came back with this new framework and before the committee and presented the new framework and it was kind of like, ‘this is what we’re going with, thanks for your time, but we’re no longer taking into account the sustainability committee,’” said Communications Coordinator for SoDak 350, Kara Hoving. “We’re just really frustrated I think at this point that that consensus-based process that took a lot of work and negotiation and compromise across different groups ended up just getting watered down out of nowhere and replaced with a plan that was almost unrecognizable.”
Frustration led to Saturday’s demonstration as community leaders, like former Sioux Falls Mayor, Rick Knobe, joined in to make their voices heard.
“It’s unclear to me what happened from the mayor’s early pronouncements to this, what I would consider to be a very weak framework,” said Knobe.
Knobe says that he does approve of the mayor’s tenure so far, but this issue is a misstep.
Hoving was really excited for the rally. She expected a good crowd because earlier in the day, she said that there were 60 to 70 volunteers at all eight locations of the Friends of the Big Sioux River Cleanup.
“People in this community, they really care about protecting our river, protecting our natural environment and they proved this morning that they show up. This is a big priority of this community,” said Hoving.
Mayor TenHaken says the changes were made and the timeline was extended to include more voices of all the industries impacted by the plan, while still supporting climate action.
“Some of the key stakeholders, really in our energy industry, were not at the table,” said TenHaken. “So we made the table a little bigger, we extended that plan as a draft for a year to get more input.”
According to TenHaken, the new framework was based on feedback from the energy, homebuilding, and development industries. Knobe acknowledges that the mayor and his office had said that they fielded calls from people with concerns about the plan, but that they did not release who was behind the calls. The sustainability groups say they want to know who, so they can have dialogue on what the concerns are about.
Much of the changes surrounded the language used in the new framework.
“Unfortunately, the topic when I say the words ‘climate change’ and ‘greenhouse gases’ and ‘carbon emissions’, those are trigger phrases for people in our community whether you agree with that or not,” said TenHaken.
TenHaken says he needs to balance viewpoints across the city, especially on this issue.
Source : Dakota News
