By Robert Williams

Editor

The City of Vergas received steps one and two of the Minnesota GreenStep Cities program during City Fest, the League of Minnesota Cities annual conference, at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center in late June.

The certificate and award were presented to Mayor Julie Bruhn, who has spearheaded the effort to improve energy efficiency in Vergas.

“Julie has worked really hard and wonderfully for the City of Vergas,” said Clerk/Treasurer Julie Lammers. “This is really exciting to get and move along and hopefully we’ll be to step three next year in Rochester.”

During fall of 2007, Minnesota’s Clean Energy Resource Teams (CERTs) held regional listening sessions around the state to discuss community-based energy opportunities and the state’s Next Generation Energy Act of 2007. 

“It really kind of came about as we started doing our work with energy and we got exposed to this and kind of saw some of the importance of it because this is a very supporting agency that really helped cities obtain sustainability and quality of life goals,” said Bruhn. “The program is set up around some overall arching science-based good things you can do and they have various actions you can implement. I found even when we put the data in we were doing some of those things. There were some new things, but things we were doing like LED lighting and the city recycling and compost. It really does help the city stretch and I think we found out when we did the energy survey how important people rated the environment and our lakes so I think this  just falls right in line with trying to protect what we have. It’s our bread and butter in Vergas.”

The idea was raised to create a sustainable cities program, free to cities, that would challenge, assist and recognize cities that were “green stars.” This idea was taken up by the 2008 Legislature, which directed the MPCA, the Division of Energy Resources at the Minnesota Department of Commerce, and CERTs to recommend actions cities could take on a voluntary basis.

Vergas passed a resolution last July to become a GreenStep City and according to Bruhn, Vergas is somewhat of an anomaly as it is very unusual to attain two steps in one calendar year.

“It just goes to show the work that has been done in this community,” Bruhn said.

Representatives from dozens of cities, non-profit organizations, the University of Minnesota, businesses and state government agencies provided the outline for what has been developed as the Minnesota GreenStep Cities program, which began in June 2010. 

“It really covers everything we do; it’s an exciting program and thank you for your efforts to get Vergas on the map,” said Council Member Bruce Albright.

GreenStep Cities are mapped and there are only five in the west central region. Vergas joins Detroit Lakes, Fergus Falls, Hewitt, Dilworth and Moorhead.

As a non-regulatory program, GreenStep learns from Minnesota cities and assistance providers, and continually refines the best practice actions and the resources for taking action. The program also benefits from contact with over fifteen other GreenStep-like programs across the nation, and helped create the national Sustainable States Network in 2015.