Chaffee County, where landscapes of surpassing natural beauty are home to populations of wildlife equal to any in the country, confronts the daunting challenge of preserving those assets while also fostering much-needed economic development. Chaffee County Democrats believe that development can take place without significantly impacting the views, wildlife, native flora, and historical sites that give our area its high quality of life and distinctive identity.
Further, Chaffee County Democrats believe in the scientific basis of climate change and that significantly reducing reliance on fossil fuels for energy is essential.
Therefore, Chaffee County Democrats support the following strategies, most of which are found in the Chaffee County Comprehensive Plan under Guiding Objectives 3 and 4:
- Using incentives, conservation easements, and augmented development codes to protect
- critical wildlife habitat such as wildlife migration corridors, meadows, wetlands, and river and stream corridors
- sensitive natural areas and view corridors such as ridges and steep slopes
- our starlit skies from light pollution.
- Codifying a process whereby all requests for development are referred to the Division of Parks and Wildlife for review and comment.
- Enforcing weed control and revegetation of development sites through the County Weed Control Office.
- Finding ways to keep agricultural land in production.
- Encouraging local food production.
- Adopting best-practice methods of protection against wildfire.
- Assuring appropriate access to public lands.
- Leaving open options for future rail service, for local transportation and commercial use.
- Coordinating economic development with environmental protection and reaching out to surrounding counties for coordinated initiatives.
- Encouraging homeowners, businesses, and government agencies to conserve water, use energy-efficient devices, use alternative sources of energy (e.g. solar, wind, geothermal).
- Encouraging homeowners, businesses, and government agencies to recycle in order to conserve valuable natural resources and to utilize landfill space efficiently.
Ecomonic Development
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Environment
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Water