City Sustainability Initiative

The city sees "sustainability" in the broadest sense possible, from solar panels and recycling, to smart land use and storm water policies. We also see general trail, sidewalk, and urban design improvements to walkability and bikeability as paths to general health and a more sustainable city. The City of Pueblo has been a partner with the Pueblo County Sustainability team which has been working on a countywide sustainability plan throughout 2010.

Our current network hardware throughout the city is 98% Avaya products. These switches and routers deliver between 20% - 50% more energy efficiency than leading competitive offerings according to a 2011 Miercom report. Avaya switches have been shown in some cases to utilize less power at 100% load capacity than competitive offerings when idle. They also have an embedded energy management solution which can be used to dim power consumption by an additional 25% during off peak hours. We are instituting a power management system with Autonomics software and funded via our local electric company to reduce energy consumption of computers, servers, and other network resources. It is anticipated that we will save over $150 thousand over a 5-year period.

City Planning works closely with the Pueblo City-County Health Department and Pueblo Active Community Environment (PACE) to add pedestrian and bike friendly enhancement on all city projects. These enhancements create a friendlier urban environment which encourages walking and biking.

In addition to our role as a regional partner, we are planning on installing solar panels on an upcoming fire station project. To reduce energy consumption, the city is in the midst of a large scale energy audit of their facilities and will be making changes to reduce the amount of energy used in city buildings.

Finally, the city has been adding water-wise western landscaping to most of its public projects, thereby reducing water demands in the desert west. In 2011, the city will be looking at numerous ways to promote sustainability internally and how we can help partner with citywide sustainability efforts.