Fayetteville, Ark., has proudly worn colorful descriptors over the years.
Crunchy. Funky. “Kind of a granola, hippie environment,” said Jeff Pummill, who chairs the city’s environmental action committee.
Set in the Ozark Mountains in the northwest corner of the state, a region of lush, rolling hills crisscrossed by rivers and creeks, Fayetteville drew back-to-the-land enthusiasts in the 1960s. It’s a city where, 25 years ago, a 53-year-old grandmother tried unsuccessfully to stop mature oaks from being razed for a retail development by taking up residence in a tree for a few weeks.
50 States, 50 Fixes is a series about local solutions to environmental problems.
The city’s tree-hugger ethos has endured as Arkansas has moved further to the right. “We’re definitely a blueberry in a bowl of tomato soup, that’s for sure,” said Peter Nierengarten, the city’s environmental director. It has also underpinned Fayetteville’s clean energy and sustainability projects, which have helped the city save money, slash emissions and weather storms.
Solar panels installed in 2019 at the city’s two wastewater treatment plants supply two-thirds of the city government’s energy needs and cut its electricity costs by $2.2 million, Mr. Nierengarten said.
The solar arrays have on-site battery storage, and both are connected to the power grid. According to a local utility official, the systems were critical to keeping the lights on during Uri, the 2021 winter storm that caused deadly power outages, especially in neighboring Texas. The city’s compost program prevents tons of food waste from being buried in a landfill, where it would produce methane, a greenhouse gas. Local farmers like Morgan Boehm, owner of Middle Fork Farm, rely on that compost. He bought about 50 trailer loads of the rich organic material last year, for $55 each, and said it reduced the weeds at his farm by 90 percent.
“Just about every farmer that I know of uses it,” said Mr. Boehm, who sells peppers, bok choy, arugula and buttercrunch lettuce at a farmers’ market downtown. “We wouldn’t be where we’re at without it.”
Last year, Fayetteville adopted an ambitious climate plan that won special recognition for including nature-based solutions such as protecting wetlands and forests. It also pledged to improve natural habitats to mitigate flooding and reduce what’s known as the “heat island effect,” where cities are warmer than surrounding countryside because of the way pavement and buildings absorb heat.
The plan restated a goal it made in 2018 of reaching 100 percent clean energy citywide by 2050 and set an interim emissions-reduction target for 2030, an aim that other cities are increasingly shying away from, according to ICLEI — Local Governments for Sustainability USA, an advocacy group.
Eric Fuselier, an environmental scientist hired by the city to design part of the plan, said it also focused on improving ecosystems to better store carbon dioxide emissions, the main driver of climate change.
“How can we plan for changes to climate that are already going to happen because of carbon that’s already in the pipeline?” he said. “What can we do to adapt and to make sure the city is more resilient to more extreme weather?”
As with any plan, the question is how much of it will become reality.
“Implementation is the most difficult part,” said Teresa Turk, a Fayetteville City Council member and retired federal research fisheries scientist. “Because people can always put this plan on the shelf.”
There are other challenges. Fayetteville has an affordable housing crunch and is under intense development pressure, driven by both a population that more than doubled in 30 years to surpass 100,000 residents and the expansion of the University of Arkansas. The city also had to put two $20 million climate resilience projects on hold after the Trump administration cut federal grants.
Fayetteville also faces headwinds from Little Rock, where the Republican-controlled state legislature effectively killed Fayetteville’s Styrofoam ban. This year, a plan to expand Fayetteville’s electric vehicle fleet was complicated by a new state law that prohibits municipalities from buying electric vehicles unless manufacturers could certify that no part of production involved forced labor.
Still, Mr. Nierengarten said the city had made significant progress toward its climate goals. Citywide emissions dropped 6 percent in 2024 compared with the previous year, despite population growth, he said, while emissions from city government operations decreased by more than three-quarters since 2010. The city is also finalizing a plan to buy power from a solar array that is a few hundreds miles away. That is projected to increase the city government’s clean energy usage to 93 percent and save the city $7 million over 25 years.
“Where we’ve been most successful are those actions that are both good for the planet and also save money,” Mr. Nierengarten said.
According to the city, more than 40 items from the climate plan are underway, and another dozen have been completed, including energy efficient retrofits of municipal facilities, a zoning change that allows residents to conserve portions of their land, and a new storm water utility fee that encourages property owners to reduce impervious surfaces to lessen runoff.
“When we’re talking about a land-use decision, or we’re talking about a policy decision, we go back and say, ‘How does this align with our Climate Action Plan?’” said Molly Rawn, Fayetteville’s mayor. “Climate resilience is an issue that is essentially about the safety of and quality of life of our residents.”
Still, some residents, including Ms. Turk, say that Fayetteville should prioritize the plan even more and give it enforcement teeth. For instance, the plan assigned a climate resilience score to every parcel of land in the city, measuring ecosystem benefits and ecological sensitivity. That score, Ms. Turk said, should be part of the evaluation process for proposed developments.
“We’re way ahead of the pack in Arkansas, there’s no doubt about it,” Ms. Turk said. “But we’re not competing with Arkansas. We’re competing with the world.”
Cara Buckley is a reporter on the climate team at The Times who focuses on people working toward climate solutions.
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