Fairfax County supervisors this week resolved to study putting environmentally friendly building practices in place at government offices and new private developments, analyze and reduce the county’s carbon dioxide emissions, and explore legislation cutting pollutants in the Potomac River linked to cross-gender fish.
In four votes Monday, the board pushed through one of the largest bundles of environmental initiatives in recent history, resolutions that come during an election year in which their patron, Chairman Gerald Connolly, and his Republican opponent tangle over their credentials as environmentalists.
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Connolly, a Democrat, already rolled out a “cool counties” proposal in March, a plan to reduce the county government’s carbon dioxide emissions through hybrid cars, wind power and other conservation measures. The board ratified, in part, the goals of that proposal on Monday by agreeing to pursue an 80 percent emissions reduction by 2050.
His challenger, Gary Baise, said the recent push strikes him as playing politics, a way for the chairman to burnish his record ahead of the November election. Connolly points to the 20-year environmental plan he laid out at the beginning of his term.
“This is a consistent record,” he said. “I don’t think you could say that there’s ever been a more aggressive environmental agenda than the one we’ve pursued in this four-year period.”
Baise, who has served on the state’s solid waste, air and water boards, replied that Connolly was largely to blame for the county’s environmental woes by approving a rash of poorly planned development.
In turn, the chairman has sought to frame Baise, a former EPA official and lawyer with Kilpatrick Stockton, as a representative of a “dirty industry” for his role in defending corporations in environmental litigation.
