Norwalk City sustainability director outlines expanded resilience plan, aims for draft by May

Joe "Jody" DiTerrelet, the city's director of sustainability, presented an expanded Sustainability and Resilience Plan to the Norwalk City Sustainability Committee on Jan. 14, saying the 2024 greenhouse-gas inventory underlying the earlier plan covered only "about 26% of our citywide emissions" and that a broader approach is needed to meet state targets.

DiTerrelet said the revised plan will be organized into nine sectors (energy, mobility, buildings, waste, natural resources, health and happiness, disaster preparedness and recovery, city operations, and community engagement), include a SWOT and materiality assessment, and set sector-specific metrics, goals and neighborhood-level recommendations. "We have access to their ClearPath 2 software program," he said, referring to ICLEI's emissions accounting tools, which the city has joined to improve inventory accuracy.

Why it matters: the presentation links local planning to state greenhouse-gas goals DiTerrelet cited during the meeting (45% reduction by 2030 from 2001 levels; an 80% reduction by 2050; and 100% zero-carbon electricity on the state timeline). He said Norwalk is not currently near those targets and that the new plan aims to identify actionable steps to close the gap.

Key findings and proposed priorities from the presentation include an emissions breakdown from the 2024 inventory—vehicles ~42%, homes ~25%, commercial energy ~19% and waste ~11%—and a focus on reducing internal-combustion vehicle miles, expanding EVs and transit, improving building energy efficiency and increasing waste-diversion and circular-economy measures. DiTerrelet emphasized tailoring recommendations by neighborhood because district needs differ (for example, South Norwalk vs. Cranberry).

Implementation and community engagement: DiTerrelet described an internal "green team" of department heads meeting monthly and a community sustainability task force organized into sector committees. He said the task force has more than 50 volunteers and that community education is a required objective for every sector. "If it meets the criteria for being sustainable, we'll do it. If not, it gets deprioritized," he said of the decision framework the staff is developing.

Timeline and staffing: DiTerrelet told the committee the draft plan will be complete by May 2026. "It'll be done by May," he said. He also disclosed that his position is funded through ARPA through June and that continued funding will be determined in the upcoming city budget process.

Questions from committee members addressed how the plan aligns with Planning and Zoning and whether the city will set phased requirements. DiTerrelet pointed to the 2024 Planning and Zoning update and offered a recent example: he said Planning and Zoning's solar requirement led Costco to install a substantial solar system that now functions like a microgrid for a large part of the building. He told members the plan will not be project-specific but that projects such as Manresa can be evaluated through the decision framework.

Next steps: DiTerrelet asked council members to help with district-level asset mapping (capital and human assets such as home businesses, commercial kitchens, parks and tree canopy) and said the community task-force meets again the following day. The committee did not take formal votes on the plan during the session; a motion to adjourn was made and accepted at the meeting's close.

The committee is expected to receive the draft plan in the spring; continued staffing and funding decisions will be set during the budget process.