Sustainability in Santa Fe County

From the Past to the Future

Jack Kolkmeyer

“Sustainability is the ability to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
The Santa Fe Community College District Plan (2000)

Sustainability principles go back literally hundreds of years in Santa Fe County. Examples include clustered settlement, the effective use of infrastructure, respect for the land and wildlife, the integration of open space, solar design, the appropriate use of natural resources, and communities with a mix of uses. Mostly, Santa Fe County has been a unique acknowledgement of the intrinsic relationships among the past, the present and the future.

Where are we now? What is our current relationship to the past? What have we accomplished in the present? What kind of future do we want? All of these questions become more profound as we struggle with single use (residential) subdivisions, fenced-off openness, disconnected places, myopic infrastructure, truncated community, limited choices of employment, and large-lot, inefficient settlement patterns strewn across our sacred landscape.

The basic sustainability premise, however, is that the landscape and its palette of incredible resources—water, flora and fauna—is the canvas upon which the unsurpassable beauty of this area is drawn. Without it, we do not have the confluence of cultures and aesthetics that make this such a remarkable place.

In Santa Fe County, sustaining this landscape relates to a number of very important issues:

• protection of the natural environment and all of its denizens, especially rural and open areas between existing settlement areas;
• preservation of water resources for present and future generations;
• continuing to focus on community needs and values through extensive community planning, recognizing both traditional and contemporary communities and settlement patterns;
• continuing to direct most new growth into the Community College District where new economic, transportation, energy, water, wastewater and telecommunications efforts can be evolved;
• continuing to develop regional infrastructure projects, especially for water, wastewater and transportation.

Santa Fe County’s concern for sustainability has most recently become apparent in its strategic growth management efforts, a multi-faceted inner and inter-governmental challenge that continues to result in programs and projects with far-reaching consequences.

The Community College District

The evolution of the 18,000 acre, place-based Community College District continues to be one of the County’s most important sustainability endeavors. Its growth principles developed in 1999-2000 include clustered development forms, central mixed-use places, new economic development, multi-modal transportation connections, mandated open space, affordable housing, and infrastructure systems that have resulted in the popular new villages of Rancho Viejo, Oshara and La Pradera. The Rail Runner will connect Albuquerque and points south to this unique smart growth district at NM 599 and I-25.