Environmental aide is hired by Corroon

Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon now has someone to help him run the environmental programs he plans to institute in the county government.

The mayor said Wednesday that he had hired Ann Ober as his environmental policy coordinator. Ober has worked for Corroon's administration since he took office in January 2005. She worked in community relations and spent much of that time pulling double duty as environmental policy liaison.

During that time, she helped the county get $100,000 for the installation of solar panels at the Salt Palace and worked with the Utah State Extension to audit the county's water usage. That audit, released in June, showed the county was losing more than $170,000 annually in wasted water.

Ober will oversee and carry out an executive order that Corroon issued in April calling on all county agencies to "incorporate environmentally sustainable practices in their day-to-day operations."

Since then, Corroon has started a number of environmental initiatives, including the Blue Sky county-employee challenge, which Ober oversaw. That program encourages county employees to tack on wind-energy payments to their home electricity bills through Rocky Mountain Power's Blue Sky program.

If 400 county workers signed up for Utah Power's Blue Sky Renewable Energy program, Corroon pledged that the county would purchase 750 blocks of wind energy. Each block, which is 100 kilowatt hours, costs $1.95 per month.

Corroon first sought to have the position of environmental policy coordinator created in June during midyear budget adjustments, but the council voted against it.

However, the council agreed to reclassify an existing position in the mayor's office, which had been vacant, as the new environmental position, Corroon spokesman Jim Braden said. That means Ober's job represents a new position but not the addition of new staffing or expenses to the county's budget.

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