photo by: Austin Hornbostel/Journal-World

The Douglas County Sustainability Office's home at 1006 New Hampshire St. is pictured Thursday, Sept. 1, 2022.

After previously operating through a combined office, the City of Lawrence and Douglas County have split into their own separate Sustainability Offices.

That change became official in mid-August, when the county announced that Kim Criner Ritchie will lead the Douglas County office as sustainability manager, and Kathy Richardson will serve as the Lawrence office’s director. Both of them had been serving as leaders in the combined office in an interim capacity since the departure of former Sustainability Director Jasmin Moore near the end of 2021.

Criner Ritchie told the Journal-World Thursday that Moore’s departure seemed like as good an opportunity as any to explore what the separate offices could mean.

“Kathy and I both became appointed to those interim roles for the county and the city to exercise what that could look like,” Criner Ritchie said.

photo by: Douglas County

Kim Criner Ritchie

The two are taking on their new roles touting nearly 35 years of combined experience in sustainability work. For Criner Ritchie, that was mostly in roles with offices on college campuses — the University of Kansas, Johnson County Community College and Ohio University. She’s been with the county for three years.

As for Richardson, she has worked for the City of Lawrence’s Solid Waste Division for two decades, starting as a waste reduction and recycling specialist. By 2013, she was the manager overseeing all collection services for trash, recycling and yard waste, plus operations of the city’s compost facility and household hazardous waste facility.

photo by: City of Lawrence

Kathy Richardson

From the county’s end, Criner Ritchie said the separation means there’s more ability to home in on projects that extend outside of Lawrence. One big example is the county’s Open Space Plan the county began crafting earlier this year. Until now, it had been a taller ask to focus on that particular project in the intentional way it needs, she said.

“I think this has been a really incredible opportunity for the county to look inward and outward at what county sustainability priorities could be,” Criner Ritchie said.

For the city’s part, meanwhile, Richardson said the focus would shift to the environmental sustainability commitment included as part of the city’s strategic plan — “a deep respect for our place in relationship with the planet and environment.” She said her work would be focused on progress indicators associated with that commitment, such as acres of green park space per resident; events that celebrate and enhance environmental sustainability; and the percentage of city-used energy that is renewable, among others. A full list of those indicators is available on the city’s website.

That doesn’t mean the city and county will stop collaborating altogether, though.

“The city and county will definitely continue collaborating on sustainability work,” Richardson said. “The county has a strong sustainability team led by Kim Criner Ritchie, which is a great asset and resource to the city. We are working together on the Climate Action Plan, and once that has been completed, there will be strategies and actives to continue working on collaboratively in order to achieve our goals.”

Criner Ritchie echoed Richardson on that front, noting that the county is taking the lead on the Climate Action Plan. That’s because the countywide plan involves all the cities in the community, not just Lawrence. The city does have a large footprint in that process, Criner Ritchie said, so it’ll be a strong contributor as the work continues.

There will also likely continue to be plenty of collaboration via the Common Ground program; the community gardening and urban agriculture program has nearly a dozen garden spaces located around Lawrence, but its program manager, Umut Bayramoglu, is housed under the new Douglas County Sustainability Office.

“We do have this huge asset, this program that the community loves, and we understand that into the foreseeable future, we’ll be working closely on that,” Criner Ritchie said.