City Power: Flexing
Municipal Muscles
San Jose shows how local government
can support sustainability - and save money, too
by John Hart
One of the articles in We Can Do It! (IC#33)
Fall 1992, Page 13
Copyright (c)1992, 1996 by Context Institute
| To order this issue ...
San Jose is one place where a city-wide effort to move toward sustainablility
succeeded at least in part because of the city's whole-system approach.
The lessons from San Jose and other cities is chronicled in a Resource Renewal
Institute book, Saving Cities Saving Money: Environmental Strategies
that Work. This book, which we adapted, is a valuable tool for those
working for city-wide transformation; it can be ordered from agAccess, PO
Box 2008, Davis, CA 95617.
San Jose, California, population 782,000, used to have a hard-to-shake reputation
as an environmental despoiler: the megalopolis that out-competed its rivals
in paving over the agricultural Santa Clara Valley, "valley of heart's
delight."
Recently, the city has emerged instead as a leader in the pursuit of environmental
efficiency. By the most conservative estimate, its environmental programs
now save the city government $6 million a year. When savings to the community
are included, the total reaches over $15 million.
The transformation didn't occur all at once, of course. There were various
turning points. The city had officially repudiated the old policy of sprawl
by 1975. But it was at the very end of the 1970s that a positive new direction
was set.
In 1978, a controlled-growth mayoral candidate achieved a stunning victory
over a traditional opponent. One of the architects of that victory, consultant
Dennis Church, wrote a report entitled "Toward a Sustainable City:
A Report on Natural Resources and the City of San Jose." The paper
reviewed the pressing need for resource conservation and suggested that
environmental protection, economic growth, social welfare, and fiscal solvency
are interlocking, not competing, goals.
While Church tapped away at his paper, two shocks hit the city. The steep
oil price rise of the late '70s and a major sewage spill: the city's overburdened
waste-water treatment plant discharged an appalling amount of untreated
effluent into the shallow, slowly circulating waters of southern San Francisco
Bay. The Regional Water Quality Control Board threatened a building ban.
FIRST STEPS
When, in the aftermath of these events, Church's paper appeared, it found
an audience wide awake and hungry for ideas. The initial step the city council
took along the recommended lines was to create an energy office. Church
was hired as its founding director.
The first major assignment of the "energy" office was to help
out with the waste-water crisis. The city distributed free low-flow shower
heads and other water conservation devices throughout San Jose. The inflow
to the sewer plant declined, helping to buy time for needed improvements.
The energy program proper took its initial campaign literally to the streets.
At the beginning of the 1980s, the city replaced the mercury vapor lamps
in all its streetlights with low-pressure sodium fixtures that use half
the electricity. Result: a $1.5 million drop in San Jose's annual energy
bill - not once, but forever.
THE GARBAGE COUP
A third early campaign cleared the way for recycling. For many years, a
single garbage company had owned the only landfill in San Jose and held
an effective monopoly on garbage collection and disposal. The cost to the
city kept rising. Moreover, the contractor was uninterested in recycling
and, faced with public resentment at high garbage bills, the city could
not launch a serious curbside recycling program for which it would have
had to charge.
Councilwoman Shirley Lewis, assisted by Dennis Church, realized that the
garbage monopoly had to be broken - if possible, at the 1984 contract renewal.
First, the city hurried to open a second landfill: that is, it solicited
a private proposal and shepherded it through the multiple levels of approval
such a project requires. Second, the city separated the garbage contract
into two parts: one agreement for collection, the other for final landfill
disposal.
When the contracts were bid, one of two major companies won the disposal
contract; the other won on garbage collection. The winning bids totaled
nearly $6 million less per year than the city had been paying. The city
used half the savings to fund recycling programs and returned the other
half to the public as a rate decrease. So San Jose found itself in the delightful
position of increasing service and reducing cost.
San Jose's garbage maneuver changed the waste management world. The two
companies that competed for the city's business - Browning Ferris, Inc.
and Waste Management, Inc. - are also the two largest companies in the field.
Spurred by the San Jose experience, each entered the recycling business
in a big way.
WIDENING THE ATTACK
"When we try to pick out anything by itself," John Muir observed,
"we find it hitched to everything else in the universe." So it
is with natural resources, Dennis Church says. To waste one is typically
to waste several; to conserve one may be to conserve them all.
If less water is used, for instance, less energy is used to pump and heat
it. Recycling saves not only landfill capacity but also energy, water, forests,
and mineral wealth. (Recycling an aluminum can - contents, a cup and a half
- saves energy equivalent to three quarters of a cup of gasoline.) Improving
mass transit cuts air pollution, energy use, and greenhouse emissions while
reducing noise, congestion, and cut-through neighborhood traffic. To take
advantage of these overlaps, a broad view and a broad attack are required.
Recognizing this interconnectedness, San Jose in 1986 combined its energy,
water, and solid waste programs and created the Office of Environmental
Management (OEM).
With support and prodding from Councilwoman Lewis and other members of the
council's environmental committee, OEM has carried out a long list of efficiency
and environmental protection measures. Sometimes these programs are distinctly
new; in other cases, what occurs is a subtle change of emphasis.
TAKING ACTION
San Jose's actions toward sustainability took place in eight areas - some
have already been implemented, others are still in preparation.
- * Saving Heating, Cooling, and Lighting Energy
- Energy audits of public buildings identified opportunities to save
energy used for heating, cooling, and lighting. A $2.2 million investment
in energy savings resulted in savings of $500,000 each year. A resource
center helps building designers and contractors meet requirements for energy
efficiency in new public and private buildings. The city plans to plant
1 million trees by the year 2000 to reduce air conditioning requirements.
* Saving Energy by Promoting Efficient Driving
- The city is buying fuel-efficient vehicles for its fleet and encourages
its major contractors to do likewise. Drivers of city vehicles are trained
to save fuel by making fewer trips and driving more efficiently. Efforts
to improve traffic flow include installing "smart" traffic signals,
maintaining streets and roads, and focusing traffic enforcement on trouble
spots.
* Saving Energy by Discouraging Solo Driving and Promoting Other Means of
Transportation
- A hub-and-spoke light rail system is being developed, and adjacent
counties are cooperating to develop a network of linked high-occupancy-vehicle
(HOV) lanes. Employers are encouraged to promote carpooling with the help
of a city-run Commuter Network.
* Conserving Water and Reducing Wastewater Flows
- The city distributed low-flow shower heads and toilet dams to every
household, and is planning an incentive program for installation of low-volume
toilets. The resulting savings to homeowners are estimated at $200 per year
in addition to saving the city some $68 million in wastewater treatment
facilities. Landscaping standards have been adopted that save irrigation
water and the city plans a demonstration garden to show what can be grown
with little watering. Recycled, treated wastewater is sold for outdoor use.
* Conserving Materials
- A preventive maintenance program is intended to extend the life of
streets and public facilities. New construction is required by code to use
durable materials and to be designed to withstand earthquakes. Older buildings
are being retrofitted to improve their seismic safety.
* Recycling Materials
- The city recycles its own solid wastes and purchases recycled products.
Over 175,000 homes participate in the curb-side recycling program, and a
yard-waste composting program is in place.
* Controlling Several Specific Types of Pollution
- The city has programs to dispose of household toxins, to recycle CFCs
used in refrigeration, and to better manage storm water runoff .
* Setting Land Use and Transportation Policies That Maximize Efficiency
- The city is controlling urban sprawl by increasing densities downtown
and along a planned light-rail system. The city is also working to locate
jobs near housing to reduce commuting. Land use and transportation planning
is the most potent lever available to cities to improve resource efficiency.
WAYS OF TAKING HOLD
Once you begin looking at government operations with an eye to extending
resources and saving money, opportunities turn up everywhere. It's natural
to divide the list by the resource conserved: here's what we can do to economize
on energy, on water, and so on.
But running through this pattern is another: a series of widening circles
of action, beginning with measures a city can take quite simply, in-house,
and expanding ring by ring to measures, sometimes controversial, that profoundly
affect a whole community. A city has the following powers:
The power to change its own internal operations and the behavior of its
employees
- City leaders can't very well push conservation on others if they don't
practice it in buildings and facilities under their direct control. Besides
their example value, such measures produce enormous real savings. These
initiatives are politically the cheapest: they can be adopted fairly quickly
and simply.
The power to promote efficiency through good management of the city's infrastructure,
including, notably, streets and roads
- Early and proper maintenance of city facilities is an enormous lever
of resource efficiency, easily grasped.
The power to promote efficiency through the products it buys and the contracts
it signs
- The city is a huge consumer of goods and services. By buying "green"
products, and by choosing contractors who represent quality practices, it
can get exactly what it wants and also work some very efficient economic
controls. San Jose, as we have seen, helped to convert two major solid waste
companies to the cause of recycling. Zurich, Switzerland, gave a significant
boost to the electric car industry.
The power to provide various environmental services and to levy charges
for them
- This method is especially easy in a city that controls some of its
own public utilities and already mails a regular bill.
The power to make sure that newly constructed buildings and facilities meet
high efficiency standards
- Every time a project is designed, built, or rebuilt, there is an opportunity
to build efficiency into it at relatively low cost.
The power to promote retrofitting
- Not less important is the adaptation of existing homes and other private
buildings to new environmental standards. Governments could theoretically
demand retrofitting through ordinances, but choose mainly to work this field
through advice and selective subsidies.
The power to plan efficient future land-use and transportation
- Although curtailed by the interdependence of each city with its neighbors,
this role is substantial.
The power to mandate, directly, changes in behavior by large businesses
- Because of the large amounts of resources they use and pollutants
they produce, large commercial and industrial firms are obvious targets
for regulation.
The power to mandate changes in behavior by small businesses and by private
citizens
- Such regulation cannot be avoided, but there are right and wrong ways
of doing it to avoid undue burdens and backlash. It is vital to consult
before acting, to explain the need clearly, and, if at all possible, to
offer a service alongside the rule or restriction.
Please support
this web site ... and thanks if you already are!
All contents copyright (c)1992, 1996 by Context
Institute | To order this issue ...
Please send comments to webmaster
Last Updated 29 June 2000.
URL: http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC33/Hart.htm
Home | Search | Index of Issues
| Table of Contents
|
