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The city of Santa Cruz goes green in 2009 | Print |  E-mail
Written by Chris J. Magyar   
Wednesday, 31 December 2008

An audacious New Year's resolution includes every citizen's help

Treating the air trash

Between 1996 and 2005, the city of Santa Cruz—as a whole, not just the government—reduced its carbon footprint by 11 percent. That’s an astounding achievement, and not even close to what Ross Clark is asking us to do by 2020.

Clark, the city’s climate change action coordinator, is following a goal he calls “30 by 20,” or a 30 percent reduction of Santa Cruz carbon emissions by 2020, based on 1990 levels. The city has also committed to the state’s goal of an 80 percent reduction by 2050 and new buildings to be emissions neutral after 2030, but first things first. The first step toward the near-term goal was determining the city’s carbon footprint for 2005, which was harder than it sounds.

“I could get as far back as 1993 with solid numbers associated with our emissions from the municipality, and 1996 for the community as a whole,” Clark says. “Most other communities didn’t go back that far, and are using 2000 or 2005 as their benchmark, but because we have been doing a lot of energy and conservation measures for a decade, I wanted to go back as far as I could.” He adds that the most important task of the inventory was fixing a method of accounting emissions across years, and giving the city a solid snapshot of where we are now.

The report, which is available on the city website’s Climate Action page, contains some interesting peeks at where Santa Cruz has excelled, and where it still has a long way to go. By far, the jewel of the government’s emissions reduction effort has been its waste management program. Even though all other energy emissions, taken together, have risen slightly between 1993 and 2005, the amount of emissions saved by waste reduction has been big enough to more than make up for it. In 1993, the landfill was emitting 29,323 tons of carbon dioxide. By 2005, that amount had been reduced to 12,455 tons.

“We’re far below the 30 percent reduction goal with waste emissions,” Clark says. “We could actually increase our waste emissions and still meet our 30 by 20 goal. But it’s an area where there’s still a lot of opportunity. Further composting and recycling—and small things like buying local or products with less packaging—could potentially cut our waste emissions in half again.” The fact that a waste emission increase is built into the 30 by 20 goal doesn’t mean Clark anticipates more waste … just that there’s wiggle room with the other goals, and if we fall a few percentage points short in dealing with wastewater or transportation, waste will likely make up for it.

There have been other reductions in the 12-year study period for the municipality. Streetlights are using less energy, thanks to efficient bulbs, and the city’s transportation fleet expels 40 percent less carbon dioxide today than in 1993. However, the overall emissions at the city have increased thanks to a power-hungry wastewater treatment plant, which has gone from 771 tons of emissions to 4,488.

Clark says the wastewater plant represents an environmental trade-off. “In ’93 the new facility wasn’t up and running,” he says, “and our effluent was advanced primary,” meaning that only large objects and significant grit were cleaned from the sewage. “We’ve gone through three phases of improving our sewage that we dump into the Monterey Bay Marine Sanctuary to advanced secondary,” meaning the wastewater is now cleaned of harmful chemicals and biological byproducts. “We’ve also put a lot of environmental controls in place to reduce odors, and added a phase of UV sterilization of the water before it leaves the plant. Our attempts to meet other environmental obligations have led to significantly higher energy use.”

He says he’s in constant contact with the wastewater plant to discover ways to reduce the facility’s emissions and energy use. Already, the plant captures its methane emissions to generate electricity, and solar panels have been installed on the roof for further energy supplementation. “We can be proud that our treatment plant is state-of-the-art,” Clark says. “We just need to look at ways to use it more efficiently.”

The municipality’s lofty goal is to reduce its emissions 40 percent by 2020, but that’s just one small part of the overall goal for Santa Cruz. To achieve 30 by 20, Clark is looking for a 7 percent reduction from residences, 23 percent reduction from businesses, and 39 percent reduction from transportation. Taken together, these decreases would save our atmosphere from 73,000 tons of greenhouse gas.

Of those sectors, transportation appears to be the most daunting. Residences and businesses have already made drastic cuts in emissions since 1996 (24 percent and 9 percent, respectively), but transportation emissions in the county have increased 6 percent during that period. Cars, trucks, buses, and trains now emit 47 percent of our greenhouse gases. The report states, “Reductions in this sector, however, are difficult without significant lifestyle changes, large capital investments or both.” It recommends pursuing infrastructure changes on a pilot level to determine how we, as a city, can delete vehicles from the road.

The report also recommends supporting financial incentives for hybrids. Clark admits, that’s a short-term fix at best. “Hybrids are an interim step to achieving the real needs,” he says. “I think that investing in alternative transportation corridors needs to be a long-term priority.” The words ‘difficult’ and ‘expensive’ pepper the transportation discussions in the report.

Taking Action

To tackle that problem, and engage more stakeholders outside the confines of city hall, Santa Cruz is actively putting together Climate Action Teams. On Earth Day of 2008, the city hired on Collette Streight to coordinate the development of these five- to 10-person teams—just ordinary citizens—who gather together and finds ways to reduce their carbon footprint. Think of it as Weight Watchers for the environment.

Streight has trained 12 people to act as team leaders for anyone who wants to gather their neighbors, co-workers, or friends together and form a team. “The teams generally meet every other week, four times, which is a six-week process,” Streight says. “They meet for an hour and a half each time. The first one is team building, to come up with a name and statement of purpose. I review the process and the city’s goals, then we go over next steps. Between those meetings there’s homework. You have to calculate your current carbon emissions, which you can do with the calculators on our website, and you get a low-carbon diet workbook and planning forms, so you choose which actions make sense for you to take. Things like working on spending less time in the shower, or weatherising the home. The second week, we talk about the plans and how the calculation went.” Subsequent meetings take actions a step deeper each time, and serve as brainstorming sessions as well as encouragement and peer pressure.

Since starting the program, Streight’s had six teams participate, and she says about a dozen are brewing right now. Teams get their goals and progress posted on the Climate Action Plan’s site, 30x20.org. The three teams that have completed their program—Sweet Pea, Rosewood, and the Low Power Rangers—have saved a combined 36,000 pounds of carbon dioxide in just their six-week timeframe, with a further 56,000 pounds to come if everyone sticks with their pledges. If the city could put together 1,500 teams like these first three (representing just 14 percent of the population) between now and 2020, the citizens of Santa Cruz will have accomplished the 30 by 20 goal all by themselves, without any help from the business or municipal sectors.

Streight says her experience so far has been surprising fun, and soul-searching. “It gets into a lot of questioning and examining, very thought-provoking,” she says. “I’m blown away by how enthusiastic and excited people are about it. I thought I was an eco geek, but I’m learning a lot in a personal way. It also feels like a community needs assessment, finding out what information people are hungry for and how the city can give it to them without being overwhelming.” She’s already revising her support materials, which she gives out in re-used binders she picked up at thrift stores.

In fact, the re-used binders are a symbol of what actually makes the difference. While statistics about necessary transportation reductions and their difficulty and expense often make the road to a healthy planet seem impossible, the Climate Action Teams prove that it’s within the grasp of a small proportion of the citizens to do simple little things that make an enormous difference.

A strange mental image forms when reading about tons of emissions in the air. It makes the air seem so … heavy. In a literal sense, trying to reduce emissions is like trying to get the weight of the world off our shoulders. But now it’s 2009, and there are some clear and attainable goals for us to make resolutions about. Santa Cruz, this year, let’s lose some weight.

You can find out more about Climate Action Teams at 30x20.org or by calling Collette Streight at 334-1478, or e-mailing This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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