Portsmouth Herald – City is a leader in green innovation
City is a leader in green innovation
Government and citizens work together
Imagine seeing everything through a green lens. Nothing is conventionally built, or renovated, or installed, or fueled, or replaced, if a sustainable alternative exists.
That, in a nutshell, is the mantra in Portsmouth.
This week, I begin the first in an occasional series of columns on the sustainable efforts of municipalities in the Portsmouth Herald readership area. So many towns are undertaking so many wonderful initiatives, I wanted to talk about each individually. I begin, correctly, with the city itself.
Portsmouth, by the relatively new sustainability yardstick, is an old hand at this stuff. Measures some neighboring towns are just considering have long been implemented here. If you think of 2000 as the green dark ages and 2009 as the middle ages — any expert will tell you most Americans still do not practice sustainability in their personal, municipal or business lives — Portsmouth is hobnobbing with the crew of the starship Enterprise.
“The key issue for us is to build a sustainable culture in our organization,” said City Manager John Bohenko. “Every two months, the department heads meet and we talk about sustainability within the department. The idea is that every time we look at a project, we ask, ‘How can we be better? How can we be more sustainable?'”
Nearly four years ago now, the city incorporated sustainable policies in its 2005 master plan, specifically to work to reduce dependence of fossil fuels and synthetic chemicals and to protect natural resources and open space. Starting in 2005, city department heads and key citizen committees took part in training provided by Sarah James, who wrote “The Natural Step for Communities: How Cities and Towns Can Change to Sustainable Practices.”
James created standards for an “eco-municipality,” and Portsmouth was the first city on the East Coast to become one.
And the city has never looked back.
In 2006, Portsmouth adopted the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, committing to follow the Kyoto Protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 7 percent below 1990 levels. The program was only launched in 2005, so Portsmouth was one of the early signers to an agreement that today involves more than 900 municipalities.
[Note: At this point we are forced to ask, but did the voters approve it?]
Its greenhouse gas inventory completed, the city has embarked on a number of endeavors. These include using biodiesel in the city’s public works fleet, buying its first zero-gas truck, installing energy efficient motors and drives on the wastewater treatment pumps, and replacing the roofs of City Hall with long-lasting tiles that will increase insulation levels significantly. The city times its stoplights to reduce idling, and has trained staff in LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) building standards.
The City Council also formed a Blue Ribbon Committee on Sustainable Practices in 2006. And with the advent of this committee comes a really interesting forging of community and municipal forces into what committee member and sustainability advocate Bert Cohen calls “the three-legged stool.”
For instance, when the greenhouse gas inventory was completed, said the city’s sustainability coordinator, Peter Britz, results showed city government generated 15,269 tons of carbon emissions out of a citywide total of 680,000 tons. “It was clear we needed to reach out to the community,” he said.
While government is ably holding up one leg of Cohen’s stool, another leg came through Portsmouth Listens, which acts as a link between the municipality and its citizens on a number of issues, including sustainability. As a result of Portsmouth Listens, study circles formed using James’ “Natural Step” book as a guide, and they’ve been meeting in six-week cycles for more than two years.
And so, said Cohen, this blending of citizen voices with officials’ voices is resulting in a systemic approach, creating the third leg of the stool: grassroots efforts. The key organization here is the Piscataqua Sustainability Initiative, a totally citizen-run organization that branches beyond Portsmouth to the entire Seacoast region. Cohen pointed to the PSI’s highly successful sustainability fair last spring, which drew upwards of 1,000 people who attended workshops, learned about green businesses and networked.
“The key here is that ‘we’ are doing this work, not ‘they,'” he said. “It is the government. It is the democratic system in Portsmouth Listens, and it’s grassroots efforts. The city is involved, Portsmouth Listens coordinates activities, and PSI gets volunteers. It’s a three-legged stool. That’s our uniqueness.”
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We await with bated breath any information pertaining to a vote taken in the City of Portsmouth regarding all these initiatives. If you have any information, email us.