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	Photo: Mark A. Tinsley

The Greening of Oakland

The State of the City

    Oakland is a city of contrasts. It is an industrial port town crisscrossed with elevated freeways, home to a steady queue of shipping and receiving, a place where things are built and dismantled within the heavy smoke of industry. It is also a forward-thinking body politic, a progressive incubator for bold ideas about health and the environment, with leaders who are taking steps to reduce Oakland’s impact on the land. In recent years the city has identified some of its greatest environmental offenders in the areas of waste, air pollution, energy inefficiency and building construction and is taking aggressive action to repair the damage.
    Much of Oakland’s greening is credited to Jerry Brown. When he joined 49 other mayors from cities around the world in San Francisco in June 2005 to sign the Urban Environmental Accords, he was signing a commitment to make his city cleaner and more “sustainable”—a term that means not burdening future generations with environmental costs. But many of the commitments Brown signed in the accords were ones the city had been working on since 1998, the year he was elected, when the city council passed the first resolution outlining goals for environmental sustainability.
    At the end of 2003, Brown appointed Randy Hayes as the city’s first director of sustainability. Hayes had spent his life as an environmental activist—he was arrested more than a dozen times for civil disobedience and was the founder of the Rainforest Action Network. His goals for the office included adding renewable power generation to the city’s energy portfolio, achieving zero waste to landfills and establishing green building rating systems for the city.
    Efforts like the accords, and pledges made by member cities of Oakland-based Local Governments for Sustainability, whose members aim to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions, are the tip of an environmental movement that has been gaining in the last five years as understanding of the costs of environmental pollution has grown. This nationwide movement of local efforts is a response to the inaction of a federal government that never met a sky it didn’t want to darken, and it’s a testament to the power of local communities to unite around political causes they are more likely to share.
    For Oakland, more so than for many other cities, the costs are already high: The presence of pollution here from manufacturing and shipping activities means that changes have a more immediate effect on residents. Unlike Portland, which has been
    No. 1 on the many “nation’s greenest cities” lists for as long as anyone can remember, Oakland has real heavy industry, not just design firms moving into brick waterfront lofts, and so the challenges—and imperatives—are that much greater. Less than a decade ago, West Oakland children were seven times more likely to be hospitalized for asthma than the California average, in part because there were 90 times more diesel particulates per square mile there than in the state as a whole.
    Today, Oakland is at the forefront of mitigating the effects of its heavy industry—SustainLane (www.sustainlane.us), an environmental public- policy group in San Francisco, named Oakland one of America’s Top 10 Sustainable Cities for two years in a row (in 2006 it was number 5) for its efforts at reversing the damage, and in 2006 Oakland came in sixth in a similar ranking by green-lifestyle site The Green Guide (www.thegreenguide.com). Carol Misseldine, Oakland’s current director of sustainability, says, “We’ve been championing the most forward-thinking sustainability initiatives we can think of. We look a lot to what other cities are doing, the leading cities in the country, such as Seattle, Portland and Santa Monica, and look at the work they’ve done.”
    Environmentalism is being talked about everywhere, having grown out of a niche movement and into our daily lives. For the first time, the effects of global warming are accepted not only by climate scientists, but also oceanographers, botanists and wildlife biologists, and new evidence of the coming Big Melt is front-page news nearly every day.
    It’s making us change our habits, albeit first in ways that don’t cramp our style, like buying hybrid cars and fleece made from recycled bottles. But that’s OK; environmentalism is big business, a growth industry that will gain, not lose, jobs. According to Misseldine, “A lot of jobs are created as we move in the direction of a green economy. The studies keep indicating that there are way more jobs as we move toward sustainability. Mandating energy efficiency creates a lot of jobs. So it’s a real win-win that meets the triple bottom line—it improves the environment, it improves the economy because you’ve got people with jobs and it’s good for equity.”
    Oakland’s biggest goals for reducing its environmental impact are centered around self-sufficiency and living in a closed-loop system. This means importing and disposing of less stuff. Ideally, we would generate our own energy, grow our own food, recycle and compost our own waste, ban the worst toxic substances from our landfills and keep our cars in the driveway. It’s not fantasy; it can be done, but only if lots of different pieces can all work together.
    For example, the city has a zero-waste goal of diverting 90 percent of the garbage we currently send to the landfills by 2020, but we can’t get there through recycling alone. We simply buy and throw away too much disposable stuff, and that stuff pile grows every year. Peter Slote, a recycling specialist at the city’s Public Works Agency, says it this way: “Recovering and recycling everything we could plausibly recycle would still result in a growing waste of natural resources, because non-recyclable and increasingly toxic products and packaging are the fastest-growing segment of the discard stream.”
    The zero-waste initiative is more than recycling; it is a complex plan that crosses several departments and agencies and will only work if its many pieces do. These include recycling more from construction sites, banning toxic substances and non-recyclables from the trash pile and requiring electronics manufacturers to take back their products at the end of their useful life instead of making consumers deal with them.
    But zero waste is only one initiative (albeit an ambitious one). The city is also working on becoming oil independent by 2020 by increasing renewable electricity generation, using alternative fuels in city vehicles and funding an ever-growing bicycle network. It has a plan to import our food from the Central Valley instead of Chile, to build green buildings where people can open windows to the breeze instead of running the AC, and to ban the Styrofoam that is killing marine life.
    This special report by Oakland Magazine looks at Oakland’s response to environmental issues facing the city and region in seven main topic areas: air quality, building and remodeling, energy, food, transit and transportation, waste and recycling and water. It’s evident that the economy is gaining acceptance of new green technologies and cleaner alternatives, especially when saving energy means saving money and fewer health problems in the neighborhood. Oakland is showing, along with hundreds of other cities, that we can do both: We can have vibrant economies in bustling cities that provide everything we want, while also being good stewards of the planet.

AIR QUALITY

    Since the mid-1950s, when San Francisco ceded to Oakland most of its shipping operations, Oakland has had one of the busiest ports in the country. In 2006 it was in the top five. This means good news for the local economy, but bad news for the air. Add in an airport plus nearly 20,000 private-sector heavy-industry jobs, and it’s no wonder that Alameda County scored an F on the American Lung Association’s State of the Air survey in 2006. But both the city and the Port of Oakland are taking steps to clear the city’s lungs.
    Two years ago, Oakland became the second city in the country to formally adopt the Chicago Climate Exchange, a voluntary program aimed at reducing greenhouse gases by 15 percent before 2010. It also passed a green-fleet resolution in 2006, which directs the city to replace aging vehicles with alternative-fuel ones. Now, nearly 15 percent of the city’s fleet runs on alternative fuel. The city also installed a compressed-natural-gas fueling station at the airport for city vehicles.
    Roberta Reinstein, the Port of Oakland’s manager of environmental programs and safety, says the recently approved taxicab ordinance requires half of all taxicabs serving the airport to operate on alternative fuels.
    In November 2003, a report found West Oakland residents—many of whom live along major truck routes from the Port—had exposure to diesel particulates that was roughly five times greater than the rest of Oakland. In response, the Port began several air-quality programs, and in April 2006, the California Air Resources Board adopted emissions reductions for “goods movement” activities from major ports, requiring them to scale back emissions to 2001 levels. The port is offering funds for truckers to replace their polluting rigs with new ones and is participating with the city on promoting a truck route that keeps trucks out of nearby residential neighborhoods. It is also moving its fleet vehicles over to CNG and liquefied natural gas.

BUILDING AND REMODELING

    Modern buildings are bulky, complex things. They have their own ecosystems that require maintenance. They have complicated infrastructures that are made from many different materials—concrete, carpet, rebar, wood flooring. Knocking down an old building or doing an extensive remodeling project produces many tons of loose material. Until very recently, it was all thrown into a jobsite debris box and hauled to the landfill, where it made up 15 percent or more of the total waste stream.
    But in May 2005, the city adopted a Civic Green Building Ordinance, which mandated that all new and heavily renovated city buildings meet a set of guidelines (established by the U.S. Green Building Council) called Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED. Oakland adopted the silver standard for all municipal buildings, which outlines onsite recycling programs and diversions for waste generated from demolition. Currently there are three projects that will fall under this new standard, with the renovation of the Lake Merritt Boathouse coming first.
    David Lau, a principal civil engineer in the city’s Public Works Agency, oversees the implementation of the ordinance.
    “It takes a lot more planning to get  LEED, more documentation,” he says. “Initially it might cost a little more,  but over the life of the building, there are savings.” Indeed, LEED-certified buildings have energy efficiency built into every aspect of their design, and over time the cost savings in heating,  cooling and air exchange can be substantial. Around 40 percent of total energy use goes to heating and cooling buildings. This is the real benefit to cities that adopt such ordinances (and many have, including San Francisco), because they own the buildings after construction and are around to enjoy the savings.
    Private developers rarely stick around to manage their buildings, however, and there is less incentive for them to build green. But Oakland is actively courting developers to build residential units in the city and provides them with a Green Building Resource Center and full-time LEED experts to help guide them through the process.

ENERGY

    A single LED light is a simple thing that looks like a watch battery, a tiny flat disc that turns off and on, nothing more. But when the city of Oakland decided to swap out the existing incandescent lights in all its traffic signals with LEDs, those little spots of light became big money savers. By gradually replacing existing signal lights with LEDs in each of its 36,219 streetlights, the city estimates it saves more than $420,000 a year in electricity costs, not to mention a whole electrician position, since LEDs
can last more than five times longer than regular bulbs. To make them an even better deal, says Scott Wentworth, an energy engineer in the city’s Public Works Agency, the city waited until it could get rebates on the greens, reds and yellows. “It’s almost like watching a couple of kids play jump rope—you’re standing on the side just timing yourself, and you jump in at the right time. We were able to do our greens pretty close to when the technology and economics lined up.”
    But the city has been doing more than replacing signal lights. It has made a bold effort at reducing its carbon output by promoting clean-energy generation. Together with Emeryville and Berkeley, it is forming a partnership to buy cleaner energy than PG&E can provide. Called Community Choice Aggregation, it is an implementation of a 2002 bill by then–State Assemblywoman Carole Migden to allow power producers to sell to surrounding communities. By law, PG&E must have 20 percent renewable energy (such as wind or solar) in its portfolio by 2017. The city has set the more aggressive goal of 50 percent green-energy generation by the same date.
    Perhaps the greenest—and most under‑utilized—form of power generation is solar energy. Until recently it has been almost prohibitively expensive, but with costs coming down and PG&E offering rebates on equipment, solar is beginning to pay for itself fast. A public works building by the coliseum is producing two-thirds of a megawatt of energy from solar panels on the roof, effectively zeroing out the building’s electricity bill. Another array at the Oakland Ice Center, at 18th Street and San Pablo Avenue, not only provides some insulation for the building’s roof, but also produces enough power to run the ice chillers at the time the rink needs it most. All together, the city is producing a megawatt from solar, the amount of energy used by around 500 homes in a year. Along with several programs aimed at helping businesses reduce their energy use by performing energy audits that identify ways they could conserve, the city is making headway towards its goal of clean power.

FOOD

    One of the strangest imbalances that has developed in our modern food-distribution system is that food is transported huge distances from where it is grown, regardless of whether there are closer markets. A May 2006 study by two graduate students at the University of California, Berkeley, measured what they called “food miles” and found the average food item travels more than 1,500 miles from farm to table. This system carries an extraordinary cost in greenhouse gas emissions from transportation.
    The problem isn’t confined to urban areas far from farmland. California—the biggest agricultural state in the country, where farms are only hundreds of miles from huge urban markets—imports items already grown here for export. According to the report, “The state imports more strawberries, asparagus, garlic and other fresh vegetables ubiquitous to California crops, than we export.”
    This topsy-turvy arrangement is being re-examined nationwide by communities that are beginning to develop policies about where their food should come from. In June 2005, Oakland’s Office of Sustainability commissioned the Berkeley researchers to evaluate the city’s food system and make recommendations that could get the city closer to its ambitious goal of getting at least 30 percent of its food from the region—up from single digits today. If any city can do it, Oakland can. We are adjacent to an immensely fertile area that comprises three-quarters of the best agricultural land in the state.
    The study will be closely read by the city’s new Food Policy Council, formed in December. The council will look not only at the origin of food, but also at the social-equity issues around how it is being distributed—whether it is getting to the people who need it the most. The report contained other food-related recommendations, such as making school lunches healthier and stocking more fruits and vegetables in the same lower-income communities that show the greatest increase in obesity and diabetes. It also looked at the rapidly diminishing farmlands at the edges of cities (which are being replaced by housing developments, further increasing demand while reducing supply), how food waste is being recaptured through composting and how to teach communities about healthy food.

TRANSIT AND TRANSPORTATION

    Whether it’s because of rising gas prices, increasing traffic or a real interest in curbing air pollution, ridership on mass transit has been going up. Nationwide, it was up 3 percent in the first three quarters of 2006, according to the American Public Transportation Association. Oakland’s rate of increase is better—with public-transit commuter use increasing from 17 to 22 percent, according to SustainLane.
    AC Transit is the third-largest public bus system in California, carrying more than 230,000 people a day, including 60,000 schoolchildren. In 2003 the agency instituted a version of Bus Rapid Transit on San Pablo Avenue—better signal timing for busses, fewer stops, dedicated lanes—as a way to create faster service on a core route, resulting in a 20 percent reduction of travel time on some sections. And faster service, so the story goes, brings riders.
    But despite rising transit ridership, our appetite for driving is growing even more. In 2005, the last year for which statistics were available, more than 84 percent of all trips were made by car. According to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, Bay Area drivers spent 135,700 hours in congested conditions on Bay Area freeways in 2005, a 9 percent increase over the previous year. Cars are the single largest source of pollution in the Bay Area, period.
    Of course, the best way to get around, environmentally (as well as healthily) speaking is by bike. Nearly half of all trips are two miles or shorter, and avoiding just 10 miles of driving every week would eliminate about 500 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year. The city of Oakland has a department devoted solely to making biking easier and more convenient. The Bicycle and Pedestrian Facilities Program is the primary agency responsible for carrying out the city’s Bicycle Master Plan, which includes more than 200 miles of proposed bike lanes. Funds for bicycle improvements can be scarce, but the program has made headway, prioritizing lanes that connect commercial districts, BART stations and downtowns while also joining segments together. Jason Patton, who heads the program, says that new lanes bring new riders, and “each bikeway that we build adds value to the entire network.”

WASTE AND RECYCLING

    The story of waste and recycling is an immensely complicated one, filled with “on the other hands” and “howevers.” Take for example municipal recycling, which was a boutique industry until California passed the Integrated Waste Management Act in 1989. The act made diverting recyclables from the landfill the responsibility of cities. Since then, the rate of recycling has risen steadily as cities make it more convenient
for residents. This has helped keep the amount of trash sent to landfills steady since 1990, instead of doubling with the population increase. More recycling has served us well, but it is being overwhelmed by modern lifestyles bursting with plastic knicknacks, Styrofoam baubles, electronic trinkets and toxic metals buried inside widgets that become obsolete the moment they are purchased.
    This is the real story—not just that we’re recycling more, but that we’re buying more things that we use briefly or once and throw away, and more of it than ever is non-recyclable and toxic. This creates a massive waste stream that is overwhelming the significant gains we’ve made from
recycling. As Peter Slote, a recycling  specialist at the Public Works Agency says, “We can’t recycle our way to sustainability.” We must simply consume much, much less if we are serious about making our zero-waste goal.
    That’s why Oakland is taking bold steps this year to reduce the amount of  garbage produced. It has banned completely one of the most insidious offenders—Styrofoam food containers—in favor of biodegradable or compostableones. It has also adopted  a multi­-faceted zero-waste goal, which aims to reduce the landfill contribution  90 percent, from 400,000 tons a year to 40,000 by 2020. It also aims to make manufacturers, instead of us,  respon-sible for the proper dismantling and recycling of toxic electronics. Called Extended Producer Responsibility, it is a practice that has already shown great success in many European countries.  It has also had the startling side effect of manufacturers creating two versions of the same gizmo—one that is less toxic and easier to take apart and recycle, and the other that gets sent to the United States.

WATER

    It’s difficult to imagine anything scarier than turning on the tap and having nothing come out. Water in abundance is something we take for granted, and we use it like it will never run dry. The East Bay Municipal Utilities District, which pulls water from 56,000 acres of watersheds around the East Bay and the Mokelumne River east of Sacramento, estimates it provides 155 gallons of water per person for personal use, a number that doesn’t account for the vast amount it takes to manufacture, recycle and process the products consumers use.
    But water is a hard thing to use less of, since most people aren’t inclined to go thirsty, kill their plants or take fewer showers. And upgrading to more efficient appliances, which most experts agree is the best way to save water over the long run, can be expensive. But recent studies by EBMUD and the Oakland-based Pacific Institute suggest that it can happen without much pain: Water usage could be reduced by 20 percent even as our population explodes—through better use of water-conserving appliances, by ending water subsidies for some agricultural crops and with stronger urban growth controls.
    The good news is that East Bay residents are using less water today than in 1970, thanks to water conservation and recycling. EBMUD offers water-usage auditing and rebates for efficient washing machines, toilets and landscaping—efforts that the utility claims save 6.6 billion gallons annually.
But while water conservation is one thing, water quality is something else—an Environmental Working Group analysis found 18 pollutants in our water, with five exceeding the limits for health set by the agency. But this can’t be a license to use bottled water, one of the greatest environmental offenders. Use water wisely, and filter it at the tap.