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Thursday, May 17, 2012

Regional Focus: June 2008

The Green Team

South county cities commit staff to eco-issues

Story by Russell Nichols

David Honeywell is driving down Joiner Parkway on a Sunday afternoon in Lincoln, soaking up the sun and zipping past cars lined up at traffic lights.

Alongside the arrows promoting a solar housing development, white signs planted along the thoroughfare read “NEV/Bike Lane.” And right now, cruising in his white and green Chrysler Global Electric Motorcar, Honeywell has it all to himself.

To an outsider, it may look as if Honeywell took a wrong turn at the 18th fairway of the nearest golf course or that he missed his Sun City Lincoln Hills exit. But in Lincoln — the first “GEM Friendly City” in the country as deemed by Chrysler and the Lincoln City Council — local residents recognize an electric car when they see one. They see Honeywell driving by in his GEM, and they don’t curse him or try to cut him off. Some of them wave or honk to show support.

“A lot of people wave at you,” says Honeywell, who runs his own website, LincolNEV.com, which includes news, original articles and classifieds. “Or they’ll drive by and give me a thumbs up, especially teenagers.”

Although it may look like a futuristic golf cart, in Lincoln, these neighborhood electric vehicles, which use no fossil fuel, have become a common sight and a tangible example of Placer County’s ongoing efforts to go green.

America’s favorite catchword surfaced in Placer County more than a decade ago. Roseville had its first residential solar installation back in 1997 and started water conservation programs in 1998. But when Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the Global Warming Solutions Act, or AB 32, into law in summer 2006, requiring cities to reduce their carbon footprints, efforts multiplied. City and county officials across the region have been working to find new and practical ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, save energy and educate the public. And if you ask any of them, they will tell you it is a work in progress.

“It’s a very new area, an emerging practice,” says Rob Braulik, Rocklin’s assistant city manager. “Right now, there’s no consistent structure for green installation, the inspection process or review process. It’s being worked on, but it doesn’t exist.”

Because the field is so new, it’s often a challenge finding experts or defining green. Just like the region at large, city officials in Placer County are still working out their own policies and procedures, gathering data and outlining strategies they believe could work best. Roseville and Lincoln have both implemented green teams, which are groups of city staffers designated to address sustainability issues.

In Roseville, the 35-member team is divided into eight work groups including energy and emissions, green building and recycling, and waste production. Each group has its own goals and projects, according to the city’s sustainability plan submitted in January. For instance, all buildings constructed with city funds are to meet the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design standards. The city has also issued low-flush toilet rebates and distributed plumbing retrofit kits to the community. It aims to reduce city facility water consumption by 10 percent by the year’s end. In January, Roseville opened its Utility Exploration Center — a 5,000-square-foot interactive museum in the Martha Riley Community Library — where visitors learn about sustainable practices and renewable energy through high-tech video displays, diagrams and sampling new products that protect the environment.

Rocklin’s Build Green Initiative is a voluntary program to encourage residential builders to increase green construction with their facilities. In 2005, Rocklin opened an energy-efficient police station with solar carports, which have decreased utility costs by almost 40 percent. Last November, Rocklin became California’s first city to officially enroll in the Pacific Gas & Electric Co.’s ClimateSmart program, which will make the city “climate neutral” by offsetting 100 percent of its total carbon footprint — more than 1.6 million pounds of carbon dioxide annually.

“We’re practicing what we preach,” Braulik says. “What we’re trying to do is to come up with standardized business practices, so we can be a leader in that area in the region.”

Officials in Lincoln are making similar strides. Lincoln officials have upgraded on the now ubiquitous bike lanes developed in Davis some 40 years ago by widening them to accommodate NEV vehicles. Legally, electric cars can only go in places where the speed limit is 35 to 45 mph or less. But last year, when the city added the NEV lane to Joiner Parkway, electric car owners were able to drive from one side of the city to the other. Now, according to city officials, there are about 600 NEVs in Lincoln.

Other than NEVs, Lincoln is taking other steps to promote sustainability. Officials purchased a solar dryer to reduce the landfill component by drying water in the sludge. They are trying to improve the city’s tree coverage, working to get new technology and examining LEED construction. The idea is to work from the inside out, taking care of basic things on a city level and then branching out into collaborative efforts with neighboring cities.

“We’ll first start looking internally,” says Steve Art, economic development manager in Lincoln. “We’ll start by reducing the amount of paper we use in City Hall and turning off lights at night. It’s about working together. If I plant a tree in Lincoln, it’ll help Lincoln, but if I plant a tree in Roseville, that will also help Lincoln.”

The cities of Lincoln, Roseville and Rocklin plan to meet in the near future to discuss policies that work and ways to pool resources. Officials from all three cities agree that one of the biggest challenges is getting the word out and teaching the public how to be green. Officials promote green programs through newsletters, bill inserts, word-of-mouth, websites and “of course, they could always pick up the phone,” says Vonette McCauley, Roseville Electric’s public relations manager.

“I think the public generally wants this information,” she says. “The challenge for us is getting it to them in a manner that reaches them. We take a multifaceted approach to reach adults and those who are Web savvy and schoolchildren.”

Honeywell says when it came to electric cars, he had to educate himself because information was hard to find two years ago. Now he is part of a committee in Lincoln created to standardize NEV-related plans. He has also changed all the bulbs in his house to compact fluorescent and is considering solar panels for his roof. But Honeywell wasn’t green from birth. He didn’t even consider buying an electric car, he says, until a drunk driver slammed into the back of his wife’s Pontiac Vibe, totaling it. And even then, he was still skeptical.

“I wasn’t sure whether the city was serious about this NEV thing,” he says. “It’s really big in the retirement community, but I’m not in that demographic. I didn’t want to buy it and get pulled over.”

Honeywell hasn’t gotten a ticket yet, but he does drive his GEM everywhere around the city. He buys groceries, goes out to eat, drops off and picks up his children from school, maneuvering around traffic with ease. The whir of the engine sounds like a loud electric razor and when the sun is out, he keeps the plastic cover unzipped so the breeze whips through the car. But when he leaves the city to go to work in Sacramento as an engineering manager, he has to take his other car: a Toyota RAV4.

It’s 1:30 on a Sunday afternoon in Lincoln when Honeywell pulls the NEV into a shopping center a few miles from his house. In the plaza, there are small parking spaces reserved for NEVs near the retail store entrances and charge stations on both sides, where owners can plug their mini cars into standard electric outlets and juice up the battery while they shop at Home Depot or eat at Mimis Café.

By now, Honeywell has used about 14 percent of his battery, so he pulls into one of the charge stations in the plaza. He uncoils an orange extension chord and plugs it in.

“I can drive by the gas station, see $4,” he says, “and not be concerned.”

While he waits, a man driving a gold Lexus LS400 pulls up beside the parked NEV. He rolls down the window and calls out to Honeywell.

“I always wondered what NEV stood for,” the man said, noting the sign. “I see it everywhere, but I never knew what it stood for.”

“It stands for neighborhood electric vehicle,” Honeywell replied. “Here, let me give you my card. It has my website on it if you have any more questions.”

Honeywell hands the man his card. Thanking him, the man waves and drives away. Honeywell smiles as if someone just complimented his child and says, “I get that all the time.”

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