Protecting Municipal Green Programs is the Smart Choice, even During the Recession

As the recession has forced municipal governments all over to tighten their belts, municipally run green initiatives have been some of the programs on the chopping block. While there are no programs that shouldn’t be looked at during these budget exercises, it is important for municipal leaders to ensure that they do not lose sight of the fact that while these programs have up front costs, many of these programs will have positive impacts on tax revenues and/or reducing municipal costs.

Community Energy developments

Reducing direct energy costs is a worthwhile initiative in any community. At a broad level, it promotes conservation habits, and in general provides a sense of community and partnership. While not every clean energy project is going to make sense from an economic, social and political perspective, the key is to ensure that projects are not rejected out of hand, or canceled partway through.

Brownfield remediation

Municipal brownfield remediation is an effective process of remediating, rehabilitating, and redeveloping abandoned or under-utilized urban landscapes. Qualitative benefits include revitalizing older communities and forgotten neighbourhoods, removal of abandoned buildings and help prevent urban sprawl in some cases through infill processes. For local municipalities concerned about revenues, brownfield redevelopment tends to bring new tax revenues online, increases local property values, and promotes new businesses.

Climate Change

Experts from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities believe that municipalities and their programs have the potential to directly affect half of all Canadian greenhouse gas emissions (specifically through infrastructure, urban planning and sustainable transportation decisions).

Sustainable Transportation

Programs developing, maintaining and promoting sustainable transportation are long-term in nature, with results usually being seen after more than one electoral cycle. It is therefore challenging to know that funds are being spent with the long-term benefits not appearing for years to come. These types of commitments rely on long-term political commitments, projects such as Toronto’s Transit City and Vancouver’s Evergreen Transit Line are being developed to increase public transportation coverage, decrease congestion, and prevent harmful air emissions.

Energy Conservation

Public spending on energy is a significant cost for municipalities, ranging from street lighting to powering municipal infrastructure. Demonstrating leadership on this file has an additional public benefit by “walking the walk” while encouraging citizens reduce their personal energy consumption and costs. Successful programs such as Penetanguishene, Ontario’s award-winning LED streetlight installation program is projected to reduce electricity consumption by up to 62% compared to the previous mercury-vapour streetlights, as well as reduce ongoing maintenance costs.

Waste diversion

Waste disposal is an expensive business. Collection, transport and disposal are all costs that are difficult to manage, and municipal waste managers find difficult to cost manage effectively. To confront these increasing costs some cities have implemented aggressive waste diversion programs with the aim of removing as much as possible from the waste stream that goes to landfill. Programs such as these are also expensive to design, implement and run. The question is moreso which makes economic, community and environmental sense over the long-term.

Green roofs

Green roof technology is a common urban and rural roofing technique in Europe. While building managers find green roofs to be beneficial due to their insulation and reduced maintenance benefits, municipalities have developed green roof promotion programs to support aging sewer and wastewater infrastructure. Research has demonstrated that green roofs are able to retain 60-100% of received stormwater. Water that is not absorbed is only released slowly over a period of several hours. Providing incentives and knowledge points for building managers and members of the construction industry are low cost, long-term beneficial initiatives.

Future Efforts

As municipal councils continue to trim their budgets and staff begin to squeeze every penny, it will take a fair amount of creativity, partnership and communication for municipalities to maintain environmental projects during this economic downturn. Knee-jerk reactions looking to cut programs without taking into consideration their long-term impacts will only ensure that decisions taking during this recession will have much longer-term impacts.

Image: hannoflickr at Flickr under a Creative Commons License

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