Of 12 leading USA sustainable cities, 5 are located on the West Coast

Moyers and Company, 1/4/13. "12 cities leading the way in sustainability"

Portland, OR

"Portland heads most lists of America’s greenest cities. Mayor Sam Adams, whose term ended on Dec. 31, 2012, said in his first State of the City Address in 2009 that he hoped to make Portland the most sustainable city in the world. Over half of Portland’s energy comes from renewable sources. Adams worked to replace dirty energy suppliers with cleaner sources, and set up Clean Energy Works, a first-in-the-nation program that gives homeowners free energy assessments and provides $2,000 rebates and loans for home retrofitting. He also started a curbside composting program that has resulted in a 38 percent drop in the city’s trash output.

San Francisco, CA

Under former mayor Gavin Newsom, whose final term ended in 2011, San Francisco instituted a mandatory recycling and composting ordinance, which means that all people within the city are required by law not only to separate their recyclables from their trash, but to also separate out compostable food and packaging. In October 2012, the city’s current mayor, Ed Lee, announced that 80 percent of the city’s waste is going to recycling and composting facilities, instead of to landfills. That means the city leads America in sustainable waste disposal. The San Francisco Bay Area is also home to nearly 700 LEED-certified building projects, and over a thousand more projects under development.

Seattle, WA

In 2005, Seattle’s utility company became the first in the nation to go carbon neutral, thanks in part to the high number of hydroelectric dams in the region. Mayor Mike McGinn recently pledged not to invest Seattle’s money in fossil fuel companies, and is putting pressure on those who oversee the city’s pension funds to do the same.

Eugene, OR

Eugene, located roughly 100 miles south of Portland, has a population of just over 150,000 people, but ranks highly among America’s greenest cities. The city gets 88 percent of its energy from renewable sources. Mayor Kitty Piercy, elected in 2005, oversaw the establishment of the city’s first Sustainability Commission, dedicated to overseeing green infrastructure and development in Eugene. Only a year after it opened in 2007, Eugene’s public transit system was nominated for an international sustainability award for being one of the first diesel-electric hybrid systems to operate in the U.S.

Los Angeles, CA

Los Angeles may have some of the worst air quality in America, but that hasn’t stopped Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa from aiming to be the nation’s greenest mayor. One of the key pieces of the mayor’s sustainability program is Measure R, a plan to raise $40 billion for transit improvements — including bikeways and public transportation services — over the next 30 years. The measure will come to fruition long after Villaraigosa’s term limit, but during his tenure he already has reduced truck emissions at the Port of Los Angeles by 80 percent, retrofitted the city with over 100,000 LED streetlights and planned 50 new parks."

Related - San Mateo County Times, 3/31/13.  "San Francisco, Los Angeles vie for tallest skyscraper."  

Posted by Kathy Meeh