Ten actions to make the City of Winnipeg greener are among the highlights of an environmental platform that Resource Conservation Manitoba (RCM) is offering to voters and municipal candidates this fall.

"RCM does not endorse or oppose any parties or particular candidates in any election," says Kenton Lobe, president of the non-profit group. "We are recommending a number of specific actions in the areas of climate change, sustainable transportation, energy efficiency, and waste reduction." RCM's environmental programs promote composting, International Walk to School Week, the Commuter Challenge, Car-Free Day, green commuting, Waste Reduction Week, and an environmental speakers bureau for schools.

Among RCM's top recommendations for all mayoral and council candidates:

1. Commit Winnipeg to a community-wide reduction of 50 per cent in greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels by 2020. Start by cutting the City's own GHG emissions by 20 per cent by 2012.

2. Stop urban sprawl.

3. Earmark a minimum 3 per cent of the municipal roads budget for commuter cycling facilities.

4. Dedicate a portion of the federal gas tax to sustainable transportation (cycling, walking, transit, increased vehicle and fuel efficiencies).

5. Improve transit with more diamond lanes, express services, park and ride facilities, transit-priority signals, and Bus Rapid Transit.

6. Implement a user pay program for waste.

7. Capture methane at the Brady Road landfill.

8. Implement curbside pickup and centralized composting of yard waste.

9. Require LEED building efficiency standards for all new municipal facilities.

10. Commit to greening the City budget to make sustainable choices easy, discourage environmentally harmful actions, and raise the money needed to fund services.

For details, please see the backgrounder below.

Manitobans vote on October 25
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BACKGROUNDER

Toward a More Sustainable Winnipeg

RCM's environmental platform for 2006 is not intended as a comprehensive policy statement on urban sustainability. Instead, RCM has picked a number of strategic measures that can be implemented by City Council to achieve environmental improvements. While these items are specifically targeted to Winnipeg, most of them are also applicable or adaptable to other communities.

Within the context of growing public concern surrounding the increasing risk that global warming and climate change pose to the viability of human life on this planet, RCM is proposing that the following actions be endorsed by all candidates for City Council and acted upon by those who get elected.

Start with action on climate change

* Commit to a community-wide reduction of 50 per cent in greenhouse gas emissions below 1990 levels by 2020. Take a leadership role, in partnership with other governments and community and private sector stakeholders, in implementing a climate change action plan to meet this target. The current problem? The trend is in the opposite direction. GHG emissions in Manitoba are 6 per cent above 1990 levels, some 12 per cent higher than the Kyoto targets for 2012. Community-wide action is needed to reach targeted levels. Municipal governments, which are close to where people live, can and must provide real leadership on this critical issue.

* Commit to a purposeful Climate Change Action Plan for Winnipeg's own city operations. As an interim goal, cut greenhouse gas emissions to 20 per cent below 2003 levels by 2012. That is achievable, and other measures in this platform will help achieve this goal.

* What will be involved in putting the City's own (green)house in order? City operations produced 73,000 tonnes of GHG emissions in 2003. In September 2006, the City's Chief Administrative Office Secretariat submitted a Climate Change Action Plan. The Plan recommends a 20 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) from 1998 levels. However, between 1998 and 2003, the City achieved a 15 per cent reduction largely through the sale of its electric utility (Winnipeg Hydro) to Manitoba Hydro. That doesn't reduce anything; it just moves the problem elsewhere. Accordingly, it is the 2003 benchmark that should be used in setting the City's internal reduction goal.

* The proposed climate change plan contains a set of detailed recommendations for reducing GHG emissions in areas such as buildings, vehicle fleet, streetlights, water/wastewater, and solid waste. All of these and other "win-win" actions that save the City money should be undertaken at a level necessary to achieve the targeted level of reductions by 2012.

Move forward with sustainable transportation

* Stop urban sprawl. In a brief to the City's Bus Rapid transit Task Force in January 2005, RCM urged: "Change development patterns to slow urban sprawl and encourage denser development. This will allow more efficient use of transit. The Smart Growth approach is an example." RCM prefers neighbourhoods that are walkable and cycling-friendly, and communities that are planned with Transit Oriented Design in mind.

* Earmark 3 per cent of the current allocation for Public Works - Streets for cycling facilities. On January 12, 2006, the City of Winnipeg Standing Policy Committee on Infrastructure Renewal and Public Works accepted the Active Transportation Report (dated February 2005) as a "resource in formulating active transportation policies and programs," and directed City administration "to develop an implementation plan based on the guiding principles outlined" in the AT report. As noted on page 75 of the report, a 2004 Public Works survey of Winnipeggers found that nearly 3 per cent (2.8%) cycle as their main mode of commuting to work. In 2006, the City budgeted $200,000 for cycling facilities, representing just 0.3% of the $62-million budget for streets. The budgeted allocation for building and maintaining cycling facilities should, at a minimum, reflect the true number of users. This measure would provide $1.8-million annually for cycling facilities.

* Dedicate a portion of shared revenues from the federal gas tax to sustainable transportation. Make the most of these new dollars. When you strengthen transit services (rapid transit, for example), you ease congestion, increase transportation efficiencies, reduce road maintenance costs, and save taxpayers money. Employees commute efficiently to work. Shoppers get quickly to stores. A first-rate transit system adds value to the local economy. While you are at it, expand the use of diesel-electric hybrid buses and commit to the use of biodiesel for the City's fleet.

* Improve the speed and efficiency of public transit through increased designation and enforcement of diamond lanes, expansion of express services, more park and ride facilities, more transit priority signals, more heated and covered shelters, and Bus Rapid Transit.

Recover value from waste

* Implement user pay for waste. No other measure is as likely to encourage higher rates of recycling and composting. Make sure waste diversion options are fully developed and readily available first, so people can recycle and compost conveniently. Incorporate measures, as needed, to ensure public confidence in the fairness of the system. Don't forget education to help residents avoid or minimize charges. Be prepared to save money and extend the life of the landfill.

* Implement curbside pickup and centralized composting of yard waste. Include leaves and pumpkins. Make a quality product that has commercial value. Curbside pickup of residential organics should be one component of an effort to get both public and private sector service providers involved in recovering the value in discarded compostables. This stuff is just too good to waste.

* Capture methane at the Brady Road landfill. Colourless, odourless methane is produced when organic materials break down in the absence of oxygen (as in a landfill). The gas is about 21 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as a contributor to climate change. Winnipeg's Brady Road site generates 4 per cent of the total GHG emissions in Manitoba. It is the largest point source of greenhouse gas in the province, and the largest landfill in Canada that is uncontrolled for methane. Pilot studies have confirmed the feasibility of capturing methane at the site. This one initiative would substantially reduce community-wide greenhouse gases.


Build greener buildings

* Require all new municipal buildings to conform to LEED building efficiency standards. LEED stands for "Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design." The program takes a life-cycle approach to the construction and operation of facilities. Higher building standards mean lower energy consumption and increased efficiency. Winnipeg taxpayers will save money and the environment will come out greener, too.

Green the City of Winnipeg budget

* Commit to green fiscal reform. Identify fiscal measures which the City can implement to raise revenues that will, at the same time, provide financial incentives for people to live more sustainably and fund programs which will enable them to do so. A community task force can help.

Ask them to look at:

• The relative assessment values of land and any property on that land, with a view to reducing the portion attributed to property and increasing the proportion attributed to land;

• Parking taxes - commercial parking taxes vs. per space or area levies;

• Inverted rate structures for the taxes the City collects on the gas and electricity consumed by Winnipeg residential and commercial customers;

• Inverted rate structures for water and sewage fees;

• Excise taxes on gas and diesel fuel paid by the residents of other Canadian cities with a view to determining competitive levels and the practice of other provincial governments in providing a portion of these taxes to cities to support public transit and maintenance of roads and bridges; and

• Ways in which the principle of full-cost accounting can be reflected in City fees, charges, taxes and incentives.

* The City continues to struggle to find growth sources of revenues and there is a desire to reduce business taxes. Yet, the demand for civic services grows. Accordingly, there is a need to find new sources of revenues. Given this reality, it seems worthwhile to identify those green fiscal reform measures that the City can implement.

* Green fiscal reform measures do two things. They tax the overconsumption of things that create costs for the environment and people, and they use those revenues either to reduce taxes on good things (like employment or wealth creation) and/or to fund those programs and services that make it easier for people to avoid overconsumption. By combining carrots and sticks, they achieve the desired ends more effectively than with the use of just one or the other tool.

* All of the above measures have been studied and implemented in other jurisdictions. They are feasible. The key focus of Winnipeg's green budget task force would be to assess how they could be applied by the City of Winnipeg and to recommend what can be done right away and over the long term.

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Resource Conservation Manitoba
October 2006