City Weighs in on Benefits of Going Green

During its first meeting of the new year, council members and 2012 weighed in on the future of Aliso Viejo's Green City Initiative.

During Wednesday's meeting Director of Planning Services, Albert Armijo, said the plan consists of a qualitative and quantitative measures that are intended to define energy and resource conservation, as well as the reduction of greenhouse emissions through new and advanced technology on future projects.

The initiative hopes those who reside and work in Aliso Viejo will to help reach their goal — a 15 percent reduction of greenhouse gases set by vehicles by 2020.

Automobiles currently contribute the biggest chunk of greenhouse emission in Aliso Viejo according to studies done by Armijo and consultants. Vehicle emissions come in around the 61 percent mark with municipal facilities being the lowest greenhouse gas contributor at .1 percent.

“The biggest single issue here is from local transportation,” said . “I would like to see what we could do with these new projects that address that issue the biggest.”

Since the city is aiming to set its Green City Initiative as voluntary based, council members are hoping residents are willing to help in the cause and that the city can act only as a liaison toward a greener lifestyle.

“If we’re talking about reducing trips in big cars why don’t we as a city start demonstrating how we can function in little cars?” the council said to residents present during the meeting. “Can we find little things we can start doing to get this off the ground so the residents can starts seeing the benefits, businesses can see it’s saving them money and the quality of life for all of us can go way up.”

One resident criticized the council because City Hall is not LEED’s Certified and used non-energy efficient items like light bulbs.

Former mayor and current rebutted by saying that the city has done a lot for conservation within the past 10 years, but that residents are not always willing to take on changes, like the proposed ban on plastic bags.

“I think it would erroneous for people to walk away from this meeting tonight and think the city hasn’t done anything for the last 10 years,” Cave said.  “There are the trail extensions, we have also done a lot for our streets, our water conservation measures and our attempts to reduce water going into storm drains.”

Cave added, “The problem I see out there is government is the only one trying to get greener in many respects. We are doing things where we get criticized because we are trying to encourage people and do things that actually make a difference."

Other than achieving a better quality of life, Phillips also said that having a greener city would help create more jobs and help fill in the millions of square feet of office space in the city. 

“Everyone thinks this greenhouse sustainability has nothing to do with economics, it’s as much as economics as anything,” he said.