Introduction

Salt Lake City residents deserve a city to match the spectacular scenery. At the foundation of this great American city are unparalleled scenic and ecological resources. Salt Lake City should optimize its setting through protection of critical lands and waters, and maximize access for residents and visitors while preserving those assets.

A green city is a place that uses energy efficiently. It reduces, reuses and recycles its waste. It works to keep its air and water clean. A green city protects its open spaces as ecological and recreational treasures. It offers its residents healthy and efficient transportation and housing choices.

By doing these things, a city becomes green: it becomes a highly desirable place to live, work, play, raise a family and own a business. A green city is a place where people want to be because the quality of life is high. As a result, a green city is economically stable and less vulnerable to the ups and downs of national and global forces, such as the prices of imported fossil fuels, over which city residents have little control.

Salt Lake City can be one of America’s leading green cities. In fact, Salt Lake City has the potential to be the greenest city in America.

This Blueprint for a Green City is a comprehensive plan for moving our city forward to nurture the health of our residents and nourish the strength of our economy. It builds on policy innovations of past administrations and takes advantage of the unique assets that Salt Lake City possesses – our close proximity to wide open spaces and mountains, an average of 237 sunny days a year, a grid of wide streets that can accommodate multiple transportation options, and key regional gathering places, such as the University of Utah, downtown and Sugar House.

To improve Salt Lake City’s green credentials, we must:

• Reduce air pollution from sources both within the city and—with the cooperation of other cities, counties and the state—outside it.
• Use energy efficiently and from clean, renewable sources.
• Develop convenient public transit and non-motorized transportation choices for residents and visitors that link open spaces, residential neighborhoods, downtown and suburban cities.
• Preserve, improve, and expand the network of open space and greenbelts throughout the city.
• Establish neighborhood centers for commercial and governmental services that foster walkable neighborhoods, reducing vehicular traffic and thus air pollution.

As mayor, here’s what I will do to make Salt Lake City America’s greenest city:

Embrace public transit, cycling, walking and alternative energy vehicles

By giving people easy and efficient options for moving around the city, we can reduce the amount of emissions that are put into the air in the first place. Mayor Anderson is pointing us in the right direction with his Executive Order on Complete Streets that promotes a variety of transportation options. We can build on and improve that strategy.

• I will complete the Jordan River Parkway through Salt Lake City and build three east-west bike trails.
I will complete the Parleys Rails, Trails and Tunnels (PRATT) trail and will work to fulfill the Parleys Trail Master Plan, a shared greenway through Salt Lake City, South Salt Lake and portions of unincorporated Salt Lake County. I will also push to fund and build the City Creek Trail project from downtown through the Euclid neighborhood to the Jordan River and then connecting north to the Utah State Fairpark by finishing the Jordan Parkway Trail. A third east-west trail, the Emigration Trail, will link the mouth of Emigration Canyon and the University of Utah with the 9th and 9th neighborhood, Liberty Park, the proposed 900 South Greenway and the Jordan River Parkway.

• I will fight aggressively to fund additional TRAX lines and increased regional rail service to serve both residential neighborhoods and downtown.
I strongly support the proposed TRAX line between downtown and the airport, as well as streetcar service to Sugar House and expanded light rail or streetcar lines in the downtown area. I’ll advocate for an extension of commuter rail from downtown to Provo, and I’ll work closely with UTA to ensure that both local and express bus service meet the needs of Utah’s capital city. I will look east and west as well: with tremendous growth in Summit County and beyond, and out toward Tooele/Grantsville to the west, we must focus on long-range plans for extended east-west commuter transit.

• I will encourage public and private schools to promote walking, cycling, and public transit to get to school.
My administration will actively assist elementary schools to assure safe school routes and to help develop Human School Buses so children can safely walk to school.

• I will mandate charging stations for electric vehicles (EVs).
Just as sewers and electric utilities are part of the cost of development in new-home construction sites, so should infrastructure be installed at the same time that will serve to minimize air pollution, such as charging stations for EVs. I will adopt rules that require new developments of certain densities to either provide charging stations for EVs or contribute to a fund to provide them.

• I will encourage the continued and expanded use of compressed natural gas (CNG) in the city.
Salt Lake City has four public CNG refueling stations, and the state of Utah has the second most extensive CNG refueling infrastructure in the nation.

Plant a tree, save a life

Trees absorb carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas, and produce oxygen. They also prevent erosion and water runoff, and they cool the air by producing moisture and providing shade. That keeps people and buildings naturally cool, reducing our need for energy-consuming air-conditioning. A continuous tree canopy helps reduce smog by reducing the amount of heat radiating off roads, parking lots and roofs. In the winter, trees lower our heating costs by blocking winter wind. Planting trees throughout the city will become part of my long-term plan to mitigate air pollution and enhance our community.

• I will initiate a citywide tree preservation and planting program.
I will lead efforts to involve residents and businesses in neighboring cities and in Salt Lake County to meet the goal of doubling our tree canopy throughout the county. This will be done with native species to the maximum extent possible.

Trade in your two-stroke motor

• I will create an incentive program to replace gasoline-powered lawnmowers and power tools with electric ones.
Two-stroke motors, common on power tools and lawnmowers, create more pollution than most people realize. Switching to manual or electricity-powered yard tools can create a noticeable dent in emissions.

Make our buildings more energy efficient and use renewable energy resources.

Most buildings in Salt Lake City consume energy inefficiently because they are older structures that do not have the most efficient mechanical systems, nor have they been retrofitted to minimize energy loss or to take advantage of passive solar design principles.

• I will establish a residential energy assessment and weatherization program in cooperation with residents, Rocky Mountain Power, and Questar Gas that will evaluate individual buildings to determine how owners can quickly and cheaply retrofit them for better energy use.

• I will revise Salt Lake City’s building codes to strongly encourage use of LEED (or LEED-equivalent) building standards.
The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System is the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of high-performance green buildings.

• I will explore the possibility of a dedicated solar-powered energy supply for Salt Lake City’s electricity-powered transportation systems.
Given the available land area to the west of Salt Lake City, combined with the abundance of sunshine, we should look closely at the potential for a dedicated solar array that could power TRAX, EV charging stations, and additional electricity-powered transportation systems as they become available and cost-effective. The increased use of renewable resources could help mitigate the negative effects of air pollution and the use of costly, imported fossil fuels that are ultimately a finite resource and that contribute to global warming.

Minimize construction waste

To reduce waste, decrease dependency on transported materials and increase energy efficiency, all construction waste from new-construction, renovation or restoration job sites must be reclaimed or recycled.

• I will require construction waste reclamation and recycling to the maximum extent possible.
This will result in less material in local landfills, a reduction in energy expended on transportation of both new material and waste material (which also means less large-truck traffic on our roads), and it will create new businesses and additional jobs in Salt Lake City.

Make sure city services support green goals

If we are to evolve into a progressively greener city, we must evolve our government so that it is structurally able to address these goals.

• I will reorganize the Planning, Transportation and Public Services departments so that those functions better serve residents and work to reduce the human impact on the environment.

• I will elevate the position of Environmental Advisor to that of Chief Energy and Environmental Advisor.
This senior-level position will create policy and coordinate with all city departments to make sure sound energy and environmental policies are developed and enacted.

• I will require all departments to develop and implement new master plans that include carbon footprints and that consider the air, land, water and conservation impacts of their proposals and actions.

Preserve and acquire open space

Without a Big Picture plan for preserving and acquiring our precious open spaces, our green spaces will “suffer death by a thousand cuts” as they are slowly nibbled away. A long-range plan for both retaining our current open spaces and for acquiring additional ones is critical to our health and quality of life from both a recreational and an ecological standpoint.

• I will begin a comprehensive open-space planning effort for Salt Lake City.
This will inventory and evaluate our “green infrastructure,” including cultural, recreational, urban and natural open-space needs within the city. This plan will include proposals to create green infrastructure with interconnected natural and urbanized open spaces that are protected places for people as well as for wildlife.

• I will develop a strong open-space acquisition program.
This will use conservation easements and other conservation techniques to fund greenways and open-space connections between the Great Salt Lake, downtown, neighborhoods, business districts, and the foothills.

• I will further protect Salt Lake City watersheds.
Building on the rich tradition of Salt Lake City watershed protection (and my professional work on the two Salt Lake City Watershed Plans), I will continue to seek protection of watersheds through strict controls of activities that adversely impact Salt Lake City watersheds in the Wasatch Canyons. Such activities will boost our efforts to acquire land and water rights to assure that future generations benefit from wise protection today.

Use Water Wisely

I will push for an aggressive gray-water program for non-culinary water uses. Water supplies will be stretched even further in the region over the next several decades. We have tremendous untapped opportunities for wastewater recycling and reuse (to irrigate parks, golf courses, etc.) and for the channeling and reuse of storm water runoff. I will develop an innovative urban water conservation strategy that will sharply reduce our household water use.

Establish Neighborhood Centers

Walkable neighborhoods will enhance our community in so many ways: sense of community, less vehicular traffic, reduced air pollution and crime rates, more neighborly interaction, and greater support for local businesses. We have wonderful historic neighborhoods all over the city and examples of success with the 9th and 9th and 15th and 15th neighborhood centers. We can build on these successes across the city.

• I will establish areas zoned for commercial centers for every neighborhood.
The city’s plans and current zoning need to take advantage of existing neighborhood-scale commercial areas and provide places for commercial centers through appropriate planning and zoning.

• I will place some city services and encourage non-governmental services to be located in neighborhoods.
Accessible services will serve the Salt Lake City residents more easily. IHC has opened some medical clinics in schools, which benefit many residents. I will look for opportunities to bring Salt Lake City governmental services into neighborhoods, sharing spaces with other government entities and commercial enterprises.

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By working hard to use our resources wisely and taking time now to plan properly for future generations, we can all enjoy a prosperous, successful, livable, green, great American city.