Philadelphia's future looking 'greener,' but battle's not over

Oct. 23, 2007
Chris Satullo
Inquirer columnist

The favorite color of this year's Philadelphia mayoral election has been green.

In city elections, it often is. This year, the difference is that green doesn't refer just to money.

It also refers to the constellation of environmental goals that form the "Green Agenda." These include everything from setting energy-efficient building standards to nurturing fresh-food markets to taking better care of Fairmount Park.

The good news for the people pushing that agenda has been this: For the first time in living memory, mayoral candidates this year decided it was just easier being green. Hey, a guy actually could lose votes by resisting the environmental wish list!

Whether they understood them or not, candidates dutifully signed on to timely and ambitious proposals generated by groups such as PennFuture (www.nextgreatcity.org), the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society (Green City Strategy), and the Philadelphia Parks Alliance (www.philaparks.org).

And the guy who ended up winning the Democratic primary, Michael Nutter, was the one who showed the best grasp of environmental concerns.

For their part, green groups did a good job of connecting their goals with the close-to-home concerns of ordinary Philadelphians. In this old, beautiful city, the term environment has top-of-mind meanings different from those that leap to mind for your average Sierra Club member.

At Great Expectations citizen forums, we heard much less about global warming than about litter and filthy streets and sewage backups in basements. So green advocates smartly made the local connections - e.g. planting shade trees makes houses easier to cool, cutting utility bills and usage.

So now green is hot, and the presumptive mayor "gets it." Looking at the lay of the land, Christine Knapp of PennFuture says, "Things feel really good right now."

So, from here on in, can we assume that Fairmount Park will be well-tended and safe from developers' clutches, that city employees will scoot around town in Priuses owned by PhillyCarShare, and that community gardens will sprout on every lot where drug dealers once lurked?

Not so fast. If it were that easy, it already would have happened. No question, the green agenda for Philadelphia has unprecedented clarity and momentum. But most of this stuff costs money, challenges embedded habits, or annoys entrenched interests.

Remember, for example, the flushless toilets at Comcast Tower? Trade unions fiercely opposed the developer's wish to meet "green" building standards, forcing a costly compromise.

Let's review the prospects for some of the main items on the agenda:

Green building: National standards have been developed for making buildings energy efficient, environmentally friendly and community conscious (the U.S. Green Building Council, at www.usgbc.org). Going green costs more up front, even if it saves in the long run. So cities have begun to offer zoning incentives to build green. Philly's zoning remap is years off, so the quick incentive would be to offer green projects a fast track through the city's cumbersome approvals process.

After the Comcast brouhaha, green-building advocates reached out to trade unions, seeking to persuade them that green standards, while forcing changes in old habits, don't threaten their members' livelihoods.

Fairmount Park: The park system is a jewel of the city, but an underfed, abused orphan of city government. The Parks Alliance has proposed a more independent, accountable system of park governance, which might help attract a top parks professional to lead the system. The proposal would also let Fairmount Park keep the revenue it generates, instead of funneling it into the general fund. Nutter has signed onto the plan, but has noted that to properly care for the city's emerald necklace, its annual budget should rise from $14 million to about $50 million - a lot more than the park could generate by itself.

Also, while stronger park management sounds good, it could annoy constituencies. As a Parks Alliance report notes, the contracts the park awards have long been a coveted "cookie jar" for political players. And the many "friends of the park" groups that filled a vacuum of park leadership might be reluctant to cede some of their autonomy to stronger central management.

Sewer problems: Philly's ancient sewer pipes handle both sewage and runoff; they're easily overwhelmed when it rains, causing those flooded basements. To get a handle on runoff, the city Water Department is considering a major change other cities have tried: charging businesses a storm-water fee based not on how much water they use, but on how much runoff-causing blacktop they have. This would create winners and losers. Expect the losers to howl to the nearest City Council person.

Waste recycling: Philadelphia's 5-percent recycling rate is one-fourth of Chicago's, one-eighth of Seattle's. At forums, citizens said they'd like to recycle but can't figure out the capricious schedule for when to put their items out. A pilot project with a company called ReycleBank in a couple of Northwest Philadelphia neighborhoods showed good results using store coupons as an incentive. When items are recycled, the city saves on landfill fees. Bureaucratic resistance stymied bids to expand the pilot citywide. Nutter seems committed to promoting recycling, and using the savings (up to $17 million a year) to fund other pieces of his green agenda.

Litter and vacant lots: New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was rude, but right, when he called Philadelphia out on its litter problem. Expect Nutter - who agrees that "our city is filthy" - to stage a concerted campaign against litter as his equivalent of John Street's opening salvo against abandoned cars in 2000. It would be a blow against a problem which, based on
Great Expectations feedback, deeply sours Philadelphians' view of their city.

Vacant lots are magnets for litter and crime. A smart move for the city would to boost support of Philadelphia Green, an arm of the Horticultural Society, which runs one of the nation's finest programs to clean and green lots. Here's one payoff: A Wharton School study found that cleaning and greening an empty lot adds 17 percent to nearby property values.

That statistic underlines a key theme of the green agenda. The items on it cost a bit, but pay off over time. They are the kind of forward-looking steps that savvy cities (Chicago, anyone?) have been taking.

Philadelphia has to decide whether it wants to be green every day, or just on days when the Eagles play.