As other cities are just now getting in on sustainabili-ty, Santa Monica is 10 years in. Why was Santa Monica a good place for a pilot program?
“Santa Monica has had a history of a very progressive City Council that has been very open to sustainability. Ever since I’ve been here, we’ve always had council support for everything we’re doing, and that really just mirrors the community support. The people in Santa Monica get it. They’re generally very well educated and very well informed about environmental issues and other things related to sustainability. So it’s really about the people, the City Council and the leadership here that have helped make it happen.”
Where does Santa Monica fall short environmentally? “We’ve had a lot of success in about every environmental area — energy, greenhouse gas, water, waste reduction. That said, I think we have a long way to go. Santa Monica, like much of the rest of the country, has an economy based on consumption. All of us who live here, myself included, are out there consuming. So we have a very successful economy, which creates even more consumption. What that means is that we are using more energy, we’re using more water, we’re generating more pollution, and even though we’ve taken steps to reduce those things, the numbers are actually going up. So the biggest problem that I see is being able to reconcile a strong community that provides a great quality of life and reducing the impact of our resource use. I don’t think anybody’s really figured out how to do that, and that’s what we’re working on right now. We’re working with the residents and the businesses, and all the institutions to become much more efficient.”
What part of the plan has been the most difficult to get people on board with?
“I think the most difficult part is just the concept of sustainability, which is confusing to a lot of people. It’s a big word that means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. That makes it difficult for us to connect. If you walk on the street today, you go outside, everything looks great. There’s some traffic, some homeless people, but in general, the community is great, so there is no real impetus for people to take some action to become more sustainable. We didn’t start the program in response to any kind of a crisis. It’s not like we had any huge pollution problems and problems with our economy. We started it because it was the right thing to do. Probably because there isn’t a crisis, it’s difficult to get people’s attention. A lot of what we’re doing right now is really focusing our efforts to get people’s awareness. That’s what 10Fest is really about. We’re doing a great job, we’re world renowned, but we have a long way to go.”
Why doesn’t Santa Monica have a mandatory recycling program?
“Recycling for businesses is a big issue in Santa Monica, and it’s really a matter of economics. Currently, businesses can either contract with the city to collect their waste and recyclables, or they can get a private hauler. Private haulers offer very limited recycling services and charge more for recycling. As far as I can tell, they actually provide incentive for throwing more stuff in the trash. The city has been looking for ways to address this, providing incentives for recycling, free recycling programs and whatnot, but really the solution would be if the city could oversee recycling for all businesses and all residences. It would have a much better ability to collect more recyclables. I don’t see that mandatory recycling is really necessary, but the services should be available and convenient for the businesses. Right now, the city is competing with dozens of private haulers who will lower their rates and don’t promote recycling.”
What do you personally do to be environmentally conscious?
“I do a lot. I go to the farmers’ market every week. I ride my bike to work every day. I have a very energy-efficient house. Pretty much every product I buy that goes into my house, that is around my children, is researched to make sure it’s environmentally friendly and safer. I took out a lawn and replaced it with a drought tolerant native garden that uses about one fifth the water. I’ve done a lot of things in my lifestyle that address sus-tainability. I do that because I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t. It was a part of who I was before I started the job, but I continue because I’m asking people in Santa Monica to live more sustainably. I don’t think I can sit here and talk about it and not do it. I know that you can definitely live more sustainably and it doesn’t negatively impact your lifestyle. You can come over to my house and see that.”
What is your background and how did you get involved in environmental analysis?
“I originally studied architecture years and years ago when I first started college in 1980 at San Luis Obispo. After about four years, I realized I didn’t want to be an architect, so I switched universities and I got a degree in geology at UC-Santa Barbara. Once I got my degree, I decided I wanted to continue on in graduate work, so I went to New Zealand and studied plate tectonics, structural geology and earthquakes. I was planning on doing a Ph.D., but I had also been in college for about 10 years at this time and needed to work. I previously worked for a company in environmental geology, so I finished up my graduate work and came back to the states and got a job in Thousand Oaks with the company I had worked for before. My job up there was basically investigating factory sites, oil fields, big property sites that had some kind of environmental contamination, and I would figure out how bad the contamination was. I did that for a number of years and it was an interesting and challenging job, but it was also unsatisfying. I would write a report that was the size of a phone book, but no one would pat you on the back and say, ‘You did a really good job.’ It was mainly a lot of negative feedback, basically because the clients had been caught releasing some sort of environmental contaminant, either accidentally or intentionally, and they had to pay a lot of money to clean it up, and I was the person who told them how bad it was. Just about every phone call I had was negative. After a few years of doing what I saw as very end-of-the-pipe work, I decided I wanted to get to the front of the pipe. So I quit my job and tried to get work as an environmental policy analyst — somebody who could maybe develop policy so that these environmental contamination problems didn’t happen. I eventually went to work for a non-profit called The Climate Institute in Washington, D.C. as a graduate intern. I worked there in 1993, then I came back to Santa Monica and I did some work with Heal the Bay and with Natural Resource Defense Council on various small projects. Then I heard that Santa Monica had a Sustainable City plan that was in development, so I contacted the city and hounded them and learned everything about it. It was something I was very interested in doing. This was very much the front of the pipe. I knew that Santa Monica had this reputation for being on the leading edge, and I was fortunate enough to be hired for a very small contract for a little project that Santa Monica was doing, and that led to the creation of a temporary position and then a permanent position.”
What is the No. 1 thing Santa Monicans could do to have the biggest positive impact on the environment?
“The biggest impact they could have globally would be reducing the amount of driving. Get out of their car, walk someplace, rideshare, take the bus. I think the biggest environmental impact today is gas emissions and local air pollutants caused by transportation and driving.”
Describe your typical day and your favorite part of this job.
“It’s pretty hectic. I feel like I’m a juggler with lots of balls in the air. I spend time communicating with businesses and residents and answering questions about sus-tainability, how people can get involved. I spend time working with the different departments in the city, addressing the same things, trying to shift their operations to make them more sustainable. At least once a month I do a talk or conference. There are more mundane things, too — dealing with bureaucracy and contracts. I’m busy every single day and I always feel like I have more work than I can ever get done, but it’s really exciting. My absolute favorite part of the job is just dealing with people. It’s going out and talking to residents and talking to businesses. I love going out and talking about the success of sustainability in Santa Monica, particularly to children and students at universities.”
What do you see for the next 10 years of sustain-ability in Santa Monica?
My goal in the next couple of years is to really ramp up the participation; to get the schools and the college and the tourism sector and the health care sector and a lot of the other businesses to really embrace sustainability goals and to realize these are things that will ultimately benefit them. I hope to get us all moving in the same direction so it’s not just the city government pulling the whole thing along, that sustainability is ingrained and established in everything we do.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 27, 2004. Read the original PDF.