Botelho says goals can be reached through smart growth, ‘green’
initiatives
City and county leaders across the Monterey Bay area have new
reason to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The California Air Resources Board last week set emissions
targets across the state, including a relatively modest decrease
for the Monterey Bay region. Collectively, the jurisdictions in
Monterey, San Benito and Santa Cruz County must maintain 2005
levels of greenhouse gas production through 2020 and achieve a 5
percent drop by 2035.
Botelho says goals can be reached through smart growth, ‘green’ initiatives
City and county leaders across the Monterey Bay area have new reason to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The California Air Resources Board last week set emissions targets across the state, including a relatively modest decrease for the Monterey Bay region. Collectively, the jurisdictions in Monterey, San Benito and Santa Cruz County must maintain 2005 levels of greenhouse gas production through 2020 and achieve a 5 percent drop by 2035.
The reductions are a response to state legislation addressing climate change.
The Association of Monterey Bay Area Governments proposed the targets, which the state adopted last week.
Though means of measuring greenhouse gas emissions, and ensuring compliance, are tricky, local leaders expect to meet the state’s directives through a number of simple policy changes. Most target the greenhouse-gas producing automobile.
“What I was concerned about as far as representing San Benito County is that 50 percent of our population travels outside of the county boundaries to go to work,” said county Supervisor Anthony Botelho, who serves on the AMBAG board along with fellow supervisor Margie Barrios, Hollister City Councilwoman Eugenia Sanchez and San Juan Mayor Ed Laverone. “To set a goal to lower emissions would make it very difficult to reach your objective. If we’re able to stabilize the current emissions and hopefully develop jobs and business growth in San Benito County and have reasonable population growth, those would be worthwhile objectives.”
AMBAG will work with local governments to encourage public transit, plan for housing closer to work and support electric and non-gasoline cars.
“As we develop some of the regional plans and have future growth, it’s imperative that we move in a way that focuses on green building, smart growth,” Botelho said. “That’ll yield the results rather than having these objectives (set by the air resources board). It is actions that will yield the reductions we need.”
Randy Deshazo, a principal planner for AMBAG, says cities and counties have already begun moving in this direction. He expects the trend to continue and for the region to easily meet state targets.
There is no penalty for jurisdictions that don’t meet the emissions goals, Botelho said, which is why “many of the directors felt this whole exercise was more politically based than practical as far as planning our growth for the region.
“We could have said that we’d have a 20 percent reduction (in emissions), but if we don’t reach that, there’s no penalty,” he said. “We want to be able to represent our jurisdictions with more integrity than that,” so AMBAG is committed to adhering to the state’s goals.
The Santa Cruz Sentinel contributed to this report.
