September 23, 2009 12:00 AM
FALL RIVER — The former head of the state's Commonwealth Development agency said Thursday that South Coast communities need to focus on cutting energy consumption and rethink transportation policy in order to make the region a greener, more sustainable place to live and work.
Douglas Foy, former state secretary of Commonwealth Development and former president of the Conservation Law Foundation of New England, offered up urban models of efficiency in both energy use and transportation to members of the Southeastern Massachusetts Council on Sustainability at the council's second region-wide meeting at the Advanced Technology Manufacturing Center (ATMC) in Fall River.
The fledgling council is starting up a volunteer effort to reduce the region's carbon footprint, cut energy use, and generally help southeastern Massachusetts become a more sustainable place in the future.
Some members seemed surprised when Foy cited New York City as "an energy sink" overall, but also "the most energy-efficient place on the earth" due to its population density. Per capita, the city's 8.5 million residents only use half of the energy per person than the national average, he said.
The main reason is that most city residents don't use private vehicles to get around, using public transportation or foot power to do much of their daily business, Foy said.
His informal survey of the membership assemble at the ATMC that afternoon showed that nearly everyone present drove alone to the meeting, and half couldn't easily walk to a convenience store from their homes to buy a gallon of milk. "Sustainable communities need places to live where you can walk for milk," he suggested.
"The region lacks a good transit system right now," Mr. Foy said, suggesting Gov. Patrick's strong commitment to bringing commuter rail to the South Coast is a good start towards addressing the public transit shortcomings of the region.
On the local level, "town centers can be much more energy-efficient" than scattered shopping centers you have to drive to," Mr. Foy explained. Local shopping districts should be encouraged by changing zoning bylaws and regulations for mixed use districts to achieve "compactness, and get people out of their cars" to shop, he said.
Foy cited Westport several times as a place where such experiments could vastly improve its sustainability quotient. "You need more sidewalks and more shops in 'downtown' Westport," to get people out of their cars and walking to clustered destinations, he said.
Individual consumers looking to cut energy use in the home should look closely at battery chargers, digital clocks and appliances which draw electricty 24 hours a day, even when not in use. These "vampire loads" add up to consume a lot of power that's expensive and contributes greatly to the home's carbon footprint, Foy indicated.
TV sets are among the biggest culprit, drawing power all day to prevent the inconvenience of waiting 15 seconds for the set to warm up, he said. The nation's 100 million water heaters are another big waste of energy, with most working all day to keep water warm even when residents aren't home.
Most buildings waste as much as 40 percent of their energy use in such ways, and updating them to be more energy efficient is "probably the most sustainable thing you can do," Mr. Foy said.
Retrofitting homes, unplugging the phone chargers and plasma TVs, and shopping locally whenever possible are all good ways to start improving sustainability in the short term, he suggested. Zoning reform and smart growth tactics like multi-use districts are long-term targets.
"We used to build beautiful town centers, but we forgot how to do that," Mr. Foy said, and now, zoning regulations make it more difficult. "You just couldn't do it with today's zoning" in most communities, he added.
Such smart growth policies are being used to plan for the economic growth areas along the South Coast commuter rail line being proposed, said Kristina Egan, director of the South Coast Rail Project. The plan encourages building public transportation links, and bringing water and sewer lines to suitable sites for dense housing developments along the proposed rail corridor, she explained, with a goal of preventing further suburban sprawl.
The Sustainability Council also heard subcommittee reports from five working groups researching potential areas for sustainability improvements. The groups are focusing on energy, food and agriculture, transportation, economic development, and natural resources.
The working groups plan to have their individual goals and vision statements ready by October. The regional council's next meeting is set for Dec. 10.