From Green to Gold in Municipal Facilities

Introduction

Sustainable energy practices in local government can run into a host of challenges, but they can be accomplished if a city is green enough—even if it is in a very red state. This essay recounts the successful experience of Norman, Oklahoma which is such a case. This case study presents the political background in Norman and the actions taken to develop two types of sustainably enhancing, municipal facilities: fire stations and compressed natural gas (CNG) fueling stations. It then discusses the efforts taken to make each type a reality, focusing on siting considerations in the former instance and funding needs and solutions in the latter. Finally, it concludes with a few thoughts on these developments.

Norman, Oklahoma

At 111,000 citizens, Norman is the third largest city in Oklahoma and home to the University of Oklahoma, giving the city a front-row seat for debates over climate change and sustainability. The University hosts the National Weather Center, a unique research confederation with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and various state organizations, to improve understanding of events occurring in Earth’s atmosphere. Adding to its prominence as a leader in climate research, the University has also been selected as one of the US Department of the Interior’s eight regional climate science centers nationwide. Consequently, Norman citizens often play a leadership role on environmental issues in the community and at the state level. Conversely, in the view of many Oklahomans, environmental issues are not a priority and sustainability efforts in particular are unnecessary, particularly if they require public investment. This view is shared by Oklahoma’s senior US senator, James M. Inhofe, who rejects the claim of man-induced global warming and calls the threat of catastrophic climate change the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people” (Inhofe 2011).

The Norman City Council entered into this debate on August 9, 2005, when its members unanimously adopted and directed Mayor Harold Haralson to sign the US Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. The city is one of the only three Oklahoma cities to sign the agreement and commit to the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. As part of the enabling resolution, the Council directed its Environmental Control Advisory Board (ECAB) to develop a plan. In the spring of 2007, ECAB forwarded its recommendations to council and city staff was directed to provide an implementation plan. Finally, on February 10, 2009, with a new mayor and city manager, the City Council by unanimous vote passed Resolution 0809-109 adopting twelve goals recommended by ECAB. ¹ These goals supported two major sustainability initiatives—a commitment to two LEED-certified fire stations and the development of a CNG fleet and fueling station.

Leed Fire Stations

Goal 7 of the Norman plan embraced the commitment “to practice and promote sustainable building practices” using the US Green Building Council’s LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) program. The opportunity to build Oklahoma’s first-ever LEED-certified fire stations came with a May 2008 voter approval of a temporary half-cent public safety-dedicated sales tax for two new fire stations to be located in growing and underserved areas of the community. The voters approved funding for two new fire stations, but it was a council decision eleven months later that directed staff to proceed with LEED-certifiable designs.

The fire station sites were chosen to meet the needs of underserved areas of the community: recent housing subdivisions developing to the northwest and east of the urban core. Norman’s existing seven stations included five clustered in the urban area and two in the rural areas to serve its 190 square miles. The two new stations were sited to improve response times in the expanding urban core. For example, once completed First Station 8 cut response times from a high of eight minutes to less than four minutes. The biggest siting challenge of the first station was to find affordable land in an area with high real estate values. Ultimately, property was secured through a purchase of two acres for $400,000 from the Oklahoma City Catholic Archdiocese, sponsor of the adjacent All Saints Elementary School. The second fire station, now under construction, is sited on the edge of two subdivisions and involved a larger purchase of property to include a future municipal service center and a potential branch library.

Fire Station 8 was completed under its $2.1 million budget in May 2011, and the 10,327-square-foot facility achieved several “green” milestones: 40 percent of all the construction materials were either harvested, mined, or extracted within 500 miles of the station, over 20 percent of the project materials were recycled products, and over 90 percent of the construction waste (about 100 tons) was recycled and thus diverted from landfills. The actual construction budget was slightly higher than a non-LEED building due to costs attributable to the required LEED documentation; however, the “green” design process was justified on the basis of lower operating costs attributable to a high efficiency heat and air system, motion sensor lighting, and super-insulated walls. This station will use 30 percent less energy than similar buildings and consume 50 percent less domestic water—including drought-resistant landscaping requiring little, if any, additional watering. Constructed upon 105 piers sunk twenty-four feet deep to bedrock, the new station is also expected to have a longer lifecycle, again turning environmental green into operational savings.

The City of Norman considered enhanced productivity and health an additional benefit of the station’s interior “built” environment, using low volatile organic materials throughout the project and solar tubes for natural lighting as much as possible. A public meeting space, educational signage on the green building features, and frequent tours emphasize the community’s connection to the project (City of Norman 2011). The project received LEED gold certification, the second highest rating available, and was recognized for an ECO-Construction Award in 2011 by Keep Oklahoma Beautiful (Cruz 2011).

Because both fire stations are surrounded by residential development, lighting on the site and reduction of light trespass into nearby neighborhoods is a priority. The LEED design provided an opportunity for the City to demonstrate how light trespass and pollution could be minimized. The city example served to demonstrate good lighting practices, at the same time that its business community was fighting a new and controversial commercial lighting ordinance which was making its way through the City Council’s policy process.

Transforming the Municipal Fleet

A second major sustainability initiative focused on the Norman municipal fleet and meeting Goal 8 of the Plan of reducing gasoline consumption and shifting to alternative fuels to produce fewer carbon emissions. The first step was mandating fuel conservation practices which were adopted by policy in April 2008. By August 2008, city staff rolled out a plan to diversify the city fleet and commit to the purchase of vehicles that would be more fuel efficient, and reduce both carbon emissions and noise pollution. To implement this, the fiscal year 2009 annual vehicle replacement purchases included securing two CNG garbage trucks, three CNG light duty trucks, nine-hybrid vehicles, and twenty-six biodiesel or flex fuel vehicles. Because the upfront purchase cost of many of these new vehicles would exceed the cost of similar conventional gasoline and diesel vehicles, city officials knew that transforming the fleet of 742 vehicles would take time (White 2009).

Funding got an initial boost from the Clean Cities grants provided by the US Department of Energy through the Association of Central Oklahoma Governments (ACOG). These grants fill the gap between the initial purchase price of conventional fuel vehicles and the cost of alternative fuel vehicles. In June 2010, the city applied for approximately $400,000 in ACOG Clean Cities grant funds for the purchase of alternative fuel vehicles: a rear-loading refuse truck, a field service truck, and a sport utility vehicle.

However, the transition to CNG vehicles would have to confront the lack of fueling facilities—whether private or public—to service a CNG-powered fleet. The only existing fueling stations for CNG vehicles in the City were operated by Oklahoma Natural Gas and the University of Oklahoma fleet services. The location of these facilities limited the feasibility of their use for certain city operations such as sanitation. So, constructing a new CNG-fueling facility was the real key to diversification of the fleet. There were two main options for constructing CNG fueling: a “slow fill” or essentially overnight fueling facility and a “fast fill” option, which would operate much like a traditional on-demand gasoline fueling facility. In 2009, city staff estimated the slow-fill option to cost between $300,000 and $400,000 to build and equip, while the fast-fill option was estimated to cost $1.2 million.

The City took the first steps toward solving the fueling facilities problem by applying for an ACOG Clean Cities grant of $200,000 to create a CNG slow-fill facility in January 2010. The application was approved in March 2010, and the City Council authorized an engineering design contract in November 2010. Later, grants from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 allowed the plans to be expanded to include a fast-fill option. In July 2010, the city was notified of a $921,450 ARRA grant through the Oklahoma Department of Commerce for the fast-fill station, and then again in late 2011, the city learned of the availability of additional ARRA funds that other communities had been unable to utilize. This final opportunity led to the city receiving an additional $507,916, which was used to design and construct the comprehensive fast- and slow-fill facility, complete with pumps available to the general public. In total, the city spent over $2.1 million, of which the city match totaled $507,033 or 24 percent.

While the ARRA grants or “stimulus” monies were not particularly popular with state and federal elected officials, city officials were able to frame the issue in positive terms. Oklahoma is the second largest natural gas producer in the United States, so while “green” environmental goals might not have been favored by some conservative officeholders, the support of a key state industry was politically popular. In addition, the possibility of saving on future fuel costs made good economic sense, even though it did not satisfy all the critics (Lang 2010; Dycus 2010). Thus, the alternative fuels vehicle program and the CNG fueling station promised to turn the City’s green intentions into economic “gold.” In the face of rising gas prices, the price of natural gas has remained fairly stable and much lower per gallon than gasoline: on March 1, 2012, as regionally averaged gas prices approached $3.70 a gallon, the city of Norman was able to provide CNG at a pump price of $1.45 per gallon (US Energy Information Administration 2012).

In addition to the significant savings in operations costs, the commitment to CNG has resulted in other benefits. According to city documents, reductions in various air pollutants and noise are significant, specifically for sanitation trucks which traverse residential streets and alleys. For example, the Green Norman Website (2012) reports that the CNG trash trucks reduce particulate matter (94 percent), nitrogen oxides (73 percent), and nonmethane hydrocarbons (83 percent) over conventional refuse trucks. In addition, the CNG sanitation trucks produce 90 percent lower decibels inside the vehicle and 98 percent lower decibels when measured at the side of the vehicle.

The CNG facility clears the way for expanding the City’s CNG fleet. By the end of FY 2012, there will be thirty-three CNG Vehicles in the City’s fleet, almost a five-fold increase since 2009. Eleven CNG vehicles were added in FYE 2012, coinciding with the completion of the CNG fueling facility. Since adopting the Alternative Fuel Policy in FYE 2009, the City has used 59,346 gallons of CNG rather than unleaded or diesel fuel. The average savings per gallon before installing the CNG facility was approximately $0.50 per gallon for a total of $29,673. Since opening the station on January 9, 2012, the average savings jumped to $1.74 per gallon or approximately $3,088. The city projects an annual savings of approximately $60,000 for the current fleet of CNG vehicles, which will grow in size each year.

Conclusion

The LEED fire stations and CNG fueling facility have yielded real budgetary and environmental benefits for Norman. The case shows how success can be achieved when sustainability efforts are incorporated into the “ordinary things” of municipal facilities. For Norman, those ordinary uses include fire stations sited to improve coverage and response and alternative fueling stations for the municipal fleet that include the use of CNG. There were two keys to the success of these initiatives. First, strong local leadership by municipal staff and elected officials and a commitment from citizens overcame political resistance. Second, this leadership supported the acquisition of the internal and external funding needed to make the projects a reality.

These particular initiatives would not have come to fruition without additional funding. In the case of the fire stations, the additional resources were a temporary sales tax. In the case of the fueling facility, federal grants through the state provided the short-term differential for construction.

Urban economist James Heilbrun (1987) argues that intergovernmental grants are appropriate when they compensate for the deficiencies in the revenue capacity of lower levels of government. Intergovernmental grants may also encourage local governments to include in fiscal considerations the externalities of a service, including for example the reduction in pollution and the increase in fuel efficiency. In this case, the ARRA grants played their role in economic theory. In the face of limited-local budgets, the grants eliminated the price differential of the CNG vehicles and fueling station and allowed the city to produce the positive benefits of reduced air and noise pollution, significant cost savings to city operations, and a public service not currently available in the private market.

Interestingly, there have been more critics of the fueling facility than the fire stations. In part, the explanation may lie in the conservative attitudes of many Oklahomans toward President Obama’s stimulus package, which helped to finance them. Going forward, the new Norman facilities should be economically and environmentally sustainable. However, the question remains whether additional initiatives will be politically sustainable.