PROJECT INFORMATION
Sustainability Challenges and Goals
California cities like Tracy face substantial challenges: a changing climate, rising oil costs, increasing and migrating populations, shifting demographics and lifestyles, increasing obesity and asthma, and too few living wage jobs that result in long commutes. The Emerald Cities Pilot will help Tracy build environmental, energy, and economic resilience and greater community health to meet these challenges, directly and comprehensively.
The following are typical challenges and types of long-term goals that can be used to address them. Goals specific to Tracy will be developed within the coming months.
Energy
Challenges: Rising energy costs and increasing demand; dependence on non-renewable energy
- Goals: Reduce dependency on non-renewable energy and increase renewable energy resources and use; decrease energy costs and waste
Water
Challenges: Increasing demand and rising water supply and pumping costs; declining regional water supplies
- Goals: Reduce water supply demands, increase water use efficiency
Agriculture/Food Production
Challenges: Dependence on fossil fuels, depletion of topsoil, growing air pollution, groundwater contamination, increasing production costs, and lack of adequate, local sustainable food production.
- Goal: Protect and enhance local, sustainable ranch and farm food production and marketing at multiple scales
Transportation
Challenges: Dependence on oil and gas; increasing congestion, air pollution, and motor vehicle operating costs; rising vehicle and pedestrian accident and injury rates
- Goals: Reduce motor vehicle use and dependency, and decrease vehicle carbon emissions; increase transit use, walking and biking, and develop a circulation system that supports mobility choice
Economy
Challenges: Reliance on auto commute-based employment; economic growth through the continued expansion of commercial, industrial, and residential land development
- Goals: Increase community prosperity, and economic resilience and health while enhancing environmental and human resources
Public Health and Air Quality
Challenges: Consumption of fertile land for new development; increasing infrastructure costs and auto-dependency
- Goals: Improve the energy and environmental efficiency of all development; protect resource lands from urbanization, and transform auto-oriented, single-use development into compact, walkable and transit-accessible, mixed-use neighborhoods, districts, and centers
Solid Waste and Recycling
Challenges: Increasing quantity of solid waste sent to, and resulting greenhouse gas emissions from, landfill
- Goals: Reduce the amount and toxicity of solid waste sent to landfill; increase community-wide solid waste recycling and reuse, and composting of organic waste
Natural Habitat and Biological Resources
Challenges: Loss of sensitive habitat and natural resources, increasing pressure on threatened and endangered species
- Goals: Protect and enhance biological and other natural resources and environment
Sustainability Targets
To meet each long term goal, the City has set targets or interim milestones and identified measurable performance criteria that enable the community to evaluate progress made on each target. The following is a list of these targets:
Overall Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reduction
15 percent reduction in per capita emissions from the 2006 baseline of 11.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.
Energy
25 percent of all community energy needs provided by renewable sources.
25 percent of all municipal energy needs provided by renewable sources.
New residential and non-residential buildings powered by 10 percent using on-site solar panels.
New municipal buildings powered by 10 percent using on-site solar panels.
15 percent reduction in community energy consumption from 2006 baseline levels.
10 percent reduction in the municipal peak electrical load from 2006 baseline levels.
Water
12 percent reduction in outdoor potable water use from 2010 levels.
20 percent reduction in per capita potable water use from Department of Water Resources Method 1 Ten Year Historical Average (1995-2004).
20 percent reduction in municipal water use from 2008 levels.
Agricultural
No loss of Prime Farmland, Farmland of Statewide Significance or Unique Farmland outside of the City’s Sphere of Influence (SOI).
Any loss of such farmland inside of the SOI is offset by mitigation fees to a qualified agriculture preservation trust, such as the Central Valley Farmland Trust, at a ratio related to every acre that is lost.
Transportation
20 percent increase in the percentage of non-City employees who participate in travel demand management programs from 2006 baseline levels.
20 percent increase in the percentage of City employees who participate in travel demand management programs from 2006 baseline levels.
20 percent reduction in the community VMT per capita from current (2006) levels.
20 percent reduction in the municipal VMT from 2006 baseline levels.
Economy
Ratio of jobs to employed residents with matched skills between .90 and 1.10.
10,000 square feet of neighborhood-serving retail within ¼ mile of 75 percent of all residents.
“Economic Diversity Index” score equal to or better than the statewide average.
10% of jobs are “green” by practice or product.
Public Health and Air Quality
25 percent reduction in the number of days exceeding National and California Ambient Air Quality Standards.
50 percent reduction in the percentage of obese adults in Tracy from 2006 baseline levels.
50 percent reduction in the percentage of obese children in Tracy from 2006 baseline levels.
90 percent of households within ½ mile of a retail outlet selling fresh food and/or with a retail outlet selling fresh food as their closest food retailer.
90 percent of households within ½ mile of a neighborhood or regional park or recreation facility.
Solid Waste and Recycling
75 percent of the community waste stream is diverted from landfills.
75 percent of the municipal waste stream is diverted from landfills.
50 percent of community construction waste is reused or recycled.
50 percent of municipal construction waste is reused or recycled.
Natural Habitat and Biological Resources
Any loss of critical habitat corridors is mitigated through the Habitat Conservation Plan or other appropriate mitigation.
Team
The Emerald Tracy Team consists of a partnership with the City of Tracy, the non-profit National Charrette Institute (NCI) and the sustainable planning firms Town-Green, Design, Community & Enviroment, ICF Jones & Stokes, Fehr & Peers, and Strategic Economics, in collaboration with the California Department of Conservation and other agencies. The Team is made up of local and regional agencies and non-private and public practitioners in the appropriate fields of sustainability - energy, water, land/ development, waste, circulation, economics, health and/or food – who will work with the State agencies, local Tracy staff, and the citizens of Tracy.
Process
The steps of the process are as follows:
- Assemble a multi-disciplinary planning team - City staff, State technical representatives, consultants and non-governmental organizations, and community representatives;
- Research and assess Tracy's current state of resilience or sustainability both collectively and by element - energy, water, land, waste, circulation, economics, agriculture, and habitat (e.g., conduct greenhouse gas emissions inventory);
- Set timely and measurable performance goals and objectives for each;
- With community input, propose, evaluate, prioritize, and select the best stratgies, programs, policies, and actions;
- Develop and launch an implementation or action plan, reflective of and supported by the community;
- Monitor the results.
Timeline of City Actions
- April 15, 2008: The City Council identified sustainability as a City priority and directed staff to develop a Citywide Sustainability Strategy.
- November 18, 2008: The City Council committed by adoption of Resolution No. 2008-241 to pursue sustainable development and environmental practices for the benefit of the community. The resolution contains goals the State of California identified to be qualitative of a sustainable community and can be found on the City’s website.
- February 24, 2009: The City engaged in a contract with the sustainability planning firm Town-Green for the development of a portion of the Citywide Sustainability Strategy.
- March 23, 2009: The City Council identified Environmental Sustainability as one of the City's seven priorities and directed staff to create an Environmental Sustainability Strategic Team to develop goals, objectives, and action steps.
- June 22, 2009: The City joined ICLEI, a membership association that provides local governments with tools and resources to implement sustainability in their communities. The membership provides access to a program for calculating GHG emissions.
- August – December 2009: The City conducted a municipal and community-wide GHG emission inventory. The base year for the inventory is 2006 and will serve as a baseline for calculating reduction targets. The greenhouse gas (GHG) emission inventory and forecast are posted in the Resources section.
- September 4, 2009: The City received a grant for $150,000 through the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG), a Federal program established to appropriate funds to local governments for establishing energy efficiency and conservation strategy plans and projects.
- November 2009 - January 2019: The City and consultant team formulated draft sustainability targets and measures and modeled them to demonstrate GHG emission reductions, costs, and benefits.
- February 17, 2010: A workshop was held to engage community input on top sustainability priorities and the proposed targets and measures.The results of this workshop are posted in the Participate section.
- June/July 2010: First drafts of the Sustainability Action Plan were published for public review and comment. Comments were received by September 7, 2010. The draft Sustainability Action Plan was revised in response to recommendations received during the comment period in the following months.
- December 15, 2010: The Planning Commission met to evaluate the Sustainability Action Plan and made a recommendation to the City Council to adopt the Sustainability Action Plan.
- February 1, 2011: The Sustainability Action Plan was adopted by the City Council.
Results
As the measures contained in the Sustainability Action Plan are implemented, we will measure the effectiveness of the Sustainability Action Plan on an ongoing basis. We will conduct periodic reviews that will include data gathering related to a series of metrics and checking our progress in meeting the values that were assumed in the GHG model for the Sustainability Action Plan. Approximately every five years following the adoption of the Sustainability Action Plan, or as funding is available, we will conduct a comprehensive update to the baseline 2006 GHG inventory and release a progress report. The GHG inventory and progress report will demonstrate the effectiveness of the Sustainability Action Plan. The progress report will list the measures that have been implemented to date and summarize the results of periodic reviews that have been conducted. The inventory update will measure actual GHG emissions in Tracy at the halfway point to the 2020 target year for this Sustainability Action Plan. Please check back with us later for our results.
