Citiwire.net

For Release December 28, 2008
Citiwire.net

While Congress gets ready for a rancorous debate over guidelines for spending billions in infrastructure stimulus funds, some states and cities are already getting deadly serious–not so much about bigger and fancier infrastructure projects, but smarter infrastructure systems.

Just this month, for example, New York City joined a group of far-sighted managers of waterworks nationwide by recommending a “sustainable stormwater management plan” to expand water and sewer capacity. The idea is not to build more plants or pipes but rather by invest in decentralized conservation systems and better maintenance.

Also this year, Janette Sadik-Khan, New York City’s transportation commissioner, made headlines when she put tables and chairs and bike lanes in the middle of downtown streets and said that the highest and best use of a thoroughfare was not necessarily more cars.

And James Rogers, president if Duke Energy, has been shocking utility commissions by insisting his company be paid for getting its customers to use less, not more power.

Question: What’s up here? Isn’t “more is better” the proven, undisputed motto of all infrastructure projects? Isn’t the issue just about laying pipe, asphalt, train tracks, cables, water lines and making the big machinery that serves them? To build, as it were, the world’s skeleton, with the idea that more is always better?

Well, perhaps not–any more. The powerful new trend is to put the words “green” or “smart” as descriptors in front of the word “infrastructure.” The labels vary, the movement disparate. But there’s clearly a growing new orientation that cuts across disciplines as disparate as roads and power, parks and airports.

The smart infrastructure crew, in short, is now concluding that more is not always better. The goal, instead: to figure out why people need something, then meet the need in smarter, more efficient and often less expensive ways.

To grasp what it’s all about take a deep breath and absorb this conclusion of the America 2050 organization’s newest report, “An Infrastructure Vision for the 21st Century”:

“Experience over the last fifteen years has demonstrated that pollution prevention, water conservation, appropriate pricing, ecosystem service and use of ‘green infrastructure’ approaches that protect or mimic natural systems, and improving management efficiency can provide the same benefits at a far lower cost than the traditional exclusive reliance on larger capital-intensive facilities. These non-structural approaches have also been proven to provide greater flexibility, save money, use less energy, protect and restore wildlife habitat and scenic and recreation areas, reduce flooding and flood damage, and create local jobs.”

Let me try the same in laymen’s terms:

When it comes to roads, it’s understanding that people don’t just want to drive or move for no reason. They move about for a reason–for access to jobs, goods and services, and other people. So why not focus on places relatively close to them that offer what they want? Or in general to building more local employment centers, sidewalks, bike paths and public plazas, missing transit lines, and selected road investments. It means figuring out how commerce and human movement work, so that transportation is a servant, not a master.

With power, it’s understanding that while people want light and heat, that need can be met in a variety of ways. So progressive power companies are handing out low-energy use light bulbs, and more radically, exploring more comprehensive ways to get power companies into the business of conserving energy rather than constantly demanding new generating facilities.

With water, it means understanding that people want clean, fresh water to drink and bathe in, but that a big part of that need can be met by plugging leaks in pipes, installing low-flow toilets, and protecting land around reservoirs, forestalling the need to build billion dollar filtration plants and tapping more lakes and rivers.

Technology is big in this movement, when it’s used to do more with less. A top example is the “Smart Grid,” the idea of integrating broadband communications with the electrical grid, allowing real-time pricing information to reach consumers, so they can scale back energy use in peak periods. This approach also looks for ways to expand distributed generation, allowing power generation in every home or business, and the ability to sell power back to the grid.

It helps to understand that the roots of this movement go deep. Starting in the 1990s, Albert Appleton, then Department of Environmental Protection commissioner for New York City, (i.e. water commissioner), pioneered many of the conservation strategies that allowed the city to meet rising population and net demand without expanding capacity. Now, the average New Yorker uses substantially less water per capita today than two decades ago.

Can Congress and the Obama administration find ways to reward such conserving ways in a fast-action economic stimulus plan? Let’s hope so. Otherwise, we’ll just be reinforcing yesterday’s infrastructure orthodoxy, and missing a green–and golden–opportunity.

Citiwire.net columns are not copyrighted and may be reproduced in print or electronically; please show authorship, credit Citiwire.net and send an electronic copy of usage to webmaster@citiwire.net.