Councillor Chris Harris

Greens get action on ESD policies

I put forward a notice of motion in February to ensure that the targets and aspirations of the City’s 2030 policy translate into action in the City’s public works and lead to measurable reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Grand statements and headline grabbing targets are great to inspire people but the real changes happen at the street level detail where water is diverted from rooves into storage and onto gardens that nourish our trees and edible plants and solar panels run day to day appliances and feed excess power into the grid for others to use.

A friend of mine, environmental warrior Michael Mobbs, sent me this brief message a couple of weeks ago about the power of these small changes in his immediate neighbourhood:

“About 500 m2 of gardens along footpaths, on both sides of Myrtle street, and in some parts of Shepherd and Rose Streets, are now watered by rainfall from the front rooves of houses. The rooves have a combined area of some 2500 m2 (50 houses x 50m2). Add to that the street gardens - some 1200m2. Thus, the total area of rain harvesting is 3700m2. Each year each square metre of that area will receive over 1200 litres of rainwater. This provides a saving of over 4.4 million litres of water which previously ran off into Sydney Harbour.”
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We are urging voters to increase The Greens representation on the City of Sydney Council to ensure that the City takes an active role in promoting Environmentally Sustainable Design (ESD) in development and renovation within the City’s boundaries.

We will find a property that will become the City’s sustainable house. The property should be readily accessible by public transport and it will have one or two car share spots out the front. The house will be renovated using low energy non-toxic materials and paints sourced within Australia. The Greens would look to involve the architecture, planning and environmental studies faculties of our local universities to design, plan and direct the project.

Water tanks will be installed to make the property self sufficient and waste water and sewage will be recycled. Power will be supplied using photovoltaic cells and a small wind turbine or we could also install tri-generation in the street and power the whole street. Energy efficient appliances and lighting will be installed and excess power will be sold back to the grid. Water efficient taps and fittings will be used throughout the property

The property will have a productive garden producing food and fruit bearing shade tress should be planted in the street. Any necessary paving should be done in pale colours to ensure heat is reflected and future upgrades to the street should use pale coloured material

Once completed the City will use this facility for tours, seminars and workshops to educate architects, builders and residents on the very latest ESD developments. This will be a great way of involving the community in active participation to reduce emissions and the impacts of climate change by promoting ideas that can be readily and economically incorporated into projects straight away.

It is important that the ESD initiatives promoted by the sustainable house should be affordable and accessible to the ordinary person. The City should be dismantling the myth that ESD is expensive and fostering the ethic that ESD is the only way to go.

To accompany this initiative the City will prepare a handy “what can be done to improve the ESD of your property” which will be sent to all individuals lodging a development application – there are currently over 3000 DA’s lodged with the City each year

Unfortunately the planning system is too cumbersome and too much a hostage to special interests to drive change with the urgency that is required. The City’s ESD DCP process will be bogged down for years and ultimately the DCP, no matter how good it is, could be rejected my the Minister for Planning who is constantly lobbied by developers and the Property Council.

The City of Sydney is in a position to act quickly to drive change and the Greens think that it should do just that with a highly visible sustainable house and an active program of community engagement.

As a side benefit the City might even be able to create some affordable accommodation for a manager of the facility by incorporating living quarters into the project.

City of Sydney Waste performance needs a shake up

Today the Greens announced their initiative to turn the City’s woeful waste performance around. Currently the City of Sydney sends 71% of its waste out of the City  to be dumped in landfill or a disused mine shaft in someone else’s backyard.

Greens Cr Chris Harris said: “This waste ‘management’ practice is totally unsustainable and requires our urgent attention. The Greens are seeking increased representation on council so that this waste policy can be changed to a short term target of recycling/reprocessing 80% of household waste by 2013 and zero waste to landfill by 2020 This will exceed the NSW government ‘waste to recovery’ target of 66% by 2014.

“There is really no excuse to allow the current situation to persist. There is proven technology that is now available to achieve the 80% short term target as soon as a suitable facility can be built.  For example there is an Alternative Waste Technology Facility located at Eastern Creek that has been recycling 80% of waste delivered to it for the past four years. There is no reason to stop the City investing in this type of technology to make our waste management something that we can be proud of.

“One option that The Greens consider is feasible is for the City of Sydney to work with surrounding councils such as Leichhardt, Marrickville, Woollahra and Waverley Councils to identify a suitable industrial site and develop a facility that processes the waste from all or some of those local government areas. This would provide sufficient waste to make a plant economic. In fact the operation can be quite profitable as a result of the sale of metal, glass, plastic & other materials recovered from waste plus the energy generation potential

“The result will be a dramatic reduction in transport kilometres traveled to haul our rubbish, a massive increase in recovery of precious resources, the ability to generate energy from our waste and a huge reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

The Greens will also seek to introduce and reinvigorate micro waste policies to compliment the larger waste initiative. These  include:

1.   Introduce the ‘second hand Saturday’ pioneered by the Harris Centre at Ultimo into all parts of the City of Sydney twice each year. Council will assist in resourcing local groups to organize this by providing environmental grants. Where no local initiative exists Council staff will conduct the event. This allows the reuse of unwanted possessions that we all have
2.   Develop a plastic bag reduction strategy designed to reduce demand and reduce supply. This will be an ongoing strategy that targets residents and merchants in the City of Sydney
3.   Develop a butt littering strategy with both incentives and penalties to eliminate butt littering on the City’s streets. The strategy launched by the Lord Mayor has been a failure and a well thought out and ongoing strategy that targets smokers needs to be developed
4.  The development of a white goods recycling initiative which will have a big impact in a council area like Sydney where there is a significant transient population
5.  Comprehensive strategy to encourage widespread take up of composting in both detached housing and apartments.
6.  Review of current recycling practices in older apartment blocks and initiatives to improve performance

On 10th March 2008 I presented a motion to Council calling for Council’s support of the community campaign to stop the sell off of the state’s electricity system.  My motion was not supported by Labor, Liberal or Clover Moore Party councillors.

The sell-off is not a done deal and the campaign to keep power in public hands is still being waged.

Privatising electricity will lead to higher power bills, lower levels of service and increased greenhouse gas emission. If Treasurer, Michael Costa, gets his way and the electricity system is sold off to the highest bidder, the people of  Sydney will end up worse off.

Privatising essential public utilities like electricity and water leads to increased prices and reduced services as the new private owners try to maximise their returns. We have seen this happen with past privatisations from the Commonwealth Bank to Telstra to Sydney Airport.

Private owners will try to increase power consumption to maximise profits, the exact opposite of what we should be trying to achieve. Increased consumption of electricity will lead to potential blackouts and will increase greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to dangerous climate change.

The Greens think that it is the role of government to show leadership by dealing with global warming and climate change. Electricity generation by burning coal is the largest producer of greenhouse gas emissions. The state government should be looking at phasing out the burning of coal and replacing it with renewable energy alternatives. Reliable technologies such as solar thermal and wind already exist and are being employed in other countries as a replacement for the burning of coal, gas and oil. The Greens are very concerned that the government will offer guarantees to any purchaser of the power stations and that the move away from coal will be much more difficult as a result of those guarantees.

Think about it logically - would you hand over billions of dollars for a bunch of power stations when you were unsure of their future viability? You would want an assurance that government would not do anything that would lessen the value of those power generators. That’s why power generation should remain in public hands - so that the government wll be free to make whatever decisions that it needs to when considering the future of energy in a low emission environment.

Many residents of the city of Sydney are doing their bit to battle climate change by installing solar power and recycling water but the challenge can’t be met by individual households alone. The state government should be taking the lead on climate change, not sending us backwards.

 A copy of my motion appears below:

1. The City of Sydney opposes in the strongest terms the NSW Government’s plans to privatise NSW’s publicly-owned electricity retailers and enter into long term leases of the state’s generators.
 
Privatisation would:
•         weaken the ability of the people of NSW to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and urgently respond to climate change,
•         result in job losses and reduce working conditions in the electricity industry,
•         increase financial hardship for consumers, and in particular for low income households and pensioners,
•         reduce state revenues by at least $1 billion per annum, as profits are shifted from the public purse to private corporations and
•         destroy public control over essential energy assets. 

2. Council also believes that privatisation would impact severely on local government as major electricity consumers.
3. Council calls on the NSW Government to better manage NSW’s future energy needs and take urgent action in response to climate change by investing in energy efficiency in homes and businesses and increasing its renewable energy targets.
4. The General Manager urgently convey this motion to the NSW Premier Morris Iemma and Treasurer Michael Costa; the NSW Local Government Association, all City of Sydney based MPs and MLCs, Unions NSW and the Total Environment Centre.
5. The reasons for Council opposing the sell-off are to be widely advertised including in local newspapers, on the Council website and by media release. 

In these times of climate change we need to be aware of, and be protective of our environment, but some of our leaders still don’t seem to get it.
 
Greens Cr Chris Harris said: “The Lord Mayor Clover Moore has now become Premier Iemma’s cheerleader. Instead of working to protect the city’s environment here she is cheering on the use of public space and Sydney’s beautiful harbour to accomodate a “Grand Prix” between 26 fossil-fuel guzzling power boats screaming around at 250km as they spew out tonnes of greenhouse gases.
 
“In the process, these power boats will be destroying the habitat of the undersea life, distressing pregnant whales seeking refuge in our harbour, disrupting anyone else who wants to use the harbour, inflicting ear splitting decibels upon local residents who may not want to experience this environmental catastrophe and, costing Sydney hundreds of thousands  of dollars to provide services such as toilets, security and the clean up afterwards. And for what? To provide cheap thrills to a bunch of aquatic rev-heads.
 
“And what a backflip.  Wasn’t it only recently that the Lord Mayor closed Sydney streets, particularly in Millers Point which has been locked up for months, to prevent motor rev-heads from hooning around?  And these terra firma racers weren’t doing anywhere near 250km per hour.

“It is interesting that the Lord Mayor slams hooning on our streets but is happy to cheer on the Premier as he encourages hooning on the harbour.”  Cr Harris said.

See story SMH 7th March 2008 ” Loos with a view, thanks to Iemma”