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Today's Air Quality...
A Message from the City Manager
What does 'green' mean? How can we each make a difference in the 'green' direction? How does a City make a difference?
By now we have all heard the message; we watch the news; we see the changes around us. On a personal level, we imagine the future our children will face and some of us feel the need to act now to reduce our own impacts on our planet's limited resources.
But how does a City with thousands of employees serving the needs of millions of citizens make that commitment to leave the world in better shape with a brighter future than it has ever known?
It is possible, actually, and at the City of Dallas we are working to do just that through the implementation of an Environmental Management System, or EMS.
An EMS is a dynamic tool designed to guide and improve our actions through continuous monitoring and adjustment. The principle activities of an EMS are the keys to its success. Through Plan-Do-Check-Act, we plan our goals, do what is necessary to achieve them, check our progress and act on the results to continually better the system. The end result is not only a better way of conducting business, but we will streamline our operations, improve our compliance with regulations, and increase efficiency through better practices.
Already, the City has taken steps to reduce its impact on the environment. To help reduce pollution from energy production, the Mayor and the City Council support our commitment to purchasing 40% of the energy the City uses in 2008 to come from renewable sources such as wind and solar energies. We are also already committed to reducing energy consumption by 5% each year at our City facilities in order to further reduce our footprint. In order to limit our vehicle exhaust emissions, a major component of the air quality issues in our region, the City has replaced 41% of its non-emergency vehicle fleet with alternative fuel or hybrid vehicles. Finally, to improve water quality, we created the 3-1-1 system and placed placards and signs around town to let people know just where that storm drain goes.
An EMS is not a static device, but rather a living and dynamic tool designed to allow for gradual changes to be made over long periods of time in order to achieve realistic and measurable goals.
Your City employees are making Dallas greener every day. And their efforts, leadership and innovative ideas are getting noticed. SustainLane, an on-line community and media company dedicated to promoting sustainability, gave Dallas rave reviews in its Sustainable Cities Ranking. Dallas ranked number one out of the Top 50 largest cities in the nation as a “Sustainability Leader” in the Knowledge Base category. This category is primarily based on a city’s plan for sustainability (EMS) and its departments dedicated to the management of environmental and sustainability functions. Other noteworthy items highlighted in the report include Dallas’ progressive land use plan, Forward Dallas!. These dedicated employees are thinking outside of the box and our planet is reaping the rewards.
What does all of this mean for the Citizens of Dallas?
Not only does the City's bottom-line improve, but as a result of the continuous monitoring and improvement of the EMS, our environmental impact will continue to shrink as smarter and better methods are utilized everyday. Better yet, our demand on the planet's precious resources is minimized and the future we leave our children is one of hope with an inherited environmental consciousness of which we can all be proud. In short, Dallas gets green.
And after all, isn't that the goal of a 'Green Dallas'?
Sincerely,
Mary K. Suhm
City Manager
