Becker’s quiet goal: Making Salt Lake City the greenest city

Salt Lake Tribune   
July 30th, 2010

By Derek P. Jensen

The way Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker sees it, Mormon pioneers had it right.

Motivated by a healthy distrust of the outside world and packing little more than pluck, they settled the Salt Lake Valley with an eye toward self-sufficiency.

That meant taming the desert by growing food, conserving water, centralizing services and living wisely off the land.

Now, 160 years later, Becker, an outdoorsy Easterner drawn to Utah’s physical grandeur, wants to resurrect that thinking and cement sustainability as Salt Lake City’s watchword.

“In a way, we’re going back to our past,” says the first-term mayor, who has labored quietly for two years on an ambitious set of environmental changes designed to make Utah’s capital the nation’s most sustainable community.

But what is sustainability, really, beyond a buzzword for planners? Think solar panels, community gardens, mother-in-law apartments, narrower streets, less lighting, landscaping laws, bike lanes, permeable concrete and penalties for over-watering.

The proposed green overhaul has “unanimous” City Council consent, Becker boasts, and should be on the books by year’s end.

“I had no idea how systematic and how pervasive it was,” marvels Pam Perlich, senior research economist for the Bureau of Economic and Business Research at the University of Utah. “I’m really impressed.”

The changes, Perlich says, could forever alter future lifestyles of Salt Lake City residents.

Overall, City Hall is pondering 30 to 40 policy updates. Much of it removes “silly” restrictions and cleans up confusing codes. But the ultimate goal for Becker, an environmental lawyer and former planner, is to create incentives to grow more local food, generate less waste and drive less. In turn, the city could cleanse the air and contract its carbon footprint.

“The feedback we’re getting nationally is that no other city has looked at it from such a comprehensive broad brush as we are,” says Vicki Bennett, Becker’s director of sustainability. “It’s pretty exciting.”

Story continues at the Salt Lake Tribune

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