Logan among the first in Utah to discuss sustainability

Across the country in hundreds of communities, a discussion is taking root about carbon footprints, sustainability and energy efficiency. Rather than leave the policy making on these issues up to the federal government, city councils and groups of citizens are taking it on themselves to start the debate. Even in Utah, which many who doubt global warming call home, the discussion is starting – of all places – in Logan. For the past year, the city council has held monthly workshops highlighting environmental issues like pollution and sustainable energy. City council member Laraine Swenson said the workshops were originally thought of because members of Logan High School’s Leaf Club brought a copy of the U.S. Conference of Mayor’s Climate Protection Agreement and asked the council to approve Logan’s addition to the 691 cities and towns – including Moab, Park City and Salt Lake City – that have signed on. Swenson said the council didn’t sign the agreement because Logan is not currently addressing the issues the agreement, a Kyoto Protocol spin-off, is aimed at. Cities participating in the agreement commit to try to meet or beat the Kyoto Protocol targets in their own communities, urge the state and federal governments to take steps to reduce greenhouse emissions and urge the U.S. Congress to pass legislation establishing a national emission trading system. “We have really tried to educate ourselves on this,” Swenson said. After realizing Logan could not be part of the agreement because it was not in compliance with its requirements, Swenson began organizing these workshops as a way to understand the issues and what could be done about them. Council member Steven Taylor said, “Laraine has been the real push behind all this,” getting the council members to educate themselves about the issues. The effect of the workshops could soon be seen. In March, the Logan City Council voted 3-2 against buying energy from a coal-powered plant to be built in Delta. Taylor said the workshops probably influenced the outcome of that vote. “I will be forever grateful Laraine took the initiative to arrange those workshops,” he said. “I don’t think the vote would have turned out the same way if those workshops hadn’t been held.” The decision has become a hot topic in the upcoming elections. All three council members who voted against buying power from the coal plant – Swenson, Taylor and Joe Needham – are up for re-election. Though Logan mayor Randy Watts told The Herald Journal he thought the vote could have been politically driven because it was in an election year, Swenson said the opposite was true. “If anything, it made the election year more difficult for us,” she said. “We really stuck our necks out.” Taylor said it was a difficult decision but not one he regrets. “It was an emotional vote,” he said. Swenson said though many who attended the March meeting in which the vote was held were against the plant – after the vote the room was filled with applause – her decision had been made before the meeting. “If we had bought coal, we would not have had to buy energy for 30 more years, and we would have been tied,” she said. Not only that, but the price of coal is projected to increase significantly in the next few years, Needham said, and Intermountain Power Plant 3 did not have the option to sell unused power back to the plant that IPP 1 and 2 did. “It had a fixed rate increase each year,” Needham said. “It looked cheap and nice right now, but we could see it would get more expensive.” That’s not to say coal power will never be an option for Logan’s energy portfolio. Needham said he can’t tell what’s in the future, but he did have one idea. “Here’s my outlandish thought,” he said. “I got my first cell phone in 1997. Now I would guess 70 to 90 percent of people have cell phones.” As a result of the unforeseen success of cell phones, land lines became less necessary, and phone companies began struggling, he said. “I think we will see the power companies toppled,” he said. “Just like we’re seeing TV changing (with innovations like TiVo), we will see the power industry change. “Right now solar is expensive, but wait until it’s more affordable. We could see each house in Logan with a solar panel. It could even happen in 15 years.” Two researchers at USU, Ed Stafford and Cathy Hartman, focus on renewable energy and especially wind power. They said rejecting the coal power has perks which are not just environmental. “Purely from an economic standpoint, knowing coal would go up, that was a good decision,” Stafford said. Stafford said some alternative forms of energy, like wind, are price stable, while others, like natural gas, are more unpredictable. Hartman said there is often talk of a “clean tech revolution.” More and more appliances are being designed to be more energy efficient, and these are more affordable than they have been in the past. “I think we’re at a crossroads as far as energy is concerned,” Hartman said. “It looks like we’re going to need a change in lifestyle – retrofitting homes, insulating water heaters … There’s just going to have to be a combination of things. No one source will be enough.” Hartman said especially since Utah is estimated to see a more dramatic climate change than the rest of the planet, according to a Salt Lake Tribune article on Oct. 11, Utahans should be particularly concerned with their carbon footprint. This means being more energy efficient and eco-conscious. Another concern about the IPP 3 decision is that Logan now has a hole in its energy portfolio. It was projected that Logan’s current base load will no longer be enough to meet its growing needs, possibly as soon as 2012. IPP 3 would have provided 20 megawatts of energy for the cost of about $42 million. Logan currently buys power from IPP 1 and 2, with the option to sell unused energy back to the plants. But those who voted against buying into the plant said there are several years until Logan reaches an energy crisis, and it will be enough time to find a solution. Unlike most Utah communities, Logan is not under contract with Rocky Mountain Power, so it has the flexibility to seek out other sources, Swenson said. Other sources include a geothermal plant to be built in Tremonton, wind power from Wyoming and Spanish Fork, a natural gas plant in southern Utah, or solar energy individual citizens could harness for their homes, thus lightening the load during peak hours when energy is the most expensive. Considering Utah’s overwhelmingly conservative citizenship, a city council giving much attention to these issues is pretty rare, Swenson said. “As far as cities that own their own facilities, others are not as progressive (as Logan),” she said. “Logan is probably the most progressive town in Utah after St. George.” Despite the outcry that cropped up in the days following the vote, including accusation of watching Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” being tree huggers, and being fiscally irresponsible, Taylor, Swenson and Needham remain unmoved in their decision. “It’s a matter of will we leave Logan in a good situation 30, 40 years from now,” Taylor said. “Will people be able to afford houses here and breathe the air?” “We need to go in a different direction,” Needham said. “Basically everyone’s calling for it in our society. We’re going in the right direction.”-elizabeth.lawyer@aggiemail.usu.edu