Role: Reiter a key contributor to each of the three initiatives
Pioneering DSM-fueled power, water and solid waste facilities
Details
Introduction
Seattle is a truly remarkable city that I had the good fortune to live and work in between 1980 and 2000. During this time, I was lucky enough to work in central roles in three “revolutions” in the City’s environmental infrastructure. In a nutshell they included:
- The City’s historic decision in the late 1970’s to buy 20 years of electricity conservation as an alterative to investing in a nuclear power plant to meet the City’s future growth. I was part of a small team that worked as a bridge between City Light’s traditional hydro resources and the new conservation resource, as well as co-leading ground-breaking research on energy use in commercial buildings (ELCAP project).
- The City’s bold decision to invest in what is now an internationally-renown recycling program, as a positive alternative to building an incinerator. There was plenty of skepticism at the beginning related to the viability of this proposition. I was a member of a very small team that made this happen.
- The City’s tough decision to choose more investments in the efficient use of water over building a new water-extraction scheme from the North Fork of the Tolt River or an equivalent. This decision, made in the context of serious differences of opinion between the City of Seattle and its suburban customers on how to proceed, ended up stimulating a “joint venture” between the City of Seattle and suburban cities in the development of bold new conservation options. During this process, I was in a senior management position at Seattle Water and later Seattle Public Utilities, I was central to the decision and its joint implementation with all our customers
Doing “more with less”… in fact, a lot more with a lot less”
25+ years later
Looking back with the benefit of 25+ years of years of hard data (see attached presentation), all three decisions yielded huge benefits to the citizens of Seattle, both economically & politically.
The DSM “powerplant” approach at Seattle City Light produced new electricity that on average had a cost far lower than any alternatives, anywhere in the US over the last 30 years. As a consequence, Seattle City Light rates, were on average in 2006 22% lower than the US average. Imagine what they were in 1990 d 200 . The GHG benefits the DSM powerplant is an equivalent to a 1 in 3 reduction in the City’s automobile emissions.
The City’s ambitious Solid Waste Recycling program, began in 198,5 had by 2015 successfully achieved a 60-65% recycling rate (the technical potential is about 78%), which means that approximately 80% of all potentially recyclable waste were returned into the economy for other uses, rather than being landfilled. All this was accomplished with benefits from the program exceeding costs since its start (see graph). There are also GHG significant benefits.
The benefits to the City and the residents of Central Puget Sound of not building another water supply source are incalculable. Putting aside the cost issues, the environmental impacts would by any account be super significant in the context of an endangered species listing for Chinook Salmon in Puget Sound. And then there’s the political side… stay tuned.
For the Documented Story
For the IWA Cities of the Future conference held in Sydney, Australia in February, 2015, I put together a 25+ year retrospective of these three revolutionary initiatives undertaken by Seattle between 1980 and 1995.
This presentation follows below. If you have questions about either the summary or the presentation, please contact me, Paul Reiter, at ReiterIWS.
After you see move through the presentation, you will see what Seattle (or most cities) could/can accomplish with great elected officials and a great group of City workers, in what was largely a staff-driven process in all three utilities in Seattle. Lots of lessons here!