Green sewers, or just a green bandwagon?

By Mark Forsythe The Kansas City Post It seems every politician is jumping on the green bandwagon these days. And why not? Who wants to be on record as being against helping the environment? But in their fervor to be on the side of righteousness, some politicos fail to educate themselves on what green solutions really are. Last month eight members of the City Council drafted and signed a letter to the City Manager calling for $500 million worth of green solutions to be included in the upcoming EPA mandated combined sewer remediation plan. The eight self-anointed environmental stewards complain that their consciences cannot withstand a sewer plan that only contains $30 million in green solutions. With an EPA deadline looming in July, it seems foolish to come in at the last minute with grandiose suggestions of environmentally friendly sewage treatment techniques. The time for that was months before the final project plans began taking shape. Massive civil engineering projects cannot be changed at the last minute like the wall color in your new kitchen. Where were councilmembers Ed Ford, Cindy Circo, Terry Riley, Beth Gottstein, Melba Curls, John Sharp, Cathy Jolly and Sharon Sanders Brooks months ago during the planning process? Certainly not studying sewage treatment techniques. Now in the eleventh hour they draft a letter asking for a half billion dollars for solutions of which they have no concept, only that they're green and that sounds really neat! At this stage the only goal should be satisfying the EPA so we don't end up in federal court. We have enough legal issues at City Hall right now. As far as "green solutions" I'm all for them. But isn't preventing raw sewage from flowing into open waters by definition "green?" It would seem we can always go back and install another rain garden or two after we stop dumping raw sewage. I'm certainly not against passive treatment techniques, but I'm more against flushing our toilets directly into Brush Creek. I also understand that even the current plan doesn't completely eliminate sewage overflow. If any extra money needs to be spent, it needs to be spent on a more sanitary plan, not a more trendy one. There are plenty of environmental issues for the newly minted environmentalists on the city council to pursue. Certainly most of them don't have a July deadline. What about clean air? We need look no further than our own back yards to find a major environmental hazard. According to the EPA, using a gas-powered lawnmowers for an hour generates as many volatile organic compounds—dangerous airborne pollutants as driving a typical car for 350 miles. With 54 million Americans mowing their lawns on a weekly basis, gas lawnmower emissions account for as much as five percent of the nation’s total air pollution. Beyond that, homeowners spill some 17 million gallons of gasoline every year just refueling their lawnmowers. Factor in gas-powered string trimmers and leaf blowers and those disturbing numbers continue to climb. Why not promote green initiatives for lawn care in Kansas City? And I don't mean drafting a letter to the City Manager asking him to "fix the air." Come up with the plan yourselves. You weren't elected to write position papers. I met most of you on the campaign trail and I don't recall "I'll write a memo" being an answer any of you gave at the campaign forums.