I'm shocked....SD is one of the least polluting big cities.. (San Diego: real estate, mattresses)

[scongress1234]

I'm really blown away by this.....I would have expected it to be maybe in the middle, but it was near the very top of the 330 metros in clean air
and green living...So, does the air just blow over the pacific or something?
I'm very impressed.....SD already is known as such a great, ambient metro. Now we see that it is one of the cleanest as well......

How does SD do it? I mean, it is not exactly a small metro(3 mill), yet it pollutes so little. SD is doing something very much right. In that case, you have to de facto rank it at the very top of the healthiest cities in the USA. Not only is the scenery breathtaking, with miles of crescent beaches
canyons, mountains, etc., very perfect weather, and an outdoors fitness ethic to kill for, but it is near the very top per green, low-polluting cities....

Congratulations San Diego!

And shame on my Austin for being near the bottom of the large cities.....15 years of unremitting sprawl is not conducive to anything resembling
green, and they are so far behind their cover as a green city that it is beyond belief

[LoneStarJerry]

I'm not surprised, after all this is paradise.

It's great to see this though, it's a lovely city here and I'm glad that everyone really keeps it clean as well.

[scongress1234]

Originally Posted by j760

I'm not surprised, after all this is paradise.

It's great to see this though, it's a lovely city here and I'm glad that everyone really keeps it clean as well.

Now I'm starting to see where they get their near the top green ranking....

They have real estate "ecobrokers" in SD... Never heard of the concept, but they give you green advice on how to find a green home, sell one,
and so on.....

San Diego has green seminars of the yin-yang...here is just one of many:
San Diego Green 2008

And on and on....so many green events and seminars, not to mention awareness, in San Diego....here is another one:

San Diego EarthWorks home

Congrats, SD!

[LoneStarJerry]

I've never been to Austin, is pollution fairly noticeable out there?

[scongress1234]

Originally Posted by j760

I've never been to Austin, is pollution fairly noticeable out there?

yes.......and no.........they don't have much heavy industry, but they have an overload of carbon monoxide particulates floating around the entire metro at any time, loaded onto a small and tight little grid, 24/7. There is an abject lack of centralized rapid transit, and even the capitol metro buses don't make it far outside the central city. The entire metro is built and maintained by and for sprawl, and there seems to be no end to it in the near future.....there are also no biking lanes on any of the major or minor streets, and no comprehensive park system OR bike trails through the bulk of the city, other than a small little strip on lady bird lake......Austin was also ranked near the bottom for fitness, per the plethora of BBQ and high-caloric eateries, and a large consumption of beer at many places. In other words, the city is not what it appears, and is far closer to Dallas and Houston in most ways than a green, or truly healthy city...and yes, it is near the bottom in pollution per capita for large cities....even lower than San Antonio and Dallas, if it can be believed........

Hope that answers your question about the "Utopia" that is Austin!'




Again, San Diego doesn't make eating, drinking, and excreting a way of life, but, then again, they have beaches and mountains to hang out at and work off those calories.....In austin, all we can do is eat....

[leighland]

That seriously sounds wrong to me. How many times a month can we not go into the water, esp. in North County and South county, due to sewage spills? And what about the unhealthy air during Santa Anas? We had the argument before about the Highways having tons of trash, like freaking Mattresses, on them. Maybe people think green, but SD gets dirty ...

[Nick682]

It is wrong, I've done all the research EPA, American Lung Association. Try 16th in the top 25 worst air quality cities in the nation, I'd like to see a link for where she's getting the air quality information. Maybe it's from San Diego's tourist industry promotion board. The increasingly bad air quality is one of the major reasons I am moving, it was way way better 15-20 yrs ago, but with all the new people and sprawl, it gets worse every year, not to mention the fires, then it's terrible. Here's a copy paste of my post from about two threads up, in reply to the asthmatics thing, links included.

Let the numbers speak for themselves 16th in particulate pollution doesn't seem to green to me: Rankings - American Lung Association site (http://www.lungusa.org/site/pp.asp?c=dvLUK9O0E&b=50752 - broken link)

If you scroll down the page you'll notice we don't make any of the top twenty five cleanest lists. We do make the top 25 worst air quality on a few though.

Another site with data directly from the EPA on air quality, the red areas are the worst in the nation, "guess what color SD is"?
Pollution Locator: Smog and Particulates

Or what about this data from the EPA that ranks SD county among the worst for dirty air: Pollution Locator: Smog and Particulates: County Report

Isn't a big part of being green and not polluting, not polluting the air? Isn't the major push behind being green because of CO2 air pollution and global warming? Hmmm....scratching my head? What about on the days that it rains here and the beach runoff is so bad that you can't swim or go surfing without getting a bacterial infection? We may be leading the way towards green, but I think it's a little misleading to say that we are currently living green.

On the positive side, it is awesome to see that SD is trying to lead the way with green technologies and improvements. I have no doubt that SD has the capability to clean up the air and the city, and I think it's great that we are taking those steps, someone needs to lead the way. It's nice to see people caring about the environment.

[bmd51]

How about Groundwater pollution, Right near the football stadium is a petroleum groundwater contamination plume that is quite large.

[Nick682]

Yeah, there are lot's of things wrong that make us "not green", that groundwater pollution your talking about seeps into the bay and contributes to the already massive pollution levels there. It is highly recommended that no one eat any fish caught at mission bay because of the high levels of pollution there too. At my last visit to the Wild Animal Park, they said that SD county has the largest extinction rate for local species of any county in the nation. That doesn't seem like a green attribute to me? I grew up here, and I remember how it was twenty years ago.

There were many more animals, canyons fields, and even streams. Me and my dad would go for walks in the canyons, there were cool catuses and tarantula spiders, deer, racoons, owls, red tailed hawks everywhere, snakes (rosy boas, king snakes, diamond backs), lots of squirrel and chipmunk species, possums, scorpions. When it rained the puddles would fill up with toad tadpoles by the millions and I would catch them and take them home and raise them. The coastal wetlands were filled with all types of bird species, cranes, sandpipers, ducks and hundreds more. Now the freeway noise and pollution has driven many of them out of here, because the 5 freeway cuts right through many of the wetlands. I have seen so much land plowed over by developers and they maximize the space with cookie cutter mini-mansions. The lack of consideration for wildlife and planning has really bugged me, which is why I'm leaving here on the 15th and why so many native San Diegans already have left.

It seems like the developers just had a field day and went unchecked out here, especially in the last five years. Many other cities have a much more dense urban area, but San Diego has begun to resemble LA, the way that they have built so many low rise structures that sprawl over the land. Another reason I don't like that, is because it creates tons of surface streets and long driving distances meaning more driving and air pollution from cars. I think we could have condensed San Diego urban areas greatly, but that doesn't seem to be the trend in building out here. One of the reasons we have such bad fires is because we have mismanaged the land by not allowing controlled burns and natural fires to burn, so the brush has just built up. I love it when everyone complains on TV about their houses burning down as if they had no I idea it could happen when they moved onto the very edge of a canyon or wildlife area. I think San Diegan's have honestly cared very little about preserving the environment so far. I think they are more interested in luxuries and the economy, but I hope that can change. I have seen more SUV drivers out here than I care to count, and most of them are all alone driving to work or sitting in traffic.

Also, I used to go to the beaches and they were uncrowded with no trash, now I see trash every time I go. I usually pick it up, but it pisses me off to see people leave trash on the beach, don't they know that it gets swept out to sea and kills marine life? Many people I know out here don't even recycle. I love to go to "Pei Wei" restaurants but they give you a huge shopping bag that has a cardboard lining and tons of utensils with a plastic container and a separate bag with all sorts of trash. People don't seem to care at all they seem to like it as if it's a major luxury. When I go there I ask for the food container only, because it seems so wasteful, you can fill a small trash can with one meal from that place. They always look at me like I'm crazy because I don't want all the extras, but I tell them to save it, and save the money too.

I am glad that SD is trying to make a difference with green technologies and leading the way with awarding technologies towards green, maybe it's because they have too? If we don't, I can see this place becoming another LA. I think it's totally misleading to the public to say we are one of the greenest cities around. We may be making strides towards being green and I think that is awesome, but we don't even have a good mass transit system. I would love to see SD go green, so we can reverse our current trend, but to me it just seems ludicrous to say we are living green and sustainable right now.

[jksouthbay88]

That's because everyone here tries to be a damn "environmentalist".