America’s Top 5 Cleanest Cities What Is a Clean
City Ideally, it’s a place where the air quality is good,
the water is safe to drink, and factories aren’t dumping harmful chemical waste
into the environment. It’s also a place where you look up and down streets that
are free of garbage, and stroll through parks without wading through
litter. San Francisco Background: Once a
prominent shipping and manufacturing center, San Francisco now has booming
financial and business sectors. Since 1980, the city’s population has increased
by more than a third and its per capita income ranks among the nation’s highest.
Few places have a citizenry that is more environmentally conscious. Problems: Like nearly every traffic-clogged urban California area,
San Francisco has struggled with high emissions of greenhouse gases. Its
Hunter’s Point area is home to two polluting power plants and a highly
contaminated Naval Shipyard. In 2002, a national report found that while San
Francisco’s source water was safe, its tap water contained high levels of a
cancer-causing pollutant known as TTHM. Solutions: The
city’s Environment Department--something many municipalities lack--is seeking to
close the power plants at Hunter’s Point, and the federal EPA is overseeing a
massive cleanup of the shipyard there. Meanwhile, San Francisco is in the
forefront of efforts to promote the use of clean-air vehicles, with its public
transit leading the way. The city’s bus fleet includes over 700 electric-drive
vehicles, with plans to convert all the buses to this clean-air technology by
2020. As for concerns about its drinking water, San Francisco responded by
modifying its water treatment process, which brought the TTHM levels back down
into the safe zone. Finally, the local government is finding ways to push energy
savings. Columbus, Ohio Background: Ohio’s
capital, according to the latest census, was the only major city in the state to
grow in population. And Columbus’s geographical expansion continues. Its
economy is light on industry-less than 12% of its job force works in the
manufacturing sector. The big growth has been in financial and insurance
businesses, as well as retail. Meanwhile, per capita income here is slightly
below our 50-city average. Problems: Columbus’s steady
development has made it tough to keep the city’s watersheds clean. Also, an
aging storm water and sewage system has caused overflows and backups in recent
years. Litter has been a manageable problem, although Columbus has a recycling
rate of just 4%, which Mayor Michael Coleman calls "pitiful." And finally, the
late 1990s were marked by a sudden increase in ugly graffiti (涂鸦) on both public
and private property. Solutions: The mayor recently
unveiled a new initiative, "Get Green Columbus", which established an office of
Environmental Stewardship. Also underway is a program to update the sewage and
storm water systems. To spruce up unsightly areas, Columbus has committed
to removing graffiti within two days of its appearance. Through the city’s
Neighborhood Pride program, a handful of communities each year get a solid week
of concentrated cleanup, including tree trimming (修剪), bulk trash pickup and
litter removal. Buffalo, New York Background:
Long known as a Rust Belt City where steel was king, Buffalo was hit hard when
that industry went into steep decline more than two decades ago. As steel plants
shut down, Buffalo was forced to rebuild its economy from the ground up. But by
leveraging its assets, including a low cost of living and cheap, clean
hydroelectric energy generated by nearby Niagara Falls, Buffalo has begun luring
new, non-manufacturing businesses to the area. Problems:
A heavily polluted Buffalo River, acres of brown-fields, dwindling population,
shrinking tax base and fiscal problems meant drastic cuts in city
services-including cleaning. As a result, huge trash piles often accumulated in
front of homes, sometimes going uncollected for days on end. At the same time,
Buffalo was struggling with a sizable rat trouble. Solutions: Buffalo has made great strides in containing and
cleaning up brown fields and contaminated sites. Meanwhile, plans are underway
to turn part of the former Bethlehem Steel site into a wind farm that will
generate clean power for businesses and residents. The state is also overseeing
a Buffalo River cleanup, already successful enough to draw boaters and fishermen
back to the waterway. As for the trash problems, Buffalo undertook an
award-winning restructuring of its garbage collection system. A fleet of 13
high-tech street sweepers, deployed 24 hours a day during non-winter months, now
helps keep the streets clear of debris. And the city has dramatically curbed the
rat problem by distributing large, securely covered garbage bins to every
residence in the city. San Jose, California Background: This area’s booming high-tech business during the 1980s
and 1990s earned it the name Silicon Valley. Numerous semiconductor and
computer chip manufacturers brought in huge numbers of highly educated workers,
driving up house values and living costs. Then the dot-com bust hit, and San
Jose suddenly lost 200,000 jobs. Now the city is seeking to reinvent itself as a
center for innovation and research in diverse fields. Problems: In the early 1980s, a leaking underground storage tank
was found to be polluting the drinking water of 65,000 people near a
semiconductor plant. Besides the high-tech contamination, the Valley’s rapid
growth resulted in extensive sprawl, which means traffic and air
pollution. Solutions: The widespread pollution gave rise
to a strong grass-roots environmental movement that pressured industry to clean
up its mess. Industry responded by going the extra mile, setting higher
standards for itself than required. The EPA, meanwhile, is overseeing the
containment and cleanup of the Superfund sites. Because of the groundwater
pollution, the Santa Clara Valley Water District became a national leader in
testing and protecting drinking water. Portland, Oregon Background: Portland, long an important port and shipbuilding
center, now also has a burgeoning high-tech sector, and a robust manufacturing
base in paper, metal products and sportswear. Nonetheless, the per capita income
is below the average for the 50 cities in our analysis. Problems: The sewer system is ancient and poorly designed, combining
storm water runoff with sewage in the same piping system. Industries in
Multnomah County, Portland’s home, continue to spew an estimated 1.85 million
pounds of toxics into the air, water and land. Solutions:
Portland belongs to the country’s only elected regional government, which means
the city coordinates its planning and growth decisions with its neighbors. This
arrangement has allowed Portland to make far-ranging decisions, such as the
establishment of a growth boundary around its urban center. Land inside this
invisible circle is fair game for development; outside the circle there’s only
open space and farmland. The result is not only a well-preserved agricultural
region just outside the city, but also a vibrant, livable urban area where
public transportation rules. San Jose is now trying to reestablish itself as a centre for ______ in various fields.