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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. In 2002, it is reported the tap water in San Francisco was safe, while the source water contained high levels of a cancer-causing pollutant.