Page 8 RAIN February/March 1983 SELF-RELIANT CITIES Ifyou were vacationing over the last decade and want to understand what has so radically transformed this country, Self-Reliant Cities will catch you up to the present. Ifyou were around, and especially ifyou were involved in energy politics, Self-Reliant Cities may be like reviewing a family snapshot album: it's all there — the trials and tribulations of America's response to the new world oflimited energy resources. The book is jammed-full ofexamples ofcommunity responses to the energy crisis brought to the foreground in 1973 with the Arab oil embargo. There are the zvell-known responses: the City of Davis, California; landmark decisions such as the Polemina, California limit to growth policy; the countless city energy studies and plans; the alternative energy booms and boondoggles; the wheeling and dealing of corporations, governments and grassroots groups attempting to lay down new ground rules for the post-Arab Oil embargo world. But Self Reliant Cities is more than snapshots from the last decade’s energy lessons. The book is also a good primer on the changing role of the city in our society. In several concise chapters, the book covers the history ofcities in America, from Thomas Jefferson's attitude that cities should be destroyed as breeders of immorality, through the succession ofcompetitions betiveen cities, states, federal government, and private and municipal corporations, all bidding for shares of financial and natural resources. Self-Reliant Cities could play an important role by giving all of us a common knowledge base from which to make sensible decisions for development ofcities in the future. Morris has much to say about ivhat that shape might and/or should be. But that hardly seems the point. What he has done has brought us up to the present, shown us the forces that have brought us here, documented the realities of the present (talk about lots of statisticsl), and presented the trade-offs now before us. Solar energy isn't necessarily good by itself, nor is any other specific technology. It just all depends. We might use wood to heat our homes and lose by polluting the air. There are no simple answers in this book, but perhaps a guiding light: in order to exist, our cities must become more efficient in using energy and other natural resources. • S/ ^ ^One company. Calorific Recovery Anaerobic Process (its acronym, appropriately, is CRAP), is turning manure from a hundred thousand head of cattle of feedlots in Guymon, Oklahoma, population eight thousand, into methane. The methane is sold to People's Gas Company, a Chicago gas utility. In the ever-changing world of energy, Chicago's homes are now in part heated from the manure of Oklahoma's cows. J J ^ ^In 1977 the Burlington (Vermont) Electric Department converted one coal-fired unit to wood. The 10 megawatt facility generates electricity for two cents a kilowatt hour, much cheaper than nuclear power and one-third less expensive than burning coal. Burlington's voters overwhelmingly approved an $80 million bond issue to take the next step and build a 50-megawatt wood-fired plant . . . However the plant will need half a million tons of wood a year, the equivalent of a forest area the size of a Burlington itself, so not all the wood can be acquired in the immediate vicinity. The neighboring town of Winooski worried about the substantial number of vans, each carrying a payload of 22 tons, traveling down its main street. Winooski City attorney William Wargo argued before the Public Service Board against approving Burlington's application for a permit to truck its wood along Winooski's streets. "Even an ideal transportation schedule would present an [unbearable] burden," he noted, "not only on traffic congestion but open road conditions, on safety, on air quality and on the noise level as well. 9 9 • ^ ^In July 1980 Charles Olmstead and Jeanine Lanier, botanists at the University of Northern Colorado, were granted a variance to build a greenhouse onto their house despite the vigorous objections of Shalto and Alma Davis, neighbors to the south. The Davises objected that the greenhouse would create glare and that melting snow would slide from the greenhouse roof and ice up their driveway. The Davises appealed the variance, but the council not only upheld the board's decision, it removed all the conditions of the variance. The greenhouse was built, and the Davises claimed their original objection had in fact been well founded. They claimed the glare harmed Mrs. Davis's eyesight, killed or harmed houseplants, and even peeled the paint on the house. Omstead offered to buy reflective window shading material for the Davises, but they refused. Instead they built a six-foot fence on their lot line. It partially shades the greenhouse, and they are seeking a variance to erect a covered carport. This would shade a much larger portion of the greenhouse. It was Olmstead's turn to object. As this book went to press, he was threatening to sue the Davises for the amount of fossil fuels he would have to purchase as a result of decreased heat from the greenhouse. 9 9
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