The Board of Supervisors’ City Operations and Neighborhood Services Committee voted in favor of “greener” legislation yesterday when they recommended that a new Environmentally Preferably Purchasing (EPP) ordinance go before the full board for approval. Authored by Supervisor Sophie Maxwell, the ordinance repeals Chapter 2 of the Environment Code, which established an EPP pilot program, and enacts a new Chapter 2 in its stead.
According to the EPP ordinance, this new Chapter enables the city of San Francisco to exercise economic decision-making power involving its own funds, and to conduct business as a municipal corporation to ensure that those commodities and expenditures purchased with public money are done so in a manner consistent with its human health and environmental policies.
If passed, the ordinance eventually would change how our city invests its $600 million worth of annual purchases, and would be a model for other cities who want to do the same. “It will make it much easier for the rest of the country, and even rest of the world to do what we’re doing in San Francisco,” said Joan Reinhardt Reiss, a consultant for the Breast Cancer Fund.
This is not the first time San Francisco verges on setting legal environmental precedence. In 2003 the Board of Supervisors and the Mayor adopted the Precautionary Principle ordinance as Chapter 1 of the Environmental Code, making it the first city to implement the Principle into legislation. The Board declared that key to the precautionary approach is the assessment of available alternatives using the best available science. “An alternatives assessment examines a broad range of options in order to present the public with different effects of various options considering short-term versus long-term effects or costs, and evaluating and comparing adverse or potentially adverse effects of each option, noting options with fewer potential hazards.”
This process allows such fundamental questions as: “Is this potentially hazardous activity necessary?” “What less hazardous options are available?” and “How little damage is possible?” to be asked.
A number of other ordinances including the Healthy Air, Integrated Pest Management, and Resource Conservation ordinances fused to create the Precautionary Principal ordinance, the first line of which sates “Every San Franciscan has an equal right to a healthy and safe environment. This requires that our air, water, earth, and food be of a sufficiently high standard that individuals and communities can live healthy, fulfilling, and dignified lives.”
The passage of the Precautionary Principle as legislation was a major victory for members of the Bay Area Working Group on the Precautionary Principle. Now a coalition of individuals and organizations, including the Center for Environmental Health, Commonweal, Clean Water Action, the Breast Cancer Fund, and Urban Habitat, in 1999 it was but a handful of environmental health and justice advocates bound through their desire to implement the Precautionary Principle in the Bay Area. “We were just trying to figure out what to do at that point,” said Reinhardt Reiss.
In May of that year the Board of Supervisors adopted an ordinance establishing the framework for the EPP pilot study to “evaluate current and future chemical products used by the city’s janitorial, building, and fleet maintenance operations, and to incorporate impacts on human health into the city’s chemical product purchasing practices.” The study found that: 1) City operations use targeted hazardous products 2) Criteria can be established to define a chemical product’s preferability 3) Preferable products are available 4) Preferable products meet most city needs 5) Purchase cost was generally comparable to traditional products 6) Somewhat more product and time is required with some products.
These results are the basis for the new EPP ordinance, which would require the Commission on the Environment to review all commodities regularly purchased by city departments and to periodically identify products that should be targeted and substituted. The Department of the Environment then would be required to evaluate substituted products and establish a list of “approved alternatives” for each targeted product.
From that point onward, city departments would be allowed to buy from only that list. The ordinance would allow for department and public participation in each step of the listing process, and waivers would be granted when none of the approved alternatives met a department’s performance specifications or when approved alternatives were cost prohibitive.
According to a report by the Director of the San Francisco Department of the Environment, Jared Blumenfeld, “Environmentally preferable purchasing programs are increasingly being implemented by government agencies, institutions, and businesses across the United Sates and even internationally because they offer tangible benefits,” including lowered energy use and maintenance costs, water conservation, and decreased waste disposal. Clean Water Action’s Lena Brook addressed this last point. The EPP ordinance would take into consideration all costs, including economical, health and environmental, she said, and would ensure protection not only of public health, but the health of one of our most precious natural resources – San Francisco Bay. She added that each year, 80 percent of our waste water goes into the Bay.
She also reminded Supervisors that while there currently are 85,000 synthetic chemicals registered for use on the market, including preservatives, retardants, and pesticides, few of them have been tested. This is in part because “Historically, environmentally harmful activates have been stopped after they have manifested extreme environmental degradation or exposed people to harm,” declared the Board in their findings of the 2003 Precautionary Principle ordinance. They cited DDT, lead, and asbestos as examples of regulatory action taking place after disaster had struck.
In contrast, this new EPP ordinance would reflect a common sense ideal that “preventing problems is better than suffering consequences,” said Dr. Bhatia, Director of Environmental Health with the Department of Public Health. Breast cancer is one such consequence. According to Jeanne Rizzo, Executive Director of the Breast Cancer Fund, 1 in 7 women are at risk of having the disease, and 50 percent of breast cancer cases are associated with environmental toxins. The new ordinance would focus on eliminating and preventing such toxins, she said.
Eventually we want to expand the ordinance to include every commodity the city purchases, said Sarah He, legislative aid to Maxwell. For now, “We’re happy to kick off World Environment Day on such a positive note,” she said.
