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Community Corner

Time for Redondo Beach to Step It Up Environmentally

It is time to bring back the Green Task Force while Redondo falls behind Hermosa and Manhattan over green issues.

The address on my California drivers license has said Redondo Beach since 1993 and when I travel anywhere in the world it's the city of Redondo Beach they see listed as my hometown on my passport. I've been proud to be identified as a Redondo resident for over 17 years now and I readily sing the praises of Redondo Beach and the people who live and work here.

But one thing I never talk or write about is how sustainable a city Redondo Beach is, or how much the city and its citizens care about the environment. I haven't written about those things because they're simply not part of Redondo's consciousness. 

My column last week on the environmental shortcomings of the Riviera Village Summer Festival garnered zero comments online and no feedback to me personally. I wasn't surprised, since green issues seem to be on the back burner in Redondo Beach, allowed to simmer and heat while we ignore them and pay attention elsewhere.

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In the last 12 months I've worked extensively with Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach on environmental initiatives driven by their understanding of the facts and the acceptance of their fiduciary responsibility to manage the risks their cities and citizens face from dangerously high levels of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere

But Redondo Beach appears far more singularly obsessed with the local soap opera — harbor development — and apparently doesn't notice that global warming is currently melting everything that's frozen on our planet. Likewise they seem oblivious to the impacts of climate change headed the city's way, impacts currently coming much faster than anyone thought they would just a few years ago.

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Redondo Beach was on the right track back in 2007 when it's Green Task Force was formed and spent a year meeting and producing the City of Redondo Beach Sustainable City Plan. The Redondo Green Task Force had an impressive roster of members with the background and skills necessary to do the job. Their report was a great first step for the city's environmental future, and it still is as it sits on the shelf, gathering the dust of time and being virtually ignored by everyone in and out of government.

That fate was preordained when the city gave the GTF only a single year to operate and issue its report with no plan or desire to do anything more after that.  It's hard to take Redondo Beach seriously as an environmental steward of its city or the people who live in it when they budget only a ridiculous 12 months to focus on sustainability, pollution and climate issues. 

Today there is no Redondo Beach Green Task Force, there is no work being done by the city on the biggest environmental threats in our history and there is no plan for the city to follow its own plan on making Redondo safer, healthier or more sustainable. 

A big part of the reason Redondo Beach is in this situation and has fallen so far behind Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach is because there is no environmental champion in Redondo Beach. 

Mayor Gin has been supportive when asked for help with the 350 Climate Action Day and the South Bay Bicycle Coalition, and Councilman Diels has been a strong advocate on bicycle and transportation issues, but neither acts as the torch carrier or city's leader on green issues. 

The one guy in city government you'd expect to take on the green evangelist role is Councilman Bill Brand who formerly headed up the South Bay Parkland Conservancy. But Brand is not a green champion. He's a one note Councilman and that note is "Building A Better Redondo" (BBR) and their take on zoning and development.  

With no environmental leader or champion in Redondo Beach the city has no climate action plan. It has no legitimate plan to meet its Cool Cities pledge or to comply with the emission mandates of AB 32. Not only is no one in Redondo talking about a carbon neutral plan for the city, there's not even an annual environmental fair to outreach to residents and businesses about green issues.

It's already past time for Redondo Beach to stop patting itself on the back for the great environmental job the city thinks it has done and to create a new green task force. Starting today Redondo should take its 2008 sustainability report off the shelf and update it and then empower its citizens and government to get to work today on cutting the city's greenhouse gas emissions, reduce its use of electricity, water and fossil fuels and cut the amount of waste the city generates. 

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