A Greener San Diego: 2024 Edition

In October, Wallethub again named San Diego the Greenest City in America, for the second year in a row. This accolade got us at Bluedot thinking about recent progress in America’s Finest City. We first did this retrospective last year, so what’s happened since?

Climate and Energy

• No sooner had the ink dried on the City of San Diego’s Climate Action Plan in August 2022, when two environmental nonprofits — Climate Action Campaign and the Coastal Environmental Rights Foundation —  sued the city for not being tough enough with setting interim targets. The city settled the suits in February 2024, and agreed to better monitoring of progress. The goal is net-zero by 2035. 
• It’s a good thing San Diego is monitoring more, because data the city released quietly in March 2023 showed the city’s impressive climate progress on electricity emissions being overwhelmed by increased emissions from cars in 2021. While that may be a blip due to the rebound from COVID in 2020, the city is in a pitched long-term battle to create a city that’s more dense, walk- and bike-able, and less reliant on cars.
• Playing along, the San Diego Unified School District in April 2023 pledged to become “net-zero” by 2035 by purchasing renewable energy and phasing out all gas use in buildings. The plan doesn’t account for the 60% of the district's emissions that come from tens of thousands of students getting driven to school each day. But the school district did get a grant to purchase 30 electric school buses for the dwindling number of students who do ride.

Air

• In April 2024, a new U.S. EPA standard for fine soot pollution (PM2.5) will take effect. Only about a dozen counties didn’t meet the old benchmark, but about 100 more will not meet the new standard, including San Diego. PM2.5 is a particularly nasty form of pollution, responsible for a range of adverse health effects, so lowering the standard will save billions in health costs nationally. The San Diego County Air Pollution Control District says most of our PM2.5 pollution comes from homes, not factories or cars, particularly cooking, which is why reducing natural gas usage is key.

Water

• With another rainy winter, San Diego and most of the rest of California stayed out of drought, according to the federal Drought Monitor. The surfeit of rain has even caused budget problems for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, as water sales fell.
• Those extremely heavy rains in January flooded some Southeast San Diego neighborhoods, pointing to the city’s poor maintenance of channelized creeks, like Chollas Creek. Those channels, clogged with mud, marshes, and even mature trees, also serve as makeshift riparian habitat, making clearing them tricky.
• The Sweetwater Reservoir is planning for a 9-acre raft of floating solar panels that would save the Sweetwater Authority about $500,000 annually in energy costs. Floating solar panels have already been built on wastewater treatment ponds up north in Healdsburg.
• Untreated sewage from Tijuana continues to pollute the Tijuana River more than ever. Congress just approved over $100 million to repair the busted South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant. Last year, the International Boundary Waters Commission announced a $474-million plan to expand the plant and reduce flows by 50 percent by 2027. South Bay beaches continue to be frequently closed when bacteria counts spike after rains.

Waste

• San Diego finally finished doling out over 200,000 green bins all over the city, for composting food and yard waste (“If It Grows, It Goes!”). In September 2023, when the program was pretty much up to speed, the city collected 5,500 more tons of organic waste in the green bins than it had collected in September 2022, and 4,400 tons less of regular trash, meaning the program is working. 
• San Diegans passed Measure B in November 2022, and in February 2024 the City Council approved a $4.5 million trash study to help the city revamp its trash collection, add new services, and figure out a fee structure. Here’s hoping they come up with a system where the more garbage you throw out, the more you pay.
• In 2014, California “banned” plastic bags, so retailers sold sturdier plastic bags to consumers for a dime apiece. The result: more plastic bag trash (by weight) than before the “ban.” State lawmakers are trying again with a toothier law that would ban ALL plastic bags. Reminder: plastic recycling doesn’t work; use reusable bags, or paper.

Planning

• Progress on making the San Diego more livable is happening, though. Data from the private company Streetlight shows that cycling surged 71% from 2019 to 2022. The City of San Diego is also looking at more “parking districts” where people would pay for parking to fund improved transportation infrastructure (specifically the congested Convoy Street area and San Ysidro). And the “Midway Rising” project, which would revamp the dilapidated Sports Arena area, was cleared by a judge.
• After years of wrangling, Barrio Logan has a new community plan with better environmental protections. The LatinX community has suffered for decades from textbook examples of environmental racism.
• Like many coastal cities, Oceanside is dealing with beach loss, and as the sand washes away, so does the town’s identity. To save its beaches O’side started RE:BEACH, an international competition to see what ideas were out there. In January 2024, the City Council unanimously approved International Coastal Management’s (ICM) “Living Speed Bumps” concept. The idea is to construct two small park-like “headlands” to stabilize sand on the beach, and to build an offshore artificial reef aimed at slowing nearshore erosive forces. The concept now starts engineering and permitting, and construction could begin in a couple years. (ICM is an Australian company with extensive experience in protecting beaches down under.)
• In January of 2024, 1,300 pristine species-rich acres in Proctor Valley were protected by a $60 million purchase. Lawsuits had stalled a plan for 1,100 suburban houses, so the owner sold. Part of the funds were from the Department of Homeland Security, which was ordered to pay $25 million to settle environmental destruction caused by the border wall.
• The Pala Band of Mission Indians put 721 acres into trust with the U.S. government, preserving it for future generations. And San Marcos has a “new” 10-acre lake park, too.

Transportation

• After the road-charge debacle in their ambitious 2021 Regional Plan, the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) is out with a new “initial concept” for their 2025 plan. The plan includes a broad range of transportation improvements, including a lot of highway expansion projects, primarily “managed lanes” that can be tolled, used as HOV, and carry buses. SANDAG, under an interim CEO, is under pressure to reduce emissions from transportation, but without the “road user charge,” it’ll be tough to deter driving.
• SANDAG continued to win grants and dole out funds for bikeways, pedestrian infrastructure, public transit, and environmental projects. One project with MTS and NCTD, the Youth Opportunity Pass, offers free transit for kids 18 and under, and racked up over 11 million rides for 50,000 youths. The program has been extended for two more years.
• In September 2022, the state mandated that all new cars sold by 2035 must be zero-emission vehicles, and in 2023, EV sales boomed in California.
• The Port of San Diego even has an electric tugboat!

It’s been another year of grand plans, modest achievements, and stubborn realities. But we’re still proud to live in a San Diego that’s envisioning a greener future.