Photo by Charlie Breitrose Watertown City Hall
Watertown will explore creating an ordinance requiring buildings to reduce their carbon emissions and will base it on similar ordinances adopted by other communities in Massachusetts.
Work has already begun on drafting a Building Emissions Reduction and Disclosure Ordinance, or BERDO, with a proposed ordinance having been submitted by the Watertown Environment and Energy Efficiency Committee (WE3C).
City Manager George Proakis told the City Council on Tuesday that creating a BERDO would “implement a key part of the City’s Climate Plan.” The Resilient Watertown Climate & Energy Plan was passed in 2022.
“I have often said (the plan) has many ambitious but achievable goals to address our climate crisis and establish a process in our climate resiliency and climate adaptation, and we’ve worked very hard to do that in a number of different ways,” Proakis said. “What that plan did is also provide strategies to reduce carbon emissions for buildings and called out the necessity for building performance standard ordinance.”
The proposed ordinance, which is aimed at 150 of the largest buildings in the City, calls for the largest non-residential properties in Watertown to reach net-zero energy status by 2035, and all of the buildings reach that status by 2050, Proakis said.
He noted that Watertown has been a leader in other areas of energy efficiency and reduction of carbon emissions including being the first community in New England to pass a solar requirement ordinance, the first municipality in Massachusetts to adopt the Specialized Stretch Energy Code, and is currently constructing one of the first LEED Platinum, Net Zero Energy high schools in the United States.
“We are not first on BERDO, but I do think while not being one of the first in BERDO, we have learned a lot from the few communities in Massachusetts that have done it ahead of us. We have been able to select from their best practices and strategy to put together this ordinance,” he said. “Why do this? Environmental justice communities in Watertown are disproportionately impacted by climate change, through increased heat island exposure, rising sea levels, and stormwater flooding. Buildings contribute approximately 50 percent of the greenhouse emissions in the City of Watertown. We have to work on both the buildings and the vehicles and transportations emissions together.”
BERDO aims at the small number of large buildings that “contribute a disproportionate amount of those emissions,” Proakis said. Of the approximately 150 buildings covered by the ordinance, 22 are owned by the City.
“While there are circumstances where I have said we should regulate government differently than we regulate other people, here we are stepping up and committing to do this through our capital budget planning process, along with all of the private entities that are doing it as well,” Proakis said.
The draft was worked on by WE3C members Brian Hebeisen, Ernesta Krazkiewicz, Pat Rathbone, and Jocelyn Tager, with the assistance of City staff, Assistant Director for Energy Management Silas Fyler and Sustainability Program Manager Laurel Schwab. The group met twice a week for at least 10 months, Tager said, to create the proposed BERDO. They examined every BERDOs adopted by other communities in Massachusetts, line by line, she added. Proakis noted that Boston was the first, and Cambridge, Newton and Lexington have also adopted ordinances.
The WE3C members also attended BERDO meetings in Cambridge and Boston. Rathbone said that the BERDO review board is the key part of implementing the ordinance.
“I think that one of the most important parts of this document is the review board,” she said. “Look carefully at it. Make sure that the review board is defined in such a way that really knowledgeable people get put on it. I have been going to Boston City’s review board meetings and this is crucial. This is where the rubber hits the road. This is where BERDO is interpreted in our City.”
Proakis said the BERDO Review Board also allows for a waiver process for buildings that have challenges making reductions. He anticipates it will be harder to meet the standard in some of the 22 City-owned buildings impacted by the ordinance.
“I can look around and definitely say that running a skating rink is very challenging related to BERDO. I really, really do hope we can do everything here. It is the type of building that is truly unique. Running an office building related to BERDO is really straightforward. We should be able to make sure to make that happen. We are going to have to push and pull ourselves, along with everyone else, to figure out how to do that. Having that appeal committee, the BERDO Review Committee, is a key part of making that work.”
There will likely need to be a new staff position created to oversee the implementation of the BERDO, Prokis said.
“Silas and Laurel have done an amazing amount of work, and have done a great job working with community members to do this. Volunteers did a lot of work pulling this ordinance together,” he said. “Volunteers can’t run this. Silas and Laurel are really, really busy. Should we see fit to pass this, I don’t think there is another way to do this without a staffing impact.”
Proakis submitted the WE3C proposal to the City Council to be discussed by a City Council Committee. With goals to be achieved by 2035 and 2050, he said that getting started sooner rather than later is important. The reductions will be based on a baseline established in the first year, which he hopes will be 2025 or 2026.
“I would not want these dates have to slide, and in order to do that I am asking of the Council to commit to work with us in the near future to get this into committee meetings and get discussions going so we don’t have to slide the dates because the 2035 and 2050 dates are very embedded in our goal setting,” he said, adding, “And I think it is only fair to the building owners that we give them as much time as possible be able to start measurement, be in compliance, and work with us to do this.”
The Council voted unanimously to send the proposed BERDO to the Committee on Rules and Ordinances for discussion. See the BERDO proposal by clicking here.
So many questions, so little space….
“Environmental justice communities in Watertown are disproportionately impacted by climate change,” City Manager George Proakis says. What are those? To simplify, they are neighborhoods where income is below the state median and the percentage of minorities and foreign languages are above. According to the latest statewide map, about 2/3 of Watertown qualifies (at least mildly so). If that surprises you, our relatively affluent neighbors in Brookline, Cambridge, and Lexington also qualify in large swathes. The map shows one local area of higher concern, but when compared to a map of town, it is revealed to be the Arsenal development, including Arsenal Park, so my confidence in the data is further eroded.
Mr. Proakis elaborated on the dangers of climate change: “…increased heat island exposure, rising sea levels, and stormwater flooding.” Two out of three ain’t bad. Heat islands are real things—in fact, climate skeptics point out that many weather stations are located in an archipelago of heat islands, distorting actual temperature trends. We can all picture parts of town that feel “overpaved”. Great credit to the organizers of Watertown’s first “Miyawaki Forest” at the Lowell School. I also only just discovered the lovely “rain park” behind The Gables on Arsenal Street. An oasis in a very developed part of town. And I salute the tree warden and Trees for Watertown for the “reforestation” of town, including three Yoshino cherry trees in front of my house. Keep ‘em coming.
Perhaps the single biggest step the town could make to ameliorate stormwater flooding would be to hasten the removal of the Watertown “Dam”. It dams nothing but fish migration upstream, and creates a large concerning volume of water that would devastate riverfront neighborhoods downstream in the event of its failure, however unlikely. The Charles River in its natural state would be lower, with a quick “greening up” of the land around its new banks. Keep it as undeveloped parkland, and it could handle all but Noah’s flood (which none but the just would survive).
As for sea levels, a NOAA.gov map shows Watertown under minimal threat. Most of the Charles waterfront is conservation land (at least DCR land), undeveloped and able to absorb an imagined deluge. Again, in an apocalyptic scenario, riverfront areas would be underwater, but that’s true of every waterfront city or town on the planet. Watertown already seems better prepared than almost all.
So, I’m all for resiliency. I’m less convinced by net-zero initiatives, when so many of the initiatives—wind and solar, for example—have severe environmental impacts of their own. I’m a natural-born cheapskate, so conservation comes easily to me. But I’m also a skeptic by nature, so faddish answers to complex formulas don’t persuade me. Turning Watertown from a tire-and-battery haven (not that there’s anything wrong with that) to a hi-tech hub is a tremendous opportunity—but not without pitfalls, even pratfalls. We’re committing to swell the population to follow MBTA guidelines, to do so with as few cars as possible, and to make it all carbon neutral. Admirable or asinine, we’ve got to walk before we can run.
Sorry for all the typos. I am typing on my.phone in a dark concert hall watching a corporate presentation.
Ugh..my response was supposed to go under the Winter Parking Ban discussion. Sorry for putting it here. Can you move it there. Under either letter or the new article by the editor about the Ban discussion. If I repost it will call out as a duplicate. Thanks!