Virginia Gov. Timothy Kaine and D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty laid out their goals for turning the D.C. region into one of the nation’s greenest Tuesday, calling on local universities to form a regional partnership to tackle the area’s transportation, conservation and energy challenges.
Speaking before the Greater Washington Board of Trade’s Potomac Conference, in which many of the region’s most influential business, government, nonprofit and academic leaders convened to develop a local green agenda, Kaine acknowledged that Virginia faces challenges in energy policy.
“We’ve traditionally been a low-cost energy state,” he said, referring to Virginia’s ready supply of cheap coal-fired energy. “One of the best conservation strategies is to have really high costs – that’s not what we want to do.”
Kaine advocated a renewed focus on nuclear power – the state has two nuclear reactors – and efforts to develop carbon-capture technology in Virginia’s abandoned southwestern coal mines as solutions, as well as developing alternative renewable energy sources.
For the District, where storm water runoff is a major pollutant, cleaning up the Anacostia River is a priority, Fenty said.
He said he will soon unveil a comprehensive plan, developed by D.C. Department of Environment head George Hawkins, for the long-term cleanup of the Anacostia River. One major storm water proposal will need about $2 billion of federal funding, according to Hawkins.
While the leaders advocated establishing a task force of representatives from the region’s many universities to tackle the area’s issues, George Mason University President Alan Merten told The Examiner it would be toothless without the participation of the business community, which he finds lacking in Washington.
“If the business community says, ‘We want help, and we’re going to put our money where our mouth is,’ then you’ll see the universities responding,” said Merten, who recently signed the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment, a large and potentially expensive undertaking that includes committing to becoming a carbon-neutral campus and developing a sustainability curriculum.
“We’re here, and we want to do the right thing for the region, but Ihave faculty members who are solving the drinking water problem in Pakistan,” he said. “Sometimes we get more support when we leave the area than we get from the businesses in the area.”
