Zoning, Sustainability, and Running for Office
There are many areas where zoning can impact our environment; from the implementation or preservation of green spaces to walking and biking infrastructure to green building codes. And just as there are many ways zoning shapes our communities, there are many ways to make an impact, like stepping up to serve in local office where these decisions are made.
Here we will be focusing on three:
Parking Mandates
Single-Family Only Zoning
Data Centers
The Problem: Parking Lots + Parking Mandates
Contribute to water pollution. Due to the impermeability of asphalt, parking lots are a major contributor to stormwater runoff. Through runoff, the oil, chemicals, and debris in parking lots are carried to waterways. These pollutants not only disrupt the ecosystems of wildlife, but can make their way to municipal water supplies as well.
Undermine transit. Because parking competes with housing for the same land, mandates reduce the number of homes per acre, making development more sprawling and harder, or nearly impossible to serve with transit.
Block adaptive reuse. Older buildings that precede parking mandates can make great apartment homes walkable to jobs and amenities but current residential parking mandates mean they cannot be used for housing.
Force development into greenspace. Parking mandates often render infill housing financially or physically infeasible, pushing new development onto the urban fringe, inevitably paving over cherished farm and forestland.
Destroy the urban tree canopy. Because a standard U.S. parking space requires 288 sq ft of land, it often requires cutting existing trees to accommodate and/or blocks new trees from being planted.
Parking lots contribute to severe weather impacts. Parking spaces and paved areas are among the largest contributors to both the urban heat island effect and increased flooding risk.
By ending parking mandates, we can lower energy costs and greenhouse gas emissions, limit ill health effects from extreme heat, and ensure that more of our land is precipitation-permeable, preventing dangerous floods in NH.
The solution: join your local zoning board to help shape conversations around parking mandates and sustainable design approaches such as permeable paving or solar canopies.
The Problem: Single-Family Only Zoning
Contribute to urban sprawl- The single family zone all but ensures sprawling development patterns, consuming vast amounts of land. The further apart homes are and the further they are from businesses and jobs increases how much people drive and subsequently vehicle emissions. Urban Form - smaller, denser development, with residential units that are located near jobs and community resources, reduces car dependence and encourages walking, biking, and public transportation use. Thus producing much less carbon than sprawling suburban or rural development.
Higher residential energy demand - multi-family residential units compared to single-family houses consume much less energy with features such as shared walls and less windows, limiting exposure to exterior temperatures. “Households living in apartment buildings with five or more units use about half as much energy as other home types.”
The Solution: join your local planning or zoning board to participate in conversations and decision making around housing, housing types, mixed-use development, accessory dwelling units (ADUs), duplexes, and more.
The Problem: Data Centers
Pollutes our Air - data centers could add up to 44 million tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by 2030, equivalent to putting an extra 10 million cars on the road and exacerbating a climate crisis. Many facilities rely on gas-fired generation for routine operations, creating continuous air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Diesel-fueled back-up generators also release harmful air pollutants including fine particulate matter (PM 2.5) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) linked to respiratory disease, heart disease, asthma and more.
Consumes Vast Amounts of Land- The average data center is roughly 100,000 square feet and Hyperscale data centers can reach well over a million square feet. Hyperion- the meta data center breaking ground in northeastern Louisiana will occupy 2,250 acres. New data centers are accelerating the loss of productive farmland, deforestation, and habitat loss.
Increases Energy Consumption + Fossil Fuel Dependence- data centers consume vast amounts of energy; increasing costs, the risks of blackouts, and fossil fuel dependency. The rapid buildout of data centers could increase electricity demand in the United States by 200-400 TWh by 2030. One terawatt is enough energy to power roughly one million homes for a year. This energy comes from the burning of natural gas and other fossil fuels, including coal. The rising energy demands from data centers are delaying the retirement of coal-fired power plants. The health and environmental impacts of burning coal has been studied immensely. Burning coal releases vast amounts of greenhouse gases, air-pollutants, and toxic waste.
Consumes Vast Amounts of + Pollutes our Water- a 1 megawatt data center can use up to 25.5 million liters of water annually, just for cooling, equivalent to the daily water consumption of approximately 300,000 people. By 2027, global demand is expected to account for 1.1 to 1.7 trillion gallons of water use, more than ~5 times the total annual water use of Denmark. Data center water usage is an urgent environmental and societal issue, especially in water scarce regions, where home taps can run dry and where farmers can face lower crop yields. If the large amounts of water pulled for cooling goes right back into the ecosystem, it causes thermal pollution. Thermal pollution impacts wildlife reproduction, causes habitat degradation, affects biodiversity, and can even create dead zones.
The solution: join your local planning or zoning board. Communities may consider approaches like noise protections, strengthening agricultural zones, mandatory reclaimed waste-water use/water recycling for cooling systems, only allowing them to be built in industrial zones, and more. These decisions are typically made by planning boards, zoning boards, and local elected offices, serving in office is one of the strongest ways to shape these conversations.
