How Will Local Governments Respond to Large Increases in Energy Bills?

[phantom power]

It's already widely discussed, how America's love affair with suburbia has put us in an extra-bad position wrt peak oil. But we Americans have another systemic flaw that's going to make peak oil extra hard on us: our near-religious hatred of taxes. It's already causing us to sell off our infrastructure to private interests, I assume because we are still laboring under the delusion that anything is better than raising taxes. No matter what.

I am the Mayor of Huntington Beach, California, a full service city of 200,000 residents, 27 square miles, 1200 employees and 8.5 miles of beach. We have nearly 200 police vehicles, 3 helicopters, 15 fire engines/trucks, 7 ambulances, 1 HazMat vehicle, and 1 medical decontamination unit. In addition there are hundreds of miscellaneous vehicles and trucks for public works, marine safety, building department, water department, and administration. All said, we consume 495,000 gallons of gasoline/diesel/jet fuel per year. For every $1 fuel goes up, it is a half million dollars out of our general fund budget.

Perhaps more shocking than the amount of fuel our city vehicles use is how much fuel is used to pick up our residents’ trash, sort it at the transfer station, and then haul it 46 miles round trip to a dump that is running out of capacity. Prior to a recent conversion to natural gas vehicles, our contractor reported to me that they were using 525,000 gallons per year of diesel.

In addition to transportation fuels, our electricity bill is over $4 million per year and natural gas is over $1 million per year. We have 10 groundwater wells that pump 22,000 acre feet of water per year and 15 flood control stations with 49 engines that allow us to discharge 2.5 million gallons/minute of water during a storm event. I am told we have the highest discharge capacity of any community in Southern California.

There are countless services that local government provides to residents: streets, curbs, gutters, tree trimming, sewers, street sweeping, water, parks, community centers, emergency services, senior services including meals on wheels. All of these are energy intensive and mean local government is extremely vulnerable to supply disruptions and high costs. As budgets get squeezed, you can speculate as to which services will be the first on the chopping block.

http://local.theoildrum.com/node/4057

[nichomachus]

1. It's all part of a plan -- and it's working beautifully

The plan of the corporatists is to bankrupt the federal government, as well as every state and local government.

Once that is complete, they will attack social services, education, libraries, etc. Their excuse will be "We had no choice."

In fact, that's already started. I read a lot of local news sites. I see stories almost daily -- teachers being laid off, police and fire positions cut, libraries closed, elderly programs cut, youth programs eliminated, school programs -- art, music, etc. -- abandoned. Almost every one of these stories contains the phrase, "We had no choice."

That's the idea -- to leave the government with no choice.

When Karl Rove, Grover Norquist and the others are brought to justice, I would pay for the chance to pull the switch to send them to hell.

[The2ndWheel]

2. The same thing any organization does when it begins a decline

Merge, incorporate, expand, increase the amount of people to spread the burden...or die.

[kestrel91316]

3. In Los Angeles, all of our buses and most of our trash trucks run off

natural gas, which is in part a renewable resource (gas from the Hyperion wastewater treatment plant runs an electric power plant in the city and has for over 50 years).

There is no lack of natural gas where there is organic matter and living creatures - feedlot manure pits being a case in point. Heck, there's plenty of gas in my home when I fix beans for dinner.....

[benny594]

the oil companies would lose money

[benny594]

4. the oil companies would lose money

[phantom power]

5. The last time I saw an assessment of landfill methane...

the bottom line was something like "2% of our energy for 15 years."

That was looking at a 2% electricity generation scenario, not running vehicles. However, the take-home insight was that a lot of landfill methane we're currently drawing on (or could draw), is accumulated. It isn't produced at the same rate that we use it. That's why the 15-year limit. After 15 years, we would be back to the actual production rate, which is much lower.

Now, that's landfills. There's also poop-based methane. I'd be interested to see a calculation of how many vehicles we could run off of bio-methane, over the long-haul. If we restricted ourselves to vehicles critical to our city infrastructures, that seems possibly feasible, although that also assumes a degree of self-control and planning that isn't consistent with my knowledge of human nature.

[kestrel91316]

6. Poop-based methane could power official and emergency vehicles and

mass transit. I see no need for such a precious resource to be developed just to put it into personal vehicles.

Personal vehicles are gonna go pretty much the way of the dodo bird.....