City deals with stage- three energy alerts
By Kara Chalmers
Since Jan. 12, California has been under a stage-three energy alert which has necessitated some changes at Saratoga City Hall in order to reduce energy consumption, according to Saratoga City Manager Dave Anderson.
Anderson said the city has been pro-active in trying to lessen its energy consumption, to help with the statewide energy shortage.
At the Jan. 17 city council meeting, the council made a commitment, at the request of the League of California Cities--an organization that pledged on behalf of its members to reduce energy consumption statewide--to reduce consumption by 5 percent, overall.
"The objective was to make sure cities were doing their part to reduce electrical demand, so we would be a contributor to the overall solution," Anderson said. "We're trying to do our part for the whole energy conservation effort statewide in conjunction with the governor's request and the League of Cities."
While they haven't received any energy bills since Jan. 17, Anderson said that city staff would monitor the bills to make sure they are diminishing by 5 percent.
The city has stepped up energy-saving efforts at city hall to last until the power shortages are over. During this and any stage-three alert, lobby, hallway and nonessential building lighting will be shut off, the thermostats will be set at no more than 65 degrees; the flags will be taken down at night so that the lighting can be turned off, and the tree lights in the Village will be completely turned off at night. Also, the city is investigating installing motion detection light switches in all offices, conference rooms and restrooms to save energy, Anderson said.
If rolling blackouts affect city hall, it could close and non-emergency employees could be sent home, Anderson said, if the circumstances were extreme.
Street lights, pathway lights and traffic lights were never considered as candidates for energy conservation efforts due to safety reasons, Anderson said, and noted that street light and pathway lights are turned on at non-peak times anyway.
He also said that in the event of another rolling blackout, if traffic signals go out, motorists should treat intersections as four-way stops.
For a stage-one or -two alert in the future, city hall staff will be asked to turn off lighting, if they leave for more than half an hour, to shut off personal computers, monitors, printers and copiers when not needed, to set thermostats at 68 degrees, to turn off all nonessential decorative lighting at city hall, and to operate the village tree lights from 7 p.m. to midnight only, according to Anderson.
"It is rather unprecedented to have this many days of stage-three alerts," Anderson said, but noted that the changes at city hall have not posed any real problems for staff there.
|
Saratoga, California Since 1955
