As part of the increasing emphasis on automobile use, American architecture has changed to place the garage nearer and nearer to the street, sometimes almost obscuring the house itself. In an effort to reverse this trend and make streets more friendly, Portland, Oregon recently passed an ordinance which no longer permits the garage to dominate the front of a home.
Under the ordinance, the main entrance must be close to the street and clearly identifiable from the sidewalk. The side of the house facing the street must have a certain minimum amount of window and door space. While the city decided not to regulate some design details such as roof pitch and siding materials, it specified that a garage could be no wider than 50 percent of a house front and that a front door must be recessed no farther than 8 feet behind a front wall. The code gives incentives for living space built over a garage.
Builders in the city are revising their plans, many of which do not comply with the new ordinance, and predict that this will add approximately $17,000 to the average $140,000 home, a prediction which is disputed by the city. The ordinance will also make it difficult to build new homes with two-car garages on the smaller infill lots available in the city. However, many city residents welcome the new restrictions; a recent survey found that while most new houses were suburban-style homes with prominent garages, neighbors felt these houses isolated their occupants from street and neighborhood activity.
For more information:
Portland Dept. of Planning, 503-823-7700; http://www.planning.ci.portland.or.us/zoning/ (specific language is in Chapter 33.110.230, 232 and 250)
During the past 30 years, laws and rules and regulations protecting the environment have resulted in dramatic improvements in air and water quality, waste disposal, and some land use practices. Public awareness has been heightened, and knowledge of the health effects of pollution has increased. Along with these improvements, additional sources of pollution have been identified, some already existing and some the result of emerging technologies. New laws and regulations have been developed to deal with them.
Proliferation of regulation has resulted in controls that conflict with or duplicate each other. Some pollutants and pollution sources have not lent themselves to effective regulation. Others lie outside the jurisdiction of regulatory agencies, and must be controlled by voluntary efforts.
Meanwhile, in the management practices of regulated facilities, environmental matters have moved from the periphery to more central consideration. Some facilities have perceived the need for greater flexibility in developing ways to meet regulatory goals efficiently. Some have gone beyond regulatory compliance and seek appropriate recognition for their efforts.
At this critical juncture in environmental protection, regulatory agencies at both the state and federal level, in partnership with regulated companies, have been exploring voluntary environmental performance programs by which a company will meet or exceed all regulatory requirements that apply to it.
One such program is an environmental management system (EMS). Part of an organization's overall management system, EMS is a process for identifying all environmental impacts of its operations, assessing current environmental performance, setting goals, and developing and implementing plans for continuing improvements in environmental performance. To be successful, an EMS requires the commitment of all personnel to the process, adequate resources, clear assignment of responsibilities, appropriate training, complete documentation and record-keeping, continuous review and revision of the process, and periodic auditing.
Some companies have already turned to EMSs for internal reasons, to improve their efficiency and profits. Some seek to improve their public image and to demonstrate a substantial concern for the environment on their annual reports. Some have adopted specific EMSs as a requirement for doing business in certain countries.
The California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) has decided to investigate whether facilities that have developed EMSs which have been certified under the International Organization for Standardization's ISO 14001 program can be assumed to meet or exceed all environmental requirements. AB 1102, passed in 1999, authorized and funded a program for up to 8 pilot projects to estimate whether EMSs provide improved protection of public health and the environment over the existing regulations. CalEPA has selected 3 facilities in Northern California for pilot projects—IBM in San Jose, Anheuser-Busch in Fairfield, and the Central Marin Sanitation Agency in San Rafael—and 3 in Southern California—the City of San Diego Metropolitan Wastewater Department's Operation and Maintenance Division, Lockheed-Martin Skunk Works in Palmdale, and Artistic Plating and Gene's Plating, a pair of medium-sized metal finishing companies. The pilot projects will continue through 2001, after which CalEPA will evaluate their effectiveness.
Adelia Sabiston
For more information:
Jennifer Smith Grubb, CalEPA, 510-540-3315; http://www.calepa.ca.gov/ems