D.C. residents could be forgiven for believing that Mayor Muriel Bowser cares about the planet, given her stated support for environmental legislation and her frequent attendance at climate change conferences. But her actions these past few years have been anything but green.
Herroner might say all the right things, but basically anytime Bowser’s administration is directed to do something to reduce emissions in the city, suddenly going green is too expensive or complicated. Her latest complaint is that an environmental law that she herself signed three years ago is making it impossible to repair older heating systems in government buildings.
Bowser’s Department of General Services asked the Council to change the law to address the issue, which the councilmembers reluctantly (but unanimously) passed Tuesday. Strangely enough, lawmakers don’t actually believe the legislation is necessary. The original law banned the installation of new gas appliances in District buildings, but DGS is interpreting the code to prohibit the repair of failing boiler systems. Lawmakers say that reading of the law is flat-out wrong, and have demanded to see the agency’s legal reasoning, which it did not deliver before the Council’s legislative meeting.
Nevertheless, the fear was that DGS, which is responsible for maintaining city offices and schools, would have blamed the Council when students started shivering in frigid classrooms. DGS is notoriously bad at keeping school heating and cooling systems working, so the agency might have been eager to find a scapegoat. So lawmakers held their noses and voted for the bill, in yet another truly bizarre bit of Wilson Building legislating.
“If kids sit in cold classrooms if we didn’t pass this, it would be the choice of them letting that happen,” Ward 4 Councilmember Janeese Lewis George, whose facilities committee oversees DGS, said at the Council’s breakfast meeting Tuesday. “But I fear the nuance of the law is not something that the public will necessarily understand.”
Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen, who chairs the Council’s Committee on Transportation and the Environment, observed that DGS clearly didn’t care so much about violating the law that it stopped making these repairs entirely. The ban on gas appliances took effect on Jan. 1, but he said the agency continued doing repair work because it believed “in good faith that we’re going to pass this.”
It remains unclear to Loose Lips what DGS feared would happen if it kept doing so—would a parent be so deeply incensed about their child having heat in school that they would sue the District over its interpretation of this law? Sadly, a DGS spokesperson did not respond to LL’s request for an explanation.
“I think the plain reading of the law is pretty clear,” Allen said. “But I do not want this administration, as they are wont to do, to point the finger and say, ‘This child has to sit in a cold classroom because of the Council.’”
Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen. Credit: Darrow Montgomery/file Credit: Darrow Montgomery
Councilmembers suspect that Bowser’s more likely motivation here is seeking additional legal cover for keeping these inefficient, failing, and dirty systems installed in government buildings.
Lewis George pointed to her experience advocating for changes at Whittier Elementary School in Takoma, which has endured years of HVAC problems. She said a contractor hired to repair the school’s combustion-powered hot water boiler recommended its full replacement with an electric system because parts for the old boiler are scarce (and it’s likely to fail again in a few years). But that would cost much more money than simply repairing it, so that’s what DGS plans to do.
“There’s no reason to keep combustion boilers on longer than we have to, especially when safer and greener alternatives are feasible, and especially when it’s going to end up costing the District more dollars in the long run,” Lewis George said. “The adverse effects of these proposed changes could be profound.”
Lewis George also feared that some of the bill’s language (as originally drafted by Bowser’s team) was too broadly written and would end up making it easier for DGS to avoid installing new, greener appliances going forward. “I just can foresee them using this language as an opportunity for them to never switch over” to electric options in school kitchens or the like, said At-Large Councilmember Christina Henderson. The bill exempts DGS from such changes if they are not feasible to manage.
So Lewis George and Allen worked up amendments to ensure that the bill was more narrowly tailored to apply specifically to heating systems, as a whole, ensuring that the administration only makes such repairs when absolutely necessary. This helped convince her and other skeptical colleagues to pass the bill.
But lawmakers nonetheless remain skeptical about Bowser’s motives moving forward.
“With every new construction project, I hear agencies will go to a public meeting and complain bitterly about new requirements in a law that the mayor even signed herself,” Allen said. “So I understand the hesitancy or the concern that they will find ways to not do what it is that we need to do as a city.”
Allen added Tuesday that “this body is getting tired of being asked to undo or water down the District’s commitment” to fighting climate change. He voted for the bill shortly after. Maybe instead of simply getting tired of going along with what the mayor wants, the Council could consider another approach.