Scottsdale ponders its No. 1 villain -- heat

Jul. 16—While Mesa, Tempe and Phoenix are charging ahead with programs to shade their residents from the punishing sun, Scottsdale's movement on this front seems to be moving at a tree-growth pace.

Scottsdale is far behind on its schedule to implement a sustainability plan.

Adding trees will almost certainly be part of the heat mitigation plans, but no goals — let alone funding — have been announced.

The topic of how to fight Scottsdale's longtime villain, heat, was on Scottsdale City Council's plate last week.

Conveniently enough, a discussion of the city's in-the-works Sustainability Plan came during the hottest week of the year — a short-lived title, as this week's temperatures should top last week's.

"I'm a little concerned about the timelines," an otherwise-optimistic Mayor David Ortega worried, at the July 10 Scottsdale City Council workshop titled "Sustainability, Net Zero Energy and Heat Mitigation Plans."

Several council members said the plans' latest "framework" shows improvement, particularly with the removal of references to so-called "road diets."

But, some wondered, why is it taking so long to put a plan together?

"This is a real good basic start — but we've been here for a couple years," Councilwoman Betty Janik said. "We need to move along to action items."

Councilwoman Tammy Caputi agreed.

"What's making me nervous is we're not going to get this moving forward," she said.

Indeed, the city is already far behind on "net zero" goals it set in mid-2022, when the city approved a goal for "a Sustainability Plan to be adopted by the City Council by Dec. 31, 2022."

In January, that was bumped back. And now the deadline has been kicked farther down the road.

What sounded like a great idea of reaching "net zero," or carbon/greenhouse gas neutrality, is proving difficult to agree on in a plan format.

Scottsdale is lagging behind several of its neighbors, as Tempe, Phoenix and Mesa have sustainability plans up and running.

Even so, as elected officials noted, Scottsdale is already ahead of the game in practice, particularly with an advanced water recycling system that rejuvenates sewer water to standards of drinking water. (None of the recycled water currently enters the city's drinking-water system, however.)

Before a July 10 council presentation, Lisa McNeily, Scottsdale's sustainability director, quoted from a recent Arizona State University study that "estimated the tree and shrub land cover for the city of Scottsdale as being 13%."

That includes the largely-uninhabited McDowell Sonoran Preserve.

Asked how Scottsdale's tree cover aligns with its neighbors, McNeily said she "does not have up-to-date data for other Valley cities, but I think that this number is similar — or slightly higher — to Phoenix, Gilbert and Mesa."

According to a recent Cronkite News story, about 12% of Phoenix is shaded by trees, though the city plans to double that by 2030.

"Tempe's current estimate of tree canopy coverage is 11.4% based on 2019 data," Richard Adkins, Tempe's Urban Forester, said. He added Tempe is in the process of revising the tree data.

"Our Urban forestry program is going well — developing in-house staff and working with contractors to grow and manage the urban forest resource," Adkins said.

Tempe's new Cost Match Tree program provides 50% of the cost of a 15-gallon or 24-ince boxed-sized tree for single family residents in Tempe.

Mesa estimated only a 6% tree covering when it recently started a "Trees Are Cool" program, with the goal of planting 1 million trees by 2050. Mesa residents can get up to $100 for planting two trees.

'Tree-tours'

Scottsdale's sustainability plans have taken a few detours — or, perhaps, "tree-tours."

What a difference a year makes.

McNeilly was hired by Scottsdale as its first sustainability director in March 2022.

A press release noted she "held a similar role in Baltimore, Maryland, leading its sustainability efforts and overseeing work on equitable climate action, floodplain management and community resiliency hubs."

After workshops held within two months of her arrival here, McNeilly shared bubbly impressions.

"I was really impressed by the range of ideas people brought to the table and the excitement," she told the Progress.

"What pleased me was how sophisticated people's understandings really were about the interconnections between trees and heat and water and density and transportation."

Ten months later, McNeilly's sustainability draft plan sustained a heavy beating from a City Council divided in what members thought were the worst elements, but united in a general disdain.

Councilwoman Solange Whitehead tried to ease the pain, warning McNeily: "The first person to go through the door on any project gets hammered."

A March 21 crowd at the council meeting was fired up over the "road diet" concept, which some council members insisted has no business in the sustainability plan.

Council members ripped the plan to pieces, though politely.

Councilwoman Betty Janik quoted from the draft's "maintain and improve multi-modal circulation by narrowing roadways where appropriate" wording.

"In other words, 'the road diet.' If we did not have this in this plan, we would have about 500 less emails to read," Janik said.

Whitehead pointed out that the plan's call for increased shading was overshadowed by the road diet.

She said wording on motorized vehicle lane reductions "doesn't belong in a sustainability plan, adding, "That's a transportation department issue."

Janik later told the Progress the sustainability plan had flawed writing: "Words like 'cut back on use of automobiles' — that is a flashpoint for our community."

The road diet element was far from the only part of the plan criticized.

According to minutes of the March meeting, council members were concerned "the proposed plan does not have the endorsement of the Scottsdale Environmental Advisory Commission or the McDowell Sonoran Preserve Commission and should be tabled until the plan is properly vetted by boards, commissions, and additional public outreach."

Council members demanded more specific goals and more emphasis on shade as a heat mitigator.

Back to the blackboard

At last week's meeting, McNeilly showed she listened to the concerns expressed three months ago.

In March, McNeilly presented a sustainability "framework" highlighted by five "pathways": emissions/climate action, water resources/open space, community services/economic vitality, heat preparedness and "waste as a resource."

Scrap all that.

"I went back to the drawing board," McNeilly said, introducing her newly worded framework.

As she later explained to the Progress, "The framework no longer included a mobility chapter, which had a draft action referencing 'complete streets.'"

The term "complete streets" is often used interchangeably with "road diets."

The new sustainability framework, according to McNeilly's presentation:

—Sustainable Community — also serves as Net Zero Energy Strategic Plan;

—Resilient Community — focus on protecting resources and preparedness;

—Thriving Community — support people and economic sustainability.

Within each priority are indicators, targets, strategies and actions.

"Indicators allow baselines to be determined and progress to be measured," McNeilly explained. "Thus, the indicators are tied to specific targets — further defining where we would like to be in the future."

The plan's priorities include: energy and climate, air quality, "waste as a resource," water and "extreme heat."

A new timeline calls for more meetings, workshops, commission input — with an implementation now scheduled for June 2024.

The city has work to do, in the opinion of Ute Brady, an Arizona State University postdoctoral scholar who chairs the Scottsdale Environmental Advisory Commission.

In a letter submitted to City Council, Brady praised the "structural revisions" McNeily has made — but noted more work is needed.

"It is important to note that the framework is a scaffolding that requires considerably more input to become an implementable policy guide to a more sustainable future," Brady wrote.

She stressed the need for the city plan to tell "a compelling and easily understood story," set goals in five-year increments and focus on energy, including heat and air quality, water and waste.

'A Cooler Scottsdale'

The draft of the sustainability plan comes on the heels of last year's ASU study, "Identifying Strategies for a Cooler Scottsdale."

In addition to ASU researchers, the paper's list of authors and contributors includes "City of Scottsdale Mayor and Council."

Last year's study noted Scottsdale "is situated in the hottest large metropolitan area in the United States."

And the Valley is not getting any cooler.

"Summers across the region are projected to become longer and more intense in the coming decades, adding urgency to calls for more action to combat urban heat."

Almost all of that hottest-in-a-bad way area of Scottsdale is "in a 4.2 square-mile area south of McDowell Road and west of Hayden Road, where tree density was approximately 50% lower than in Scottsdale's most vegetated neighborhoods."

The study found a striking temperature-to-money correlation: "Land surface temperature decreased by more than 1°F for each $10,000 increase in mean per capita income."

More money, more trees, in other words.

While the study stopped well short of suggesting throwing money at Scottsdale's hottest areas, it strongly hinted at throwing seeds at them.

The ASU-Scottsdale study concluded with "three recommended goals for heat mitigation."

The first was planting more trees.

Achieving that primary goal would also go a long way to the other two goals: "reduce the land area of exposed dark asphalt, dark roofs and other hot surfaces" and "improve and increase pedestrian shade amenities."

The ASU study came in the wake of the summer to end all summers: 2020.

That year, the Scottsdale Airport recorded extraordinary heat.

In the summer of 2020, there were 28 days with highs over 110 — nearly triple the 9.8 days over 110 average.

And 2020 had 129 days topping 100 — 40% more than the average of 93 days over 100.

The average daily max temperature in 2020 was 106.3, well above the annual summer average of 103.4. And nights in the summer of '20 were 2 degrees warmer than average.

This summer is not looking to be much cooler, with a string of 110-plus days continuing and no end in sight.

Asphalt = heat

The study said South Scottsdale had the least number of trees at 6% — less than half the citywide average.

And 48% of South Scottsdale is covered by asphalt, nearly three times the citywide average of 17%. With 35% covered by asphalt, Old Town was double the city average.

"Buildings and asphalt accounted for at least 40% of total land area in each of the three Growth Areas, with a maximum of 69% in South Scottsdale," the study noted.

Green land — including trees, shrubs, and grass — covers about 20% of Scottsdale, but only 7% of sun-battered South Scottsdale.

"Tree and shrub coverage was generally higher in Central Scottsdale, along the Shea Boulevard Corridor, and along the western boundary of the City bordering Paradise Valley and Phoenix," according to the ASU study.

Near the end of the 92-page paper, the authors point to a few of Scottsdale's neighbors for positive examples.

Mesa and Tempe both have tree plans and incentive programs.

And Phoenix is putting $1.5 million into "a Cool Corridors program, which will support planting 200 trees per mile on each of nine 1-mile project areas (1,800 trees total) each year.

"While Phoenix is clearly a much larger city than Scottsdale, elements of this investment may be adaptable, such as a prioritized street tree planting program," the study says.

Green actions will not be easy, nor without drama, the study strongly warns, illustrating potential "tradeoffs," including:

—Possible increases in outdoor water use to maintain a more robust tree canopy and other green infrastructure;

—Possible pushback from residents concerning the loss of parking spaces and/or roadway lanes if pavement and asphalt are removed;

—Possible decreases in roadway visibility for drivers, bicyclists, and pedestrians, associated with increases in trees and other vegetation.

The Mesa model

Mesa hasn't experienced any of these problems with its new tree-planting program.

"Response from the community — residents, corporations, schools, businesses, and nonprofit organizations — has been incredible," said Laura Hyneman, deputy director of Mesa Environmental and Sustainability.

"It's a program people can relate to and participating is easy. Newly planted trees and caring for existing trees benefit individuals and the community in so many ways."

Mesa Mayor John Giles likes to boast, "Mesa has been on the forefront of sustainability for many years."

And Giles and company can back it up, as the city fast-tracked a sustainability plan two years ago.

According to a Mesa Tribune July 1, 2021, story: "Less than four months after the idea was proposed for study, the city has a Climate Action Plan."

Meanwhile, Scottsdale is still pondering how to tackle the strengthening opponent known as heat — as well as troubles raised by last year's ASU study.

"The current experience of heat is clearly inequitable for Scottsdale's residents," the study stated. "Tree canopy coverage is much lower, and land surface temperature much higher, for residents of southern Scottsdale."

Climate inequity may seem like a curious idea, but it is nothing new, for Scottsdale's sustainability director.

According to her biography, McNeilly was the director of Sustainability at UC Berkeley, directed programs at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change and "has written on equity considerations for climate change."