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Bring on the tax

Fred Hendy has a box full of instruction books on the floor of his office at Squamish’s public works yard on Government Road. He cranes his lanky frame over the box, fishes out a book and thumbs lightly through the pages.

Fred Hendy has a box full of instruction books on the floor of his office at Squamish’s public works yard on Government Road. He cranes his lanky frame over the box, fishes out a book and thumbs lightly through the pages.

“We’ll put these in every vehicle,” he says. “They’ll help with good maintenance.”

As fleet manager with the District of Squamish, Hendy spends a lot of time thinking about things like vehicle maintenance and information dissemination. There are costs to control, emissions to moderate. There’s research to do and ideas to exchange. And Hendy wants all his drivers on the up and up. In fact, he wants everyone on the up and up.

Even before the Gordon Campbell Liberals announced their plan to levy a progressive carbon tax starting in July, Hendy’s department was hard at work seeking out alternatives to conventional fuel. He’s got 50 vehicles in his fleet, and, depending on the ferocity of the winter, they use 100,000 to 140,000 litres of diesel and gasoline each year. Even without the carbon tax, the cost of fuel can be intimidating, especially when purchased in such volume. The tax starts at 2.4 cents per litre in July, growing to 7.2 cents by 2012.

“Multiply that by 100,000,” Hendy says, “and it’s not the kind of thing you can budget for.”

And then there’s the carbon footprint end of things, a different sort of cost the district has pledged to control. To that end, and like many other jurisdictions around the country, Squamish has been experimenting with biofuels. Using half a dozen vehicles, the district launched a pilot project in October 2006. They borrowed a tank from Whistler to help make it happen, and now all vehicles use a 20 per cent mixture in the summer, and 5 per cent mixture in the winter.

“We’ve got to get rid of these old ways of thinking,” Hendy says.

He’s not the only one in the Sea to Sky corridor with an eye on tomorrow. School District 48 (Howe Sound) is also preparing to absorb the new operating costs presented by the carbon tax. But, like the municipality, simply budgeting for the increase is not the only initiative on the table.

“What we’ve done, first of all, is all of our busses that we order have Mercedes engines,” says District 48 superintendent Rick Erickson, “and Mercedes are one of the most efficient diesel engines that are produced. Our fleet, we have those motors in there.

“And what we’ve also done is we’ve retrofitted all of our older busses with a diesel oxidization catalyst. And that was funded by the province. It wasn’t mandatory but we chose to jump on board. These devices, they reduce a minimum of 20 per cent particulate matter into the atmosphere, and 40 per cent of carbon monoxide, and 50 per cent for hydrocarbons. We did all of our older busses with that, and our newer busses are that much more efficient.”

The B.C. Ministry of Finance deliberately applied the tax to all entities, be they individual consumers, municipalities or school boards. Erickson agrees with the full sweep, as does Whistler’s Ted Battiston, who heads up the resort municipality’s Sustainability Initiatives department.

Battiston points to Whistler’s position as a signatory of the B.C. Climate Action Charter, a commitment it made during September’s Union of British Columbia Municipalities convention.

“We were one of 20 to sign on,” he says. “Those who signed on committed to carbon neutrality by 2012. There are 103 municipalities signed onto that now.”

Pursuant of that goal, Whistler has rounded its municipal fleet out with two Smart cars, an electric vehicle, and two hybrids. And, like Squamish, Whistler also uses B5 and B20 mixtures.

The extra 2.4 cents, meanwhile, will not wreak havoc with the municipality’s balance sheets. That cost, says Battiston, will ring in at about $20,000.

“We have about a $50 million budget as a municipality,” he says. “The $20,000 will be absorbed within those budgets. It’s not of a scale that can cause property tax increases or anything.”

And, as the tax increases along the road to 2012, so too will the municipality’s efforts to be carbon neutral.

A diversified fleet is also something Squamish is looking at. Hendy says his department will be researching purchases this year with the aim of acquiring smaller, more fuel-efficient vehicles.

In the interim, Hendy aims to keep the district’s fuel costs down through modern policy and smart purchasing habits. No municipal vehicles are permitted to idle, for example, while fuel purchases come at a discount on account of the district’s membership in the B.C. Petroleum Fuel Buyers Group, which purchases approximately 40 million litres of fuel every year.

“If anyone needs help,” Hendy adds, “we’re willing to share our information. It’s important.”