Olympic Visions
By Lily Auliff

On November 7, voters overwhelmingly approved a bid by the City of Houston to host the 2012 Summer Olympic Games. Although the proposal promises great benefits for the city and the region, environmentalists are divided about the true impact on the city’s resources if Houston were to become the site of such a massive, international event.

The United States Olympic Committee (USOC) requires bidding cities to include an environmental section in their proposals. Houston’s environmental section, produced by city officials and leaders in the environmental community, has two themes: improving current resources, and protecting them from any harm that might be caused by hosting the Games.

“The idea is, quite honestly, to use the Olympic proposal as a way to improve the environment in the Houston region, whether or not we get the bid,” explains Dewayne Huckabay of the City of Houston.

The plan bases much of its content on A Vision for Houston, the results of the Environmental Foresight Project in which community leaders gathered to brainstorm how an ideal Houston might look. Foresight is a project of the Center for Global Studies at the Houston Advanced Research Center.

A Vision for Houston is cited by the Olympic proposal as a Houston Bicentennial 2036 vision that will be “used to guide and enhance our future impacts on the natural features of this area.” It calls for a holistic overview of the region that balances economic, community, and environmental interests.

According to the Olympic proposal, the bayous are central to the plan for the Games. Existing bayous are to be upgraded with trees and other landscaping features. A system of interconnected linear parks along the waterways will create an alternative transportation network. During the Games, areas of the city will be identified by the bayous that flow through them. For example, officials will term downtown the “Buffalo Bayou Aqua Zone.” All these plans intend to “establish a focus on water quality and water conservation issues.”

“People spaces” are to be created around Olympic venues, which will include shade trees, seating, natural or artificial ventilation, and artwork. There is even suggestion of breaking up the pavement in the Astrodome parking lot to add some green space.

Although no promises are made, the proposal says that Houston’s “transportation system is being expanded to include further consideration of light rail projects beyond the starter line, providing access with the city’s core Downtown, Texas Medical Center, and AstroDomain activity centers.” Perhaps the Olympics will give Houston more incentive to begin and expand rail construction.

Many of the Olympic venues are to use alternative energy technology as well. Enron Field is presently cooled by state-of-the-art thermal technology that produces ice at off-peak times; the ice is melted during the day to cool the building. The proposal suggests that other venues could use this technology.

A public “environmental awareness program” is to be developed, too, in conjunction with the Olympics. A Houston 2012 Olympic Games Environmental Link web page will “highlight the strong environmental commitment within the City of Houston.”

In the plan, a contest will be held to ask Houstonians for the most environmentally beneficial ideas that could be applied to the Games. Examples might include creating a solar-powered, car-free Olympic village; reducing water use by installing a low-flow toilet system, irrigating with gray water, and xeriscaping; or implementing a comprehensive waste reduction and recycling program. The contest will glean suggestions for improvements and build public support for environmental projects.

“In terms of urban development, events like the Olympics offer the opportunity to help shape the urban area,” says David Hitchcock, Associate Director of the Houston Advanced Research Center. “Generally, it focuses things more on the central city. I think that is useful for Houston, which has a sprawling kind of development pattern. The activities and the facilities that need to be provided will focus on the area inside the Loop. That provides an additional attraction for people to live a little more centrally.”

Sounds great on paper, but how will all these environmental improvements be accomplished? There is no money set aside for environmental projects related to the Games, although some may be included in future funds for the creation or improvement of venues, explains McCoy McLemore, Director of Communications for Houston 2012, the organization charged with developing the Olympic bid. Volunteers will complete the environmental improvement projects that Houston 2012 is planning.

“The Olympic group has been very successful at tapping into volunteerism. They have hundreds of people signed up to do things in support of the Houston bid for the Olympics. That’s a pretty valuable resource,” says Huckabay.

Houston 2012 has already rallied those volunteers. In a recent project, the group organized local Boy Scouts to plant trees in the Sunset Trail area. Planners expect to complete up to five similar projects in the coming months. The USOC will visit the projects when they come to Houston in 2001 as part of the selection process.

In the early 90s, a volunteer project to plant two million trees in the area was successful, and is seen as a model for other large-scale initiatives.

Opportunity comes with responsibility. Although Mary Ellen Whitworth of the Bayou Preservation Association is pleased that the focus of the Games will be Houston’s bayous, she warns that environmental organizations need to be on their toes. “The environmental community is going to have to stay on top of the process to make sure that the planners implement all of those great ideas that they have agreed to do,” she says.

Whitworth has some reservations about the direct impact of the Olympics as well. “When you crowd that many people into a small place, and try to move them around, there are implications for air pollution and water pollution. They’re going to have to plan very carefully for all that,” she explains.

Some are also concerned about habitat destruction. In Athens, controversy is rising over the proposed creation of rowing and canoeing venues in precious wetlands for the 2004 Olympics. Although the Houston plan promises to “make certain that no permanent adverse effects occur,” not everyone is convinced. “We can be relatively confident that there will be habitat destruction, and we can be quite confident, based on prior development in this city, it will not be done sustainably,” explains David Cobb, chair of the Harris County Green Party Organizing Committee.

Cobb is also concerned that Houston will be doing the right thing for the wrong reason, with questionable results. “For example, if we were to attempt to create a mass transit system, we could make the fundamental mistake of creating a transit system for connecting sports venues rather than for people moving,” explains Cobb.

Despite the drawbacks, many see great potential for environmental improvement if Houston attracts the Games. “It gives us an opportunity to do some things that we might not otherwise be able to do. If we can take advantage of that, we ought to,” says Huckabay.

“We are increasingly concerned about the negative perception people elsewhere have of us, and as a result many political and business leaders are listening to ideas that will improve the quality of life,” says David Crossley, president of the Gulf Coast Institute, which leads the Smart Growth Initiative in the region. “We should use the Olympic effort to move strongly toward this vision for a far more interesting and healthy environment.”

Cobb disagrees: “I would much prefer to see the environmental community building power around real environmental issues and using these issues as educational opportunities for Houston residents.”

The environmental theme is only one small section in a 600-page bid document that Houston 2012 will submit to the USOC in December of 2000. Houston is competing with seven other US cities to become the US Candidate City, which the USOC will select in the fall of 2002. The International Olympic Committee will then choose the final location in 2005. A Vision for Houston document is available online at www.livablehouston.org.