Page 268 - BWA FEB 2013

268 | Business World Magazine | February 2013
The City of San Antonio has emerged as a
national model of how to build collabora-
tions, develop programs and effectively im-
plement solutions that result in beneficial
changes in terms of conservation of energy,
improved air & water quality, and substan-
tial cost savings that strengthen its economic
stability, and not only for the long term, but
here and now.
Mayor Julián Castro says San Antonio
“has a long, proactive history of pursuing
sustainable development” which he cred-
its to beginning some 13 years ago with the
leadership of former Mayor Howard Peak.
At that time, San Antonio voters approved
a 1/8-cent sales tax to purchase and preserve
property over the recharge zone of the city’s
primary source of drinking water, known as
the Edwards Aquifer. Since that time, voters
have re-authorized the sales tax twice, effec-
tively preserving some 20,000 acres of sensi-
tive land. In 2009, another initiative known
as the Mission Verde Plan was spurred to
being through the leadership of Mayor
Phil Hardberger. Castro says with “Mission
Verde’s core tenets of advanced energy in-
frastructure, clean technology development,
green jobs, sustainable buildings, integrated