On a hot Thursday afternoon in September 2011, San Diego County
was plunged into darkness when a massive power outage hit the
region, caused by a grid malfunction across the southwestern
United States. The blackout spanned from North County to Coronado
and left millions of San Diego County residents without power for
over 12 hours. Power was restored but in the aftermath,
County officials learned a lot about the vulnerabilities and gaps
in their emergency response plan.
In a twelfth floor conference room overlooking the serpentine
shoreline of Lake Merritt in Oakland, Sarah Church sits down and
takes a drink from her reusable, stainless-steel water bottle.
Church works for Alameda County in the Office of Sustainability
where she and colleague Karen Cook collaborate with the County’s
Procurement Department to advance the county’s Sustainable
Purchasing Program – an impressive initiative that has grown over
two decades to become one of the leading green procurement
efforts in California local government.
