Once that number is tabulated — and track manager Mark Wigginton wants to do it right and get a “good hard number that is not conservative at all, that’s unassailably big enough” — city employees will decide how they want to offset the emissions. All they know so far is that the offsets will be local. “We don’t want to plant trees in Uruguay,” Wigginton says.
It won’t be a cheap venture. Preliminary estimates put PIR’s carbon-offset costs at anywhere from $25,000 to $50,000. But like Pappas, Wigginton thinks he’ll be able to find an advertising partner that’s tempted by the 400,000 “active and dedicated fans” who come through the park each year, he seems resigned to shoulder some extra cost, if only because he knows his customers: “Portland’s a green town,” he says. “It’s just the right thing to do.”
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Deirdre Fulton: dfulton@phx.com
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