Collaborative tools such as document-management systems and portals are often lauded for the efficiencies and cost-savings they generate. But a sparsely populated county in Northern California has unearthed another benefit: pollution control.

Nevada County, a mountainous 978-square-mile area with 92,000 residents, may not sound like the kind of place where air quality is a major problem, but with pollutants drifting in from Sacramento, county officials decided a couple of years ago to do their part by beefing up their Web site's collaborative capabilities with Xerox Corp.'s DocuShare document-management application.

Between Oct. 1, 2000, and April 30, 2002, the county monitored residents' use of the document-management tool and made some startling conclusions: Nearly 1,300 round-trips from people's homes to county buildings averaging 46 miles were eliminated annually, reducing the number of miles county residents drive annually by nearly 3 million. That translates to a reduction of more than 7.5 tons of auto emissions, says Dave Bloch, Webmaster for the county's IS department.

Bloch admits that the impact hasn't been visible in "the land of the five-minute rush hour," but says county residents believe that every bit helps, even if the air quality is compromised mostly by their neighbors in California's Central Valley. "If we're gonna complain about all of those flatlanders," he adds, "then we've got to have our own house in order."