Low-tech green
Much that is green can appear a far-off dream as far as paying the mortgage or sending the kids to college. But low-tech green infrastructure could create jobs, bringing plants back to the city in the form of roof top gardens and ivy-covered walls and by embracing ecologically based storm water management.
Unlike decades past, when a hardened cadre made such pitches to their own echoes, builders ”“ who also foresee retrofitting work in existing buildings ”“ and governments now see the need, too.
These ideas and others were discussed at the Green 2010 conference held at the Millbrook-based Cary Institute for Ecosystems Studies, held Dec. 4. It was the institute”™s fifth annual green building and energy conference. Speakers noted that though the economy will benefit from the jobs and ingenuity green building programs create, there is an even more compelling reason to invest.
“Green jobs is the fastest way to start reversing global warming,” said Paul Mankiewicz, executive director of the Gaia Institute, a Bronx-based nonprofit engineering firm exploring ways to reintegrate natural systems into urban areas and restore tainted lands with natural plantings.
Green roofs and walls are one relatively simple example, he said, citing pilot programs in urban areas that show vegetation on rooftops and ivy on walls and in pocket parks reduced the heat-island effect cities normally create. The green measures reduce building-intake temperatures to create energy savings. As a rule of thumb, Mankiewicz said, dropping the intake temperature of air by a single degree produces a 1 percent reduction in energy usage. Outdoors, the greenery provides shade, beauty and habitat for birds creating an urban oasis.
The same principles hold for the process of recycling storm water runoff into engineered wetlands. Noting that there are between 15 to 20 miles of roots underneath every square mile of forest, he said that bio-filtering has enormous untapped capacity, both in terms of their cleansing ability and their economic benefits as a labor intensive task. “We just have to engineer the coupling of green jobs with these filtration capacities.” (Fenced-in storm water sumps have long been in place on Long Island where sandy soils otherwise do little to impede the flow of pollutants into sensitive saltwater environments.)
Mankiewicz showed slides of the Institute”™s bio-engineering work on grounds around the Sims Metal Factory that was converted from a bleak industrial yard to a man-made wetland using native plants created as part of a $2.3 million project to prevent pollutants from entering the Bronx River.
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“A fundamental problem with our current development patterns is how we pave over landscapes,” said Simon Gruber, of the Hudson Valley Regional Council, one of the event sponsors. He said creating “green infrastructure” would involve “Low-impact development more integrated into landscapes, to put water back in the ground instead of just letting it run off. We can go to urban areas and restore ecology and building projects can become ecological systems that benefit biodiversity.”
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The Hudson Valley Regional Council and a consortium of landscapers are working to educate communities and contractors on implementing green infrastructure measures.
Mankiewicz said state regulators have been won over by the value of “green, low-impact development.” He said they are now considering situations where zero storm water discharge is allowed off properties, saying that plants and engineering can absorb and filter water very efficiently. To get it done right, he said, “The best thing is to get the contractor in that conversation early on.”
Such ideas are becoming increasingly familiar and popular among contractors, according to Wayne Williams, the sustainability executive with U.W. Marx Construction Co. of Troy, Rensselaer County. “I think contractors are moving forward,” said Williams
“I think we have a tendency: the need to see it to believe it,” said Williams. “You have to show us. But we are starting to see specifications coming from state projects and we”™re finding more and more contractors want to get educated about LEEDs,” he said, citing the leadership in energy and environment and design certification process by the U.S. Green Building Council.
Williams said even if new construction remained mired in recession, there is work to be done that could create jobs. “The future is we have an enormous amount of existing building stock. There is a great opportunity for contractors to get on board rehabilitating buildings with incentives for energy efficiencies.”