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County seeks members for ‘green committee’
Attention, environmentally and energy conscious residents: The county wants your help and ideas.In a May 18 resolution, county supervisors approved formation of a committee to look into ways to reduce the county’s overall impact on the environment while saving money and improving services.
The idea, while important, is not a new one, said board Vice Chairman Michael Hobert (D-Berryville), who has been active in getting the project underway.
We’ve historically been proactive in this area, and we see it as a continuation of our efforts to respect our environment and to work together to protect natural resources,” Hobert said.
The committee would consider, for example, energy policies to promote waste reduction and recycling, energy efficiency in county-owned and commercial buildings, fuel economy in school and county vehicles, policies regarding land-use, storm water, and water conservation, and construction and conservation practices to enable buildings to be certified as “green,” or environmentally friendly.
The idea is to make less of a footprint on the earth,” Hobert said.
This is not a debate about global warming,” Hobert added. “This is a discussion about how we can work together to have more efficiency in our operations and also how we can continue to protect our resources.”
But to do that, the community as a whole must become informed, plan, and work together, Hobert said.
It’s going to happen over time, and it’s going to happen only with a real change in the way we think about things,” he added.
A key component, he said, will be creation of an outreach plan to educate the community about these issues.
Hobert said the county wants to involve the Town of Berryville, the school system, businesses, and individual residents in what the resolution called a “conservation partnership.”
Saying supervisors have already received some positive response to the concept, Hobert said anyone interested in serving on the committee should contact County Administrator David Ash.
The goal is to have the committee in place within the next month, he added, estimating its overview could last from six months to a year.
Unless we as individuals take the first initiative, the planet’s not going to survive,” said Berryville resident William Liggett, who is among a group of residents who have been working informally to try to make the county a green place to live.
In April, Liggett gave a presentation to the School Board’s Construction Committee on making the proposed new high school a green project. Citing a study by the U.S. Green Building Council, a national nonprofit organization, he suggested using large windows to capture more sunlight, passive solar heating, and non-toxic construction materials as well as recycling water to prevent runoff.
“The first thing you notice when you enter a green school is that the air quality is as good as or better than outside,” Liggett said. “And it’s been demonstrated that improving air quality has a profound positive effect on productivity in industrial applications.”
The USGBC studied about 30 schools nationwide and found that, by going green, they saved on average more than 33 percent on energy costs and more than 32 percent on water usage, Liggett said.
The most prudent use of taxpayers’ dollars is to go green,” Liggett added, noting that although it might cost one to two percent more to build a green school, “the extra money spent will easily be recaptured in a few years with energy savings.”
Allen Kitselman III, a Berryville town councilman (Ward 2) who owns an architectural firm, has also been active in staying atop of emerging technologies and is interested in helping the county committee.
In the last couple of years, we’ve completely retooled our way of thinking,” Kitselman said. “Buildings account for quite a lot of energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions.”
“We’ve been trying to incorporate sustainability into what we do for a long time,” he added.
Several town initiatives, Kitselman said, will be to distribute compact fluorescent light bulbs to each home in Berryville and to upgrade trash pickup and recycling procedures.
Contact the reporter at rmarlow@timespapers.com
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