Midwestern Consulting

The United States Green Building Council (USGBC) is now roughly 6-months into the implementation of the LEED for Neighborhood Development (LEED-ND) rating system.  After a pilot program and a response period, the new rating system has a total 110 possible points and requires a minimum of 40 points for a project to be certified and 80+ to receive platinum status. 

The main sections to achieve points in are:

• Smart Location and Linkage
• Neighborhood Pattern and Design
• Green Infrastructure and Buildings
• Innovation and Design Process
• Regional Priority Credit

Based on the various credits, one of the primary goals of this rating system is to develop larger concepts of a community and how all the individual pieces work together.  It is an extension of many credits that are already a part of the LEED for New Construction system (LEED-NC), specifically the Sustainable Sites points section. 

It will take a little time to fully digest all the aspects of this rating system, but the key concepts have already begun to be used by Midwestern Consulting on recently started projects and will hopefully continue to be a guiding light for future developments. 

Scott Fisher is an engineer at Midwestern Consulting in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  He is LEED-AP and can be reached at 734.995.0200.

Design and construction rating systems like LEED include little recognition of the benefits of sustainable landscape and site design. The Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES) intends to change that with a 4-star rating system that recognizes “ecosystem services”. 

LEED scores soon to incorporate landscape design.

These ecosystem services include global and local climate regulation, air and water cleansing, water supply and regulation, erosion and sediment control, hazard mitigation, pollination, habitat functions, waste decomposition and treatment, human health and well-being benefits, food and renewable non-food products, and cultural benefits.

SITES is a distillation of practices and principles for integrating “ecosystem services” into site development, as described in The Sustainable Sites Initiative: Guidelines and Performance Benchmarks 2009, released on November 5, 2009. It establishes and encourages sustainable practices in landscape design, construction, operations, and maintenance. 

Sustainable landscapes move beyond the typical green building do-no-harm/carbon neutral approach by sequestering carbon, cleaning the air and water, increasing energy efficiency, restoring habitats, and giving back through significant economic, social, and environmental benefits never fully measured until now. The U.S. Green Building Council anticipates incorporating the SITES guidelines and performance benchmarks into future iterations of its LEED® Green Building Rating System™.

SITES provides the first voluntary guidelines and rating system for sustainable landscapes, with or without buildings, and creates an essential missing link in green design.

Earl Ophoff, LSA, is a landscape architect and a senior project manager with Midwestern Consulting, LLC, Ann Arbor, Michigan.  Call Earl at 734.995.0200.

We’ve all seen poles on the freeway with solar panels attached to power whatever transportation device that has been installed, but these always seem to be far apart and not commonly used. This, however, is a misconception because when you see these it is just in this area. I was surprised when a simple web search of “solar powered street lights” produces over 1.84 million hits for various websites and companies that are now producing solar powered lighting systems that are ranging from park lighting to parking lot lighting. A few favorites are shown below:

http://www.solarlightingusa.com/

http://www.google.com/imgres?…

These are independent units that come equipped with a solar panel and battery system to power the light without the need for trenching or running of conduits between poles and then the power source.

These self-contained units would prove ideal for locating new lights in congested existing sites where the underground utilities are delicate or unknown, or in sensitive environmental areas where the desire is to limit impact to the surrounding area. Beyond these examples the self-contained units will of course make good use for any location requiring lighting and do so in a green manner and from a renewable resource. These units can also help to achieve LEED credits for onsite renewable energy. Rather than needing to devote large areas of roof space to larger photovoltaic units (PV), these individual units mount directly to the light they are energizing and can provide all the power those lights need.

I am sure that as PV technology advances these individual units will continue to grow smaller and more affordable to use and will one day dominate all site lighting without anyone thinking of them as something new.

NEW SUSTAINABLE LANDSCAPE DESIGN CONSTRUCTION AND MAINTENANCE RATING SYSTEM AND GUIDELINES, 2009
Sustainable Sites Initiative Guidelines and Performance Benchmarks

The American Society of Landscape Architect (ASLA) has notified their membership (including MCLLC) that the Sustainable Sites Initiative™ has released the first voluntary, scientifically researched rating system and guidelines for design, construction, and maintenance of sustainable landscapes, with or without buildings.

The rating system works on a 250-point scale, with levels of achievement for obtaining 40, 50, 60, or 80 percent of available points, recognized with one through four stars, respectively. If prerequisites are met, points are awarded through the 51 credits covering areas such as the use of greenfields, brownfields, or greyfields; materials; soils and vegetation; construction and maintenance. These credits can apply to projects ranging from corporate campuses, transportation corridors, public parks, and single-family residences. The rating system is part of two new reports issued from the Initiative, The Case for Sustainable Landscapes and Guidelines and Performance Benchmarks 2009, both available for download at www.sustainablesites.org/report.

The Initiative will oversee pilot projects during a two-year system assessment process. www.sustainablesites.org/pilot. The Sustainable Sites Initiative is a partnership of the ASLA, the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center and the U.S. Botanic Garden. The rating system “represents four years of work by dozens of the country’s leading sustainability experts, scientists and design professionals, as well as public input from hundreds of individuals and dozens of organizations to create this essential missing link in green design.”

Suzanne LaBarre wrote a snappy article on the “Living Building Challenge” (LBC) in the October 2009 issue of Metropolis magazine. She says that we should “think of the Living Building Challenge as a Port Huron Statement for the green age.” I had to look that one up on Wikipedia and found a tie-in to the University of Michigan as follows:

The Port Huron Statement is the manifesto of the American student activist movement Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), written primarily by Tom Hayden, then the Field Secretary of SDS, and completed on June 15, 1962 at an SDS convention at what is now a state park in Lakeport, Mich., a community north of Port Huron[1]. It begins: “We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit…”

So it’s the radical voice of green building according to Suzanne whose “motto, ‘No credits, just prerequisites’ rebukes the moderate incrementalism of LEED, which favors plaques and incentives of soup-to-nuts sustainability.” The LBC may well pressure USGBC to “radicalize, effectively tamping the entire industry into smaller carbon footprints, one pretty little building at a time.” Ouch! And further, LBC “turns architecture into a series of Carthusian statutues that no one, not even the most devout among us, could possible follow to a tee.” Huh? Back to Wikipedia where the site for Carthusian statues is a bit rough and reads in part:

(The monks) follow their own Rule, called the Statutes, rather than the Rule of St Benedict (as is often erroneously reported) and combine eremitical and cenobetic (sp.) life.

I’ve been out of school for a long time, so it’s off to the dictionary for “eremitical” (like a hermit) and “cenobitic” (a member of a religious order living in a convent or community). Cool! LBC will make us all monks and nuns living in convents and following all sorts of neat rules and rituals! So how far out does the radical voice of green building get? Well, the article is really about the Omega Center for Sustainable Living, “the newest addition to the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, a non-profit that is every bit as New Age as it sounds and wherer shape-shifting courses and ‘bootcamp for goddesses’ do the work of its sunny mission: ‘awakening the best in the human spirit.’”

There are 16 rigorous prerequisites and lots of inherent conflicts. You really need to read the article, if only to get to the part where the Omega therapeutic dance teacher has you “exhale out through your hands and feet today.” And don’t skip the very last line!