October 17, 2007

Hepp named region’s green school leader

The U.S. Green Building Council has launched a new national initiative to make schools greener and picked Seattle architect Greg Hepp to oversee the effort in the Pacific Northwest.

The Green School Advocates program is intended to create an army of people who care about green schools. Their mission is to spread the word about the benefits of sustainable schools.

Hepp, a principal at Seattle-based Bassetti Architects, has a longstanding interest in green schools. Because of this, the Cascadia chapter of the USGBC, which includes Washington, Oregon and British Columbia, chose him to represent the region.

Hepp is one of 64 leaders in the green school movement from across the country that were sent to Washington, D.C., for training. They learned different methods to promote green schools based on local needs. The leaders include architects, school board members, school superintendents, engineers, energy consultants and lawyers.

Rachel Gutter, schools sector manager with the USGBC, said schools are a unique market because they exist in every town across the country, are built differently according to local rules and are important to anyone who cares about future generations. The USGBC decided it needed a new approach that would tailor information based on the different needs of each community.

Each leader is developing a plan to support green schools in his or her community based on local needs. They will also create Green School Advocacy Committees.

“There are troops on the ground,” Gutter said. “Right now the idea being that they are going to multiply and form quite the army.”

Hepp will work on goals for Washington state. Last June, Washington started requiring all public schools in districts of more than 2,000 students be built according to the Washington Sustainable Schools Protocol or to LEED silver standards. There are about 10 states that have similar requirements.

The Washington Sustainable Schools Protocol mostly matches LEED silver, Hepp said. It includes guidelines on indoor environment, minimizing energy use, minimizing site impacts, maintaining water quality and conserving natural resources.

Because the state has already recognized the need for green schools, Hepp said his goal is to educate school districts to better understand and support the program, and push it even further instead of just meeting state requirements.

“Too often green schools or sustainability is seen as things that are being pushed,” he said. “When people understand the benefits both to the students, the long term operating costs and the environment, the demand will increase.”

Hepp hopes to have teams of between six and eight members in Seattle, Portland and Vancouver, B.C., to support green schools. Each team will concentrate on increasing local support for building green schools, with Hepp acting as the nucleus of the network.

Gutter said the advocate program will give people interested in green schools a regional contact. For example, when a person asks for information in Alexandria, Va., Gutter said she will send that person to an advocate who understands regional concerns rather than just sending the person general information.

While advocates will tailor the goals based on communities' needs, the goal of the program is to get resolutions passed that support green schools. “The idea for us to really set this in motion,” Gutter said, “is to work to have resolutions passed.”

The USGBC launched a Web site about green schools at http://buildgreenschools.org/ to learn more.

 

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Katie Zemtseff can be reached by email or by phone at (206) 622-8272.