Federal Land- Landfill Remediation at School Site

Jason Ridings

Senior Project Manager

Boynton-Williams & Associates

LEEDuser Basic Member

2 thumbs up

September 14, 2012

We are constructing a new school on a U.S. Army base. The local school district is building the school on a leased tract of land, owned by the Department of Defense (DoD). A portion of the site is an existing school to be demolished. Another portion of the site is open space with a clean environmental history. A portion of the property was a solid waste landfill that the U.S. Army has completely mitigated. This effort was completed, entirely by the land owner (the DoD) in the hopes that the school would be located there in the future. The federal funding for this project requires it to meet LEED Silver. Are we to understand that SSp2 disqualifies our project from pursuing LEED certification?

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Larry Sims

Principal

Studio4, LLC

LEEDuser Expert

120 thumbs up

Sun, 09/16/2012 - 12:58

Jason, technically your understanding is correct. However, in the past, USGBC has offered a possible work-around with regard to contaminated sites by culling out the contaminated portion such that it is no longer a portion of the subject property. For instance, if the subject property is, say, 100 acres and the contamination had been determined to be 1 acre located in a corner of the property, you could make the contaminated portion a separate, legal parcel. The premise is if you have a 1000 acre site, you should not be penalized by the existence of a small, insignificant section of the property. DoD – U.S. Army base – solid waste landfill – lease. Certainly challenging, but I’d review the options internally, then with the DoD if viable, then contact GBCI.

Jason Ridings

Senior Project Manager

Boynton-Williams & Associates

LEEDuser Basic Member

2 thumbs up

Mon, 09/17/2012 - 16:34

Thank you for your reply. Unfortunately in this particular case we would not be able to parcel out the previously contaminated area as it falls directly beneath the new building footprint and the center of the property. Originally the state and federal environmental quality authorities worked together to create a mitigation work plan for the explicit purpose of building a school here. This work was planned and completed before conditions existed requiring LEED certification. We will continue to work through this on our end with the DoD and GBCI.

Tristan Roberts

Representative

Vermont House of Representatives

LEEDuser Expert

7780 thumbs up

Mon, 09/17/2012 - 18:01

Jason, officially speaking I don't think the project can be certified due to the SSp2 requirements. There is always the chance of working around this through direct contact with GBCI, and/or a CIR spelling out the specifics of the project and how mitigation was performed.I hope you'll let us know how it works out.