LEED v5 BD+C/ID+C Sustainable Sites public comments

With the expansion of the light pollution credit to include bird safe building design, the growing awareness of the dangers buildings & lights pose to birds, and the added cost/effort involved in following bird safe design - I would support offering more than one point for the credit. 

I also recommend an exception for doors and similar areas from the threat factor requirement. Or use an area requirement of 90-95% meeting the threat factor in the credit language rather than ALL materials. I;ve seen that treated glazing for entry doors can be hard to source, or even nonexistent for specialized products (picture an overhead door to a loading dock with a small integrated window). I think revising the bird section of the credit to allow these relatively small areas an exemption would make it much more accessible and hopefully allow more uptake. 

SS Prerequisite: Minimized Site Disturbance

Schools often do not get to pick the land for they are to be built on. This is land set aside by the developer of the community. Is it possible that the special status vegitation could make a project totaly unable ot achieve LEED certification?

Active Travel Facilities

Schools should continue to exclude students from the calculation of showers and changing facilities. It is not clear if this will still be the case.

For Option 2, Path 2, repair stations were attempted in Edmonton. However, the theft of the tools and vandalism are a significant issue. This is really not a feasible Path.

Expressing biodiversity by requesting 15 native species does not seem like the right way to incorporate biodiversity in the framework. In light of the biodiversity directives on a European level, the requirements in LEED V5 are falling short. What about using tools such as the Society of Restoration Recovery Wheel. That is a tool that makes a lot more sense.

The Rainwater Management credit sets a very high threshold to achieve the 1 point. I think an approach similar to the v4 Building Life-cycle Impact Reduction credit is warranted. Set an entry-level requirement to get project to do the initial analysis or to meet a minimum threshold. Then award additional points for performance.

Emily,

I strongly agree that Light Pollution and Bird Strike should be 2 points, but they really need to be seperate credits! It makes no sense to combine two unrelated things into one credit. 

Combining them for only one point means that in practice this credit will never be pursued except perhaps for a Platinum projects desperate for 1 point. So no Bird Strike mitigation, and much less light pollution control. That is moving backwards. LEED 5.0 should be moving foward.

SS Prerequisite - Minimized Site Disturbance

Conserving 100% of Special-Status Vegetation seems prohibitive in the sense that some entities may not have a choice in site selection; zoning may limit conflict with vegetation and development areas. I recommend amending language to include conserve and/or transport/restore. Can a site survey inventory this information or is a specialist required to survey/inventory a site for special-status vegatation? What are the requirements/parameters for documentation? Additionally, healthy habitat seem to general of a term - more established definition and guidelines should be provided, as well as specific requirements for compliance (especially if this is going to be a prerequisite).

If there is an additional public comment session, it would be great to have clear LEED v5 definitions and guidance around special-status vegetaion or reference to a defining agency. Appreciate the ongoing alignment between LEED and other evaluation bodies, eg. American Forests Tree Equity score.