FORT WORTH, Texas – The National Association of Environmental Professionals today awarded the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Fort Worth District, Southwestern Division, an Environmental Excellence Award for sustainability planning at Schofield Barracks, U.S. Army Garrison-Hawaii.
The award, in the Planning Integration category, was for the district’s Regional Planning and Environmental Center’s Installation Sustainability Component Plan. It integrated sustainability into long-term master planning to help the garrison meet Department of Defense Net Zero goals for reducing energy and water consumption, and cutting waste and stormwater runoff.
“To meet the natural resource challenges in the 21st century, we must find new ways to help military installations meet these difficult goals,” said Lt. Col. W. Neil Craig, commander, Fort Worth District. “Cutting-edge initiatives, such as those developed by our master planning team, will keep the Army mission ready.”
The pilot project at Schofield Barracks breaks with the traditional narrow focus on individual buildings by taking a holistic view across Area Development Plan districts. Key is the development of a new Net Zero Planner tool with RPEC’s partners at the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center, Construction Engineering Research Laboratory in Champaign, Illinois.
This modeling tool can run thousands of districtwide simulations to develop sustainability guidelines that, when implemented over the next 5, 10 and 20 years, can meet aggressive Net Zero goals. The project showed how energy at Schofield Barracks could be cut by 59 percent, water use cut by 91 percent, waste cut by 72 percent and storm-water runoff by 47 percent using a “best case” effort scenario.
The project team included personnel from Corps Headquarters, the Pacific Ocean Division, CERL, Fort Worth and Europe Districts and The Urban Collaborative LLC.
Accepting the honor today at the organization’s national conference awards luncheon today were Dr. Rumanda K. Young, chief of RPEC’s Master Planning Section and regional energy program manager for the Corps’ Southwestern Division. Joining her in accepting the award was Mark Mitsunaga, master planner at the U.S. Army Garrison-Hawaii Directorate of Public Works Planning Division.
The American Planning Association honored the same project earlier this year for Outstanding Sustainable Planning, Design or Development Initiative.
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About the Fort Worth District: The Fort Worth District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was established in 1950. The District is responsible for water resources development in two-thirds of Texas, and design and construction at military installations in Texas and parts of Louisiana and New Mexico. Visit the Fort Worth District Web site at: www.swf.usace.army.mil and SWF Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fort-Worth-District-US-Army-Corps-of-Engineers/188083711219308.