FORT WORTH, Texas – The American Planning Association has recognized two U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Fort Worth District projects with top awards in its 2014 Federal Planning Division competition. The projects, managed by the Regional Planning and Environmental Center Master Planning Section, will be presented April 20 in Seattle.
One award was in the Outstanding Sustainable Planning, Design or Development Initiative Category for sustainability planning at U.S. Army Garrison-Hawaii Schofield Barracks. The second award was in the best Area Development Plan Category for work at Fort Polk, Louisiana.
“These awards recognize the important role planning plays in supporting our current and future Soldiers,” said Lt. Col. W. Neil Craig III, acting commander for the Fort Worth District. “They also demonstrate our competency and commitment to the sustainability mission through energy efficiency and environmental conservation.”
The Schofield Barracks Sustainability Component Plan is a pilot project that injects a sustainability component into master planning to meet Department of Defense mandates for reduction of energy, water, waste and storm water. It breaks with the traditional narrow focus on building envelopes by taking a districtwide holistic view. Key to this approach 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. This modeling tool, which can run thousands of districtwide simulations, helps develop master planning sustainability guidelines. These define actions that can be implemented over the next 5, 10 and 20 years to meet these 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, Pacific Ocean Division, CERL, Fort Worth and Europe Districts and The Urban Collaborative LLC.
Fort Polk is home of the Joint Readiness Training Center, where Army units train for joint contingency force deployments. The Hub Area Development Plan, developed in collaboration with The Urban Collaborative LLC, meets DoD Installation Master Planning mandates. This project trained Fort Polk planning and engineering personnel and brought together stakeholders, including a soldier focus group, to develop planning alternatives. Stakeholders then adopted a preferred alternative that best met the vision of ’modern infrastructure, appealing landscapes, safe environment and Louisiana style.’ Specific recommendations included ways to promote ease of pedestrian access to key sites, improve street grids and encourage future development using demolition/infill sites instead of open space.
“These awards demonstrate how our Master Planning Section is able to tap expertise across several Corps of Engineers divisions, districts, engineering laboratories and the private sector to deliver valuable services to our partners,” said RPEC Director Eric Verwers. “RPEC’s leading-edge planning makes Army installations more efficient, more livable and more flexible to meet future mission requirements.”
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About the Fort Worth District: The Fort Worth District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 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 our website at: www.swf.usace.army.mil