So green, it's platinum
At Sweetwater Creek State Park in Lithia Springs, most rainfall that falls on the visitor center's roof is harvested into downspouts and collected into a 10,000-gallon underground cistern, treated and redeployed in a mop sink, lavatories and foam flush toilets.
Waste from waterless urinals and toilets at the center flows into compost bins in the building's basement and is recycled as fertilizer.
Any remaining liquid is mixed with gray water from the drinking fountain, restroom and showers and passed into a septic tank, which feeds a drip irrigation system to water plants in the center's demonstration garden.
For providing the civil engineering piece of one of the world's most environmentally friendly yet moderately priced buildings, Atlanta-based Long Engineering Inc. won the 2006 Grand Award in the small (under $5 million) project category presented by the Georgia chapter of the American Council of Engineering Companies.
The annual awards competition held in conjunction with Engineers Week honors cutting-edge engineering projects that will be models for the future, said Randy Knott, awards committee chairman and vice president and senior principal at Atlanta-based MACTEC Engineering & Consulting Inc.
When the visitor center was first conceived in 2003, the hope was that it would qualify for a silver certification under the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System developed by the U.S. Green Building Council.
But when it opened in October, the 8,743-square-foot building -- which cost $2 million -- became one of only 20 LEED Platinum-certified new construction buildings in the world and the first Platinum LEED building in the Southeast.
"When you imagine if every building in the United States was built with this type of innovation and LEED criteria, you realize how much energy we would save in this country," Knott said. "It would turn the whole country around in terms of energy conservation and sustainability."
At every opportunity, the civil engineering firm pushed itself to find the most sustainable solutions to building challenges and create a fully integrated water and waste management system where each piece works in tandem, said Shepherd Long, vice president of Long Engineering.
Faced with the lack of an adequate public sewer line and only one two-inch line for drinking water already at the location, one easy solution would have been to install a conventional septic system, he said.
Or, at much greater expense, a large water main could have been extended to the site, Long said.
Instead, Long designed a sewer system that not only treats all waste on site but also serves all the visitor center's water needs -- eliminating the need for municipally provided potable water and reducing overall potable water use by 77 percent, he said.
In addition to the already mentioned components, pervious pavement further reduces stormwater runoff; and two stormwater quality ponds collect any additional rainwater not reused or absorbed by the soil, slowly filtering it through a matrix of grass, soil and open graded stone, cleansing the water of potential pollutants and encouraging groundwater recharge.
Long also designed a 15,000-gallon underground storage system to hold enough water to fight a potential fire.
"Probably the most challenging part of the project was whenever we had an obstacle, we couldn't pull from past experience on how to resolve it," Long said.
"The solutions were so unique that we had to do a lot of research to figure out what options were available."
Long's engineers distinguished themselves as critical members of the project's integrated design team, collaborating on designs that have resulted not just in a cost-effective construction phase but also will extend taxpayer savings throughout the building's lifetime, said David Freeman, chief engineer for Georgia's Department of Natural Resources, a national green-building leader with six LEED-certified buildings under its belt.
That team was led by Atlanta-based architecture firm Gerding Collaborative, and included DNR officials; Palmer Engineering Company Inc., Johnson, Spellman & Associates Inc. and Barnett Consulting Engineering Inc. providing, respectively, structural, mechanical and electrical engineering services; landscape architects jB+a Inc.; and contractor Mooney Construction Inc.
More than 100,000 visitors are expected annually at the Sweetwater Visitor Center, which includes retail, administrative offices, an audiovisual room, a water-quality lab, classrooms and an exhibit explaining its many sustainable features and educating the public on how green buildings work and can be built on a moderate budget.
Long Engineering, a female-owned company, was named one of the nation's fastest-growing engineering firms by Chicago-based ZweigWhite, a management consulting firm serving the architectural and engineering fields, in 2004 and 2006.
Long has been involved in many sustainable and LEED-certified projects, including Callaway Gardens' Cecil B. Day Butterfly Center, the Atlanta Botanical Garden's parking deck and visitor center and Glenwood Park, an environmentally friendly condominium complex in South Atlanta.
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