Environmental Concerns

By Andrew N. "Andy" Weissman

I have been working with our building officials on developing a street trees protection and replacement program and the requirements need to be strengthened; this is something that goes a long way towards making C.C. the beautiful place it is, and improves the environment.

I have been working to expand energy and resource efficient programs for installation and retrofit, such as lighting, furnaces, low-flow toilets, windows, irrigation and water conservation.

We need to do more to promote efficiency upgrades to existing buildings. Our green building program is great, but it applies to new construction and remodels. In a typical year less than 1/2 of 1% of the existing buildings in C.C. are new or major remodeled.

If we rely on green building programs to improve our buildings, it will take approximately 200 years to complete all our buildings.

I would like to explore the feasibility of adding as part of the next C.C. green building program, the inclusion of a very small permit fee surcharge on all permits for environmental/ sustainability training.

The costs of building construction don't include the large "external" costs that are borne by others. A new building causes environment degradation where the raw materials come from, and causes air pollution through its energy use into the foreseeable future. The harmful effects of this pollution aren't paid for by the building owners, they're paid for by society in the form of health problems caused by air pollution.

We ought to begin addressing these costs now.