Scottsdale Is Serious About Their Green Side
By Alan M. Petrillo
Tucson Green Times – November 2009
Encouraging green building, both in residential and commercial projects, is nothing new for the city of Scottsdale – its Green Building Program is the earliest formal municipal program in Arizona and the fifth oldest in the United States.
Established in 1998 to support environmentally responsible building in the city, the Scottsdale program has been used as a model for other municipalities in the country.
Anthony Floyd, Scottsdale’s Green Building Program manager, calls the effort part of the historic culture of Scottsdale.
“The city wanted to create somewhere special to live and work,” he says.
Before the program was begun, Scottsdale instituted a hillside ordinance, a native plant ordinance that established desert-sensitive design principles and created the McDowell Mountain Preserve.
“Citizens, architects, builders and elected officials all contributed to those efforts,” Floyd says, “and green building came out of all those things. It was a natural outgrowth for us.”
The program rates building projects in six environmental impact areas – site use, energy, indoor air quality, building materials, solid waste and water. A green building point rating system is used to qualify projects into the program. Flexibility of design is achieved by offering more than 150 green building options, yet still maintaining a whole building systems approach. Builders, designers and developers can enter any number of projects into Scottsdale’s voluntary program.
With regard to site use, Scottsdale’s program seeks to protect ecologically sensitive land and indigenous plants, minimize the size of a development’s footprint, integrate buildings with site topography and optimize opportunities for outdoor living (such as courtyards, porches and canopies), and avoid any ground treatments that might have toxic or hazardous constituents.
The energy impact area of the program seeks to incorporate passive solar design strategies by orienting the building and interior spaces for seasonal benefits, encouraging the use of a well-insulated building envelope and installation of high performance low-e windows, and consider active solar systems, such as water heating and photovoltaic-solar electrics.
Use of environmentally responsible materials is encouraged in buildings, as is the creation of a safe indoor air environment though avoiding materials and finishes with high volatile organic compounds (VOCs), providing for ventilation, and maximizing environmental control through operable windows and zoned temperature controls.
Efficient water use is recommended through low-flow plumbing fixtures and water-efficient appliances, improving the water delivery system using tankless and recirculating water heating systems, converting to xeriscape for landscaping, and considering graywater use and rainwater collection for outside irrigation.
Reducing the generation of solid waste can be accomplished, the program recommends, through sorting construction and demolition waste for recycling, purchasing building materials in required dimensions to minimize waste, reusing discarded materials wherever possible and donating reusable materials to local non-profit building supply companies or community groups.
“When we first began the program, we started working primarily with custom home builders, but later got involved with production home builders too,” Floyd notes. “At one point, when several major subdivisions were being built in the city in 2005 and 2006, about 50 percent of single family building permits were green permits. Now, because of the slowdown in production housing building, about 30 percent of our permits are green in residential building.”
Tom Norris, owner of Norris Architects in Scottsdale, is both an architect and licensed contractor who has participated in the program since its inception.
“I found the program extremely educational and it has changed my philosophy of building,” Norris says. “Scottsdale did a great job in setting up the training for those things that would make us better architects and builders in terms of sustainability.”
For example, he notes, the program encouraged builders to move insulation off the ceiling in residential structures and put it on the bottom of the roof deck, thus increasing the efficiency of air conditioning in the house.
“We may be insulating more cubic feet of space, but we’re not insulating against the 150-plus degree temperatures you can get in an attic,” Norris says, “so we’re keeping some of that heat out of the attic and allowing the air conditioning to work more efficiently.”
In addition, Norris points out, as time passed, Scottsdale did a good job in addressing builder concerns that arose and made the program a more streamlined process by integrating inspections with those required by other city departments.”
Floyd says that green building on the commercial side is less popular than residential, mostly because commercial projects also have to go through a developmental review board and get involved with the planning department.
“On the residential side, we’re usually the first interface with the builders,” he says, “so we have more influence on single family residential buildings.”
One of the incentives for builders to go through the Green Building Program, Floyd notes, is expedited plan review.
“Expedited plan review has been very popular with the builders because it usually means they get their building permit in about half the time as it generally takes,” he says. “That saves a lot of money for the builders.”
Builders participating in the program also are listed on the program’s website, are allowed to put up green building signage on the jobsite, can use the program’s logo on their marketing materials and are furnished with green promotional materials for distribution to potential customers.
“I think the program has been a shining star in Arizona and an example for other communities to follow,” Floyd says. “We plan to continue to keep working to get more people involved in the program and think we’re halfway to completely integrating the program and making it a standard way of construction in the city.”
Author: Alan Petrillo is a local freelance writer.
