As a growing city, Kingston is almost always under construction, with new buildings popping up all the time.
While building construction is inevitably detrimental to the environment, there is now a way for building designers to ensure environmental responsibility with their designs through Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED).
According to the City of Kingston website, LEED is “a rating system representing a holistic and environmentally responsible approach to building design.” It is overseen by the Canada Green Building Council and is internationally recognized as the leading standard in environmental building design. The City of Kingston website states that to become LEED certified, a building must meet prerequisites and earn credits in categories such as sustainable sites, water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, indoor environmental quality and innovation and design process.
Civil Engineering professor Bruce Anderson said LEED is useful in of developing environmental responsibility.
“[LEED] has its place. I don’t think it’s a perfect system, but LEED is evolving, it’s fairly new,” he said. “It’s moving things in the right direction.”
Started by the U.S. Green Building Council, LEED works by taking the entirety of a building into and tries to make it as sustainable and efficient as possible with good design and material selection.
LEED certified buildings in the city include the INVISTA Centre, the Kingston Regional Sports and Entertainment Centre and the Kingston Police Headquarters. One of the sustainability efforts the Police Headquarters is engaged in is catching and using the abundant Kingston rainwater. This suits another LEED certified building, the Ravensview water pollution control plant’s istrative centre, just fine.
All water for Kingston and the area is purified at Ravensview. The treatment facility reopened in 2009 after a $115 million upgrade. The project took three years but has resulted in one of the most state-of the-art facilities in the country, making Kingston an international leader and example to other municipalities.
Premier Dalton McGuinty attended the 2006 ribbon-cutting ceremony that marked the beginning of construction.
“Everyone knows sewer systems are important, but we don’t often get excited about them. Ravensview is different, though. It’s environmentally friendly, energy efficient and uses only small amounts of chemicals to return clean water,” he said. “Building a sewage plant is not the sexiest endeavour, but without it, there will be serious effects both inside and downstream from this community.”
The plant does more than simply protect the natural resources in its immediate vicinity.
Allen Lucas from Utilities Kingston co-authored a paper discussing 18 key equipment components in the plant. He told the Whig-Standard that this was a part of the education and training aspects that go along with such a high calibre of equipment.
The University is also taking advantage of the educational opportunities provided by having a plant so close to home. Research projects conducted around the plant are no anomaly and undergraduates are exposed to the technology through fieldtrips to the plant, like the one BIOL409 took last week.
“The benefits of this project will have an impact for a long time,” Lucas said. “Papers, procedures, community partnerships, and training -those are all aspects that other municipalities can examine and tailor to specific situations, but they’re proven and explained because we implemented them at Ravensview.”
All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s) in Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be ed, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to [email protected].