As part of West Windsor’s continuing efforts to reduce the detrimental impacts of new development to the environment, the township’s Planning Board will be drafting a sustainability element to its Master Plan, board Chairman Marvin Gardner announced during the board’s September 3 meeting.##M:[more]##
Having the sustainability element as part of the township’s Master Plan is optional, but Gardner said he felt it was important for West Windsor to actually have that section outlined in the Master Plan. This will be the first time in West Windsor’s history that the Master Plan will include the sustainability element, an element that is rarely seen.
“It’s not required by state statute, but it’s optional, and it’s new,” Gardner said. “The whole concept of doing it is brand new in the state, and obviously new to West Windsor.”
After the sustainability element is created, the board will be able to draft ordinances to enforce it. Even though it’s optional, “I think it’s an absolute necessity to ensure developers will adhere to some of the sustainability changes” in their own plans. Currently, the board can only recommend that developers incorporate green building measures, but cannot force them to do so when they say those options are too costly or that they may not be logical. If these sustainable measures are ordinanced, “they’ll be required to do it,” Gardner explained.
“Obviously we have to be realistic,” Gardner said. “You can’t require developers to do everything. We’re going to have a rational approach — one that is ready for implementation in terms of developing, constructing buildings, or doing things in connection with the property.”
Gardner says he wants the board to get to work right away. In drafting the element, professionals will incorporate the Sustainable West Windsor Plan drafted by the Environmental Commission and presented last fall.
In addition, it will also be using information from a presentation about incorporating green initiatives into the township’s land use policies, which the board heard over the summer.
Presentation Details. In that presentation, township landscape architect Dan Dobromilsky, who sits on the board’s sustainability subcommittee, told the board that the presentation came as a product of the Sustainable West Windsor Plan that was drafted last fall. Part of the goals in that plan included outreach and education. Jennifer Senick, of the Rutgers Center for Green Building and the New Jersey State Sustainability Institute, who helped the municipality develop the plan, showed the board various ways through ordinances and its Master Plan it could help make a difference.
Dobromilsky said the overall objectives of the plan include reducing the environmental impacts of construction and operation of buildings.
Green building encompasses several ideas, including the placement of buildings — whether they are near mass transportation or located in the middle of cornfields — and how the site itself is treated. Other components include building in a way that conserves materials and resources, improves air quality, creates opportunities for renewable energy and water efficiency, Senick explained.
Senick reviewed various protocols involved in green building, including Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED), creating by the U.S. Green Building Council — a protocol referenced often during Planning Board hearings.
“New Jersey is not immune to environmental issues that face the globe at large,” Senick said, adding that issues like climate change will have an impact on the state’s residents. “Green building really is an opportunity to do better.”
She presented slides to the board showing statistics like the rising levels of New Jersey’s greenhouse gas emissions, solid waste production, and vehicle miles traveled, as well as the decline in acreage of farmland still available. “These are all trends we’re going to have to reverse if we’re going to achieve a cleaner environment, and building plays very heavily into this — their construction, their operation, their demolition, and where they’re located,” she said.
New Jersey has been slower in the area of green building compared not only to Western states like California, but to its closest neighbors, like New York and Pennsylvania. This is mostly because of a difference in how New Jersey’s building codes are administered, Senick said. Currently, New Jersey municipalities cannot require Energy Star homes of applicants applying to build new developments, like in New York. But the good news, Senick says, is that there has been a steady increase in the number of LEED projects and residential green building within the state, and new legislation proposed by Gov. Jon Corzine would set requirements for reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 and 2050. Officials from Rutgers are trying to work with the Department of Community Affairs to find ways of tightening the codes to make it easier for municipalities to carry out green initiatives.
In addition, with LEED certification, there is a large difference between being a registered project and one that is certified. A developer can pay a registration fee of $150 and say that it has the intention to “build green,” but never follow through on the requirements and building standards needed to become certified. Many times, those that are registered never actually become certified. Further, municipalities also cannot currently require a project be LEED certified, Senick explained.
Still, there are a few good examples of successful green projects around the state, which Senick highlighted. The new Goldman Sachs building in Jersey City came as a result of urban brownfield redevelopment. Some of the green features include that it is energy efficient, and is located near numerous mass transit options. The building has sometimes been criticized that it is not “energy-efficient enough,” but that’s because it relies on mechanical systems to produce better air quality, Senick said.
Another example is EDA’s Waterfront Technology Center in Camden. This was the first public project in the state to be LEED certified. Like the Goldman Sachs building, it was also located in an urban redevelopment zone, was a brownfield site, and is located near mass transportation. More notably, 98 percent of construction waste was diverted from the landfill, when usually anywhere from 50 to 85 percent of construction waste from any project ends up in the landfill.
One the municipal level, there are a handful of tools that can be used by boards and township officials to carry out green goals, Senick. These include Master Plans, ordinances, redevelopment plans, companion plans, and education and outreach. A municipality could develop guidelines and checklists for developers that include suggested ideas for construction that officials would like the developer to include in its site plans. Municipalities could also create information documents to give to residents that show how they could also make an impact. Municipalities could also specify the greening of new developments in the land use and conservation elements of master plans. They can also make green development a top priority in redevelopment planning.
Suggested ordinances for municipalities can include those that place restrictions on compact footprints, maximum house sizes, and that set up the street design for solar orientation of buildings. They can also enact ordinances that implement penalty provisions for teardowns, vegetation removal, and inefficient site layout.
Two sustainable ordinance examples Senick highlighted came from Hopewell Township, where the municipality has looked at limiting roof coloring to materials that are no darker than light gray. The municipality has also looked at setting requirements that would divert 50 percent of construction debris from the disposal through recycling and reusing materials where applicable.
Further, municipalities could also emphasize green building incentives, like priority review of applications for developments where green initiatives are intended to be used, a refund or waiver of applicant and developer frees, and density bonuses and additions. Senick said a fourth incentive, reduced tax assessment basis for green improvements, could be tricky. “The problem is that sometimes people elect strategies that cost more than traditional ones,” she said. For example, if a homeowner puts an addition on a house that is energy-efficient, the assessment value of his or her home could increase drastically, in essence, giving them a “tax penalty for doing the right thing. “I think the one that hurts is when somebody tries to do the right thing and ends up having to pay more,” she said.
She also listed a host of other incentives available through state and federal initiatives and national tax credit systems that could be useful. Recent legislation includes new laws that require certain state building to be designed and managed to meet high performance Green Building standards, that authorize the DCA commissioner to prepare and make available to the public a green building manual, and that authorize municipal planning boards to adopt green buildings and environmental sustainability municipal master plan elements.
