LAKEWOOD —The General Services Administration is increasingly focused on environmental innovation while also saving taxpayer dollars, and the 624-acre Federal Center in Lakewood has become a testing ground for sustainable technologies.
has seen innovations in solar, wind and water save millions of dollars and reduce greenhouse emissions by thousands of tons at the Federal Center alone.
“The goal of the Federal Center is to be greenest campus anywhere in the country by 2020,” said Sue Damour, the Regional GSA administrator. “We’re not a temple in the middle of nowhere, and we have enormous influence.”
As the largest owner of real estate in the United States, the GSA says proven technologies have the potential for dramatic savings if applied to federal property across the country. On a local level, Lakewood has also benefited from sustainability collaborations with the GSA.
In one example, testing on three water cooling evaporative systems saved the Federal Center over a million gallons of year once the technology was in place and earned a rebate check of $18,000 from Denver Water. The experiment has helped reduce water usage by 50 percent at the campus since 2007.
“We worked with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory to quantify those savings, then asked ‘how were we successful here and how do we replicate and share that across the country?’ ” said Silas Cambell, a GSA asset manager.
The cooling systems are among dozens of successful sustainability measures that include the installation of a seven megawatt solar array that dropped utility costs by $700,000 per year and 34 boiler replacements and retrofits that reduced total campus energy use by 20 percent.
After working with the Department of Energy and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory promoting wind energy to federal agencies in Colorado, Damour launched the with the original federal partners and the city of Lakewood in 2010.
The group promoted over 40 programs on sustainability and created a sustainability challenge that saw several hundred federal and city employees pledge to reduce 1,079,000 pounds of carbon dioxide — equivalent to planting 12,519 trees.
“This sustainability challenge was significant because it supported our employees in their commitment to use green practices, and it strengthened and broadened our partnerships with other agencies in our community,” said Lakewood City Manager Kathy Hodgson.
Along the way, Red Rocks Community College joined the WEST group and the second stage of the collaboration has seen Lakewood producing .
“The idea behind the videos isn’t’ to teach everyone how to do everything with sustainability, but to say, here, there’s a ton of info out there and just to direct people to where they need to go,” said Lakewood media director Kit Lammers.
Lisa Wild, a GSA senior project manager, said the and the Regional Transportation District with locating the the Federal Station light-rail stop in a way that best benefited the environment and
“I think the idea of all of this is that the federal government gets out of its little box and sees that we’re an integral part of the community, with the idea that partnership and success is all of us working together, not just the GSA saving money,” Damour said.
