Going Green Big-time

St. Mary's Newest School Claims Lead In Statewide Environmental Design Race

CALIFORNIA, Md. - - Approaching Evergreen Elementary, it's clear right away that there's something different about this new school. A pair of silo-like structures squats in front of the two-story brick building - cisterns storing rainwater for flushing the toilets. Then there are the cactuses and other plants growing atop the entrance canopy - put there to soak up more rain.

Evergreen represents the latest in green school design in Maryland. The $20 million elementary school, which started classes last week in this woodsy, suburban community in St. Mary's County, has been designed and built to save bundles of energy and water, and to reduce the building's impact on nearby streams and wetlands. It's also been planned to hammer environmental consciousness home to its 600 students. It is, contends county School Superintendent Michael Martirano, the greenest school in the state.

He might get some argument on that - Montgomery County has built or rebuilt four schools now with enough energy-saving and environmental features to qualify for the second-highest rating given by the U.S. Green Building Council. But there's no doubt that green schools are starting to spread across the state.

St. Mary's school officials say Evergreen, like the Montgomery schools, is in line to get a "gold" rating under the green building council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, or LEED, rating system. Among other features, it boasts a geothermal heating and cooling system, waterless urinals and low-flow faucets, and a white reflective coating on the flat portions of the roof to keep the building from needing as much air conditioning in warm months.

Small patches of the roof also sprout plants - with the cisterns, part of a system meant to capture 90 percent of the rain that falls on the school. There is a bank of photovoltaic cells mounted on a sloped portion of the roof, and even a small wind turbine that powers one outlet. Though their contribution to the school's energy diet is tiny, the gadgets are meant to be teaching tools, not just bells and whistles.

"This is more than just a school," said Martirano as he showed a reporter and photographer around, giving what he estimates was his eighth tour of the new building. "It's a full immersion in the energy conservation issues [students] are going to experience as adults."