[SPEAKER_02]: So it looks like most of the participants have been assigned to a room. So it looks like we can go ahead and get started. I'm going to be your facilitator for this session. My name is Melissa Russell. I am a sustainable design analyst with SMMA. And I am not as familiar with Medford High School. I have just been working on and off when they need me. So Laura is going to be doing a lot of the heavy lifting and talking for this session. She is much more familiar with this project than I am. So Laura, you can introduce yourself.
[h56i5SspnTk_SPEAKER_08]: I am Laura Swan. I'm a civil engineer with SMMA, and I've been working on Medford High School since the beginning. Civil engineering has to do a lot with the site, the exterior of the building, and the design and systems outside the building envelope.
[Theresa Dupont]: OK.
[SPEAKER_02]: All right, with that, I'm going to go ahead and share my screen just so we have a visual of what we're going to be talking about today. All right. So just so everyone is aware, we are in the Water Efficiency and Sustainable Sites Breakout Session. If you did not want to be in the session, I'm not sure if you can change sessions. So you might be stuck with us for the next 20 minutes. So get comfortable. Okay, so with that being said, we are going to focus on the middle section here, the water and efficiency. And we want this time to be given to the public and the community, and it is for you to talk about what you want to see in this project. We want to hear about your goals. Now, what we've listed here are some bullet points that are already going to be in the project. What is listed are things that are already required by either the Massachusetts Stretch Code or are required to meet LEED Silver. So we are already pursuing everything that is listed in these bullet points. You're welcome to comment and ask questions about whatever is listed here. And feel free, and we want to hear if you have any additional ideas to what is listed here. So I'm going to open the floor and let anyone chime in, questions, comments. If not, Laura and I can talk about what we have here in the bullets and go into a bit more detail on what we have.
[Jessica Parks]: So one goal I would love to see, and I know that, I know the super stretch is, I mean, for uh, landscaping and all kind of exterior. I'd love to see the elimination of potable water, um, and just kind of native landscaping and the use of weather, um, um, stormwater retention and utilizing that, um, other methods of water other than um, potable water for our landscaping. Um, I know that is, um, I know that in saying that I've gotten pushed back, um, from. I've heard pushback from people in the community about not wanting an ugly landscaping and dead landscaping around the school. But I also know it's possible. I've seen it done. I know you don't need to use a hose to have nice looking landscaping. That would be my main goal. I know that The sustainability goals are already pushing the limits for interior water, almost. I mean, they could go a little bit further, but I understand that by having gender neutral bathrooms, that also increases some of the water use and things like that. from reducing some of the percentages, but I'd like to focus on exterior water as much as possible.
[Alicia Hunt]: So along with the water use exterior, one of the things that we've found to be a problem in the city of Medford is invasive plants and making sure that it's not just that the right things that are planted, but when they're planted, that there's thoughtfulness about how to sort of fight back the invasives, because being in the woods is great, but it also means that, you know, all those seeds, like we can't control the invasives in the woods as much as people try. So we'll constantly be getting, you know, the seeds coming in from the black swallow wart and all the other things that I could name. That one's been sort of the worst recently and bittersweet is really bad in the woods. And so it's how do we plant things so that that's not an issue but then also how do we make sure that the training comes in place so that the staff then understand what's a weed and what's a plant and when they go to then hire outside contractors to maintain it how do they know what's a plant and what's a weed and how can we it's a it's a problem that we fight all over the city. So I thought I would mention that. And I'd be interested to know what we're actually talking about with like green vehicles, like charging stations, like for the public, for the teachers, for school vehicles. I know that when we have installed charging stations in some locations, people, staff, people who work in those locations have then bought electric vehicles because they know they can charge at work. And I have two examples from City Hall from that exactly actually. And actually one of the librarians as well, when we put them in at the library. So I would like to know what the plan is and if the some of the charging stations will be like for teacher parking as well as for public parking and stuff like that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I do know that we have to have a certain amount of parking devoted for green vehicles and this is charging stations and we are going above the code required. There is a certain amount required by stretch code. We are going above that required amount and we are also I believe going above the required amount for lead as well. Now I'm not sure I am not as familiar with this project. I'm not on this project all the time. This is not my main project, so please forgive me that I do not know this for sure, but I can get you this information and I can verify this with a colleague and we can get this information to you. But I do know that there is a certain amount for public parking and I am not sure if any will be dedicated for teachers alone. or if it is all going to be in that main parking space?
[h56i5SspnTk_SPEAKER_08]: I can speak to that a little bit. I will say I'm designing some or helping the site team design the parking. There's going to be, I think, 377 spots on the site. This is because more program is coming, more especially the early childhood education center is moving into this site. That being said, these EV parking spots, if that's 10%, that's almost 40 EV parking stations, right? Which right now, I think there's only two on site, which are well used. And the idea would be that these would be distributed Usually the EV spots are closer to the front door. And it's usually a request by teachers to try and separate out teacher parking from student parking from public parking. So we might have to distribute those EV charging stations throughout different parking lots based off of which population is using that lot. So these are all things to take under consideration. But right now, I think that the EV parking spots are in such demand by the teachers and staff that it's not really available to the public. I think if there's more, then it'd be easier to add these to, say, visitor parking or flexible parking. But usually, The idea is that the visitor parking would be for short term visits, like say to the nail salon or to the bistro or someone who would be dropping off a child or so forth. So it might be a little less critical to have an EV charger there for someone who's not going to be able to use it for a longer period of time. We haven't really talked about like a longer term visitor like let's say a substitute and a teacher or something like that and where they would necessarily park and if they would have access to a charger, but that's something we can definitely discuss with operations. There's also two questions about landscaping. I don't know if we want to answer those really fast or if I want to make sure that Paul also gets a chance to speak. So what's our time like? Um, do you know Melissa?
[Theresa Dupont]: Yeah. So we've got about eight, nine minutes.
[Alicia Hunt]: Why don't we hear from Paul? Cause both Jessica and I have also have ways to get answers if we need to.
[h56i5SspnTk_SPEAKER_08]: Okay. Sounds good.
[Alicia Hunt]: Paul, you're still muted.
[Paul Garrity]: Thank you. We came out of the earlier session on energy and atmosphere. And I was looking here is that as they develop the energy systems in the building, how does this relate to the indoor outdoor water goals that they're trying to establish? Is these water intensive operational entities being considered as we establish indoor outdoor watering standards?
[h56i5SspnTk_SPEAKER_08]: Okay, so that kind of goes to some of those other landscaping questions. I'll just say briefly that indoor water use usually has to do with using more modern toilets and sinks and other fixtures inside the building. You know, things like maybe sinks that turn on and then are on for a certain amount of time and turn off again automatically, especially with kids. For the outdoor water use, the biggest demand is irrigation, right? The planting. So a lot of the lead requirement is to use drought-resistant plants. We'd like to use native plants. And the idea is that after that two-year establishment period, that they would be able to sustain themselves without an irrigation system. There is an exception in LEED and usually in other green communities.
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total time: 2.18 minutes total words: 200 |
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