Point News, 2000 September 12

              From Left to Right: Rob Taylor, Director of Energy Projects & Services, The
St. Mary’s College of Maryland
St. Mary’s campus weekly • 52nd year, No. 1 September 12, 2000 • St. Mary’s City, MD 20686
College announces plan to
conduct energy audit
ERIN CARMANY
senior editor
In an effort to cut down on energy costs
while simultaneously reducing air pollu­tion,
the College has recently announced
its plans to begin a campus-wide energy
audit that is intended to result in a 20
percent overall reduction in energy con­sumption.
St. Mary’s and the Department of Gen­eral
Services have entered into a contract
with Constellation Energy Service, Inc.,
in order to conduct a campus-wide study
of energy use. This information will be
used to devise a plan for the 20 percent
reduction of energy use while maintaining
or enhancing existing comfort levels.
“Currently, the College spends approxi­mately
$900,000 per year on energy,” said
Chip Jackson, associate vice president of
facilities. “This College is blessed by a
beautiful, natural environment, and to
lower energy use will be economically and
environmentally beneficial to the campus
community.”
The audit will take place over a period of
nine months, with expectations that im­provements
will be evident within 12-15
months. The long-term goal is to cover the
expenses of the project within ten years
with the anticipated savings in energy costs.
The contractor will pay the costs, how­ever,
if the goal of 20 percent reduction is
not reached.
into account the various new build­ing
projects the College has planned
throughout the course of the next
ten years, and the anticipated en­ergy
use both in the construction of
these buildings and in the everyday
operations once they’re finished.
The unique position of the
College’s location in both a his­torically
and environmentally sen­sitive
area will also be taken into
account as the College develops its
energy reduction plans.
Jay Evans, an engineer in the
Physical Plant, was hired to begin
to get a handle on how to get our
energy costs down. He will be
working with Constellation on the
audit and the implementation of
the proposed ways to cut costs.
On an institutional level, the College is
looking into improving or replacing the
existing heating and cooling systems, as
well as the electrical systems, in some
dorms, which haven’t been replaced since
the 1960s and are inefficient. Some of the
proposed ideas include putting new boil­ers
in the dorms, changing some of the
lights to a motion detector system, and
switching to high efficiency bulbs.
On the personal level, through educa­tion,
environmental groups and the envi­ronmental
studies concentration intend to
encourage students to take matters into
Maryland Dept, of General Services; K. Gregory Fox, CEM, Senior Project Developer
for Constellation Energy Source; Tom Hattery, Assistant Director, Maryland Energy
Administration; Charles “Chip” Jackson, Associate Vice President of Facilities;
Professor Sara Ebenreck, Coordinator, St. Mary’s Environmental Studies Area.
photo courtesy Office o f Media and Public Relations
For example, the Bay Savers Club is pro­moting
energy use reduction by designing
and printing stickers for the light switches
around the school to encourage people to
turn off the lights when the rooms are not
in use.
In addition, the Environmental Studies
Area Study will devote its spring 2001
one-credit class to the study of air and the
energy-air relationship.
Sara Ebenreck, a philosophy professor
and coordinator of the Environmental Stud­ies
Area Study, sees students as one of the
driving forces behind the College’s con-ment.
“Students see that we’re wasting
energy, and they see that the product of
that energy is causing air pollution and is
one of the causes of global warming,” said
Ebenreck. “They see the waste ... [and]
they see that our energy use is not ecologi­cally
sane.”
Ebenreck points out that there are two
potential causes of global warming—natu­ral
cycles and the greenhouse effect. Al­though
we can’t do anything about the
former, Ebenreck believes we can cer­tainly
have an effect on the latter.
Continued on ENERGY,
In addition, Constellation plans to take their own hands to reduce their energy use. cem about energy costs and the environ- page 2. Schaefer deal achieved, building being repaired
SHAWN MILLEVILLE
editor-in-chief
Six years after the original completion
of Schaefer Hall, construction workers
from the C.A. Lyndman firm are finally
making repairs meant to finish the build­ing
for good.
Repairs are required because the flash­ing
in the building’s brick facade were
improperly installed in some places or
not installed in other places.
The way an exterior wall works, there
Schaefer Hall repairs continue as the contractors search for flashing in the
building’s facade that must be repaired. photo by Jamie Brown
is an air gap between the block wall that
makes up the support for the building
and the brick facade. Brick is a porous
material, so water seeps through and
gets into the air gap.
Flashing is a rubber or copper mem­brane
used to move the water seep­ing
into the air gap back through
the brick to the outside and pro­tects
the building from water dam­age.
Flashing is commonly found
above windows or doorways, which
cut into both the brick facade and
the inner block layer.
Charles “Chip” Jackson, associ­ate
vice president of facilities, said
the reason repairs are occuring so
long after the completion of the
building is that “[flashing] is a hard
thing to find, because you can’t see
it and it took a couple of years to
find the problem and once we found
it, go through the legal issues to get
it resolved and now the work is
getting done.”
The legal issues involved include
a settlement ast spring between the
College and the John C. Grimberg Cor­poration.
The College showed that the
construction firm had not followed the
architects orginal plans and had not put
flashing where it was clearly required.
The firm agreed to pay part of the cost
for the repairs to the building.
The archiect firm Bolin, Cywinski
Jackson, whom designed Schaefer Hall
and whom does all the master planning
for the campus also agreed to pay part of
the cost for the repairs. In their case, as
Chip Jackson puts it, “it was a very short
conversation” and the firm agreed they
had misplaced or not place flashing in
certain cases in the plans.
After years of having to deal with a
building not totally finished, students
and facilty are certainly happy that they
shouldn’t have to worry about water
leaking in any more. As Jackson said,
“We’re glad to get it right.”
With the chapter closing on the
Schaefer Hall construction, it can be
said with happiness that “we perservered,
we kept at it and we came out on top,”
says Jackson.
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