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Mountain News: Aspen LEEDs way in green building

Wild Idea One of wildlife overpasses in Banff National Park. Photo by Western Transportation Institute
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SNOWMASS VILLAGE, Colo. - The Aspen Skiing Co. continues to LEED the way in green-building.

The U.S. Green Building Council recently awarded platinum certification, the highest of four levels in the LEED program, for an employee housing project called the Holiday House. A mountain-top restaurant called Sam's Smokehouse, located at the Snowmass ski area, was given gold, the third highest of four levels.

Aspen Skiing has a long history with LEED buildings. In 1999, it developed one of the first LEED-certified buildings in the world. A golf clubhouse in 2003 received the silver-level certification, the second highest level.

Auden Schendler, the company's director of community and environmental responsibility, has been a stern critic of the LEED certification process, calling the process cumbersome with too little attention to energy efficiency. The process has improved somewhat, he says, with the LEED standards now putting a greater emphasis on energy savings.

Still, Aspen actively seeks LEED certification. "As a business that's trying to pursue legitimate sustainability, we need some level of third-party accountability," Schendler told Mountain Town News. "LEED is the only certification that's widely recognized."

That said, he stated Aspen's first priority in designing buildings is energy efficiency.

At the employee housing project, this was accomplished by using extremely efficient boilers, super-insulated foam-panel walls and roofs, and R-11 gas-filled windows. Altogether, the complex exceeds the local energy codes by 50 per cent.

The restaurant at Snowmass has R-49 foam insulation, high-efficiency boilers, and waterless urinals. Altogether, the building's mechanical system is projected to reduce energy use by 26 per cent relative to a conventionally designed building.

 

Keeping hooves & hoods apart

VAIL, Colo. - In 1999, one of the new Canada lynx that had been released into Colorado a few months before got squashed on Interstate 70 just west of Vail Pass. It wasn't the only one to die there, either, showing just how dangerous that I-70 was for endangered critters in Colorado.

Now, an international contest is being sponsored, with teams invited to help design a better wildlife crossing. Parties from both Canada and the United States are involved in the competition, and they hope to create models that can be used not only at Vail Pass, but more broadly across north America.

Tony Clevenger, a wildlife ecologist most closely associated with the wildlife crossings in Banff National Park, suggested that the contest hopes to figure out a less expensive way to keep hoods and hooves apart.

"The possibilities for lighter, more durable, mobile and less expensive structures exist," he said.

The Montana-based Western Transportation Institute recently calculated that the average total costs associated with a single collision is $6,617in the case of a deer, $17,843 in elk collisions, and $30, 760 in the case of moose.

Clevenger also suggested a secondary motive for perforating highways to allow safe passage by animals.

"The road network, and all the luxuries it affords, is a remarkable societal and engineering achievement," he said. "But unless we, as a society, figure out a way to lessen its impact on wildlife and wild processes - the relevance of that achievement is diminished."

In recent years, experiments in reducing vehicle-wildlife collisions have also been conducted east of Durango, Colo., and south of Jackson, Wyo.

 

The lived-in look

JACKSON, Wyo. - Jackson continues to talk about what its famous downtown district should look like beyond the well-known gateways of antlers in the town square. What planning commissioners seem to agree upon is that they want a place that is more fully lived in, reports the Jackson Hole News & Guide.

"Planning commissioners say they want to see buildings and businesses in town whose liveliness is indicated by lit rooms at night, and they want a community that fosters interaction between visitors and year-round residents."

This used to be called mixed-use development, although the phrase of late has been adulterated to mean pretty much whatever anybody wants it to mean.

But whatever you call it, not everybody in Jackson agrees with this drift of thinking. Save Historic Jackson Hole, an organization, contends that many of the ideas are not rooted in hard data.

 

Aspen hoping seeds bear fruit

ASPEN, Colo. - With real estate sales this past year jerking like a fast-moving car downshifted from high into granny gear, Aspen's city leaders decided to allocate $200,000 to be used as seed money for ideas that can draw tourists.

The ideas have been winnowed to the top 10, reports The Aspen Times. They include a curling tournament in September, as curling clubs apparently have a loyal following and teams would travel from across the country. Very different would be a singles event, modeled after Gay Ski Week. Yet another idea is a Winter Family Weekend, to be held the week before the People-Gone-Crazy X Games.

Among the more exotic ideas in the list is a singer/songwriter festival, in which struggling and established artists would be invited to participate in an outdoor festival. Think of a grassroots-level Austin City Limits.

Aspen Mayor Mick Ireland said that big ideas sometimes start with just a little bit of seed money. For example, the Food & Wind Classic several decades ago was seeded with just a $5,000 grant - and now is one of the biggest, most lucrative events of the year. It is held in June.

"A lot of this stuff doesn't require a lot of money... it's about cultivating an idea," he said. "It's seed money that gets sprinkled around, and we'll see what sprouts. My theory is you have to plant a lot of seeds to see which ones come up and which ones wither."

 

Johnson bore turns 30

SILVERPLUME, Colo. - Most people who drive west from Denver to Breckenridge, Keystone, Vail and other ski areas assume that Interstate 70 and the tunnels were built to accommodate the resorts.

Not true. Road engineers had thought the terrain too difficult and without sufficient need, so I-70 west from Denver was left out of the original bill passed by Congress in 1956 that created the interstate highway system. Dwight Eisenhower was president, but Albert Gore - father of the Al Gore you've probably heard of - was a key leader in hammering out a compromise on the funding that resulted in the federal government paying 90 per cent of construction costs.

Another senator, Edwin C. Johnson, along with colleagues from Utah, argued for an addendum to the bill - and succeeded. The formal justification was that I-70 into Utah would cut three hours of drive time to Los Angeles.

Colorado had just a handful of ski areas then, among them A-Basin, Aspen and Winter Park. Vail, Breckenridge, Copper Mountain and most of the rest weren't even a gleam in anybody's eye yet.

But the federal money poured into Colorado, resulting in first the Eisenhower bore and then - 30 years ago this week - the opening of the Johnson Tunnel under the Continental Divide.

 

Ouray to harness falling water

OURAY, Colo. - Ouray has received $30,000 from the Colorado state government to install a turbine as needed to harness the power of water flowing toward the town's commercial hot springs. The microhydro unit is expected to save the city $12,000 in electricity costs annually, with a total pay off of $370,000 during the 30 years life of the project, reports The Telluride Watch, which does business just over the hill from Ouray. Ouray is site of one of the continent's premier ice-climbing events every January.

 

Appliances need to be tweaked

TELLURIDE, Colo. - Most human bodies can adapt to the thinner air of higher elevations, notes The Telluride Watch. Not so, many gas appliances.

The newspaper notes that the gas appliances are designed to function at sea level. Thus, at 8,000 to 10,000 feet, the elevation of most ski towns in Colorado, there is less air for combustion, which means natural gas or propane gets wasted.

A company called Rocky Mountain Energy Conservation can readjust the appliances, saving money and eliminating potential health hazards.

 

CB mulls marijuana dispensaries

CRESTED BITTE, Colo. - The rule-making for who can sell medical marijuana and under what terms has gotten complicated in Crested Butte, where 10 people have inquired about the potential for setting up a business.

Rules being reviewed by the town council, reports the Crested Butte News, call for operations only between 9 a.m. and 7 p.m., and somewhat removed from schools and parks.

Whom they can sell paraphernalia to seems to be still up for debate. The owner of a store that sells tobacco and paraphernalia dislikes the idea of the medical marijuana businesses edging into his paraphernalia sales. "It's not like this is New York or Denver, with a huge customer base," protested John Benn. He predicted he might go out of business.

 

Idle threats

KETCHUM, Idaho - Drivers in Ketchum have a very long grace period for violating the town's new law against idling. The city council passed the law in October, limiting a vehicle's idling time to three minutes.

The law makes many exceptions, such as when a driver is sitting at a traffic light, testing a serviced vehicle and other instances.

But cars sitting outside a grocery store for 45 minutes are another matter entirely. Still, the town staff members enforcing the ordinance are merely handing out educational fliers through next September.

The law applies winter and summer. "They do it to keep their dogs warm in the winter and their dogs cold in the summer," said Ketchum Police Chief Steve Harkins.

 

No sympathy for rider

LOVELAND PASS, Colo. - A snowboarder and his buddy hiked up above Loveland Pass to ride, but almost didn't live to tell about it. The snowboarder said he knew he should have had a beacon and shovel, and had already signed up for an avalanche class in January. Various bloggers at the Summit Daily News website were completely unimpressed with the snowboarder's argument that he more or less knew what he was doing. "I guess Darwin was wrong this time," lashed one blogger.

 

Nothing festive about vote

EAGLE, Colo. -- It's hardly a cheerful Christmas/Hanukkah/Winter Solstice in Eagle, the once-booming town 30 miles west of Vail.

The town board has approved a major shopping complex called Eagle River Station after consideration for several years. Everybody agrees the town could use the added revenue, but opponents think the complex will end any vestige of small-town charm - and perhaps not add all that much revenue.

Recriminations have been flying, with the opposing camps alleging various illegal procedures - none of them rising to the level of importance that will probably be remembered even a year from now. As well, union carpenters picketed in protest of the developer, Trinity/RED, who they believe had a bad track record in Missouri.

Knowing there would have to be a town-wide vote on the matter one way or another, the town board scheduled the election for Jan. 5.