Sustainable dorm in the future?

By Dusan VuksanovicGreen Mountain College is planning on improving the campus environment by building new buildings. The sketches of what the new buildings should look like were presented to the campus community at the Administration Fair on November 28 by Joe Manning, who was answering students’ questions at the Fair. The Mountaineer had an opportunity to get a special scoop of what the college will be looking into expanding in near future.“The first thing we are looking into is new residential halls. What we have now is … not a complete, definite plan; it is really a vision plan,” Manning started. “As we grow to a thousand students, we want to plan for that … and to fit that well within our campus.” It must be noted that 1000 students include undergraduate students, new online graduate students, commuters, and Killington students.With the residence halls, the college will gain new 100 to 120 beds, and they should be completed in Fall 2009. “We’re not quite sure if we’re going to do 4 halls with 30 beds each, or 2 buildings with 60 beds each,” Manning said. The location for the residence halls is the tennis courts.Apart from residence halls, the college received a feasibility study for biomass heating that would burn woodchips. The building is considered as one of its priorities. “Initially it shows that we would save money; however, there’s a longer payback than we would like, but we’re looking at it,” Manning explained.The biomass won’t need a separate building, though; the technology in the current Maintenance building would just be replaced and adjusted to accommodate the functioning of biomass heating. “It just happens that this [the building] used to [work on] coal a long time ago, so there’s a huge coal bin that’s perfect for woodchips,” Manning noted.The steam would still be operating, but 90% of the heating would come from biomass. The college is not only considering biomass as a form of heating, but also other “alternative sources,” but Manning didn’t want to make any speculations as to what those sources might be.The cost for the construction of the dorm buildings would be $7-9 million, and $4 million for the biomass, according to Manning’s calculations. “The biomass is a 13-year payback; the dorms would be a lot longer. On the dorms, we’re not looking for an immediate payback; we’re just looking for the beds.”The construction is expected to begin in Fall 2008. “These projects take approximately two years; there’s one year of planning, and one year of building. There is a lot involved in planning – from the color of the paint in the room, to the heating, to making this environmentally correct,” Manning explained.Manning promised that the building will be performed with regards to the environment. “The architect is very environmentally conscious; he’s done a lot of work in Burlington.” The plans that are on display in Withey lobby are a vision of the school in the next 20 years. “Those are way down the road.”Manning underlined that, even though plans of making the buildings exist, the construction itself is not definite! “It’s not guaranteed, nothing is guaranteed until it’s done. We’re investing money for permits for the residential halls … But, if enrollment went down through this process [planning and building], or remain stable, we might put it on hold for a few years.”Manning expressed hope that the project for the halls and the biomass heating will be completed successfully. It remains to be seen how soon college’s visions and hopes will come true.