Seattle Parks and Recreation recently brought in their one millionth rebate dollar and by doing so, they are keeping more than just the grass “green”.
Over the past few years, Parks had made significant investments to reduce operating costs while upgrading the quality of parks and facilities.
Provided by Puget Sound Energy, Seattle City Light and Seattle Public Utilities, the rebate dollars come from 59 energy and water conservation projects that Parks has completed over the past five years.
The benefits are compounding each year and in addition to one-time rebates, the projects and other conservation work are saving Parks more than $1.5 million each year on utility costs, according to Parks.
Parks stated that it has reduced the amount of energy consumed per square foot of building space by 14 percent since 2005, and has also significantly reduced water use.
“We’re moving beyond the concept of re-inventing government to green-inventing government,” said Christopher Williams, Acting Parks Superintendent, in a press release.
In addition to the investments, Parks has reaped substantial savings from no-cost and low-cost projects.
“It isn’t just one or two people who generate these savings,” said Williams. “Parks has been working to create a culture of conservation across all of our work units.”
When challenged to reduce fuel use by 10 percent, work groups held brainstorming sessions to identify specific savings ideas that could contribute to the effort. The result: fuel use is down more than 11 percent compared to before the effort began. This will save Parks more than $122,000 in 2011.
“When budgets are tight, it’s important to be creative,” said David Broustis, Parks’ Acting Facility Maintenance Manager in a release. “It wasn’t that we were asleep at the wheel. We just didn’t understand the degree to which inefficiencies were driving our costs until we ‘peeled the onion’ and figured out how to reduce costs while still meeting public expectations.”
The larger investments Parks is making have been very cost-effective, generally paying for themselves in five years or less, and sometimes paying back the cost of the project in less than a year, according to Parks.
Most of the savings are resulting from work that happens behind the scenes: high efficiency boilers, variable speed fans that ramp down at night, toilets that perform exceptionally well with less water, and sensors that shut down irrigation systems when it rains.
Parks announced that 2012 will see a continuation of new projects such as efficient boilers, lighting systems and other technologies that will further reduce costs.”
