The EcoCampus – California’s first sustainable utility campus – was unveiled last weekend in Burbank, CA.
The new power plant was transformed from an industrial relic into a state-of-the-art regenerative green space, through the collaborative efforts of Burbank Water and Power and AHBE Landscape Architects (http://www.burbankwaterandpower.com) and (http://ahbe.com).
With the latest in sustainable landscape technology, 3 LEED Platinum buildings (of the 50 recognized throughout the state), and inclusion in the Sustainable Sites Initiative (SITES) pilot program, the EcoCampus is a groundbreaking model for the nation as a leader in sustainable energy.
(http://www.sustainablesites.org) Burbank Mayor Jess Talamantes, Senator Carol Liu, US Department of Energy representatives Kelly Opatz and Daniel Stricker, and host of Future 360 Sarah Backhouse were among the special guests at the Saturday dedication ceremony, to celebrate the completion of the EcoCampus. The community event invited guests to explore the colorful roof gardens, an Art Deco-inspired solar array canopy, and five different types of water filtration technologies (including infiltration, flow-through, detention, tree root cells, and rainwater capture).
BWP has served this community for almost 100 years,” explained Ron Davis, General Manager. “We owe it to our customers to ensure that we continue to do so into the foreseeable future, which means we should seek long-term solutions to the problems that our industry faces. Most notably, how do we generate the water and power that our customers need with the least impact on our environment?
When Burbank Water and Power built an award-winning electric power plant in 2005, it also replaced several existing substations located on the campus. In restoring the old substation sites, BWP saw an opportunity to achieve something greater. Los Angeles based landscape architecture firm AHBE Landscape Architects was commissioned to create an ambitious master plan for an EcoCampus that focused on transforming the grounds from an aging industrial site into a regenerative green space.
Never before have so many different sustainable landscape technologies been integrated into a single industrial campus,” reiterated Davis. “BWP chose to do this to show that sustainability is not just about a single action or decision; it’s about the ripple effect that consistent, sustainable decisions can make. BWP’s EcoCampus is literally powered by innovation. We want this to cause a ripple.”
Source: Burbank Power and Water
