LEED sets a rising bar for efficient buildings.

• Author: Swagel, Will
• Position: CONSTRUCTION - Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design

Katlian Street is a narrow, half-mile stretch of 15-mph road along the Sitka waterfront, lined with harbors, fish processing plants, and cold storage facilities. It's the oldest part of town, named after a hammer-wielding Tlingit war hero, who fought against the Russian takeover in 1804. Katlian Street is adjacent to an area of old homes that some people still call the Indian Village. The Sitka Tribe of Alaska's main office is located on Katlian Street.

The headquarters of the tribally-designated Baranof Island Housing Authority (BIHA) is a few blocks south of the main tribal offices. BIHA provides more than one hundred Sitka families with affordable homes and apartments, many of which BIHA built for them.

Katlian Street may be the oldest part of town, but BIHA's headquarters is an example of the new awareness in building energy-efficient structures that one Alaska architect calls "high performance" buildings. BIHA's building was designed by Juneau architects Jenson Yorba Lott, Inc.

BIHA's headquarters is the only building in Sitka to receive a coveted certification from LEED, the acronym for the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design program. LEED is the most widely-used "green building" rating system in the world. It is administered by the US Green Building Council (leed.usgbc.org) in order to distinguish those buildings that are truly built to green standards from ones that may only claim to be.

LEED awards points to projects, based on things such as using sustainable materials, the efficiency of heating and cooling systems, indoor air quality and reducing the amount of construction waste, and even the availability of public transportation. Depending on the level of commitment, projects can achieve a basic certification or higher Silver, Gold, or Platinum status.

BIHA's Katlian Street headquarters received some of its LEED points for "water-efficient landscaping." Sitka gets one hundred inches of rain per year, so the points were not for saving water. Instead, they were awarded for BIHA's method of cleaning the oily runoff from their parking lot and roof, before the water is discharged into the ocean.

Along the south side of BIHA's building runs what looks like a garden of irises, ferns, and small maples. A trough down the center of the garden carries the runoff from the parking lot and roof through a pipe and then through the roots of reed grass and sedges, which filter the water. The partially-cleaned water then goes through an oil/water separator and the oil goes to a storage sump to be disposed of later. Only then is the water discharged.

The garden sits beside soaring windows that provide lots of natural light into the building, making it more pleasant for workers and lowering lighting and heating bills--garnering more LEED points.

BIHA's Development Coordinator Cliff Richter says all this and similar investments added significantly to construction costs, but he was confident they would pay off in the...