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2006 Award Winners
In This Section
In March 2007, EPA announced the winners of 10 different awards for leadership in sustainability in fiscal year (FY) 2006. These sustainability champions include facility managers, building design/maintenance personnel, and other EPA staff that have demonstrated exceptional effort and achievement in energy and water efficiency and other sustainability areas.
- Rick Dreisch of the Environmental Science Center in Fort Meade, Maryland, earned a Btu Buster Award for helping reduce the laboratory’s energy use by more than 13 percent—8.4 billion British thermal units (Btu)—in FY 2006 compared to FY 2005.
- Rodney Booth from the Mid-Continent Ecology Division Laboratory in Duluth, Minnesota, received a Btu Buster Award for diligent management of laboratory operations, including manually resetting the cooling and heating set points on the facility’s building automation system, as well as upgrading the facility’s heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system to use variable air volume technology. Thanks to his hard work, the Duluth laboratory reduced energy consumption by 12.5 percent in FY 2006.
- Steve Dorer of the National Vehicle and Fuel Emissions Laboratory (NVFEL) in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was named Energy Partner of the Year (Field). Steve helped NVFEL achieve 24 percent energy savings in FY 2006, thanks to his meticulous care and close work with the onsite energy savings performance contractor to optimize building performance. As a result, the laboratory realized savings of 17.95 billion Btu in FY 2006 compared to FY 2005. Reducing chiller operations and raising chilled water loop temperatures also helped the laboratory reduce its water consumption by nearly 26 percent.
- Stephanie Bailey, Linda Donahue, and Robert Manos, were given an H2Overachiever Award for reducing water consumption at the Manchester, Washington, Region 10 Laboratory by more than 29 percent in FY 2006. They accomplished this reduction by encouraging laboratory employees to reduce their individual water consumption through the facility’s environmental management system (EMS).
- Bob Beane won an H2Overachiever Award for his careful attention to daily operations and facility maintenance at the New England Regional Laboratory in Chelmsford, Massachusetts. By draining and cleaning the water cooling tower system, resetting head pressures for optimum efficiency, and manually increasing system set points daily, the laboratory reduced water consumption by 25 percent in FY 2006.
- Leading Edge Awards went to Russell Ahlgren and Mark Tagliabue for their efforts to reduce water use at the Atlantic Ecology Division Laboratory in Narragansett, Rhode Island. Initiated in January 2006, the installation of a compressed air delivery system that eliminates the use of once-through cooling water is expected to save the laboratory nearly 600,000 gallons of water per year.
- The Emergency Response Facility Relocation Team from the Region 7 Office and Science and Technology Center in Kansas City, Kansas, received a Leading Edge Award for moving the facility’s emergency response staging center/continuity of operations site from aboveground to an underground complex in May 2006. This limestone-mined cavern provides a constant temperature and humidity profile that has reduced the need for the HVAC system, enabling the Kansas City laboratory to significantly reduce its energy consumption and costs.
- Another Leading Edge Award went to Chet McLaughlin of the Region 7 Office for his battery reuse initiatives. Chet collects spent batteries from home and from employees at work, tests the batteries’ energy levels, and returns batteries with useful life back to the Region 7 Office for reuse.
- Gail Miller Wray received a special Lifetime Achievement Award in anticipation of her retirement from EPA Headquarters. Her myriad sustainability projects include founding EPA’s recycling program; managing recycling assessments at EPA facilities; coordinating the national pollution prevention program; actively participating in EPA Headquarters’ EMS program; advocating and organizing Earth Day events; and, most recently, assisting the Office of Solid Waste’s Green Team in recycling office supplies during its move from Crystal City to Potomac Yard in Arlington, Virginia.
- Ruth Schenk and Dorothy Branham, of NVFEL in Ann Arbor, Michigan, were named Pollution Prevention Partners of the Year. Ruth and Dorothy led the charge to accomplish NVFEL’s ISO 14001 Registration (a voluntary environmental performance certification). Under their leadership, the staff at NVFEL used the Recycling Electronics and Asset Disposition Program to recycle 425 computer units in FY 2006.
- The Sustainable Landscaping Team at Duluth, Minnesota’s Mid-Continent Ecology Division Laboratory received the first annual Green Thumb Award for implementing sustainable landscaping on its campus. The laboratory has also embarked on a public education campaign, creating an insert in its brochure for visitors, as well as a poster in the building lobby, explaining the landscaping project. Planting native trees and shrubs, which require far less water than non-native species, has helped the laboratory reduce its water use significantly since the project’s inception.
- Fred Childers of the Las Vegas, Nevada, National Exposure Research Laboratory was named Reporter of the Year for being one of the first facility managers to submit both a Top 10 Operations and Maintenance survey and an Energy Use Reduction Plan, and for consistently submitting quarterly reporting packages two to three weeks prior to deadlines. Art Zimmerman, from the National Exposure Research Laboratory in Athens, Georgia, earned honorable mention for his timely reporting in FY 2006.
- Chris Grundler of NVFEL in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was named a Senior Management Advocate for Sustainability for being, in the words of a colleague, “a champion of energy conservation and pollution prevention.”
- Martha Cuppy of the Region 7 Office in Kansas City, Kansas, was also named a Senior Management Advocate for Sustainability for her enthusiastic support of Region 7 staff’s energy and water conservation efforts.
- A new award for 2006, Sustainable Partner of the Year, went to Cathy Berlow of EPA Headquarters’ Architectural, Engineering, and Asset Management Branch. She was honored for her vision and continued hard work on the multi-year, multi-phased low-impact development project at the Federal Triangle building in Washington, DC, and her work on sustainable site construction at the Potomac Yard and Denver, Colorado offices.