Success Stories
Journey to Sustainability – U. S. Army Garrison Hawaii (USAG-HI)
It is a word that keeps popping up in modern culture, yet many are still struggling over its meaning. In Army terms, sustainability means finding ways to accomplish today’s missions while still allowing for the accomplishment of future missions.
In the growing culture of environmental awareness, military missions face many challenges. Threatened and endangered species, unexploded ordnance, demands for land/air space, encroachment, urban growth, air quality and noise are all hurdles that impact military readiness.
Through sustainability efforts, like environmental compliance and conservation; environmentally friendly products and services; and partnering with communities to plan and avoid encroachment, we’re beginning to eliminate some of those challenges and sustain readiness.
U.S. Army Garrison, Hawaii (USAG-HI), has started embracing sustainability in many areas, but work still needs to be done on documenting our successes and establishing goals and objectives to move toward a sustainable future.
As a part of this effort, in 2007, USAG-HI will work with Army higher headquarters, to document past, current and future sustainability initiatives in the garrison’s strategic plan. USAG-HI will document its current baseline and create a future sustainability vision that ensures a garrison-wide culture of sustainability awareness and practices – involving everyone from Soldiers and civilians to tenants, contractors and Army partners.
USAG-HI’s sustainability baseline is robust with aggressive sustainability initiatives that span across the entire garrison. The garrison is an avid steward of natural and cultural resources here in Hawaii. Its environmental staff oversees more than 100 threatened and endangered species on Army lands in Hawaii, and they have played a key role in saving two native species, the Hawaiian mint and the Hawaiian bellflower, from extinction.
The USAG-HI Cultural Resources Management (CRM) program provides oversight and management in archaeology, historic buildings/landscapes, and Native Hawaiian affairs. The CRM is responsible for more than 900 archeological resources and 795 historic buildings and structures. The CRM staff supported more than 100 cultural accesses, open houses, lectures, exhibits and educational tours at various USAG-HI training areas over the past two years.
Energy conservation and focus on environmentally friendly building processes are two other large sustainability initiatives.
Between 1985 and 2005, USAG-HI’s energy consumption was well below the Army’s overall energy consumption. To help keep energy consumption levels down, the USAG-HI Energy program has adopted the five Army energy initiatives, eliminate waste in existing facilities; increase energy efficiency in new facilities/projects; reduce dependence on fossil fuel; conserve water resources; and improve energy security.
When completed, the USAG-HI Army Hawaii Family Housing (AHFH) Residential Communities Initiative (RCI) will be one of the largest solar-powered communities in the world. Photovoltaic panels (PV) will provide approximately 30 percent of AHFH’s electrical needs.
While utilizing solar power to produce clean energy, AHFH is also incorporating sustainable design to reduce consumption with things like solar hot water heaters, insulated walls and attic spaces, ridge vents on roofs, and high-efficiency air conditioners. Additionally, the AHFH Recycling and Green Design RCI has recycled more than 80,000 tons of material at Schofield Barracks.
Ideas for future sustainability initiatives abound. There are several ideas in the works to decrease fossil fuel dependence, using renewable fuel sources instead. The plans for the Kahuku Wind Initiative on Oahu and the solar PV projects on Pohakuloa Training Area and Oahu focus on using renewable fuel sources – wind and sunlight – as alternatives to fossil fuels.
USAG-HI is also pursuing the use of alternate fuels at AAFES gas stations and fuel cell testing at the Schofield Barracks fire station.
Future sustainability initiatives include the Sustainable Range Program, which bridges the gap between stewardship and readiness, and the Leadership in Energy & Environment Design (LEED) system, which establishes standards for designing, constructing and certifying the world’s greenest buildings.
Finding ways to accomplish today’s missions while still allowing for the accomplishment of future missions entails changing individual behavior. It is, quite simply, a change of ethos, or how we live our lives today and the impact that will have on the future.