School Earns LEED-Silver Designation

Agua Fria Union High School District #216 Desert Edge High School Expansion project received certification as one of the most environmentally friendly high school projects in the United States.

The 90,000-sq.-ft. expansion earned a LEED-Silver rating, only the fifth high school in the world to earn such an honor, and is the first school in Arizona to earn a Silver rating under the U.S. Green Building Council's rating system.

The school is 28 percent more energy efficient than a conventionally-designed high school, saving more than $58,000 in projected energy costs each year. Also, 84 percent of the construction waste produced on the job was diverted from the landfill.

Some of the key environmental strategies implemented at Desert Edge include a high-efficiency central cooling and heating plant, natural and artificial lighting with controls to maximize savings, waterless urinals, low-flow faucets, and recycled material content in new building materials.

The project team included Emc2 Group Architects Planners, Adolfson & Peterson Construction, LSW Engineers and Green Ideas Environmental Building Consultants.

First Mesa Elementary School Achieves LEED Certification

Kitchell's First Mesa Elementary School project built for The Hopi Tribe in Polacca, Arizona, also recently received LEED certification. The 74,000-sq.-ft. K-6 facility is just the eighth building in the state to be LEED certified. It is also Kitchell's first project to receive the distinction.

Replacing a 50-year-old school, First Mesa Elementary serves 220 children from the Polacca community. Albuquerque-based Dyron Murphy Architects, a Native American-owned firm, designed the school, which includes a media center, computer laboratory, full-sized gymnasium, sports fields, and a full kitchen and dining facility.

First Mesa's environmentally friendly features include 100 skylights and clerestory windows that bring natural light into the building's classrooms, media center and corridors, rapidly renewable linoleum flooring in classrooms, low VOC paints and toxin-free carpets and adhesives.

Highly insulated walls and roofing along with the use of shading devices cut energy consumption 16 percent beyond the mandated standard, while low-flow faucets and native landscaping cut water usage by more than 34 percent. Kitchell directly contributed to two LEED points by diverting nearly 78 percent of construction waste from the landfill.