Long Beach City College Officials Thinking Green

By Carla M. Collado
Staff Writer

The fact that Long Beach City College just hired its first-ever energy management coordinator about a month and a half ago may be a sign that college officials are thinking “green.”

“Definitely on a community college level there’s a big push to go green and be energy efficient in everything we do,” said Medhanie Ephrem, who filled the new position.

LBCC currently is working with Siemens Building Technologies to develop an energy assessment plan for both its campuses (Liberal Arts and Pacific Coast), according to Ephrem. In the process, college officials are looking at ways to make campus buildings and areas more energy efficient — installing dual pane windows, upgrading to energy-efficient lighting, better controlling air conditioning systems and using reclaimed water for landscaping, explained Tim Wootton, deputy director of LBCC Facilities and Management.

All new buildings — part of ongoing construction projects — will be linked to a central plant on each campus. The central HVAC (Heating, Ventilating and Air Conditioning) plants are scheduled to be completed by early spring on the LAC and by this fall on the PCC, Wootton said. The new plants will be more energy efficient than the school’s current HVAC plants.

LBCC officials estimate that the new central plants will help the college save close to $1 million in energy costs over five years, Wootton said. The school also will receive rebates from Southern California Edison for the amount of energy saved over time, he added.

The college’s new welding and manufacturing building (currently under construction) will feature a state-of the-art air filtration system, according to Farley Herzek, dean of LBCC’s School of Trade and Industrial Technologies. Each working station in the academic building will have a duct that extracts the air and then passes it through a filtration system that cleans it before it’s released into the environment, he explained.

A new outdoor water clarifying system at the new Aviation and Automotive Technology Center on the PCC also is helping the school become more environmentally friendly. When students hose down a floor that has grease or oil on it, for instance, the soiled water heads into the drain and then through the clarifying system, Herzek explained. The separated waste is collected and then disposed of properly, he added.

As part of other “green” efforts at LBCC, the college recently started a recycling program in collaboration with the California Conservation Group, Wootton said. The program adds cardboard to the list of items that can now be recycled on both college campuses.

LBCC also partners with the Long Beach Water Department, which for several years has sent representatives to visit the college and offer ways to conserve more water through landscaping on both campuses, according to Herzek.

“Certainly we want to have a beautiful, lush campus,” Herzek said, “but we’re also paying attention to the type of landscaping (we do) to be better stewards of water conservation.”

The college doesn’t just look at buildings and landscaping for ways to be more environmentally friendly. Its service fleet, which consists of about 30 vehicles, is a combination of conventional gasoline vehicles and electric carts, according to Wootton.

As a school with numerous trades programs, LBCC also has to modify its classroom instruction to be up-to-date with new “green” technologies and practices in different industries. For example, the Air Conditioning and Refrigeration program will be phasing out its old refrigerants by 2010, Herzek said. They will be replaced with newer refrigeration units that are more efficient and use gases that are better for the environment, he said.

“Our instruction at the college has to be extremely current because of changes in environmental laws É they impact our instruction,” Herzek said.

Students in the Auto/Diesel Mechanics program now learn how to service CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) vehicles as many city fleets are moving toward the alternative fuel, he explained. Herzek said the college works closely with Long Beach Transit, which offers LBCC students summer internships working on maintaining its busses (including its new fleet of hybrid busses).

All of the college’s trade programs now are required to use water-based solvents and paints, rather than oil-based ones, Herzek said. This impacts auto body and cabinet-making classes, for instance.

Lastly, LBCC’s horticulture program teaches students the latest techniques in drip irrigation, low-water irrigation and Xeriscape landscape design, he added.

“Whatever is being required of industry is part of what we’re doing here in Long Beach City College,” Herzek said.