Cape Girardeau green board looking at ways to reduce municipal energy use

Editor's note: This is the last of a four-part series about the Girardeau Goes Green Advisory Board, a relatively new group that is charged with looking at the ways the city affects the environment. This final installment deals with energy.

Electric hand-dryers that are just as hygienic but run for a shorter time and don't rely on heat.

Motion sensors that detect when a person enters or exits a room and turns the lights on or off accordingly.

Special thermostats that are programmed to adjust temperatures during off-peak hours.

All these innovations and others could substantially curb Cape Girardeau's municipal energy consumption as well as costs that are passed on to taxpayers, Steve Maldonado says.

That's why Maldonado and other members of the Girardeau Goes Green Advisory Board are recommending that such items are incorporated in new city projects. Maldonado and other members of the board's energy focus group have been studying ways the city can cut back its energy use.

For more than a year, the group has been working to draft an 11-page report that lays out its suggestions, which include the aforementioned ideas and a few others.

"We're just trying to make sure that new construction is as energy-efficient as possible," Maldonado said. "And what will surprise some people is that it can also be cost-effective."

Maldonado has only been an official board member for the past several months, but he's volunteered on the energy focus group since just after the board was implemented to find ways the city can reduce its environmental impact.

The California native migrated to Cape Girardeau more than a decade ago, but he noticed that Southeast Missouri didn't seem to be as interested in the environment as those back home.

That's what inspired him to join the group.

"I believe we should have clean air and a nice environment and leave the world a better place than we received it," he said. "I follow a good stewardship model."

Maldonado is painfully aware of the misconceptions some have about those who are environmentally conscious. He also isn't interested in heated debates about global warming or climate change.

"To me, those are secondary to the real issue -- clean air, clean water and energy conservation," he said. "We want even people who are skeptical about global warming or climate change to get on board. We're not really about that."

Maldonado heads the energy focus group, which also would like the city to incorporate more natural lighting, large-scale fans and special bulbs called light-emitting diodes into its new public structures and parking lots.

Installing LEDs in public parking lots, for example, instead of incandescent or fluorescent is better because LEDs last longer and have lower operating and maintenance costs, he said.

Big, air-moving fans in large common areas, reduce air conditioning usage while providing fresh airflow through large spaces, he said. And making natural lighting a priority in the design of new public buildings reduces the reliance on artificial lighting, he said.

The philosophy is simple, according to Maldonado.

"The less energy you're consuming, the less energy that needs to be generated," he said. "You use less energy, you pay for less energy."

This has not been lost on local officials who have already implemented some of these suggestions. Past board chairman Eric Redinger has been involved with the energy focus group and says he has been surprised by how forward-thinking Cape Girardeau officials have already been.

For example, the city last year took advantage of a $190,000 grant through the U.S. Department of Energy to pay for replacing 104 conventional high-pressure sodium streetlights with LEDs. The new bulbs were installed along North Kingshighway and along Highway 74.

"Nobody's perfect," Redinger said. "There's a lot of things they could improve on. But a lot of things they've already done. They're looking at every reasonable option."

smoyers@semissourian.com

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