Environmental Audit Of Amherst High School By UB Students Reveals Ways To Save Money, Energy

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A detailed "environmental audit" prepared for Amherst Central High School by students at UB is being applauded by high school and district officials for its incisiveness and for its environmentally friendly, often economical recommendations.

The audit promises significant cost savings, including a $14,913 reduction in the annual lighting bill for Amherst Central High School, if it implements the recommendations. (An environmental audit is a detailed study of all the ways a particular institution affects its natural environment, including recommendations for improvement.)

The audit report will be presented to the Amherst School Board this evening (Tuesday, December 7) by Bruce Kohrn, adjunct lecturer in environmental studies at UB and president of SBK Environmental Research, and Walter Simpson, UB energy officer and course advisor.

The audit was completed by UB students in the senior-level Environmental Audits environmental-studies course taught by Kohrn in UB's Interdisciplinary Program in Social Sciences. The course is an outgrowth of an environmental audit that UB students first undertook of their own campus in 1995. Since then, students in the course have completed audits of Buffalo City Hall, the Buffalo Museum of Science, Hutch Tech High School and now Amherst Central High School. In each case, they were invited to do so by the institution.

"This audit was a wonderful initiative, which contributed significant information to the district," said Paul Wietig, assistant superintendent for the Amherst Central School District. "In this day and age of trying to curb energy costs, this collaboration with the university is particularly significant."

According to Mark Whyle, director of administrative services for the school district, the students' findings have lent credibility to some of the energy-saving measures the high school already was considering.

"This has really added some fuel to our fire in terms of putting some energy-efficient projects in place," said Whyle. "Sometimes a company will come in and tell you, 'You need this or that,' but you may not really want it. I was looking for an independent, third party that we could trust, if you will, and this audit was the perfect opportunity."

Recommendations in the energy area include:

• Retrofitting completely the existing lighting system, for an expected annual savings of $14,913

• Improving implementation of nighttime setback of heat, by incrementally lowering building temperatures earlier in the afternoon and experimenting with keeping the school a few degrees cooler for evening activities

• Undertaking a comprehensive audit of summer energy use, since electricity use during the summer seems high

• Replacing all incandescent lamps, which have a lifetime of 750 hours, with compact fluorescent lamps, which have a lifetime of 10,000 hours

• Installing a pool cover on the indoor swimming pool to retain heat

• Turning off lights when not in use

Recommendations in the recycling and solid-waste area include:

• Institutionalizing the recycling program after the UB model to make it truly effective

• Obtaining larger recycling boxes

• Testing HEPA filters in darkrooms to see if they can reduce exposure to photographic chemicals

• Recycling metals, plastics, glass and cardboard

• Incorporating "green" concerns into procurement contracts to encourage markets for recycled and environmentally-friendly products

• Removing, through use of a professional lead-abatement company, the lead in the high school's (sealed-off, now defunct) rifle range, which, the report states, does not pose an exposure concern so long as it remains undisturbed

The audit also commended Amherst Central High School for a number of environmentally-friendly and safe measures it currently has in place:

• Its enthusiastic, student-operated Environmental Awareness Club, supervised by a school secretary, which currently conducts all the recycling in the school

• Its policy of not using pesticides on school grounds

• The use of microscale experiments in chemistry labs

• The use of vegetable oils and other nontoxic alternatives to clean paintbrushes and other tools in the art department

Amherst school district officials and the UB students and instructors described the collaboration as a particularly positive experience.

"I tell my students that our role is not to come in as outsiders and evaluate as experts," explained Kohrn, "but rather to recognize that the students, faculty and staff there already know quite a bit about their school. We give them the opportunity to speak up."

The audit was conducted with the support of Denny Frank, a local energy consultant who provided assistance to the students on a volunteer basis.