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JOINT BASE LANGLEY-EUSTIS, Va. – The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality named the 733rd Civil Engineer Division Environmental Element as an Extraordinary Environmental Enterprise during a ceremony at Fort Eustis, Virginia, March 9, 2015.
Fort Eustis is one of only three military installations in Virginia to earn this title and one of approximately 40 titled entities across the state.
David Paylor, Virginia DEQ director, presented the certificate as a symbol of the CED’s achievement and commitment to minimizing the installation’s environmental footprint beyond the minimum requirements.
“This environmental program enables us to get away from the ‘one size fits all’ approach,” said Paylor. “At Fort Eustis, the unit was able to identify their own site-specific approach to conservation issues and save money over time.”
The Virginia Environmental Excellence Program qualifies an Extraordinary Environmental Enterprise, or E4, as a facility with a fully implemented environmental management system, and efforts in protecting and improving the facility’s environmental health while supporting the mission.
The benefits afforded to an E4 member are not rewards for membership, but rather recognition of the member's commitment to that conservation mission. Members are expected to display an attitude focused on the environment and conduct themselves in an exemplary manner with regards to environmental leadership.
According to the DEQ website, to qualify as an E4, members must:
Promote environmentally responsible practices, awareness and improvement to their neighbors, employees, customers, business community and public.
Partner with DEQ in promoting regulations as minimum requirements and not goals or measures of success.
Openly communicate with DEQ and the public on non-proprietary results and processes.
Set and achieve goals with discernible improvements to air and water quality and increases in land conservation and restoration.
To qualify, the 733rd CED worked to reduce the amount of energy and water used on the installation throughout the year, as well as participated in conservation and recycling efforts.
“We look at every possible angle to make sure we are running as efficiently as possible,” said Emma Watterson, 733rd CED Environmental Element consulting environmental analyst. “We’ve cleaned up Eustis Lake and we’ve worked on a lot of community outreach to encourage participation throughout the installation.”
The Environmental Element has several new initiatives planned for the coming months including developing procedures to improve reuse of old furniture, developing plans to protect training lands from flooding and improving recycling programs. They also have plans to investigate composting food waste from dining facilities, identifying opportunities to reduce energy usage in individual buildings and protecting the Chesapeake Bay by reducing storm water runoff.
“We have reduced our energy impacts with a lot of emphasis on Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design building standards such as adding solar panels to older barracks buildings,” said Watterson. “We plan to continue upgrading buildings to use less water and electricity and this E4 status will help us get things done in a timely manner.”
| Date Taken: | 03.09.2015 |
| Date Posted: | 03.31.2015 12:01 |
| Story ID: | 158659 |
| Location: | FORT EUSTIS, VA, US |
| Web Views: | 34 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, CED earns title Extraordinary Environmental Enterprise, by MSgt Teresa Gallagher, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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