Northwest Community College offered up the redesigned Smithers campus construction site for a tour to community stakeholders and media last week.
The new college building will be state of the art for environmental design, as they are working towards achieving a LEED Gold certification.
That gold designation essentially means anything that can be recycled during construction will and facilities and structures will be built with environmentally-minded materials.
However due to the age of the existing building, which has been effectively gutted to make way for a new design, only the new building will be gold designated.
“The carpet for example, carpet is a very toxic thing and it’s hard to dispose of it. It’s like tires in construction debris,” said site superintendent for Unitech Construction Paul Miller. He said to be eligible to have the LEED designation they could not include the old structure.
Throughout construction credits are applied and the number of credits you finish with affects which level of certification you receive.
Ways the new building is being environmentally sensitive includes how it handles water.
“We have a grey water tank that allows us to use grey water for flushing toilets,” said Smithers campus principal Regina Saimoto. “We capture the grey water from runoff from the roof.”
Miller elaborated that there is a 5,000 litre water tank which collects the grey water, which is filtered for dirt and debris.
The building will also have solar panels on the roof and the building will take advantage of geothermal heating, said Saimoto.
“We also have a lot of natural light which is part of heat as well,” she said.
The cost of Smithers’ new campus is $16.7 million. $8.5 million comes from the provincial government while $8.2 comes from the federal level.
As best as they can, they say money has been spent locally.
“As far as the material for the building, other than the big open structural beams … all the framing materials come from the local mills. Everything is purchased at the local building supply stores,” said Miller. “We’re firm believers on spending tax dollars in the community because that’s where the money should go.”
For certain tasks they said local labour was not available but area contractors are involved in the project.
According to Saimoto, the college’s new structure will mean that they can enhance their ability to provide programs and to increase student success.
“It will increase our ability to respond to the demands in the community and to provide innovative and responsive programming,” she said.
She said they hope to be able to move back into the building by the end of April.
Nechako Lakes MLA John Rustad and Stikine MLA Doug Donaldson were on hand to make remarks congratulating the college on their work to date.
Rustad noted that there is no question in his mind that the North will need a lot of people working in mines and that the expansion to the college will help this region grasp those mining potentials.By Cameron Orr
