Stimulus rescues Gwinnett project

By Patrick Fox

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

After being wiped out by deep budget cuts in June, Gwinnett County’s $1 million program for energy-saving initiatives has been rescued through federal stimulus funding.

A $7.3 million federal grant will allow the county to proceed with many of the initiatives it had proposed, said Dennis Baxter, the county’s engineering coordinator.

While drawing up a strategy, Baxter said, the county joined the Green Communities Program, a voluntary certification process for jurisdictions served by the 10-county Atlanta Regional Commission to encourage governments to become more sustainable.

“We’re not just doing this certification for certification’s sake,” Baxter said. “We believe there is a linkage between these programs that we’re pursuing and our ultimate goal of improving our environmental stewardship.”

Gwinnett’s plan includes environmental-friendly practices, such as recycling office furniture and retrofitting plumbing fixtures. It also provides for energy-saving measures, such as stepping up efforts to turn computers and lights off when not in use, and planning buildings with energy-efficient designs.

Through these measures, Baxter said, the county is looking at simple paybacks over a period of up to 12 years. Immediate payback would be the lights-off policy.

Another major step to save energy is replacement of traditional incandescent-bulb traffic signals with ones using LED lights. This measure, Baxter said, represents a 20 percent savings in energy. The county has already replaced about 60 percent of its signals, he said.

The energy savings come at a cost. The new LED signals cost $300 each, while the old ones were priced at $125.

Even so, the incandescent signals are no longer on the market due to federal restrictions, said Charles Bailey, director of the county division that handles traffic engineering and planning.

“What we are shooting for is to reduce our energy consumption by about 10 percent by 2012,” Baxter said. “This equates to a reduction of about 30 [million] to 40 million kilowatt hours and savings of about $1 million annually to the county utility budget.”