At its headquarters, Heifer International employs constructed wetlands and graywater storage to supply a majority of its water needs.
By Dan Rafter
Based in Little Rock, AR, Heifer is a global organization dedicated to ending world hunger and poverty. The organization promotes sustainability to do this: Heifer provides cows, goats, and other livestock to families in need around the globe. But before receiving an animal, recipients are trained in animal care and environmentally sound agricultural practices. The goal? For families to lift themselves out of poverty—not rely on others to do so—and, in the process, become self-reliant.
When it came time for Heifer to build new company headquarters in Little Rock, the organization had the chance to follow its own teachings. It’s no surprise, then, that organization officials demanded that the headquarters, which cost $17.5 million to build, have as little impact on the surrounding land as possible.
The new headquarters meet this demand with a cutting-edge green building, one designed to conserve energy and curb pollution. The hope, Heifer officials say, is that the building’s environmentally friendly features, including a wetland built out of a former decaying brownfield, and a graywater storage tower that provides for a majority of the headquarters’ water needs, serve as a model for other institutions who want to “make living in harmony with the earth part of their mission.”
“We had to design our building this way. We had to do it,” says Erik J. Swindle, director of facilities management for Heifer, who, along with the rest of the staff, moved into the new headquarters building in February 2006. “Our mission is to end hunger and care for the earth. It was time for our world headquarters to have that same impact, or lack of impact, if you will. It was a no-brainer for us to have this sustainable building.”
The building’s innovative rainfall collection system and onsite water treatment methods, provide a major boost to the facility’s green status. Relying on the newly constructed wetland and a 25,000-gallon water tower, the headquarters also serve as a model for other property owners investigating the feasibility of environmentally friendly onsite treatment, collection, and reuse of water.
The water, captured and treated onsite, is used to flush the building’s toilets, power its radiant heating system, and replenish the wetland during dry periods. This has reduced the building’s reliance on water provided by Little Rock, lowering water bills significantly in the process. And by treating and recirculating water onsite, the headquarters have so far sent no water or runoff into Little Rock’s city sewers.
“To be honest, I am thoroughly impressed with the water treatment system,” Swindle says. “There were a lot of question marks before we moved in. It was new to all of us. But we’ve all been so impressed with this system. It’s an amazing system.”
Low-Impact Building
Heifer International officials had several goals for the new headquarters: The new building would be energy-efficient, built with the latest in green techniques. It would place little strain on the environment.
The building’s unique onsite water treatment system, with its use of natural cleansing methods and its reliance on rainwater instead of city-provided water, is a major component of the headquarters’ green nature. But it’s far from the only one. The entire construction of the headquarters has been an example of an environmentally friendly building.
Before construction began, in 2002, Heifer International officials selected a building site in a former warehouse district and rail yard for the new 94,000-square-foot office building. The EPA had earlier designated the site as a brownfield, a property that may be complicated by the presence or potential presence of a hazardous substance, pollutant, or contaminant.
Partnering with the city of Little Rock, along with several other engineering and environmental partners, Heifer hired construction crews to move 75,526 tons—or 4,537 truckloads—of dirt from the headquarters site to the city landfill. Here, the city reprocessed the dirt for daily fill use. Heifer sent a smaller amount of soil, that had been contaminated with metals and petroleum, to a disposal facility.
The effort made history as the largest-volume brownfield cleanup in Arkansas.
Heifer’s efforts, including the construction of the wetland, in what was formerly a decaying former industrial site, attracted attention throughout the state.
Jay Chesshir, president and chief executive officer of the Little Rock Chamber of Commerce, said that Arkansas is seeking to attract—and has already attracted—other environmentally friendly projects that can follow the lead set by Heifer.
“Having an international headquarters facility, whose core mission focuses on sustainable development, speaks volumes for us, the community, and the state,” Chesshir says. “The environment is important for us all. We are building a nucleus here of renewable, sustainable industries in central Arkansas.”
The energy-efficient and sustainable features of Heifer’s new headquarters are many. First, architects designed the 62-foot-wide, curved building so that it would receive the maximum possible exposure to the sun. This spills natural light to every work station throughout the building, reducing electrical use. Light sensors read and react to the amount of natural sunlight, so that employees use artificial light only when it is absolutely needed, another way that the building conserves energy. Heifer officials, in fact, predict that the headquarters will use at least 40% less energy compared with similar buildings built with conventional construction methods.
Other green features are tied into the way the headquarters collect and treat water. The building’s parking area features a permeable surface that funnels rainwater into the wetland. Filled with vegetation, this water-collection basin stores the water and purifies it for future use, an environmentally friendly alternative to sending the water to Little Rock’s sewer system.
Rainwater collected from the headquarters’ roof is stored in a standard municipal water tower that can hold about 25,000 gallons. Heifer uses this water to flush toilets, to power the building’s radiant heating system, and to replenish the surrounding wetland during dry periods.
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Photo: Heifer International |
| Heifer's new, environmentally friendly headquarters remains true to the company's values by using the surrounding resources. |
The building also houses, and was made from, several recycled and renewable materials, including recycled steel, carpet, and cotton insulation. The headquarters also boast bamboo floors, bathrooms that include recycled tiles, partitions recycled from pine sawdust, and insulation made from soybean byproducts.
Finally, to meet national standards for green construction, most of the source materials that construction crews used during the building process came from within a 250-mile radius of the job site. Doing this saved money and transportation energy alike.
Innovation in Onsite Treatment
When Heifer tagged the Little Rock–based architecture firm of Polk Stanley Rowland Curzon Porter to design its new headquarters, it presented Reese Rowland, a principal with the firm, with a huge challenge. Rowland and his fellow architects had to design a building that was not only functional, but also reflected Heifer International’s core mission of promoting sustainability.
In other words, the headquarters had to be just about the greenest building Rowland and his partners had ever designed.
“The building had to meet Heifer’s mission,” Rowland says. “In doing that, the longer we went into the design process, it pretty much became our mission to make this building one of the most sustainable ones in the world. It was important for Heifer to be able to use this building to help tell its story of sustainable design. They rely on donations to survive. If they are not following what they are preaching with their own headquarters, that could impact their donations.”
A major component of the building’s sustainable design is its onsite water treatment and collection systems. Rowland calls the system one of the most innovative he’s seen. The wetland surrounding the headquarters does the heavy lifting when it comes to storing and purifying the water used at the building.
Creating this natural system took great planning, Rowland says. For instance, visitors park their cars on highly compacted gravel lots. This gravel allows water to pass quickly through it and into heavily landscaped bioswales that wrap tightly around the parking lots. The bioswales remove silt and pollution from the water before it funnels into the surrounding wetlands.
The project’s landscape architects carefully chose the plants that line the bioswales, Rowland says. They are mostly made up of native wildflowers that feed off the pollutants that come from cars.
The wetland then stores and treats the runoff water naturally. The wetland runs around the entire building site. According to Rowland, by the time runoff makes it to the end of the system, the water is clean and ready to be redistributed throughout the wetland, where it aids in supporting the area’s lush landscaping. “Our landscape architect says wetlands are nature’s kidneys,” he says.
The building’s roof also plays an important part in collecting and distributing water throughout the headquarters. The 30,000-square-foot roof, shaped like an inverted “V,” overhangs the edges of the building. The water from storms flows across the roof, and is directed to a four-story water tower. This collected water is then reused throughout the building to flush its toilets and to help fuel its mechanical systems.
Rowland and his fellow architects made sure that the water tower was not an eyesore. The building’s fire stairs wrap around it, and they and the tower are encased in glass.
The results have been impressive so far, resulting in significant savings to Heifer. Swindle says that the headquarters’ city water bills have run from $140 to $200 a month since employees moved in last year. He estimates that without the onsite system, these bills, considering the 94,000-square-foot size of the headquarters, could easily reach the $2,000 to $3,000 range every month. Depending on the amount of rainfall to hit the area, Heifer will pay back the cost of the onsite storage system in three to seven years, Swindle says.
The wetland plants are not the only method of treatment that Heifer is now using to clean the runoff water from its headquarters. The fish in the ponds and wetland do their part, too, of course, eating and controlling the amount of algae present in the system. The system also includes a pump that circulates the water through the entire wetland about once every day. This prevents any buildup of stagnant water.
Rowland says that 75% of the rainwater collected in the onsite water tower is used to power the building’s mechanical system, with the remaining 25% used to flush its toilets. The building even uses the condensation that collects on the sides of the water tower. The only water used in the building is that collected from its roof.
Was it a challenge constructing such an innovative system?
“This wasn’t the easiest project that we’ve ever taken on,” Rowland admits. “We took a hard look at trying to take fairly standard systems and modify them in a way that would allow these efficiencies to occur. One of the things that we keyed in on was that we didn’t want to design a system that was difficult to maintain.”
After working in the building since early 2006, Swindle says, he’s had no problems working with the system. Officials with the American Institute of Architects also have appreciated the work that went into creating the building: The institute presented Rowland and his partners with one of its highest green building honors for their work on the headquarters.
“The main thing that sets this building apart is its message,” Rowland says. “Its message is related to what Heifer is all about. Heifer is a sustainable organization, an organization dedicated to fighting world hunger. The people there preach sustainable farming and development. So it was very important that this building allows them to practice what they preach.”
No Burden on City Services
Heifer officials are especially pleased that their headquarters have yet to place a burden on Little Rock’s stormwater runoff system. So far, thanks to the wetland and the water tower, the building and its grounds have used every bit of rainwater and runoff that has touched the site, Swindle says.
And simply by building the headquarters, Heifer cleaned a large patch of land that had been abandoned.
“This land had been left to deteriorate,” Swindle says. “It was left to be dealt with ‘whenever.’ There were a lot of things on the site that we weren’t aware of when we first selected it. We uncovered a lot of old storage tanks, for instance. But we did clean this land up, and, at the same time, we haven’t placed a burden on the community around us.”
Ellen McNulty, watershed coordinator with the water division of the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality, says she and her agency were happy with the project and with the cleanup’s beneficial impact on the Arkansas River.
“This is such an important project,” McNulty says. “They are right on the Arkansas River. They have cleaned up that brownfield site. That wetland they built is a nutrient and sediment sink. It does a great job of keeping pollutants and sediment soil from going into the river.”
McNulty is especially pleased that Heifer officials are eager to spread the word about their building and its innovative environmentally friendly features. Heifer holds regular tours of the building for members of the public.
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Photo: Heifer International |
| The surrounding wetland stores and purifies the water used. |
McNulty hopes such success stories as Heifer’s will encourage other property owners, both large and small, to consider sustainable design and innovative treatment systems.
“The idea of low-impact development is becoming more and more well-received,” she says. “A lot of the more innovative building techniques end up costing less than the traditional curb-and-gutter method.”
Swindle says he doesn’t know how much water the headquarters would use from the City of Little Rock, if it didn’t have its onsite collection systems. But, he does say it would be an immense amount. Arkansas boasts a lot of hot, muggy weather. The headquarters’ air-conditioning system, then, is frequently humming. Swindle says that the building uses 10,000 gallons of rainwater a day for the air conditioner at least 200 days out of the year.
It’s easy to see, then, just how quickly water usage adds up, and how much of a siphon the building could have been on the city’s water supply.
The new headquarters are environmentally friendly in other ways, too. Previously, Heifer housed its employees in five separate locations, including its main office inside a high-rise building in downtown Little Rock. Despite efforts to promote recycling and carpooling at the facilities, such a spread-out system of offices resulted in higher energy and transportation costs, Swindle says.
Today, Heifer’s employees work in a centralized location. Many of them are able to bike or walk to work, and the headquarters are located more conveniently to public transportation, Swindle says.
The natural light that floods the building is also a pleasant change, Swindle adds.
“In our old location, nobody, during the day, knew what the weather was like outside,” he says. “You were locked in a cage to be let loose at five o’clock. Here, to have all this natural sunlight, and all the nice views, we have boosted employee productivity and communication.”
Swindle says his employer’s headquarters should serve as a model for other property owners.
“The type of treatment systems and design elements in this building are new to this area,” he says. “It was new for all of us. We originally thought the design process would take from six months to a year. It ended up taking more than two years. That’s because it was all so new. The results, though, have been well worth it.”
Dan Rafter is a technical writer based in Chesterton, IN.
OW - March/April 2008 |
