HomeMy WebLinkAboutFebruary 19
Environmental Initiatives Committee
Minutes
DATE: Thursday, February 19, 2009
TIME: 7:30pm
LOCATION: Parks & Recreation Building
26379 Fremont Road
Los Altos Hills
Roll Call: The following were present: Ian Earnst, Peter, Evans, John Harpootlian,
Breene Kerr, Lew Jamison, Rich Larson, Raj Reddy, Steve Schmidt, Jay Shideler &
Walt Wilson.
Committee acceptance of the minutes: All present accepted the January 19, 2009
Minutes as-is (with corrections).
EIC Mission Statement, Goals and Milestone discussion:
1. Mission Statement – Revamping of EIC charter has been postponed pending the
establishment of the new Water committee- (M-M) - Jay
2. Goals and Milestones for 2009 – No update (M-M) - Jay
Energy Conservation and Management:
1. GHG reduction Home Audits:
• Steve met with Acterra – They are receptive to funding if project can be
expanded to 18 months covering the audits of at least 350 LAH homes.
Steve & Peter have noticed that the established Acterra audit program
lacks some applicability for high-end LAH’s homes. Continue to pursue
Acterra for help & finding - (H-H) – Steve, Peter
• Meet with PG&E (find the right money “pot”) for funding – (H-H) –
Steve, Peter
• Home audits: Complete the initial 10 home audits (Raj to help) and
continue to refine the audit software – (H-H) – Steve, Peter, Raj.
• Foothill College Interaction:
a. Steve and Peter gave their presentation for GHG reduction and
goals for LAH. Presentation was well received. Foothill College
calculations for gas & electricity are much greater than Steve’s
data – investigate - (H-H) Steve.
b. Dr. Judy Miner, President of Foothill College, expressed a desire
to work with Town of LAH to provide classes and training to
Any writings or documents provided to a majority of the Environmental Initiatives Committee regarding any item of the open
session portion of this agenda will be made available for public inspection in the City Clerk’s office located at 26379 Fremont
Road, Los Altos Hills, California
during normal business hours.
augment a LAH home audit program. Also, grant money is a
possibility from Foothill – follow up with potential grant money
from Foothill College – (H-H) – Breene.
• Walt showed an “alpha” phase of a modified “KiloWatt Meter to give
readouts of instantaneous power consumption using wireless technology.
Challenge is to increase range to 300 feet. A working model is expected to be
available in about one month – (H-H) – Walt
• Smart Meter Rollout – Evaluate Google’s effort and talk to a neighbor about
Google’s Power Meter – (H-M) – Peter, Raj.
• Establish home audit game-plan (with milestones) for education and training –
(H-H) Lew.
• Resident’s annual participation spreadsheets – Evaluate efficacy of using such
a flier for residents to tract their own progress. Also, consider converting to a
web-base – (M-M) – Lew, Jitze.
2. Town Hall energy monitoring- FSI report has been given to Carl Cahill for the
following modifications to be made in the Town Hall:
• EMS (Energy Management System) that would work for at least controlling
the thermostats. Contact Carl Cahill to explain details of desired modifications
- (H-H) Peter.
• Data room outside cooling – implement ASAP – continue working with Carl
Cahill to implement – (H-H) - Jay
3. Solar Energy Generation:
• Flier of P.V. Solar Systems Purchase Options has been approved by the Town
attorney with minor modifications. Flier is being prepared as a handout - H-
H) Jay.
• AB811 Government funding of solar systems for residential homes – Jay has
researched and written a synopsis of requirements and restrictions. Prepare
paper detailing beneficial attributes of AB811 for the Town of LAH - (H-H)
Jay, Rich.
• Solar installation penetration of LAH is not known – investigate and
determine amount of penetration – (H-M) – Peter.
• Evaluate LAH solar tracker’s performance based payback to date – (M-M) -
Jay
Green Construction and Demolition:
1. Build-it-Green requirement – procedure ready for next new home applicant but as
to this date, no permit applicant has yet to be subjected to its regulation – (M-M)
– Raj & John.
2. Consider adapting build-it-green procedure for remodels – (H-L) - Raj
Recycling:
1. GreenWaste Recovery’s service – Continue to monitor GreenWaste. - (H-H) –
Jay.
2. GreenWaste recycling monthly spreadsheet: Numbers that GreenWaste is
inserting into the spreadsheet for recycling do not reflect month-to-month
changes because they are based on one test of shutting down the recycling line,
clearing out the line, then processing a single sampling of LAH refuse to obtain
LAH data. Numbers also appear to be trite since they are multiples of “5”.
Investigation and modifications ongoing - (H-M) – Jay.
Water Consumption:
1. Water Conservation issues will be assigned to a new standing committee
henceforth. This committee has been approved by the Town Council.
Participants will be solicited and a chairperson selected shortly. This committee
will interface with the EIC, EDC, and the Open Space Committee. There will be
some overlap of water conservation and management between the EIC and the
new water committee – the degree of overlap to be determined at a later date –
(H-H) - John
2. “Gray water” utilization in LAH – analysis ongoing. Make recommendation to the
EIC – (M-M) – Margie.
3. Pools, pool pumps, fountains, waterfalls discussion – Peter has completed his flier
(subject to review by at least one pool contractor) and will release it to be
published as a flier at his own discretion. This was passed unanimously by the
committee – (H-H) – Peter
4. Drought preparation and plans needed – (H-H) – John.
5. Consider adding select pool specifications and questions, al la Peter’s pool flier,
to the permit application for pools – (H-H) - Peter, John.
Miscellaneous:
1. Status of official web-site for EIC – (H-H) – Jay, Lew.
2. Education Sub-committee – The EIC voted to establish a sub-committee to direct
efforts of education of all aspects of the EIC. Sub-committee needs to be formed
and staffed with EIC members. Add detail bullets to outline developed by Lew
earlier – (H-H) – Lew.
3. The Town Hall solar website has run into a snag when trying to update it. Two
companies are involved, one which designed the hardware and one that developed
the data acquisition. Detail documentation of how everything dovetails together
appears to be lost. Investigate funding a FootHill/Stanford student internship to
modify the website to incorporate changes listed by Jay and possibly others – (M-
H) - Jay.
4. EIC Wiki – Send out reminder and Wiki address for dumping documents into the
Wiki site – (M-H) Steve.
Next Meeting: Monday, March 16, 2009 at 7:30PM in the Parks and Recreation
Building.
Concept for establishing Goals and setting Priority: These minutes, henceforth, shall
follow the format of denoting priority as (Value-Time) until further notice. “Value” and
“Time” are expressed as one of three letters: “H” – high, “M”- medium or “L” – low.
JAS 02-19-2009