A partially decomposed body of a 6-foot tall white man was found on Plum Island, N.Y., home of the the government’s Animal Disease Center, according to a New York Daily News report. A facility guard found the body, which reportedly had no signs of trauma, on a beach that was part of a secure area of the island. This is the latest mystery on an island shrouded in mystery. Some of the world’s most lethal livestock diseases are researched here. During the Cold War, it was home to the government’s bilogical weapons program. Plum Island’s history as a super-secure animal…
Browsing: Facilities
The Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Houston, Texas, today became the 100th facility in the U.S. to be certified through the Green Building Initiative’s Green Globes rating system. The medical center joins another 15 VA facilities that have been certified through the Green Globes system, which recognizes achievements in energy efficiency and environmental management practices. In the U.S., Green Globes has trailed behind the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) as the preferred tool for measuring and certifying green buildings. But like the little engine that could, Green Globes is steadily making inroads in the…
Rep. Eliot Engel is trying again to ban smoking near federal buildings. The New York Democrat unsuccessfully introduced a bill during the last Congress to ban smoking within 25 feet of any federal building’s entrances, exits, windows that can be opened and ventilation intakes. Engel reintroduced the bill Nov. 18 to correspond with the American Cancer Society’s Great American Smoke Out smoking-cessation campaign. The Surgeon General reported in 2006 that there is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke. One step we can take in limiting such exposure is to free the entrances of buildings of the clouds of…
The federal government may be growing under President Barack Obama, but a just-released report shows the government is actually getting smaller. Confused? It turns out that while federal agencies are hiring more workers, they’re also getting rid of thousands of buildings they no longer need. The number of buildings in the federal inventory declined nearly 9 percent in 2008, or roughly 70 million square feet, according to a report posted today by the General Services Administration. GSA attributes the decrease to a reduction of 36,000 military housing units and 4,000 warehouses by the Air Force and Navy.
This weekend I took a trip to Ellis Island, which is operated by the National Park Service, in New York City. While I expected to discover quite a bit about the conditions my ancestors endured when they passed through there in the early 1900s, I did not expect to discover a government contracting story that seems to prove the adage “the more things change, the more they stay the same.†According to an exhibit at the history of the immigration station, after the original complex of wooden buildings burned to the ground in 1897, the Treasury Department ran a competition…
Last week, I wrote about how federal agencies are using some of the billions of dollars in stimulus funds flowing to them for facility and energy projects to replace or retrofit their building rooftops with green alternatives. Options being considered include thin solar films that are imbedded into roofs, additional insulation to repel heat, and vegetative roofs such as a 5,000-square-foot garden patch atop the seven-story Interior Department headquarters building in Washington. Other agencies have outfitted their roofs with vegetation, recognizing both the environmental and economic benefits. Our videographer, Colin Kelly, recently toured two examples outside the nation’s capital in Suitland,…
The White House is developing an executive order that will set new goals for greening federal agencies, the administration’s top environmental policy adviser said this afternoon. The White House Council on Environmental Quality is working with several agencies to draft the new presidential directive, council chairwoman Nancy Sutley said during an Earth Day event at the State Department. Sutley did not say when the order will be issued. Existing laws and executive orders already require agencies to cut their energy and water consumption, increase their use of renewable energy, purchase environmentally preferable products and buy alternative fuel vehicles. Sutley said the…
Update: The General Services Administration has posted the stimulus plan on its Recovery Act website. The 13-page plan can be accessed here. Original post: The General Services Administration just announced that it’s decided how it will spend the $5.5 billion in stimulus funds it received. Congress directed that $4.5 billion go toward converting federal buidlings to high-performance green facilities. Another $750 million is available for building and renovating federal buildings and courthouses, and $300 million must be directed to renovating and constructing land ports of entry. GSA said it’s selected projects based on the speed at which jobs can be…
With pressure mounting to purchase environmentally friendly products, sorting through the various federal programs to determine whether there are specific products identified that meet environmental standards can be daunting. After all, federal agencies are rating scores of products — everything from awards and bed linens to vending machines and water coolers — for recycled and biobased content, energy and water savings and absence of environmentally harmful chemicals or gases. Agencies are required to buy environmentally preferable products, but finding out whether green alternatives exist for products being purchased is often a time- consuming and frustrating exercise. Now there is a tool…
President Barack Obama wants agencies to consider requiring contractors on large-scale federal construction projects to enter into collective bargaining agreements. In an executive order issued this afternoon, Obama said the White House would encourage agencies to require so-called project labor agreements for facility, highway or other construction projects totaling at least $25 million. The union contracts would establish work rights and labor dispute procedures for all employees working for a contractor or subcontractor on a specific construction project. Obama said such work rules would ensure big construction projects don’t get bogged down by disputes among various companies working on a single…