Last night the Fremont County School District 1 board voted on building the new middle school LEED certified. The school district demonstrated their commitment to the well-being of their students and the community by voting to build the new school “Gold” level. (For more information on LEED building visit www.usgbc.org.) The Gold level is one step below the platinum level, which only a handful of buildings have been built at this level in the world. The Gold level vote will ensure that the building will be energy efficient, will increase air quality within the building environment, will ensure the building design is compatible with the cultural heritage and the natural setting unique to Lander, will utilize natural lighting in the building design, and potentially provide the building as an extension of learning rather than just a vessel to contain learning. I would like to thank the school board for their choice to invest in the future of the Lander youth and community. The decision to build LEED Gold is a pioneering decision that shows leadership not only at our community level but also a model of leadership for the state.

Karl Sutton

Building a LEED certified school has become a potential reality in our community thanks to the efforts of individuals connected to the On Sacred ground local chapter and individuals in the Lander Community. LEED building became front page and editorial news in our local newspaper. Community members met in late November at our local coffee shop to learn more about what exactly is a LEED building and community members wrote the school board members and attended school board meetings voicing their desires for LEED built schools. The grassroots work paid off. The school board agreed to create an ad hoc committee that had representatives from the school district, school board and community. This ad hoc committee formed to look closely at the merits of LEED building design and the costs associated with building a LEED school. The committee traveled to Greybull in December to tour a LEED built elementary school and hear the testimonies of the Greybull personnel on the merits of the building design. A final decision has not been made on building LEED. This decision should be coming shortly in January.

On the local food front, the Fremont County Food Security project called Sustainable Lives continues to move forward. At the moment six individuals representing various organizations have been working on writing a trends report that holistically evaluates our local food system. This report covers our general demographics, water quality and quantity that effects agricultural production, land use trends such as subdivision development, direct market economies such as Community Supported Agriculture, farmer’s markets and food stands, farm production and economic indicators, and food security. This document will be a base report to inform the project steering committee, which is comprised of community members who individually have expertise in various facets of our food system. The projects ultimate goal is to create a project(s) that works to address food security and relocalizes our food system. A few project ideas are farm to school, community gardens, cooperative markets, and expanded community supported agriculture.

This morning in Lander several of us who had attended the “On Sacred Ground” conference sat down together. We want to take steps toward stewardship in our community. We want to translate inspiration from the conference into concrete progress and action.

Diane Corsick, Darci Jones, Maia Rose, April Pendleton, Joy Owen, Karl Sutton, and I (Aaron Bannon) sat down and began to hammer out a name, a mission, potential projects, and a cause.

The name: Fremont County On Sacred Ground Community (FCOSGC – perhaps still a working title).

The mission: To provide a vision of stewarsdhip for the future that inspires care of the natural world by example, educates about social and environmental justice, and activates civic engagement. (This is also a work in progress).

The projects: Field trips, newsletters, and workshops, which are vehicles to inspire and educate people about our identified action.

The cause: All agreed that, with two to three new school buildings on the way, working with the school district to adopt LEED certification and other sustainable practices (discussing school to farm projects, etc.) for these schools is a good project to begin our collaborative work. LEED certification uses a practiced system to consider green building techniques before, during, and after construction. The main sticking point is money, as a LEED certified school in Greybull, WY Business Council offered a demonstration grant to implement the systems required to meet LEED standards.
Everyone at the meeting walked away with a personal project to add momentum to this cause. Some are developing fact sheets, others are writing LTEs, still others are reaching out to school board members.

In our next meeting, we plan to start generating a work plan. The seeds have been sown.