E.S. Bird Library could house plants, soil and shrubs if a new green roof proposal is funded by Syracuse University and General Electric.

As part of the General Electric Undergraduate Leadership Program, a team of five SU students proposed installing a green roof on top of Bird Library once the current roof needs to be replaced.

The GE Leadership Program offered 10 teams the chance to propose a sustainable project that could be easily implemented on campus. The entries were evaluated Feb. 28.

The winning team will be installing new, sustainable and water-saving showerheads in Sky Halls to begin next year, said Holly Rosenthal, director of corporate relations at SU and one of the judges on the panel for the GE Leadership Projects. The second-place team, Alternative Solutions, proposed the green roof. Another team proposed giving energy-efficient light bulbs to all incoming freshmen.

If the green roof proposal is approved for eventual implementation, it would be the first of its kind at SU, Rosenthal said.

Advantages of green roofs include storm water retention and runoff control, and reduced energy consumption that contributes to a lower lifetime cost compared to conventional flat roofs, according to greenroofs.com.

Naresh Rammohan, a sophomore broadcast journalism and finance major on team Alternative Solutions, said his team hopes to have a contract in place with the university by the end of 2009 to ensure that when Bird Library’s current roof is ready to be replaced, a green roof could be installed, rather than the traditional gravel roof the library now uses.

‘We’d have to speak with someone who is sure when it will expire, because we’re probably going to be graduated by the time the roof would be implemented. But we want a contract for this reason,’ Rammohan said. ‘So when it is time everything will be in place. Students will come back from summer break and realize that Bird Library is now green.’

Rammohan said another reason his team thought of the library for the location of the green roof was because it served as an academic hub of the university. ‘Getting a green roof here would put SU on the map as far as going green,’ he said.

Other team members include Brandon Goodnow, a junior accounting and finance major, Shehtaaz Zaman, a junior geography and economics major, Anton Pepe, a junior geography and economics major and Adam Davidson, a sophomore finance major.

‘A lot of questions people have about green roofs, is that we live in Syracuse and it’s always snowy here, so isn’t it going to die?’ Rammohan said.

But with the green roof, a drainage system beneath layers of grass and soil absorbs any precipitation and uses it for irrigation.

‘We could see that Bird Library did have a fairly old roof,’ Rammohan said. His team also looked at roof needs on Haven Hall and the Women’s Building, but decided on the library because its roof would have to be replaced within the next five years.

He added it would cost about three times as much as a normal roof, but that over the long run, it’s a cheaper investment than traditional roofing because it would curb energy costs.

‘During winter, you don’t need to turn the heat up as much, and during summer, it keeps the temperature fairly cool,’ Rammohan said. ‘I think it’s a great idea, and I think it’s something the campus can get excited about.’

Rosenthal, who served on the panel of judges that also included GE representatives, a State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry professor and a few SU alumni, said that even though the green roof proposal was the most expensive proposal, she thought the team’s idea was well researched and had a strong concept.

With a background in construction, the green roof proposal was not as overwhelming to Rosenthal as the other judges. But because it was not as easily implemented as the team that proposed sustainable showerheads, it was chosen for second place in the competition.

‘I think that if the university were to build a green roof, they would do so at the end of the life span of the current roof, rather than tear up an existing roof,’ she said. ‘They would wait until they were going to build a new one.’

Rosenthal also said that the installation of green roofs is dependent on the structural integrity of a roof.

Davidson, the sophomore finance major on the Alternative Solutions team, calculated that it would cost $14 per square foot to install an ‘intensive’ green roof. The total cost of a green roof on top of Bird Library would come to approximately $500,000, he said. The university would save about $4,000 in energy costs a year. There would be maintenance costs for the first two years, but after that the roof would maintain itself.

‘We thought it would have kind of the most impact on the campus,’ he said. ‘The other (proposals) were stuff the university has kind of already done. The green roof would be very visible and have a long term benefit for the entire campus.’

blbump@syr.edu

Published on March 30, 2009 at 12:00 pm