7 hours Ago
If it were not for City Councilor Carol Romero-Wirth, who has announced she’s not running for reelection, Santa Fe’s residential green-building codes would remain stuck at 2018 levels, where they are today. Fortunately, she is determined to get the long-overdue revisions and updates over the finish line before her term expires at the end of the year. Unfortunately, given its slow walk within the corridors of City Hall, it may take that long to get approval on a product that has been finished for months.
There was a time, like 20 years ago, when city councilors, land-use staff and Santa Fe’s green builders were excited and eager to put the city on the map as a national leader in adopting sensible residential green-building codes. Ten years of construction dormancy following the housing crash of 2008, followed by the COVID-19 shutdown of 2020, followed by the grandiose multiyear effort to update the city’s massive land-use codes and general plan, have eclipsed the importance of regular and predictable ratcheting of improvements to green-building codes. It certainly has not been a priority for Mayor Alan Webber or any of the other seven city councilors.
Romero-Wirth, while no green-building expert, does have a deep understanding of water issues through her long service chairing the Water Conservation Committee and serving as a member of the Buckman Direct Diversion board of directors. Significantly, green code updates presently under review in the city attorney’s office make huge improvements around water conservation, especially for multifamily apartments. A few years back, the Planning and Land Use Department recognized it didn’t have the capacity, with either personnel or building science knowledge, to lead on necessary updates, so they contracted with two excellent local consultants with national reputations — Steve Onstad and Doug Pushard.
Onstad is a HERS rater for energy and WERS rater for water, both of which are protocols required by Santa Fe code for getting a building permit to start and a certificate of occupancy to finish. Pushard is a water-harvesting professional largely responsible for shepherding Santa Fe’s creation and adoption of the WERS protocol, which stands for Water Efficiency Rating Score. Both HERS and WERS are predictive calculation tools for dwelling units that provide scores between zero and 100 for energy and water efficiency, lower being better.
Current levels from 2018 updates set HERS at 60 and WERS at 70. Both will be lowered by five points, certainly not radical changes, when Romero-Wirth’s ordinance finally gets approval. Both HERS and WERS were designed for applicability for all dwelling-unit types, including apartments, but Santa Fe never folded them into its green-building codes because even though apartments are dwelling units, they adhere to commercial building codes, not residential codes.
Because Santa Fe’s green-building codes are “residential,” apartments were exempted. How long has this oversight been recognized? Well, since around the same time the flurry of apartment building applications came forward after adoption of fee-in-lieu affordability waivers for rental apartments. Or roughly around the same time Webber first ran for mayor and well before thousands of apartments were built with no enhanced energy or water requirements.
Better late than never, but why does green-building code review and approval need to follow the grandiose and contentious multi-year update of land-use codes? It doesn’t, but apparently that priority has been set by the Webber administration. Romero-Wirth can try to bring her ordinance to the top of the stack, but only Mayor Webber can make it happen. Do the easy one first and bring forward the fully vetted green-building code updates for council consideration now.
Give Councilor Romero-Wirth the win she deserves..
