I'm building the Water Mill Ateliers mixed use project in Southampton, NY. I've had a few experiences that show that municipalities really need to get on board with green building standards. It will save everybody involved a lot of headaches and help the environment.

Two main issues we had both involved water usage. Water conservation is a major issue on Long Island and it comes into play with every development whether it's commercial or residential. As a LEED project we will be saving over 100,000 gallons of water per year or 42% over a standard building. We have achieved this strictly through the use of water saving fixtures including low flow toilets and showerheads and aerated faucets. The problem is that according to the Town of Southampton, a single bedroom apartment uses a certain amount of water that they've had written on a piece of paper for probably over a decade and an office or a certain size uses another specific amount of water flow. They refuse to take into account all of the efforts we have made to save water. So our site doesn't have enough water flow credits for the usage we are building so we would be required to buy an acre of two of land in the pine barrens of Long Island and then donate those water credits to the town. It works a lot like a carbon offset but is enormously expensive.

The other issue we had which is so maddening and upsetting because of how bad it is for the environment involved the drywells. The town code required that we put in 27 drywells based on the square footage of our land. We are using native grasses and our parking lot is going to be crushed pea stone with a crushed asphalt substrate. Essentially we have achieved 100% permeability on our site. If more then two of those drywells ever get wet it will be a big surprise. Each drywell takes dozens of cubic yards of concrete – the manufacture of which is one of the worst activities for the environment – not to mention the transportation and installation involved.

The town of Southampton has just adopted a green code which is basically energy star and is incredibly behind the times. In the great effort to encourage people to build green we will always be held back by municipalities who for whatever reason can not recognize that the standards they use every day and probably haven't changed in years simply to do not service their communities. While it may be difficult for a town to recognize that an individual project has specific water and power requirements, having a cookie cutter mold can only do harm.