Save that old firehouse at Magnuson Park

Seattle is a green city — isn't it? Let's put our reputation to the test by taking a close look at a building at Sand Point/Magnuson Park.

Recently Mayor Nickels kicked off a campaign he calls "Choose Reusable" promoting reusable bags over disposable ones. "Both paper and plastic disposable bags harm our environment, and every year, residents in Seattle throw out 360 million of them. That's simply unsustainable," said Nickels. Thanks to new efforts by the City and Seattleites, we are on our way to our sixth year of improving domestic and commercial recycling and sending less waste to our landfills. We recycle glass, paper, metal, and kitchen scraps, and we carry reusable totes to the grocery store.

If we recycle paper, bottles, and cans, why don't we recycle more of our buildings? If we are so concerned with being sustainable, why aren't we considering the environmental consequences of demolishing buildings — especially if the building is a public one.

This past week, the City of Seattle and Seattle Parks and Recreation submitted a SEPA Checklist and Determination of Non-Significance in order to prepare all the paperwork to demolish Building 18, the Fire Station Building, at Magnuson Park. In making my case to save this building, I'm going to start with arguments that don't attempt to prove the building's historic significance, beginning with the environment.

The U.S. EPA reports that "In 2006, US residents, businesses, and institutions produced more than 251 million tons of municipal solid waste, which is approximately 4.6 pounds of waste per person per day." If Building 18 is demolished — a solid brick and steel building of approximately 14,013 square feet — 1,212 tons of construction and demolition would be put into a landfill. That's as much waste as it would be for a single person putting his or her 4.6 pounds per day into a landfill for 1,444 years! Even if part of the building was recycled, the energy expended to demolish, load, haul, and recycle is astounding.

Every building is a storehouse of non-recoverable energy and can be considered by its "embodied energy." This is the energy that has been spent in its construction, manufacture, and transportation of materials. When a building is torn down, more is lost than the built resource (and its associated heritage). Embodied energy is also lost, and more energy is expended for the demolition, loading, and hauling of the debris.

The amount of gasoline this represents in a single building can be helpful to understand the impact. For Building 18 alone the embodied energy is the equivalent of driving your (fuel efficient) car every day, 365 days a year, for over 200 years. Tear down Building 18? We have now wiped out the entire environmental benefit from the last 1,972,830 aluminum cans that were recycled. We’ve not only wasted a perfectly good building; we’ve wasted months of diligent recycling by the people of Seattle. In addition, demolition is also equivalent to carbon sequestered by either 427 tree seedlings for a decade or 3.8 acres of pine forest annually. Aren't we a green city?

Embodied energy only tells us part of the story. As the National Trust for Historic Preservation says: "while knowing the embodied energy in a building enables us to understand how building construction and demolition compares to other energy intensive activities, such as auto use, it doesn’t help with much else. It doesn’t tell us anything about toxins that are released as a byproducts of extraction, manufacturing, construction, and demolition — or the natural resources consumed in the process." Other tools, such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), provides a means to do just this. LCA quantifies the energy and materials usage and environmental releases at each stage of a product’s life cycle, including extraction of resources, manufacturing of goods, construction, use, and disposal.

However, while all this science is extremely useful, there's a point when logic should kick in. Recycle that wine bottle? Absolutely yes. Now, look at a building like the Fire house. Throw that in a landfill? Preposterous. There has to be a really good reason to do so, and so far, there is none to be found.

It seemed like the City was going in the right direction. Earlier this year on March 25, Nickels announced an alliance with the National Trust for Historic Preservation for the Seattle Green Lab, recognizing the important connection between buildings and climate change. The Lab will be looking at connections between existing buildings and energy savings, and using these measures to promote building reuse and green adaptation. “Our buildings are our history." said Nickels. "We need to preserve our past, but we also need to prepare for the future. By adapting the latest technology, we can renovate our historic buildings without toasting the planet.”