Hammack sees progression of installation's green initiatives

By Megan Locke Simpson, Fort Campbell CourierFebruary 6, 2015

Hammack sees progression of installation's green initiatives
Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment Katherine Hammack tours Fort Campbell's Utilities Command Center, where the Directorate of Public Works relies on station keeper Marsha Lopez (left) and her team to monitor the... (Photo Credit: U.S. Army) VIEW ORIGINAL

FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. -- Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment Katherine Hammack visited Fort Campbell earlier this week, where she received a sneak peek into some of the installation's latest energy and environmentally-friendly initiatives.

She toured Fort Campbell Tuesday, guided by Garrison Commander Col. David "Buck" Dellinger and his deputy, Jonathan B. Hunter, as well as several Directorate of Public Works officials. This week marked Hammack's second visit to post since being appointed by President Barack Obama in 2010.

Officials showed Hammack several areas in which Fort Campbell is going above and beyond the requirements in areas such as energy and sustainability. One of the stops on the tour was the Utilities Command Center, where DPW uses an automated Energy Management Control System to monitor heating and cooling digitally in about 500 on-post facilities. While this system has been in place for several years, Fort Campbell created a "central nerve center" concept to use in conjunction with it this past year.

"We bought some flat screen TVs and put in a few extra terminals and dedicated an area … it's kind of like a 911 call center," said Rick McCoy, chief of DPW's Business Operations and Integrations Division.

"It is literally the nerve center for managing our heating and cooling needs for those 500 facilities."

The backbone of the Utilities Command Center is station keeper Marsha Lopez, who monitors the terminal and communicates to technicians in the field about what she is seeing on the screen.

"Many times, Marsha can increase or decrease the temperature," McCoy said. "She can turn something off and on, while [the technicians are] standing right there by the unit seeing what happens. So it makes troubling shooting and diagnostic checks much, much easier and much more efficient."

Hammack said this concept impressed her, adding "that really is the kind of management of buildings that we want to see."

"Marsha's sitting at her computer, can see where there's problems going on in any building, dispatch someone to fix it and they might fix a problem before the occupant knows there is a problem," Hammack said. "… The garrison can take care of everything almost invisibly."

The tour also stopped by the John W. Kreckel NCO Academy's new location on Headquarters Loop. The NCO Academy relocated this past fall from World War II era buildings on 16th Street. This stop showed Hammack how Fort Campbell is striving to repurpose buildings for different functions.

The NCO Academy's new location is not a new construction, but was renovated to better suit their needs. The facility includes classrooms, barracks and even a dining room on site. The new location is both more energy efficient and involves less maintenance costs, DPW Master Planning Division Chief Sally Castleman said.

"… They were in old World War II wood buildings that were failing," she said. "We were able to move them to something that was a lot better."

This model is a great example for other posts, Hammack said. Fort Campbell officials also showed her the transformation of the old commissary into the bustling Soldier Readiness Processing site with multiple services in one location.

"[Relocatable buildings] cost a lot to heat and cool, and so if we can get people into permanent buildings and improve service to Soldiers -- that's really a great mission that Fort Campbell has … Getting rid of relocatables; getting rid of some of the barracks we built in World War II when we had 8 million Soldiers in the Army," Hammack said.

"We're under 500,000 active duty Soldiers now, so some of these older buildings have gone through multiple lives and you get to the point where they need to retire. We're retiring them; taking them down and reclaiming that space for new missions. So that was really wonderful to see."

In an era of drawdown and Defense Department budget cuts, Hammond said repurposing is a wise decision and shows Fort Campbell is "doing the right things for the right reasons."

"When you don't have MILCON dollars for military construction, if you can repurpose a building that has a great foundation, has great walls and a great roof -- the rest of it can be repurposed, remodeled and renovated so it can have a new life," she said. "That costs about a third of the cost of new construction."

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