Water conservation is a hot topic at the ICC Green Code hearings.
Sitting through the ICC Green Code hearings in Phoenix was completely different than the IAPMO Green Supplement hearings.
IAPMO utilizes a consensus committee. ICC’s final voting is done by the organization’s code-enforcement members. Another difference between the two organizations is the ICC Green Code covers everything - building, energy, mechanical and plumbing.
Having sat through many ICC code hearings, I now have a good sense of the voting membership. Typically after hearing testimony I can predict, within 90% accuracy, how the vote is going to turn out. The same was not true for the Green Code hearings. It was almost impossible to figure out the voting pattern. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to how people voted.
Of course, with the normal codes, the goal is protection of public health, safety and welfare. With the Green Code, there is no similar mantra. It is whatever you think is green - whatever that means.
One of the best lines came during the discussion on the energy provisions of the code. As you can imagine, this section of the Green Code had the most discussion. A green advocate testified that a building cannot be green unless it generates some of its own energy. Wow! What a statement to make.
All I thought about were all the buildings that have been classified as green that don’t generate any of their own energy. Are they no longer green?
Many of us listening to this testimony envisioned every green building having either solar panels, wind turbines, co-generation plants or a nuclear power generator. I wondered if the use of ground water for heating or cooling would qualify. That never seemed to be answered since most of the discussion revolved around solar energy.
Both the plumbing and mechanical sections had a single public comment that addressed all the issues for updating the Green Code. The single public comment was developed by a group of concerned professionals highly respected in the green code initiative. The single public comment contained modification to the code that included every green provision discussed during the initial hearings. All of the changes were compiled into a single public comment.
Frankly, when reviewing the public comment, one would think: “Why bother having all this discussion? You approve this change and you are done with it.” That is how simple it could have been.
Unfortunately, the voting membership viewed the single public comment as having all the green issues shoved down their throats without the opportunity to discuss each issue independently. So, rather than discussing the single public comment first, ICC moved the comment to the end of the agenda to discuss all the other public comments first. Mind you, all the individual public comments had proposals that were included in the single public comment.
When the dust finally settled, approximately 90% of the single public comment proposals were accepted on an individual basis. The final 10% also should have been accepted but were not. When the single public comment was addressed at the end of the hearing, it was soundly defeated in favor of all the individual changes to the Green Code.