Mayor Officially Opens LEED Building [AUDIO]

The city of Casper is going to officially open a new building at the regional waste facility Wednesday. Mayor Paul Bertoglio will be there for a ribbon cutting ceremony for Casper's first LEED certified building, the Special Waste and Diversion Facility.

Official opening:

"Ten o'clock the mayor's going to be here to do a ribbon cutting and we're going to have tours available free to everybody."

Cindie Langston with the city explains what a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design building is.

Efficient and low impact:

"Solar panels and we have a couple of wind turbines. And for this particular building because of operations we have some highly efficient heating systems that rotate the air from the outside 100 percent. And it also has a lot of skylights and windows so employees don't have to turn on the lights during the day. So the energy that we use is significantly reduced."

Ms. Langston added that the building also has low environmental impact with the paint used. The Waste Diversion Facility is where Casper residents can take their hazardous wastes such as fluorescent light tubes, batteries, paint, oil and pesticides for disposal.

Although some new buildings in Casper have applied some of the standards of energy and environmental design, said Langston, this building is actually certified.

Commissioned and certified:

"The last fire department building, they put a lot of the LEED features in it, but they didn't hire a third party to actually get the certification, so many of the new buildings the city of Casper's building are to the environmental standards, we're just not commissioning them."

The guided tours of the new building will be from 10 am to 2 pm.