Russ Steele
Knowing that many of Nevada County's well known residential construction companies were struggling to keep their crews busy, and some had no work at all, I was surprised when the Seifel Study recommended construction as one of "the target industries and business clusters" for economic growth. This selection was made on the "strength of employment growth," "strength of industry concentration." and being "a higher wage paying business." The study farther recommends the construction business focus on green residential and business retrofits and new green building to reduce greenhouse gases. Lets look as some of the problems with these recommendations.
1) The latest data used in the study is from 2004, during the building boom. The boom is over and our local residential construction companies are struggling, while commercial constructions is flat and builders are looking at how to bid on government construction contracts to stay busy, according to an interview with Barbara Bashall, Executive Director of the Nevada County Contractors Association.
2) The study does not define what green building really is. What is green building? According to Home and Garden TV, it is using sustainable material like rapidly growing wood from South America, eco-friendly paint with few volatile organic compounds (Low VCO Paint), native grasses for mats on walls and floors, and ground up blue jeans for insulation. The wood and blue jean insulation costs three time standard building materials. Low VCO paint and grass mats have a shorter service life than standard materials. Even with government subsidies, solar panels do not pencil out over the service life according to an analysis by Tom Sullivan, financial guru on KFBK. However, there are several local solar installation companies in the County.
3) Local builders are already using Insulated Concrete Forms and Structural Insulated Panel, which are considered green building materials because they help manage energy in the home. In some cases building really tight buildings, controlling air flow, often produces more problems than they solve when it comes to heating and cooling. These buildings are slow to heat and slow to cool when the weather changes, requiring expensive heat exchangers that require powered blowers.
4) Now that we know what green building is the next question is there a market for this kind of building in Nevada County. According to Barbara Bashall the market is not very large, though some customers have used green material, significantly increasing the cost of their buildings. With our growing economic uncertainty, depending on customers to splurge on sustainable building materials seems to increase the risk of depending on the green buliding market.
I found it interesting that the Seifel Consultant never interviewed anyone at the Contractors Association, leaders in the local construction industry. Had they take the time, they might have discovered that the local construction industry was in decline, that there was little market for green building, and that local contractor were meeting the existing demand.
In my next post I will examine some of the positive features of the Seifel study. So far, I have been quite critical.
