LANGFORD - The City of Langford will develop a heightened set of environmental standards for developing new neighbourhoods on green field sites, Mayor Stewart Young announced March 8, 2006.
"This is a leading edge environmental initiative," said Young. "This will be an especially important measuring tool to ensure the highest environmental standards are achieved when looking at the development of new lands."
The standards will be developed in collaboration with the City of Langford, Canada Green Building Council and the Ministry of Community Services following the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Program. At present there are no LEED standards for new neighbourhood development in Canada. However, a LEED system to guide sustainable community development is currently being developed by the US Green Building Council. This initiative will complement, build on and assist the work already underway in the US by the US Green Building Council.
"We're pleased to partner with the City of Langford in this very important project," said Ida Chong, Minister of Community Services. "Supporting environmentally-friendly building standards at the neighbourhood level is another example of our commitment to maintaining safe, healthy communities and a clean environment."
The City of Langford will be the first demonstration project in Canada to apply the draft LEED for Neighbourhood system. This demonstration project will showcase how it could best be applied in a Canadian context. It builds on Langford’s previous sustainable development initiatives and will be a catalyst for establishing new national standards for sustainable development.
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