LACKLAND AIR FORCE BASE, Texas –
With Lackland's entrance into the Clean Texas Program last year, those organizing the program on base hope to see significant benefits not only for the base but for the community surrounding it by the end of 2009.
"The Clean Texas Program is a volunteer effort where you identify things that you want to do to improve and help with the environment," said Monico Luna of the 37th Civil Engineer Squadron.
"The main reason that Lackland has engaged in it is that we want to be good stewards to the environment. We want to show our leadership in the San Antonio area and to our communities that we care about the environment."
Currently, there are four levels to the Clean Texas Program, which allows both civilian and military applications.
From the bottom up, the levels are: bronze, silver, gold and platinum.
"Lackland is at the Bronze level, the lower tier," said Mr. Luna. "And there are currently not any people on the silver tier. Most are at the bronze or gold because there's not that much difference between the silver and the gold."
David Rairdan, also with the 37th CES, said a committee will meet soon to decide whether or not to attempt to move up to the silver tier.
"We're going to bring this up to the Cross Functional Team, which is the working group for the Environmental Safety Occupational Health Committee," he said. "We want to see if they want to go to the silver now or wait until the end of the three years.
"If we want to go for silver, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality would come out and look at us and do the external audit it would take to ensure that our Environmental Management System can be certified."
Once the EMS is certified and the TCEQ validates that Lackland has three foci on helping the environment, he said, they will be eligible for the silver level.
Currently, said Mr. Luna, Lackland does have three environmental foci, though at the bronze level, they're only required to have one.
"We plan to reduce energy use by 3 percent each year for the three-year period," he said. "Also, we plan to reduce water usage by 2 percent each year and try to make a significant effort on increasing our recycling numbers."
According to Mr. Rairdan, there are many ways the program will benefit Lackland.
"It's mostly a matter of external communication," he said. "Clean Texas helps people come look at us. We just had the Environmental Protection Agency come down and look at us for hazardous waste, and they hadn't looked at us on that for probably 20 years.
"It brings attention to the good things we're doing, what we plan on doing, and it's another way for them to see that we're open and communicating with them."