From Flood Damage
to First Class
The floods of 2016 left West Virginia devastated, but with
tragedy came opportunity. Several public schools in central West
Virginia were severely damaged by flooding, and in rebuilding
the schools, there is a chance for communities that lost every-
thing to now have schools of the future: educational facilities
with advanced technology and environmental sustainability.
Herbert Hoover High School and Clendenin Elementary
School in Kanawha County and Summersville Middle School
in Nicholas County suffered such extensive water damage
in 2016 that they were rendered unusable. In addition, these
schools were located in flood-prone areas and could easily be
damaged again. Terradon Corporation, a West Virginia-based
engineering firm, conducted a feasibility study to look at costs,
safety, environmental concerns and other factors and deter-
mined that building new schools would be more viable than
repairing the old ones.
“It’s a disaster that affords an opportunity to allow us to be
a part of picking a location that hopefully precludes the pos-
sibility of a future disaster,” says Bill Hunt, president and envi-
ronmental director at Terradon. “Selecting a site that is safe for
the students and making use of the geography of West Virginia
that eliminates those threats for future residents is a great benefit
for these communities.”
Embracing the Region
Using pre-existing natural space is the backbone of the design
plans for the new schools. The topography and landforms of
West Virginia will allow students to have learning experiences
specific to the places in which they live. In addition to typical
science labs, the new schools are going to feature outdoor
science labs that utilize local streams and surrounding areas.
Chuck Wilson, Kanawha County’s executive director for fa-
cilities, uses Charleston’s Edgewood Elementary as an example
of the kind of forward-thinking school the county is using as
a model for the new schools. Edgewood students can monitor
and demonstrate sustainable features at the school, such as solar
panels, temperature sensors and live energy-use data. Students
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West
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often take visitors on tours and explain these systems as part
of their science education.
A Curriculum of Caring
New school curriculums will also use natural environments
for the practical application of science and business. The new
Herbert Hoover High School will feature an extensive unit on
the timber industry in which students will process raw wood
from around the school, mill it, plane it, kiln it and manufac-
ture it while learning about marketing. Programs like this will
help students gain experience in a career setting while making
them environmentally responsible citizens.
“We want to be good stewards of the environment and do
the right thing,” says Wilson.
To that end, design plans for the new schools also benefit the
schools’ budgets and environmental impact. Terradon, along
with its partners and county school boards, have many plans
in place to make the new schools economically efficient while
reducing their carbon footprint.
Instead of traditional heating and cooling systems, for example,
the new schools will use geothermal fields. As a result, the tem-
peratures inside the school buildings will stay at a consistent
level all year rather than using more energy to cool down hot
air in the early fall and late spring and warm up cold air in the
winter. This practice will help the schools reduce their electric-
ity costs and save money for classroom supplies or improve-
ments to the buildings.
Keeping with the overall goal of efficiency, the schools will
also be designed to use and recycle as many natural resources
as possible.
“A lot of it deals with laying out the footprint so we maximize
space utilization, stor m water management, development of rain
gardens and bio-swales,” says Greg Fox, site civil designer at Terradon.
“We look at green space in the building and parking areas to help
design shade areas to reduce heat build-up on the building. We
look at distances from the parking lot to the building, reducing
vehicle traffic amongst pedestrian traffic in all areas of the site.”