Berto van Veen, owner of Berto van Veen Construction in Santa Maria, oversaw the building of one of the most environmentally friendly buildings in the state. The Hayward Building recently received the LEED Gold Certificate for green building, making it one of five buildings with such a designation from the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design in California.

The structure was built with recycled products, environmentally friendly paints, and recycled steel. The flooring is made from recycled tires, two 30,000 gallon cisterns store rain water runoff, and an 85-Kilowatt solar system on the roof covers 20,000 square feet.

Van Veen said that the PVs produce 70 percent of the truss company’s energy needs, and the system will be paid for in about seven years. He said that working on that project has changed his attitude, as well as that of others who worked on the project, toward “green” construction.

“I think that solar is a wonderful thing to be included in the construction process,” the local contractor said. “I can see builders embracing green building, but I think it needs to be forced, because 99 percent of builders just build one [project] and go onto the next one, and build one, and go onto the next one, and they don?t want to change their ways.”

Free and clean:
Photovoltaics—or PVs—atop the Hayward building spin the electric meter in reverse on weekends and holidays when the shop is closed, earning the company energy credits and providing

Seeing green:
Berto van Veen surveyed the clean-energy producing photovoltaics atop the greenest building in Santa Maria, Hayward Truss

Thanks to the Santa Maria Sun:  http://www.santamariasun.com/,  Thursday, July 29, 2002