Ensure sustainable construction and design of buildings to minimize their environmental impact throughout their lifecycle

The way in which a build­ing is designed, con­struct­ed, oper­at­ed and main­tained deter­mines its impact on the nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment, as well as on the building’s occu­pants, for its entire life­cy­cle. Green build­ings are designed and oper­at­ed to be resource-effi­cient, to gen­er­ate less waste and pol­lu­tion, and to serve as healthy envi­ron­ments for occu­pants. Green build­ings can also pro­vide eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits (e.g. reduced ener­gy costs, high­er home val­ues) well into the future. Build­ings in New Cas­tle should be as high-per­form­ing and as sus­tain­able as pos­si­ble. The Town’s exist­ing green build­ing code, which can be found with­in Chap­ter 74 of the Town Code, should be exam­ined to ensure it reflects the best prac­tices in mate­ri­als, build­ing sys­tems, and oper­a­tions, to the extent prac­ti­ca­ble. The Town should con­sid­er adopt­ing a stretch code that requires more rig­or­ous ener­gy reg­u­la­tions for new­ly con­struct­ed and exist­ing build­ings that have been ren­o­vat­ed than the base ener­gy code. Edu­ca­tion­al mate­r­i­al regard­ing the ben­e­fits of green build­ing prac­tices should be devel­oped to pro­mote sus­tain­able construction.