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NACUBO to Develop New Environmental Compliance Center for Colleges and Universities

October 16, 2006

NACUBO's collaboration and relationship-building with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues to progress. Last week, the agency announced that it will provide a five-year award of up to $350,000 to NACUBO; the Campus Consortium for Environmental Excellence (C2E2); the Campus Safety, Health, and Environmental Management Association (CSHEMA); and APPA: The Association of Higher Education Facilities Officers to develop a compliance assistance center for the education sector. The award was announced by EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson at Washington University in St. Louis in recognition of the university's environmental leadership. Bruce Backus, assistant vice chancellor of environmental health and safety at Washington University chaired the Steering Committee for the College and University Sector Strategies Initiative with the EPA for the last three years.

The new Web-based compliance assistance center for the education sector will provide the community with tools and information for improving environmental management on campuses. Through guidebooks, tool kits, resource locators, virtual tours, webcasts, and other interactive features, the compliance assistance center intends to be a one-stop shop for all questions related to environmental compliance on campus.

In addition, the center will go "beyond compliance" to demonstrate the ways that colleges and universities are proactively reducing air emissions, minimizing waste, conserving water, and integrating sustainability into their campus operations.

The center will be the fifteenth in a network of EPA-supported centers for a variety of mostly industrial sectors, including auto repair, paints and coatings, agriculture, and hospitals. To learn more about this award, see the EPA's Press Release.

If you are interested in volunteering to help develop or review elements of the new assistance center for education, or if your institution has developed online tools or training programs that would be useful for other institutions, please contact Michele Madia.