Lime Hollow News

Lime Hollow Secures $10,000 Grant from the Community Foundation for South Central New York for Photovoltaic Solar Energy System

The new system will reduce operating expenses by approximately $5,000 year – even as it helps educate the community about sustainable energy.

The Lime Hollow Center for Environment & Culture (LHCEC) today announced it has been awarded a grant of $10,000 from the Community Foundation for South Central New York toward the installation of a $50,000+ photovoltaic (PV) solar energy system that will be installed at its Visitor Center in Cortland, NY. The PV solar energy system selected by the nature center will be designed and sized to handle the bulk of its visitor center electricity needs, reducing the organization’s operating expenses – even as it affords the center new opportunities to inform the community about sustainable energy.

“We are enormously excited about this grant,” says Lime Hollow executive director, Glenn Reisweber. “Not only does it tangibly demonstrate the Community Foundation for South Central New York’s commitment to supporting Cortland County, it shows they understand that what can be good for a particular organization has added value when it can be shared with the entire community.” The Community Foundation, headquartered in Binghamton, serves six counties in the Southern Tier and Central New York, including Cortland County. Reisweber added that the solar energy system is an important new addition to the nature center’s arsenal of “green” building features – which includes water-free composting toilets, geothermal radiant heating, and sky lights.

This combination of sustainability-minded features, says Reisweber, combine to make Lime Hollow’s visitor center one of “the greenest buildings in Cortland County” and will one day go far toward the organization’s future application for a prestigious LEED certification based on stringent standards of the U.S. Green Building Council.

Robert Jensen, the Foundation’s Program Officer, notified Reisweber by phone with the good news. Jensen said the Foundation’s Board was favorably impressed by Lime Hollow’s partnering with other organizations and foundations in the project, and he is looking forward to the Foundation’s visit to Lime Hollow in a few weeks.

Expanding on the educational value of the system -- which will be funded by additional sources, including private donors, other granting organizations, and incentives from NYSERDA – Reisweber concluded by saying Lime Hollow will “be developing an educational and outreach program around all aspects of the PV system” including the basics of PV systems, how to conduct the bidding process, sizing/specifying a PV system, and solar power’s importance in America’s sustainable-energy equation.”

“Once we get the system installed, up, and running some time in the 2009 calendar year,” said Reisweber “Lime Hollow will take the local lead in informing Cortland about how this and other sustainable systems serve human needs with minimal impact on the natural world.”