Rebuilt After a Wildfire: The Park Service’s First Net-Zero Building

In 2010, Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area finished its new student intern center — the first net-zero building in the National Park Service, one that produces as much energy as it uses. This case study was written by Claire Baker of the Park Service's Climate Change Response Program in 2024.

The student intern center. Credit: National Park Service.

Born of a disaster

In November 2007, intense wildfires swept a drought-stricken Los Angeles. One, the Corral fire, burned through the hills into the park so fiercely that firefighters could not safely stay. Several buildings were lost overnight, among them housing for student interns.

Fires such as the 2018 Woolsey fire and the 2007 Corral fire have hit Santa Monica Mountains hard. Credit: National Park Service.

Climate change is affecting wildfire across California. Studies show fires in the Sierra Nevada have become more common and intense because of it, and at Santa Monica Mountains it may be making dry conditions and fast Santa Ana winds more frequent — the conditions in which fires spread fast and destroy most.

Building back differently

Then-superintendent Woody Smeck decided the intern center would be rebuilt, but not as before: somewhere less exposed to fire, and in line with the Park Service's new sustainability goals and its Green Parks Plan. With Chief of Facilities John Williams and Rick Alesch of the Park Service's Denver Service Center, he set out to make it net-zero.

The team won funding through the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The two-year project was not smooth: budget and funding difficulties, limits on reusing wastewater, and a long process to connect the solar panels to the grid with local utilities. They chose a site next to an administrative office so the building could share existing utilities.

How it works

Using less:

• thick insulation in the walls and roof;
• a low-energy geothermal heat pump for heating and cooling;
• LED lighting and low-flow faucets;
• thoroughly treated wastewater reused to flush toilets and water the landscaping.

Making more: the roof is covered in solar panels, which run a solar water heater and more than offset the building's energy use. That makes it technically "net-zero-plus." The surplus flows to nearby buildings, including the administrative office next door, which generates no power of its own but is now nearly net-zero too.

Recognition and teaching

The building earned LEED Platinum, the highest sustainability rating. As housing for young people training to be park leaders, it was also designed to teach: signs around the building explain its design, and Smeck imagines newer buildings could show real-time emissions savings.

The Anthony C. Beilenson Interagency Visitor Center. Credit: National Park Service.

What followed

The intern center was the first, but not the last. A few years later, a team led by Alesch built the park's Anthony C. Beilenson Interagency Visitor Center, rated LEED Gold, which likewise teaches every visitor about both the park and sustainability. Projects like these, the Park Service says, cut their own carbon footprint and inspire a new generation of sustainability leaders.

Sources

Based on "Case Study: Santa Monica Mountains' Net-Zero Intern Center," by Claire Baker, Climate Change Response Program, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain.