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Community Corner

Green Idea House is Now Shovel Ready

Hermosa Beach's home lab for energy efficiency, renewable energy and sustainable living breaks ground in well-attended celebration.

I've been impatient for the Green Idea House's groundbreaking celebration ever since it was postponed from its original date last spring due to the El Nino storms. 

As I headed out the door on my way to the Fortunato's home on Prospect Avenue Tuesday morning, with precipitation in the forecast and the sky filled with threatening clouds, I grabbed my raincoat. 

But on that same day when the Obama administration announced online that new solar panels for electricity and hot water were finally going to be installed on the White House, the sun broke through the clouds in Hermosa Beach.

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Nine months from now it will be the power source for the Green Idea House's electricity and hot water, too, I thought.

The bright skies matched the bright smiles and spirits everywhere you turned in the Fortunato's driveway as three City Council members (Peter Tucker, Jeff Duclos and Michael DiVirgilio), members from the city's planning department, the Green Task Force, the Carbon Neutral City Committee, and the Chamber of Commerce mixed with green builders, energy-efficiency experts, utility representatives, environmental groups and representatives of our Congresswoman Jane Harman, State Senate and California Assembly.

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For an environmentalist like me it was a special treat to get to schmooze with so many high-profile members of the green community in one concentrated spot.

Some of the folks I got to yap with were: Manhattan Beach's Environmental Programs manager Sona Kalapura; Martha Segovia from the South Bay Environmental Services Center; Scott Powell, president of Hermosa Beach's Earth Club; Fred Koch, president of Fred Koch Green Builders; Congresswoman Harman's Environmental Deputy Diane Moss; Dan Thomsen, president and founder of the Building Doctors; and Alison Suffet Diaz, founder of the Environmental Charter High School and Middle School.

We were all brought together to witness the groundbreaking celebration of the Green Idea House, a net-zero energy, net-zero carbon home to be constructed at the same basic $200 per square-foot cost as the typical remodel in the South Bay.

Mayor Peter Tucker spoke to the crowd and declared the city's "commitment to making Hermosa Beach a carbon neutral city and reducing all of our emissions." 

I was very glad to hear him say so with such conviction, following up on the comments he made to me about his environmental intentions when I interviewed him in early September. 

Tucker seems ready to show the rest of the South Bay just how much of a green leader Hermosa Beach intends to be.

And I was just as happy to hear him emphasize the city's commitment to bike lanes as well, having already shown his support for the bicycle community through his efforts on behalf of the Fiesta Hermosa bike valet operation. I think Tucker gets just how important a role bikes can play in a town the size of Hermosa.

Dency Nelson, Hermosa's long-term environmental conscience and founder of its first Green Building Committee, spoke with obvious pride and joy about seeing the Fortunato's three-year process to reach this point finally arrive. Nelson connected the dots between the Green Idea House and Hermosa Beach as the Green Idea City.

Roberto Fortunato welcomed and thanked the crowd and was justifiably beaming throughout the event. He and his wife Monica, and their son Carter, have been on an unpredictable ride ever since they started this process back in 2007. They all seemed very pleased to have reached this stage of their journey.

Of course next up is the deconstruction and construction portion of their trip, and as anyone who has been part of a major remodel of their home can tell you, they haven't seen anything yet.

But on this feel-good day, the future looked positive and encouraging to all of us who were there to celebrate another milestone for the city of Hermosa Beach, and for those of us who look forward to a tomorrow where the Green Idea House becomes the common sense house of choice for everyone.

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