One of our main goals throughout this process has been to team up with Norwich University’s Center for Global Resilience and Security. This is an awesome new initiative that is launching the “Dog River Conservancy (DRC)”. Despite choosing Northfield as our first location, the primary focus for the DRC is to bring together communities from all around the Dog River, including Williamstown, Berlin, and Montpelier-Roxbury, and of course Northfield. This river in central Vermont is extremely important to the members of each community and it has been vital to promote awareness on things such as water conservation while finding new and innovative ways to clean up anything harmful that may plague the Dog River’s overall pristine condition from time to time. Now that you have had an introduction to the reason behind this project, let’s get down to our specific idea and how it will benefit not only Northfield but also the Dog River. To begin, there are some environmental issues that typically threaten rivers and other bodies of water around the world. As society continues its rapid technological growth, so do the effects on the environment. Water runoff from parking lots, industries, farmland and communities carries oil, gasoline, pesticides, sewage and other various contaminates into our water supplies. Trash, plastic bottles and other refuse are also carried away in floods and rainstorms. The pollutants all have a negative, sometimes even devastating, impact on vegetation and aquatic eco-systems. Household mismanagement of potentially harmful pollutants is one of the contributing factors to water pollution. The mishandling of household pollutants, often harsh chemicals, can severely impact bodies of water such as the Dog River. Erosion also plays a big factor in natural pollution processes due to rainstorms, floods, heavy snowfall and urbanization. This is where Gridiron Green Gang comes in. The installation of kinetic tiles underneath Sabine Field’s artificial turf will lead to the production of very large amounts of new clean energy. The goal of these tiles is to provide almost enough clean and green energy to potentially power all Northfield homes. The average residential home in Vermont use 6,828 kWh per year. If the population of Northfield and the current number of residential homes in the community are factored in, 14,364,879 kWh are used per year. With the installation of kinetic tiles, each step taken on just one tile will produce an average of 5 watts. Our organization calculated some rough estimates for the kWh that could potentially be produced from some sports teams alone. Taking into account football, soccer and lacrosse, there is a chance that nearly 5,289,366 kWh are created from the kinetic tiles. This would save citizens of Northfield a total of $899,192.22 overall per year in power bills. The use of clean energy by homes would help eliminate some pollutants that might enter the Dog River. These calculations do not even take in to account all other field usage throughout the year. Obviously, it is still a new technology and there is always room for improvement. If the power produced by the tiles does not go directly to the homes in Northfield, it can be used towards Dog River clean-up methods. We fully believe that however this power is used, it will benefit the Dog River and surrounding communities. #cleanenergy #DogRiverConservancy
Comments