Anne Arundel County Passes New Green Building Requirements
Anne Arundel County recently enacted a new law that will require all new county-owned construction and major renovation projects to meet or exceed LEED Silver requirements in place at the time of construction. The new provision, which was signed by the County Executive in July, makes the County the latest to enact such requirements for governmental buildings. The new law does not apply to new school construction in Anne Arundel County. To date, Anne Arundel County has not enacted any mandates or incentives for private green construction.
Within Anne Arundel County, the City of Annapolis has now fully phased in a broader green building law. Annapolis mandates basic LEED certification for newly built or substantially modified privately owned buildings with over 7,500 sq. ft. in gross floor area, for newly built or substantially modified privately owned residential projects consisting of five or more residential units, and for newly built or substantially modified privately owned residences exceeding 3,250 square feet in size. The new law also requires that newly built or substantially modified publicly owned buildings of any size achieve LEED Silver certification. The requirements, effective January 1, 2009, initially applied to commercial and governmental buildings. The mandates for residential green construction became effective July 1, 2009.
Each of the new statutes ties compliance solely to the LEED standards and provides no provision for the substitution of an equivalent or an alternative. With the new legislation, both Annapolis and Anne Arundel County follow in the green footsteps of Anne Arundel County's smallest governmental unit, the Town of Highland Beach, which completed the first LEED Platinum certified governmental building in Maryland, its town hall, in 2007.