USGS Multimedia Gallery: (Video)--New Brazoria Administration Building

Kelly K. Mensah
3/16/11

The history of Brazoria NWR; it was founded in 1966; it was only 12,000 acres originally. It was put in a line of refuges coming from the Arctic Circle down to the Gulf Coast in order to form safe habitat and homes for migratory waterfowl.

The refuge now is 44,350 square acres, so we've grown a lot. This right here means the end of 8 years of hanging out in trailers.

Right here is going to be our main copy room, we're going to have our fax machines, our copy machine, everything is going to network out of every one of these offices and it's going to come down here so we can print off anything; fax, scan, all right here at this point rather than multiple offices.

Going to one of our offices here, you can see that we have our skylights up there so they'll heat the building on cold days and just add extra light...brings a cool ambience to the room here. Also automatic lighting so that 5 minutes after leaving your office, the lights will shut off automatically. And all of the windows are double-pained; they're very energy efficient as well.

In here is our mechanical room, we've got two big HVAC systems, one for each side of the building, and they are very efficient. I think they took two days balancing out the systems on them.

There are water returns up here to keep condensation out of the system, they even will release water back down and dump it into the septic system if there's too much condensation in the system up there.

It's going to be a great plus to the visitor's that come and see us, everybody that uses the refuge or enjoys the refuge, it's going to help us so far as the management goes , the administration, everything.

Up here on top of our covered parking which we were very fortunate to get, we have a very high-tech solar voltaic system which has enough power that it's bringing in from the sun, that when we have everything on in the building, and the building is running at capacity, we still have enough power to push energy back into the grid. So we actually get credit for what we're putting back in rather than having to pay a monthly bill for what we use in energy, which we love.

Underneath this front walkway on the building, and down the side of the building here as well, we have what's called a French Drainage System, which means there is a pipe down there and it has a lot of rocks around it, and is perforated, the pipe is, and water as it seeps into the ground right here around the building is washed out the side of the building to the north and then out the side of the building to the west as well. It helps with the drainage so we don't get inundated with water up here on top of the building.

We have our alligators...American Alligators, Texas Gulf Coast, yes, we have those out here and you never know what you might see going onto our tour loops, you know we can go from bobcats, to wild hogs, to coyotes, to possums, raccoons, just some of everything.

It's just beautiful, beautiful area out here, sometimes you look and it's no big mountains, but it's beautiful down here on the coast.