Going green in the U.S. Army

By NATE HUBBARD/Staff

Paul Wirt isn’t the type of person to let a little thing like a mangled appendage slow him down.
Nearly 20 years after suffering a devastating leg injury during a military training exercise in Saudi Arabia, Wirt, 45, is leading the U.S. Army’s march to a sustainable future.
The 1981 George Wythe High School graduate has had a noteworthy summer, claiming one individual award and two installation honors for his work as the chief of the environmental management branch at Fort Bragg, N.C.
“It’s been an incredibly rewarding and humbling experience to be a part of something that is taking hold across the Army,” Wirt said.
First, in June, Fort Bragg’s sustainable design team received a White House Closing the Circle Award in the sustainable design/green buildings military category.
The awards honor environmental stewardship excellence by federal government agencies and were presented in a ceremony at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in the White House complex.
Then, in July, Wirt was honored both individually and with the Fort Bragg installation as a whole when the first Secretary of the Army Sustainability Awards were given out.
Wirt said sustainability involves incorporating a long-term outlook into plans for construction projects and using environment-friendly building materials such as recycled carpet.
Despite his recent national recognition as a leader in the sustainability movement, Wirt, who is married with two children, Madison, 13, and Jared, 10, said he never envisioned himself working in the environmental field.
“It was totally chance or fate, depending on what you believe in,” he said.
After Wirt’s injury back in 1990 when he was Capt. Wirt of the 82nd Airborne Division (a truck that strayed onto a blast range led Wirt to leave his cover to alert the driver to the danger and when the explosion went off shrapnel shredded his right leg), he underwent nearly 50 surgeries during the next six years.
Although both his life and leg were saved, he could no longer meet the physical demands of Army life and received a medical discharge.
That didn’t stop Wirt, though, from trying to find a way to continue serving his country.
As a 1985 graduate of Virginia Tech with a degree in building construction, Wirt latched on to a civil engineering civilian job with the Directorate of Public Works on Fort Bragg in Master Planning, working as a program manager overseeing major military construction from 1992 to 2000.
During those eight years, Wirt said he saw the members of the environmental unit as the “bad guys,” always slowing up construction projects with cumbersome regulations.
“At that time, I just saw no benefit to doing environmental work,” Wirt recalled.
Wirt said he initially considered his move in 2000 to the chief of the environmental management branch as a “forced promotion.”
But just as Wirt made a successful transition from military to civilian status, he didn’t pout when he was transferred to the environmental unit.
Wirt’s mother, Anna Bush, who continues to live in Wytheville, said her son has never been a complainer.
“I think it’s probably just a combination of Paul’s character and dedication to his job and his country,” Bush said about the reasons for her son’s success. “He’s just a super, super neat guy – and not because he belongs to me.”
She added that he’s also never been one to back down from a challenge.
“His dad and I would never let him play football because we thought he would get hurt,” she said. “So what does he do? He joins the Army!”
“I should have let him play football,” she added with a laugh.
Wirt said his upbringing in Wytheville, though, was crucial in teaching him the value of hard work, and he called the town a “special place.”
He emphasized not only the affection of his family, specifically his mom and his now wife, Connie, as well his dad, Ralph Wirt of Pulaski County, in sustaining him through his long recovery from his leg injury, but also the outpouring of support from the entire community.
“There’s nothing like being from a small town to know that people love you,” Wirt said, adding that his mom still tells him nearly every week that someone has asked how he’s doing.
In an Army news release about the Secretary of the Army Sustainability Awards, Wirt was commended for embracing environmental initiatives before it became a popular cause.
“Mr. Wirt was one of the original participants in the earliest Army discussions on how to incorporate the principals of sustainability at military installations and volunteered Fort Bragg to be the pilot installation for the new initiative,” the release states.
Wirt said a key to his success has been changing the negative perceptions – like he originally had – about sustainability projects.
His branch now works with other divisions to set long-term goals and tries to make sure all projects incorporate the “triple bottom line” of meeting the Army’s mission and improving the environment and the overall Fort Bragg community.
He cited as an example a mock Iraqi village built at Fort Bragg to help train soldiers before they are deployed to the real thing.
While Wirt said a project of that magnitude would normally take around nine months to finish, Fort Bragg was able to get it done in less than three months and at a much cheaper cost by using materials such as leftover paint and empty shipping containers to create the village.
With around 50,000 soldiers stationed at Fort Bragg and approximately 150,000 people at the base each day – and with Fort Bragg expecting even more growth in the coming years – Wirt said the sustainability projects going on at the installation can be models not only for other military bases, but for the country as a whole.
“The concepts of sustainability that we are proving at Fort Bragg, and now other installations across the country, will have a ripple effect of shaping the way our country addresses the environmental challenges that will become more and more critical in the coming years,” Wirt stated in an e-mail message. “It is a powerful and exciting process to be a part of.”
“It doesn’t matter if you are a tree-hugger or not, you better recognize that reality is what it is and we have to address these things,” he added in a phone interview.
Wirt said the important thing is to look at growth and sustainability as partners instead of competing interests.
“There are win-win-win solutions,” he said. “We can find the right balance.”
Nate Hubbard can be reached at 228-6611 or .