A legendary downtown hotel, the Willard InterContinental and top D.C. property developers and owners Lerner Enterprises, Carr Properties and WC Smith, joined with Silver Bullet, a cutting-edge water treatment company, today to introduce a commercially available system that dramatically increases building sustainability by cutting water, electricity and toxic chemical use in commercial buildings across the District, where sustainability has gained momentum under Executive Order 13514 on federal sustainability leadership and Mayor Gray’s Sustainable D.C. Plan.

“Lerner is pleased to announce that we are installing the Silver Bullet system throughout our entire D.C. area portfolio of properties,” said Scott Mead, Lerner. Lerner Enterprises is one of the largest private real-estate developers in the Greater Washington D.C. area. “We tested the effectiveness of Silver Bullet in treating our cooling towers and condenser systems for 16 months and we were pleased with the results and the energy and water savings that followed.  We expect to save millions of gallons of water and tens of thousands of kilowatt hours of electricity, allowing us to decrease the overall operating costs and increase the sustainability of our properties without any investment of capital.”

Silver Bullet estimates Lerner has saved enough water to fill more than 75 Olympic sized swimming pools since installing its first system in 2011. Silver Bullet systems are currently installed at 19 of Lerner’s properties and that number continues to grow.

Up to half of a building’s water use is from cooling towers, which provides cooled water for air-conditioning, manufacturing, and electric-power generation. By targeting this component of building infrastructure for efficiency with Silver Bullet’s water treatment system, property owners can immediately realize significant savings in electricity, water, labor and maintenance, while meeting corporate and government directed sustainability goals, and saving money.

Silver Bullet is already helping the Department of Defense meet its sustainability goals. Its system at the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), located in the Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado Springs, Colorado is saving over 1,000 megawatt hours a year of electricity and over one million gallons of water a year.

“We appreciate the opportunity to be among the first commercial entities in the nation’s capital to utilize this cost-effect and environmentally sound commercial technology,” said Patrick Birchall, General Manager of the Willard InterContinental. Silver Bullet estimates the historic, 335 room hotel has saved nearly half a million gallons of water and 14,000 megawatt hours of electricity since installing Silver Bullet in March 2013 to support the hotel’s responsible business and sustainability efforts and reduce maintenance costs.

If Silver Bullet’s technology were installed on 20,000 cooling towers, just one-percent of the commercial cooling towers in the United States, water savings could top 10 billion gallons a year and reduce electricity consumption by more than 1,200 megawatts of power.

“Silver Bullet’s technology is transforming the water treatment and sustainable building industry with our proven, patented, non-toxic technology that saves electricity, water, cuts costs and creates safer working environments,” said David Sunshine, president of Silver Bullet. “We are proud to partner with such notable D.C. property owners like the Willard InterContinental, Lerner Enterprises, Carr Properties and WC Smith to showcase the kind of impact our technology can have on buildings across the country. We have tremendous appreciation for D.C.’s top property developers’ willingness to bravely embrace a new technology.”

Carr Properties installed the Silver Bullet system on five of its properties in Washington D.C. since December of 2012, including the Willard InterContinental in March of this year. Silver Bullet estimates those five properties have saved more than 4.5 million gallons of water and 105,000 megawatt hours of electricity.

Silver Bullet estimates that WC Smith has saved more than eight million gallons of water and 140,000 megawatt hours of electricity at its 298,000 square foot Federal Gateway office building since installing Silver Bullet in August of 2011.

The Silver Bullet system was created by Chief Technology Officer David Kolstad following three decades of experience as an operating engineer in power plants, commercial buildings and hospitals. David’s hands-on work with traditional, chemical-based approaches to water treatment inspired him to develop a more efficient, lower maintenance and safer solution.

The Silver Bullet system provides a safe and highly efficient treatment that serves as a biocide that reduces and eliminates scaling and significantly reduces corrosion, while increasing energy efficiency and reducing water consumption.

A University of Pittsburgh study confirmed the effectiveness of Silver Bullet System in reducing biological growth in cooling towers. It performed “significantly better” than previously tested non-chemical solutions in controlling free-floating and immobile growth of HPC bacteria. Test results showed that the Silver Bullet device reduced the average free-floating HPC bacteria concentration by 98.8%, and met generally accepted industrial biofouling control recommendation for free-floating bacteria. The test also showed that Silver Bullet’s technology reduced concentrations of biofilm HPC bacteria by 85.9%, and free-floating Legionella bacteria by 78.1%.

“Our goal is to save customers water and energy, and reduce their operating costs – while eliminating the use of toxic chemicals. The University of Pittsburgh’s independent study confirms that our system reduces both HPC and Legionella bacteria in cooling tower bulk water,” said Silver Bullet’s executive chairman, Robert Hanfling.