If Scott Zaremba has his way, his filling station will become an interactive billboard for solar energy, wind power and a host of other green technologies.

Zaremba won tentative approval Tuesday night from city commissioners to add a small-scale wind turbine, a set of solar panels, a green roof and a botanical garden area to his Zarco 66 Earth Friendly Fuels filling station at the southeastern corner of Ninth and Iowa streets.

“The vision is really to turn this site into a green energy gateway in the community,” Zaremba told commissioners.

Zaremba is undertaking the project at the urging of regional leaders of the Environmental Protection Agency, who said they have been looking for a way to educate consumers about new ways to use alternative energy. Catching people while they’re filling up seemed like a sound strategy, said Becky Weber, director of the air and water division for EPA’s Region 7 office in Kansas City, Kan.

“As people are refueling, they’ll be able to learn the benefits of everything from recycling to fluorescent lighting,” Weber said.

The station – which has been specializing in the sale of ethanol and biodiesel since February – will include several displays and also will have information recordings at each pump.

But the bigger attention-getters will be overhead. Zaremba said he wants to place an approximately 8-by-7-foot wind turbine on top of the canopy that covers the fuel pumps. The turbine is a new small-scale model being developed by a company that hopes it will be feasible for use in individual homes that don’t have the space for a traditional wind turbine.

The turbine will be highly visible to the several thousand motorists that travel through the intersection each day.

“The idea, besides selling some earth-friendly fuels, is to educate everybody about what they can do in their lives,” Zaremba said.

Other features planned for the site include:

¢ Solar panels that will be installed on the canopy covering the fuel pumps.

¢ Replacing a traditional roof on an existing storage building with a green roof. The green roof will have nearly 5 feet of soil to support a variety of plants designed to cut down on water runoff. The entire storage building – which is on the eastern end of the site – will be converted into a drive-through coffee kiosk.

¢ Building a Japanese-themed rain garden in the city right of way just east of the storage building.

The garden ultimately would require the removal of four evergreen trees that are currently in the right of way. City commissioners on Tuesday told Zaremba to wait on removing the trees until a formal site plan could be approved by city planners.

But commissioners did give Zaremba approval to start working on parts of the project before receiving site plan and other necessary city approval. Zaremba is seeking to move quickly on the project because he wants to have a grand opening with EPA officials June 30.

As part of that celebration, he’s proposing to close the Ninth Street spur that runs just south of the station to accommodate several booths. The closing would be from about 8:30 a.m. to noon during the day.

Commissioners gave preliminary approval of the project, but told Zaremba that he may have to change or remove some of the elements if issues are identified during the site plan process.