MANKATO — Meet the recently completed Blue Earth County Justice Center, a $42 million facility and the county’s largest-ever undertaking:

This is where jail inmates and criminals rub elbows with banana-fiber cabinets, where attorneys and court magistrates conduct business in geothermally heated offices, and where police dispatchers and records clerks use water-saving toilets and motion-triggered lights.

After more than three years of planning and construction, the move to the Justice Center from the old Law Enforcement Center on Front Street was completed during the summer.

Not only did the new facility consolidate much of the county’s criminal justice system, but it was also among the first buildings in southern Minnesota to be certified as environmentally friendly.

When the county began planning for the Justice Center, officials announced their intention to pursue certification by the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (commonly called LEED) program. LEED, which started in 1998, provides a set of objective standards for environmentally friendly building design.

In the Justice Center, the toilets have two-way flushers — pull up for liquids, push down for solids — designed to save water. There’s preferred parking for carpools and hybrids. The wood doors, paneling and millwork come from forests certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, which hires third parties to study the management practices of timber companies.

In addition, the carpet, ceramic tiles, plastic toilet compartments, walls and other materials contain various percentages of recycled materials. Temperatures are kept constant via computer-controlled thermostats.

But the building’s use of geothermal power is perhaps its most impressive energy-saving device.

To heat and cool the building, the system uses 48 miles of tubing beneath the ground and a series of pumps to circulate water and heated air.

In the winter, the water absorbs heat from the ground and is converted into air heat using pumps. In the summer, the heat is carried away from the building and dissipates in the ground.

The system runs on electricity, most of which is generated through the burning of fossil fuels, but the Justice Center is planned to be between 24 percent and 31.5 percent more efficient than if it were built to industry standards.

All told, officials believe the Justice Center’s LEED measures will save 250,000 gallons of water and 16,250 tons of carbon dioxide every year.

The facility also features several security upgrades from the old jail in the Law Enforcement Center.

Among the upgrades is the so-called “direct supervision” style that allows custody officers to watch inmates. That’s superior to the old jail’s “linear” or “remote” monitoring, which puts inmates out of staff members’ sight.

The new jail features large rooms with two levels of cells lining the walls, with a common area in the center. The old jail in the Law Enforcement Center has corridors with cells set off, more like the halls of a school.

The new strategy also is expected to be safer for staff and more efficient to monitor. Overall, more custody officers will be needed, but the jail will more than double in size, from 75 beds to 196. This excess capacity may be sold to other counties in the future.