OWSUtils application generates sizeable amount of heap garbage

A WMS memory profiling sessions showed that OWSUtils class, called very often by the dispatcher, generates a very sizeable amount of garbage, second only to the very BufferedImages allocated to draw the images. The memory profiler showed somethign along the line of 18MB of buffered images, and 14MB of Method[] and StringBuilder objects coming out of OWSUtils.

I've reworked OWSUtils into a cacheable structure that avoids most allocations and lookups, and that solves GEOS-749 and GEOS-2218 as well. Given it makes quite a difference in benchmarks I'm developing for FOSS4G, is it ok to commit it right away?
I can add some testing as well (OWSUtils has none, at least not directly)