It’s the end of a hit, dry summer on the Palouse, and about 20,000 students, faculty and staff have returned to campus. Imagine the amount of water they consume by drinking, cooking, showering, laundering and flushing.
Do you picture the water table dropping? If so you will be surprised to learn that when the students leave the campus in May water usage generally increases. When they return to campus in the gall water usage typically decreases.
During the summer, explains Terry Ryan, WSU’s energy manager, the university uses large volumes of water to keep 467 acres of landscaping and playfields green and to cool buildings offices, classrooms and research space – much more water than is used for the personal needs to staff and students on a daily basis.
As a result, greatest relief to the campus’ need for water comes when the temperature cools down and precipitation increases in the fall.
Water use on the WSU campus is tabulated by the energy group through the Department of Facilities Operations. Most of the year, usage is between 30 and 50 million gallons per month, but the amount nearly doubles from June through September.
August is the highest use month for water, but it’s also the hottest. Ryan explains, “Since school begins in mid-August, it is hard to calculate how much of the increased water is used due to students returning to campus and how much is due to the higher temperatures.”
To conserve energy and water, summer classes are grouped so that not all buildings need to be kept cool.
In the past 15 years, Facilities Operations has completed the monumental task of installing an automated sprinkler system throughout most of the campus. (WSU has 30 miles of fresh water lines and 22 miles of steam lines.) This means lawns and shrubbery can be watered during the evening and nighttime and that the amount of water that is sprinkled can be regulated. The automated sprinkler system significantly enhanced water conservation on campus.
Another conservation measure that has been implemented by Facilities Operations over the years is the upgrade of “once-through” cooling systems to “closed-loop” cooling systems. This means that no running water is involved in cooling of associated equipment.
Lee Hately, manager of Maintenance Services for Campus Life, says his department has installed shower head flow restrictions in all campus residence halls and apartments, which cut the flow of water to approximately one gallon per minute.
And Maintenance Services is experimenting with no-water urinals. A heavy fluid is put into the urinals, then gravity flushes away the lighter liquid while the heavier fluid remains.
The units have been installed in the maintenance building and also in Gannon Hall, which houses the themed living coed Science, Engineering and Math Support Program. Hately says, “How the students respond to the new units is the real test of how they will be accepted.”
Other projects are under way that should reduce water use even further. The new energy plant (currently under construction) will be more efficient than the old plant in regards to water use and steam production. Combined with programs under way to reduce steam and condensate losses, the new plant could cut plant water use in half, saving about 30 million gallons a year.
WSU is a primary member of the Palouse Basin Aquifer Committee, which was formed in 1967. The committee monitors usage of the aquifer, which serves Whitman and Latah counties, WSU, the University of Idaho, and the cities of Moscow and Pullman.
In 1982 WSU science professor James Crosby alerted the committee to the fact that the water level of the aquifer was declining faster than predicted in 1970. Studies were carried out to determine what could be done to maintain the quality of water on the Palouse for the future. They concluded that if the cities and universities did not increase their rates of groundwater pumpage, the water level in the wells would stabilize and the aquifer could adequately supply the region.
Ryan reports that WSU has been “fairly successful” in maintaining conservative usage of the region’s water supply. In spite of the university’s growth during the past two decades, water use has stayed at the same level (600 million gallons per year) since 1989. In comparison, the city of Pullman uses approximately 850 million gallons per year.
The Pullman City Council is currently conducting a study to determine if raising the water rate would encourage consumers to use less water. However, Ryan says a rate hike wouldn’t directly affect the university because WSU has its own wells, pumps its own water and has its own distribution system. The university has some cross-connected systems with the city of Pullman in case of emergency, but those systems are rarely used.
Are campus water meters in your future? Probably not soon.
“We have very little water metering on campus other than the main well pumps, so there is no way to track how much water is being used for irrigation versus facility needs, nor how much is used in which facilities,” Ryan explains.
The energy group plans to install water metering at individual buildings when funding becomes available, but under the current budget restrictions the timing of that is uncertain.
WSU has no current water conservation programs for users other than encouraging them to minimize waste and reduce consumption. So just treat yourself to a cool glass of water, turn off the faucet, then step outside and appreciate the green.
