Stanford conserves water, keeps clean

// news / daily - february 26, 2006

http://daily.stanford.edu/tempo?page=content&id=19519&repository=0001_article
written by Andrew Burmon

If you’ve ever wondered where the water you bathe in comes from you might be surprised to discover that your warm shower comes all the way from the Hetch Hetchy reservoir in Yosemite. The reservoir was created by the construction of the O’Shaugnessy dam in 1923, despite John Muir’s protests that damming the Hetch Hetchy Valley would be akin to damming “the people’s cathedrals and churches, for no holier temple has ever been consecrated by the heart of man.”

Stanford’s water used to make the migration north from Yosemite to the University’s campus — where it was fluoridated before flowing through the maze of pipes connecting all the dorms, halls and laboratories. The practice stopped recently, as the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission began fluoridating water for all of its 2.4 million Bay Area consumers.

“The water is receiving system-wide fluoridation now at optimal levels, so there is no need for each water agency to add fluoride,” said Marty Laporte. Laporte co-authored Stanford’s 2003 “Water Conservation, Reuse and Recycling Master Plan,” which was devised to keep Stanford’s daily consumption of water under three million gallons a day.

As of now, the University’s daily water consumption is approximately 2.7 million gallons. Twenty-seven percent of the water is used in housing and dining settings, while 22 percent is used in staff housing. The rest goes to academic departments, the School of Medicine, campus projects and the Central Energy Facilities Cooling towers that generate about 63,000 gallons of waste water per day — enough to alarm those who wish to curb the University’s water consumption.

With respect to the problem of growing consumption, Laporte said her office is exploring possible remedies.

“With appropriate treatment and if regulatory agencies would permit such non-potable water re-use, the water could be used for irrigation, toilet flushing or possibly other non-potable uses, such as decorative fountains,” Laporte said.

In the meantime, the University’s expansion is making the importance of water conservation more apparent. While the University constructs new graduate student housing, students are actively cultivating consciousness for this increasingly pressing issue.

Students for a Sustainable Stanford (SSS), formed in the spring of 2000 by a group of environmentally conscious students, are currently co-sponsoring — along with Student Housing — their second “Great Annual Stanford Energy Bowl and Water Derby,” an idea inspired by similar competitions at other schools such as Oberlin College in Ohio.

The competition, in which houses and dorms compete to curb their water consumption, has been a real success.

“Last year [dorms] definitely improved during the water derby competition,” said SSS Coordinator Emma Yuen, a junior.

But the problem remains grave. While Yuen said she was confident that “most students appreciate the environment and recognize that we face serious environmental problems,” she is still concerned that students “don’t realize that they are constantly affecting the environment by their actions.”

“Saving water is one of the easiest and most direct ways to help the environment — and can be done by taking shorter showers or by making sure they only do full laundry loads,” Yuen said.

Meanwhile, the University’s water consumption will be high this week as the facilities department “flushes” the water pipes by allowing fire hydrants and other outlets to run in order to loosen accumulated sentiment.

As this water runs down the streets and into gutters, Yuen and the SSS will be announcing the preliminary statistics for how each house is doing in the Water Derby.

With students continuing their efforts to conserve water, Laporte pointed out that there are always ways to help.

“We can still do more to prevent water waste in daily activities, to improve inefficient irrigation systems and to prevent water wasting pranks,” she said.

Until the University comes up with means of recycling its waste water or appoints a sustainability coordinator as SSS has recommended, the burden of conservation will continue to fall on students — and the jury is still out as to whether or not they will prove to be up to the task.