If all the city’s water customers were swimming around in a pond together, UVA would be a mighty big fish. In 2006, the University went through 438 million gallons of water, which is 13,305 gallons per person (including faculty, staff and students). Given that the pond itself is looking drier—both the city and Albemarle County are currently under drought warnings—it pays for the big fish to be able to show that it’s doing something to cut down those numbers.
And cut it has, as detailed by both the UVA website (which trumpets a reduction from 672 million gallons in the peak usage year of 1999) and Director of Energy and Utilities Cheryl Gomez. “Since 1999, the University has grown three and a half million square feet or 35 percent,” she says, launching into a series of stats. In that same period, “water usage declined 29 percent, the number of faculty, staff and students increased over 12 percent, and water usage per person declined by 37 percent.”
How have they done it? A variety of measures, from keeping a closer eye on cooling towers to using water from stormwater management ponds on thirsty plants to hiring students to spur their classmates to conserve. A drought warning kicks another tier of cuts into place: Gomez says the school has halted washing its buses, planting new landscaping and power-washing buildings—even cutting back on water-reliant equipment in research labs. “We have put up hang tags in our showering facilities in our sports facilities urging people to take short showers,” Gomez says.
Outreach doesn’t end there—October 12 is Energy Day, and in August incoming freshmen were treated to conservation tips. Still, Gomez acknowledges it can be hard to get the message through. “How much students pick up on that I’m not sure, because they’ve got a lot of info coming their way during orientation. You still hear people say they hadn’t heard anything about it,” she says. And then there are those numbers. After six years of declining usage, the 2006 total was a slight uptick from 2005, when the University went through 427 million gallons. Gomez attributes this to UVA’s having pitched in to supply water to neighbors near Alderman Road during maintenance by the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority; the University website blames increasing population and square footage.
Gomez says “it’s looking good” for the 2007 total to go down once again. And she says that, especially with UVA building all its new facilities to LEED-certified standards, she’ll be looking for both total usage and per-person usage to continue decreasing in the years to come—though she doesn’t have specific numerical goals, saying only, “I like to see how the curves are going right now.”
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