Students, staff and faculty at the University of Southern California (USC) and the University of California, Los Angeles are preserving natural resources. The eco-system has impacted the way both schools construct their buildings and landscapes. Their efforts are important as California spends another year in a historic drought.
A dining hall is surrounded by drought resistant plants at UCLA. A plant irrigation system at USC strives to use less water while maintaining healthy and colorful plants. Both schools have organizations and projects that increase water sustainability.
Governor Jerry Brown declared that the state of California is in a drought in Jan. 17, 2014. The hardest hit area in the state is central California, a region full of growing crops like fruits and nuts, according to USC professor Kelly Sanders. Sanders works in the Civil and Environmental Engineering department with an expertise in water management.
“You and I still turn on the water and get water out of the tap. That hasn’t been the case in a lot of the Central Valley, which is our primary agricultural part of our state,” she said, “That’s where most of our crops are produced,”
The more fortunate farmers can purchase pumps and harvest water from underground, using it to irrigate their crops. Although helpful to their business, ground water pumping has ecological consequences.
“We’re depleting the ground water at an alarming rate and these ground water aquifers can’t be recharged as fast as we’re depleting them,” Sanders said.
Farmers are not the only ones feeling the impact of the drought. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, a wholesale distribution company that serves six counties will soon have only half the amount of water they had on reserve when the drought started in 2012.
“We had 2.7 million acre feet of water in reserve that was the end of 2012,” said Bob Muir, spokesperson at the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, “By the end of the year, our water reserves will be at about 1.4 to 1.2 million acre feet of water,”
Urban areas feel the weight of the drought through new rules, incentives and building renovations. Each Los Angeles household received a small blue postcard in the mail this summer that gave residents a schedule of days they can water their lawns and outdoor plants. Universities also have programs and student organizations that prioritize the subtle, yet omnipresent presence of the drought.
USC and UCLA have both unique and common projects that aid in reducing the water usage of their respective campuses. USC found ways to preserve water through architecture.
“In the newer buildings, we’re implemented low flow toilets, low flow shower heads in some of the dorms,” Sanders said. “We implemented a lot of more water conservation appliances in the buildings that we can,”
USC has a website dedicated to environmentally friendly project called green.usc.edu. The website showcases the efforts of the university, one of their projects was a garden of drought resistant plants. Sanders feels that students are becoming more concerned about preserving resources for the future. However, she believes that changing the university to match the desert landscape of California would be a big shift for people on USC’s campus.
“We have to change our perspective on what we see,” Sanders said “We have to become comfortable with a more desert and more native landscape and that’s going to be tough, it’s going to change the whole look of USC,”
Across town, the students and faculty has already molded a segment of UCLA into an environmentally conscious university. Sustainability at UCLA is a group that aims to reduce wasteful practices on their campus. Nurit Katz, the chief sustainability officer at UCLA believes that preserving resources as a way of helping the generations to come.
“Sustainability is about the future, it’s about our kids and our grandkids and how can we figure out how we can live in a smarter way today so there’s something left over for future generations,” she said, “we see sustainability as critical part of our mission as a university at UCLA and we integrate it in everything that we do,”.
The participants of Sustainability at UCLA has made drastic changes on the campus, one of them being the Molecular Garden. Along with plants that do not require watering, the garden contains bio-soil. This type of soil assists the campus collect grey water: storm water that runs down drains.
“When it rains here, it’s a lot of water that goes rushing down the streets, down onto the ocean,” she said, “Not only is there a lot of issue with that storm water getting polluted along the way with oil and all kinds of things from the streets but it’s also a waste of water that we could be using in our buildings,”
Engineers assisted the organization in making the rain water catchment system in the garden. Buildings on campus can use the water for their toilets according to Katz.
“In America, something like a quarter of our potable water goes to flushing toilets, so we’re taking drinkable water-- in a time when a lot of people don’t have access to clean water around the world—and we’re taking drinkable water and we’re flushing it down the toilet” she said.
In 2012, the Court of Science Student Center dining commons opened to students. Around the dining commons were a legion of native plants like dwarf maiden grass and deer grass, according to officials at UCLA. The roof of the dining commons also collects water in order to keeps the building at a cool temperature, according to Katz.
Sustainability at UCLA also has the Pilot Project, a development that is connected to the campus power plant. The organization helped a professor and a group of graduate students, this aided the students academically and reduced the use of water on campus.
“There’s a professor here at UCLA that’s working on this smart water filtration system and that’s in our water technology and research center.” She said, “we were able to pilot that technology here at our cogeneration plant and eliminate the use of about 80,000 gallons a day,”
The historic contention does not hinder the two schools from being allies to save the world’s resources.
“Come sports time there always a lot of talk about the rivalry,” said Katz, “But when it comes to sustainability, we actually work very closely with our colleagues over at USC,”
Sanders believes the best way to thrive through the drought is for students to collaborate and demand change.
The drought can possibly stay with California for several years, according to Katz.
“The students create the environment at any given university,” said Sanders, “Ultimately, the students are the consumers here and USC is here to produce what the students want. If you see sweeping environmental changes on campus, it really has to come from the students”
