Using foresight and resourcefulness, departments in Facilities Planning & Management (FP&M) are conserving water and maintaining vital campus operations amid a statewide conservation order brought on by another punishing drought.

FP&M is taking measures big and small to conserve water, from upgrading irrigation control devices to replacing 64,000 of decorative grass areas with mulch to installing low-flow toilets and faucets.

Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a wide-ranging Executive Order N-7-22 to provide guidance on emergency drought relief and urge state water suppliers to implement aggressive conservation measures as levels in California reservoirs have plummeted and calls for residents to reduce water usage have gone largely unheeded.

The governor's Drought Emergency Proclamation on March 28 called on urban water agencies to implement actions to reduce water usage by at least 20 percent and to adopt regulations that prohibit the watering of "non-functional" turf, such as ornamental grass next to industrial and commercial buildings.

Local water agencies have implemented schedules that allow homeowners and businesses to irrigate lawns and landscaping two days a week. The executive order excludes fields used for recreation, such as sports fields and parks.

Under the mandate, local water agencies on June 10 instituted a 20 percent reduction in water use from 2020 usage levels. In turn, the trickle-down effect means that consumers have been told to curtail water usage by a similar percentage. The campus community is encouraged to conserve water at work and at home. (For ideas about conserving water, go to bewaterwise.com.)

Landscape Services, the Water Treatment Plant and the Plumbing Shop are the FP&M departments that are most impacted by the water mandate. The order applies to potable water supplied by local agencies but does not ban or restrict the use of recycled water.

Campus Irrigation

Since 1965, Cal Poly Pomona has been using recycled water for irrigating crops and landscape. An estimated 97 percent of the campus is irrigated with the use of recycled water.

"We take care of the campus in a very educated way that is focused on water conservation. We're not water wasters," said Brian Lake, the manager of Landscape Services. "We've been very fortunate to be able to upgrade our systems to state-of-the-art computerized irrigation."

The governor's Drought Emergency Proclamation severely reduces the watering of "non-functional" turf in parts of the campus.

A state-of-the-art central system adjusts irrigation according to weather. If the system is timed to irrigate for 30 minutes and conditions are hot, the system might irrigate several minutes longer. If the weather is wet or cold, the system could shut down after only few minutes. The central system can also detect water line breaks and will shut off water going to that sector.

The system contains built-in triggers to conserve water. If the central system detects a half inch of rain, all irrigation will be turned off. If there is a quarter inch of rain in an hour, such as a thunderstorm, irrigation also will be shut down.

"We have a system that oversees all of the irrigation components around campus that calculates the usage rate for the entire day," said Salvador Guzman, the lead in Irrigation. "We've been proactive with our central system. We've saving water the entire year."

Landscape Services has been handed more tools to conserve water after the Division of Administrative Affairs approved funding to upgrade 35 irrigation controllers. The upgrades will allow the controllers to track how much water is being used and to shut down water lines in the event of a break. Previously, 44 of the 79 irrigation controllers had received upgraded flow meters and master control valves.

In addition, eight areas across the campus containing approximately 64,000 square feet of grass are going to be replaced with mulch. The transition will save the campus more than 2 million gallons in water per year. Of that total, 27 percent of the savings comes in the form of potable water. Landscape Services also is limiting watering of decorative grassy and allowing those patches to turn brown to help save water.

The choice of plants for landscaping also plays a role in water conservation. Drought-tolerant plants and grass that can withstand hot, dry summers in Southern California help keep Cal Poly Pomona's landscape appear lush. For example, 90 percent of the turf grass is the Kikuyu variety, which is considered one of the most drought-tolerant turf grasses available.

"We have lot of California natives and Mediterranean-climate plants that are adapted to a wet winter and a hot, dry summer," said John Hiatt, the gardening specialist in Landscape Services. "The plants are already pre-programmed to deal with the weather conditions we have. These plants are very hearty."

Hiatt said that a substantial amount of plant material on campus can survive on rainwater alone. He said that plants in Parking Lots F, M and K survive on rainwater and have not been irrigated in nearly 35 years.

Additional areas that use recycled water for irrigation include farmland, the Poly Vista Apartments, and Innovation Village. The Don B. Huntley College of Agriculture and the Cal Poly Pomona Foundation, the two other main water users on campus, are planning their own strategies to help conserve the use of recycled water in their operations.

Drinking Water

To quench the thirst of the campus community, the Water Treatment Plant turns groundwater into treated potable drinking water. The treatment plant also helps Cal Poly Pomona lessen its reliance on imported surface water from the Metropolitan Water District.

The treatment plant processes groundwater through reverse osmosis, which uses a series of membranes that remove minerals and regulated contaminants, and the water is then treated and tested for regulatory compliance before being disinfected with chlorine. The water treatment plant has the capacity to produce 480,000 gallons per day. The plant can produce 120 million gallons of drinking water annually to meet campus consumption.

The treated water is pumped and stored in two reservoirs with a capacity of 2.7 million gallons. From there, a network of pipes distributes the water to faucets, filling stations, restrooms, and fire-protection systems throughout the campus. The water troughs at the W.K. Kellogg Arabian Horse Center are supplied with potable water for the horses.

The Plumbing Shop is also doing its part to conserve water. In Kellogg Arena (Building 43), the shop installed a combined 43 low-flow toilets and urinals along with 30 hands-free faucets. Low-flow toilets and urinals and hands-free faucets also will be installed in the Engineering Laboratories (Building 17) once the materials arrive. The long-range plan is to install low-flow toilets and urinals and hands-free faucets in all campus restrooms.

In addition to installing water-conservation fixtures, the Plumbing Shop is vigilantly on the lookout to detect and expeditiously repair leaks in the vast network of underground water pipes that crisscross the campus.

The Poly Vista Apartments and the Lanterman site use potable water from the city of Pomona and will abide by the water-use restrictions imposed by the municipality.