You are here

Obtain and Publicize Water Data (Ongoing)

Recent Project Updates

  • 12/13/2022

    On December 13th, the Land & Water iCAP team met to discuss a new approach to crafting recommendations for next semester; including the creation of a land subcommittee and a water subcommittee.

    Meeting minutes are attached.

  • 4/22/2022

    Below is an email sent by Dr. Edwin Herricks to Morgan White regarding a research site to study stormwater mitigation designs.

     

    Morgan,

     

Key Objective

Description

The 2015 iCAP, chapter 5, objective 1, is "Obtain and publicize more granular water use data by FY16, including water quantity and quality data where available." The campus should obtain and publicize the usage, costs, and quality of water for campus.

The campus publicly displays water quality and quantity data to encourage transparency, instructional use, and campuswide participation in water conservation activities. The site interface could be modeled after the current energy dashboard to facilitate consistency, and could potentially be implemented in tandem with the energy dashboard to leverage the interest of current users of that system.  Real-time water meters for each of the source locations on campus are now connected to the utilities database, and a website display is being developed to share the data for total campus water usage.

Background

One way to look at water in the context of reducing green house gas (GHG) emissions is to account for the fact that certain energy efficiency improvements reduce water use. In other words, the economic value of energy efficiency is often greater than just the economic value of the energy saved. For example, energy efficiency improvements that reduce cooling loads will save a proportional amount of cooling tower water. When cooling towers use less water, they require proportionately fewer chemicals, maintenance, etc. Therefore, a cooling efficiency improvement will result in savings in the cost of energy, the cost to purchase water, the cost to discharge water to the sanitary sewer, the cost of cooling tower chemicals, and the cost of cooling tower maintenance. Economic justification is easier when all of these cost savings are captured. The Illinois Sustainable Technology Center has performed true cost of water accounting for Ford and Caterpillar, and the results have shown that the actual cost to use water can be 5 to 20 times greater than the cost of the water alone.

Campus has begun to utilize efficient water fixtures, including low-flow aerators for faucets, dual-flush and high efficiency toilets, high-performance low-flow showerheads, and pint urinals. These fixtures will continue to be utilized in new buildings and retrofits, and newer technologies to improve upon these efficiencies will be researched and harnessed. Non-potable sources of water will also be utilized when appropriate, including untreated raw water, sump pump discharge, cooling tower wastewater, stormwater, and graywater. The University has a raw water system across campus that has yet to be activated. This would allow campus to purchase lower cost, non-treated raw water from the water company. The Business Instructional Facility is already plumbed in a way that would allow for raw water to be used for toilet and urinal flushing when available. The BIF greywater pipe system project was developed to allow for greywater usage and real-time water meters are pilot tested in some campus buildings.

Website URL(s)

No description has been provided yet.

4.1 Total Potable Water Use (kgal)

Annotations

  • FY 2020:

    includes covid-19 impact

  • FY 2021:

    includes covid-19 impact

Percent Reduction in Potable Water Consumption

Annotations

  • FY 2020:

    includes covid-19 impacts

  • FY 2021:

    includes covid-19 impacts

Themes

Project Location(s)

This map is interactive! Click (or touch) and drag to pan; scroll (or pinch) to zoom.

View larger location(s) map