Amid global concern that water will one day become a scarce and precious resource, UC Berkeley's Office of Sustainability is attempting to overcome technical complexities and financial strains in order to implement programs projected to save up to 53 million gallons of water and $4 million.

In response to consecutive years of drought, Joanna Zhang, a water associate for the Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Sustainability, published a report in March detailing the campus's current water conservation plans and goals. The report used and expanded upon data from UC Berkeley alumna Jubilee Daniels' 2005 master's thesis, which has inspired some campus water conservation initiatives.

One large-scale project is the replacement of faucet aerators to reduce the rate of water flow - an inexpensive way to reduce water use because aerators are donated by East Bay Municipal Utilities District (EBMUD), leaving only the cost of labor, said Lisa McNeilly, director of the Office of Sustainability.

During 2008 and 2009, student group Building Sustainability at Cal discovered that more than 300 aerators could be replaced to save water, said Claire Evans, the group's lead program coordinator, in an e-mail. They worked with Physical Plant-Campus Services to install the new aerators, which reduce water flow from about two gallons per minute to 0.5 gallons per minute.

The chancellor's advisory committee has since uncovered about 700 more aerators to be replaced, McNeilly said, amounting to water savings of approximately 6.5 million gallons annually. The campus will begin installing these aerators in the coming months.

According to McNeilly, progress is already observable in the campus irrigation system, which currently makes up 8 percent of water use.

"Ninety percent of irrigation systems are now connected to a weather system that regulates how much water is released," she said. "This is an area where we have definitely seen success."

Such successes have inspired the Office of Sustainability to do more to conserve water. They are considering launching pilot programs in the future, such as installing shower timers with red lights to encourage students to reduce the length of their showers.

"Sometimes you need to do something, see the success, and that gives you the momentum to do something else," McNeilly said.

However, other projects inspired by the 2005 thesis are riddled with complications, making them expensive to implement. The challenge of maintenance has inhibited the installation of more waterless urinals beyond the ones installed in 2008 in the Martin Luther King Jr. Student Union.

"There is a different kind of cleaner and filter, and we must train the (maintenance) staff," said Christine Shaff, communications director for the campus Department of Facilities Services. "All of our pipes are installed to have a certain volume of liquid go through them, (which is) done by installing them at a certain angle. If there is more liquid, we put the pipes at an angle not as steep. If we don't replace all the pipes, there will not be as much water, so urine will just sit in the pipes and corrode them."

Such complications mean toilet and urinal renovations are only done during whole-bathroom renovations.

According to McNeilly, similar technical complexities involved in renovating single-pass cooling systems in laboratories as well as the variations among laboratories have prohibited substantial reduction of water use in laboratories, which constitute about 19 percent of campus water use.

Making campus water data available has also been complicated by technical issues. In addition to the four meters EBMUD uses for billing, Physical Plant-Campus Services monitors meters on almost every building on campus. Over 23 meters are "state of the art," McNeilly said, showing the water used in 15-minute increments. However, the software used to read the data is "not very user-friendly," and there are no definite plans to install better software.

According to McNeilly, another inhibitory cost is that involved in buying water-efficient parts for domestic water use systems, especially because EBMUD does not always give rebates for necessary parts.

"There was a gym that wanted to buy a low-flow showerhead," McNeilly said. "EBMUD only offered a residential one meant to (be used) two to three times a day, so the gym had to buy (the showerheads) at full cost."

Despite the complications and costs of water conservation, Daniels said continuing efforts are necessary.

"It is important to not just teach about sustainability but to show through how we operate the school that sustainability can be put into practice," she said.

Tags: UC BERKELEY'S OFFICE OF SUSTAINABILITY, THE CHANCELLOR'S ADVISORY COMMITTEE FOR SUSTAINABILITY