The need to conserve water has been readily apparent this summer, as water levels in Washington have dropped enough for the City of Seattle to call on residents and businesses to voluntarily reduce water consumption by 10 percent. The University of Washington supports this effort, and in today's look at the Sustainability Dashboard you can see how the UW has been reducing water consumption for years.
Since 2001, the UW has spent about $3 million on water conservation efforts. Those efforts have led to a continued downward trend in water consumption, seen by the above graph which includes month-by-month water usage data. The graph also shows the summer peaks of water usage, reflecting the fact that significant amounts of water are used for cooling and irrigation. UW Facilities Services works to make UW’s water usage more efficient by expanding the use of automatic irrigation systems and installing sub-meters (which can help identify leaks or faulty sprinkler heads). This summer, Facilities Services has also allowed lower visibility/priority lawn areas to go dormant to save water.
You can download the numbers behind this graph and see more information on our Sustainability Dashboard. We'll be highlighting a Dashboard metric on our blog every week during the upcoming year.