Water Conservation at NBHS

We are a group of three UCSC students currently working on an off campus project for the Impact Designs: Engineering and Sustainability through Student Service (IDEASS) course.  Our project began with the idea of building a rainwater catchment system with the teachers and students of Natural Bridges High School, for the campus garden, located at 313 Swift Street. Rainwater catchment was chosen for its low cost and simplicity. Setting up a rainwater catchment system requires relatively little funds and technical knowledge. The systems can be simple and require only a sloping surface onto which rainwater will fall, a storage container to hold the harvested water, and a means of conveying it from the roof to the container (often a gutter or hose).  We are already nearly finished with a small scale catchment system which we have constructed out of both reused materials and purchased materials.  This small scale system, which we have labeled our pilot system, has given us an opportunity to practice working with the students and to establish a better understanding of the construction process.  We will also be able to run some tests for rainwater runoff efficiency once the pilot system is complete.  Ideally, these tests will provide valuable insight into how we might enhance the performance of our main system.  By harvesting rain water, the school’s municipal water use will be reduced significantly, thereby eliminating the CO2 which would otherwise be released in pumping the water to the school.   

Since we started working on this project, its ambitions have expanded beyond rain-water harvesting.  We’ve decided to aspire to also include grey water recycling as a method of conserving water. Grey-water systems tend to be much more variable in level of simplicity and cost; however they have the potential to save a substantial amount of clean water.  Due to time constraints, we will not be able to install any grey water recycling systems at the school, but we do plan on working through the permitting process so that, if given the opportunity, future projects may pick up where we left off.

Since our project is taking place at a school, we have also had the opportunity to work with the students and so student involvement and education has become another one of our main ambitions.  Ultimately, we aspire to create and/or promote a supportive network of activists, influential individuals and any interested members of the community, through the use of various mediums, in order to foster productive collaboration on water conservation projects across the county.  If we are to take water conservation seriously, we need to try an approach which is versatile and involves educating and motivating as many people as possible.  The Natural Bridges High School is the ideal location for us to take said approach and begin working towards these goals.