Zoo officials face a serious balancing act: How do you conserve water without endangering the animals that rely so much upon it?
The Oregon Zoo, located in
Portland, OR, doesn’t want for rainfall. Its Pacific Northwest home is famous
for its rainy day. But that doesn’t mean that officials at the popular zoo don’t
have to worry about conservation. As with all zoos, the Oregon Zoo uses an
enormous amount of water, for both its patrons and its animal inhabitants. Zoo
workers also consume a large amount of water while cleaning the facilities.
Because of this, the Oregon Zoo is
taking several new steps to use as little water as possible in the facility,
including setting up new filtration systems in several animal exhibits,
installing more efficient toilet-flushing valves and collecting stormwater to be
used later for landscape irrigation.
“We are fortunate being in the
Pacific Northwest with the copious amounts of water we get everywhere,” says
Ross Weiner, aquatic life support technician with the zoo. “We have such a lush
green environment here. But still, it is becoming a more important issue, both
locally and nationally, to conserve water. Water is a precious resource, and
we’re looking at doing what we can to use less of it.”
Weiner and his fellow staffers at
the Oregon Zoo aren’t alone. Zoos across the country—from New York City, NY, to
El Paso, TX, in dry areas and lush, rainy regions—are taking steps to both
conserve and recycle their water.
The reason is clear: Zoos use an
immense amount of water per year. Carefully crafted water conservation plans are
crucial, if they are to use as little water as possible while still providing a
healthy environment for the animals. Zoos, like all other businesses, need to be
good stewards to the environment and conserve the precious resource that water
is.
Saving Water, Dollars in
Cleveland
How much water does a zoo use?
That depends on a lot of factors. Some zoos use water as barriers between
animals and humans. Others boast extensive water-based habitats for seals,
otters, dolphins, and other aquatic creatures.
But the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo,
in Ohio, is a good example of how even a smaller zoo can go through hundreds of
thousands of dollars worth of water every year. The 125-year-old zoo, the
seventh-oldest in the country, covers 168 wooded acres and serves as the home to
3,000 animals representing 600 species. In 2003, the zoo paid $485,000 for its
water, says Todd Kinzer, superintendent of facility operations for the zoo.
That’s a lot of money for a zoo that relies on tax dollars and an overseeing
board whose members don’t believe in going into debt.
“Water can be very expensive,”
Kinzer says. “It’s a pricey utility. It’s a huge item for us, and something
we’re trying very hard to reduce through conservation and smarter water
use.”
The Cleveland Zoo has already
taken several steps to reduce its water consumption, steps that have resulted in
significant savings. In 2007, the zoo paid $433,000 for its water use for the
year. Year after year, such savings add up to a large amount of dollars.
That is the reason why zoo
officials, beginning in 1992, began conducting water-use analyses to identify
how the zoo was using—and in some cases, wasting—water. At that time,
Cleveland’s zoo was using about 1.1 million gallons of water every day.
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Photo: El Paso Zoo |
Zoos across the country are taking steps to conserve and recycle
water. |
Realizing that this was far too
much water, zoo officials authorized several improvements to the facility’s
60-plus year-old water-distribution lines and infrastructure. Workers repaired
leaky exhibit pools and re-coated their bottoms. They installed sub-meters on
the zoo’s largest water-use areas, including the pools that provided homes to
the facility’s bears and tigers.
In 2002, the zoo conducted a new
water-use analysis to uncover more areas for water conservation efforts. Today,
zoo workers read water meters twice every day, and then record the results in
spreadsheet programs that create quarterly bar and pie charts that help staffers
visually understand the impact that conservation practices can have. The zoo
added these sub-meters to its Monkey Island exhibit and Pachyderm Building in
2003.
These measures have had a
significant impact. In 2002, the zoo’s daily water consumption had fallen to
572,000 gallons, a 48% savings over its average use in 1992, not bad for a
single 10-year period.
Kinzer says that the zoo’s water
conservation efforts are ongoing. The zoo recently changed its philosophy
regarding its animal pools, moving away from the “dump-and-fill” program that
the zoo had used for most of its existence. Under the old policy, zoo workers
would empty and fill animal pools on a daily basis, resulting in a serious waste
of water. Today, the zoo instead dumps and fills the pools every couple of days.
Zoo officials are now working on improving even this policy, by exploring
chemical testing of its animal pools. That way, workers can dump and refill the
pools only when the water’s chemical levels show enough dirt and pollutants to
require it.
Kinzer and his staff also studied
the depth of the animals’ pools, filling some to more shallow levels to conserve
more water. “We’re doing what we can to make sure that we do use less water on a
daily basis,” he says. “Doing the meter readings twice a day has been a big
help. This way, we can catch anything that is leaking underground, or we can
tell quickly if something has been left open or running.
“If we see a spike, we know that
something has gone wrong,” he continues. “We can catch these problems before we
lose a lot of water.”
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Photo: El Paso Zoo |
The El Paso Zoo features a sea lion exhibit, which boasts a
sophisticated filtration and treatment system, including ozone treatments, sand filters, and ultraviolet
sterilizers. |
The zoo is now beginning to look
at recycling water. In the fall, it will break ground on a new elephant exhibit
that will use a high-tech water-filtration system. This will allow the zoo to
treat and reuse about 80% of the exhibit’s water, Kinzer says.
“This is something that we do take
seriously,” he states. “Not only does using water more wisely save us money,
it’s also the right thing to do environmentally.”
Conserving Gallons in the Pacific
Northwest
At the Oregon Zoo, aquatic life
support technician Weiner and his staffers are constantly looking for new ways
to conserve water. A big example is the way water is recycled and reused in the
zoo’s eight-year-old Steller Cove exhibit. The exhibit, which cost $11 million
to build and holds 387,000 gallons of water, features the plants and animals
native to Oregon’s coastal areas, including large sea otters and sea lions. The
exhibit relies on closed-filtration systems to treat and reuse water, so that
its holding areas need not be dumped and refilled on a daily basis.
Today, Weiner and his fellow
aquatic staffers are studying the Oregon Zoo’s older exhibits, including its
popular penguin habitat—which, like many of the facility’s older exhibits,
relies on a constant flow of fresh water—to see which habitats should be
converted to closed-filtration systems similar to the one being used at Steller
Cove.
Zoo officials are also considering
collected stormwater to use for irrigation throughout the zoo. This includes
taking water from remediation wells that have long been on the zoo property,
treating it, and using it in animal exhibits or for irrigation. This long-term
plan is still being studied and considered, Weiner says.
“We’ve been fortunate with the
amount of water we do receive here in the Pacific, but that doesn’t mean that we
shouldn’t try to conserve water, too,” he acknowledges. “Water conservation has
become a national and worldwide issue.”
To highlight this, the zoo’s local
governing body—Metro, which owns the zoo, as well as the Oregon Convention
Center, Portland Center for the Performing Arts, and the Portland Metropolitan
Exposition Center—has made it a goal to create a greater number of green spaces
for citizens to enjoy. Water conservation efforts are an important part of this
initiative, Kinzer says, and one of the reasons why the Oregon Zoo is working so
diligently to reduce water usage.
This conservation effort extends
to the zoo’s public areas, too. For instance, zoo staffers are steadily
replacing the washrooms’ old flushers with more efficient two-level flushers.
When patrons hold the flusher up, it uses less water than when they push it
down. This way, patrons voluntarily help the zoo consume less water.
The key at the Oregon Zoo, as it
is at zoos across the country, is for zoos to use the appropriate amount of
water, so that its animals are healthy without using so much water that the zoo
becomes wasteful. “We do have some animals that spend a significant amount of
time in the water,” says Weiner. “We try to manage our water usage appropriately
while still providing a quality, healthy environment for these animals.
“That’s the balancing act all zoos
have to take,” he adds. “I think we’re getting better at it.”
Going for the Gold in the
Bronx
Such water conservation measures
have become a focus of zoos across the country. Bronx Zoo in New York City, for
instance, in the fall of 2006 opened its new Eco-Restroom at one of its main
entrances. This new facility is a good example of how innovative zoos are
becoming when it comes to using water efficiently.
The new facility, designed to
serve more than 500,000 visitors every year, boasts composting toilets and
greywater irrigation systems. The Eco-Restroom is not connected to the New York
City sewer system. Instead, the facility collects toilet waste in a compost
system, while water from sinks and drinking fountains—known as greywater—are
used to irrigate plants outside the structure. This not only conserves water, it
eases the burden on New York City’s already-overworked sewage
infrastructure.
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Photo: El Paso Zoo |
The El Paso Zoo has earned a grant to upgrade its water filtration
and treatment systems, in order to reuse more water. |
The facility’s Clivus Multrum
Compost Toilet Systems feature 14 foam-flush toilet fixtures, four waterless
urinals, and 10 composters. The Clivus Multrum Greywater Irrigation System
collects water from the restrooms’ other fixtures into a small tank in its
basement. It then sends the water into a nearby flower garden. The foam-flush
toilets use just 3 ounces of water, saving an enormous amount of water when
compared to traditional systems. The composting feature is unique. In the
composter, natural biological decomposition separates solid and liquid wastes
and then transforms these into solid compost that resembles topsoil. Zoo
officials estimate that the system can save more than 1 million gallons of water
every year when compared to traditional low-flow toilets.
More water conservation methods
can be found at The Lion House, a 20,000-square foot French Beaux Arts-style
structure, designated a historic district by the New York City Landmarks
Commission in 2000. Over the last six years, the building has been re-imagined
and remodeled in order to lower the Zoo’s “carbon footprint” and reduce water
consumption. The building recently became New York City’s first Leadership in
Energy and Environmental Design (LEED)-certified Gold-landmarked building.
In order to meet LEED
certification requirements, entire portions of the building were modified,
including an expanded crawlspace to allow for additional plumping, heating, and
electrical needs. Although water conservation was not an integral part of the
LEED certification process, several changes made to the Lion House were designed
to help the zoo reduce water consumption. For example, the new space created
underneath the building accommodates a new geothermal system that includes five
deep wells with running water (at a consistent 55˚F) that can cool the building
year-round.
Additional water conservation
efforts incorporated into the Lion House include waterless urinals and low
fixtures. The sinks and the toilets also use reclaimed water supplied by a
graywater system that saves the zoo approximately 150,000 gallons per year.
Finally, a water-filtration system adjacent to the Sea Lion pool has reduced the
need for regular dumping and filling of the seal’s pool, thereby saving an
additional 160,000 gallons per week. Ultimately, the combined water conservation
efforts have reduced the zoo’s consumption of water by over 50%.
Reusing Water in El Paso
The El Paso Zoo has worked with
its local water utility to discover ways in which to recycle and reuse the
facility’s water. Today, the zoo uses this recycled water for a number of
non-drinking uses, including irrigation and cleaning its outdoor exhibits.
The zoo has also earned a grant to
upgrade its water filtration and treatment systems, so that it can reuse even
more water. Zoo officials also rely on ozone treatments to clean facility water
so that the same water can be used more often.
“It’s a matter of looking at our
animals and how they use water, and then trying to figure out how we can get
them that water in the most efficient and least-wasteful way possible,” says
Scott Gilliland, operations manager with the El Paso Zoo.
The way zoos use water greatly
impacts the way they can conserve it. Water used as a barrier between facility
guests and animals, for example, can be treated, filtered, and recirculated
without worry about how it would have an impact on animals.
But zoos also water to duplicate
animal habitats. For instance, South American tapirs use the water in their
exhibit at the El Paso Zoo as a bathroom. That way must be treated in a
different way than water used mainly as an aesthetic feature or barrier.
“Zoos use water in so many
different ways,” says Gilliland. “Some zoos may be very dry; they don’t rely as
much on water. A lot is based on their location and what type of animal
collection they have put together. All those elements figure into water usage
and how much water a zoo uses on a daily or yearly basis.”
The El Paso Zoo features a large
sea lion exhibit, one that’s extremely popular among Southwest visitors not used
to seeing a lot of marine animals. This exhibit boasts a sophisticated
filtration and treatment system that allows zoo officials to treat the water and
use it over again. The exhibit includes ozone treatments, sand filters, and
ultraviolet sterilizers.
“We do have to occasionally change
out the water,” adds Gilliland. “But with the treatment systems we have in
place, we reduce the amount of changeover as much as we can.”