TUCSON, Ariz. — The city of Tucson and Downtown Tucson Partnership are doing their part to conserve water, and making a significant change that you'll most likely never notice.
Walking through downtown Tucson, there are planters just about everywhere you look. Rather than using our limited supply of drinking water to water all 225 of them, maintenance workers with the Downtown Tucson Partnership are now using reclaimed water instead.
"We see that as a real win for the City and for the community," said Office of Economic Initiatives Deputy Director Kevin Burke. He says the change puts the city more in line with their climate action goals.
"We're talking about several thousand gallons a week that we're using reclaimed water, instead of potable water downtown.
The question of why the city didn't make this switch sooner, comes down to the fact that you can't access reclaimed water everywhere in Tucson. The City saw the opportunity to switch to reclaimed water for landscaping use during work on the Stone Avenue improvements, and took it.
Festus Sallu works maintenance for the Downtown Tucson Partnership. He spends eight hours a day, five days a week, watering.
As the downtown area goes through more improvements, the new landscaping requires more water.
"We have to fill the tank like 7 to 8 times," Sallu said. He says the change also saves time for him on a daily basis. Using regular water, it would take about 45 minutes for him to fill up the tank. Now, it takes about 10 minutes.
The downtown partnership also used to get water from several different property owners. Now that it's all from one source, they can actually keep track of it.
"We've got a direct connection behind a meter to the reclaimed system," Burke explained. "And going forward, we'll be able to track exactly how much water we're using on the downtown landscape."
Now that they can be more conscious of water use, he says things are only going up from here.
"Any time where we can offset potable water use with reclaimed water use, those are the opportunities that the city is looking for," Burke said.
The City of Tucson is actually a national leader in using reclaimed water. Tucson uses almost 5 billion gallons of reclaimed water a year, that we otherwise would have been using groundwater for.
Claire Graham is an anchor and reporter for KGUN 9. She grew up in Tucson and graduated from the University of Arizona with a degree in musical theatre. Claire spent a decade in Washington state, where she worked in journalism, met her husband and welcomed their baby boy, before moving back home. Share your story ideas and important issues with Claire by emailing claire.graham@kgun9.com or by connecting on Facebook and Twitter.
