Despite Cuts, UCLA Is Using More Water : Conservation: City’s seventh-largest consumer says it has made efforts to save water. But usage has increased 20% since ‘85-86, and is likely to keep going up.

UCLA is the city’s seventh-largest water user. Last year it used about as much water as a city the size of Hermosa Beach.

For its acres of lush, verdant lawns.

For round-the-clock showers for youthful dormitory dwellers.

To chill out.

Nearly half of campus water use is for climate control, essential so that fancy, but finicky, research equipment can churn out data without breaking a sweat, campus officials said.

So, one could expect the school to really help out a lot in these drought days if it cut back its usage by 10%, as Mayor Tom Bradley has requested of all water users.

But despite efforts the university says it has made to conserve water, Department of Water and Power records show the campus increased consumption by 20% since 1985-86, the base period used by the city. So, if the university were to try to cut its usage by 10% from that period, it would be faced with the daunting task of cutting back 30% from its latest usage figures.

And, according to its own calculations, UCLA will need at least 45% more water if all of the remaining expansion projects in its already-scaled-back 15-year development plan become a reality.

UCLA used 1.2 billion gallons of water in 1988-89. The current enrollment of the school is about 34,000, with more than 20,000 employees, although most students are commuters and do not live on campus.

Community members opposed to the scope of UCLA’s development plan cite the water figures as evidence of the university’s wastefulness, charging UCLA with gobbling up an unseemly amount of resources in an era of limits.

“It’s an environmental-be-damned attitude,” said Alvin Milder, leader of UCLA Watch, a group of Westwood neighbors that keeps an eye on campus doings.

UCLA, however, views itself as in the vanguard of voluntary conservation. And, university officials say, the school has made great strides on its own.

“I’d be happy to have the university’s activities put up aside others” for comparison, said Vice Chancellor Raymond Schultze, a physician who oversees campus facilities and is director of UCLA Medical Center.

Schultze said the university’s water consumption must be considered as part of a larger policy evaluation.

UCLA’s mission, including education, research and positive economic impact on the area’s economy, serves society well, Schultze said. “We feel it may be well worth the additional water to enhance that.”

Most of UCLA’s water conservation has been achieved by changing the chemical water treatment for the cooling system to cut down on sediments. The change, which means that the equipment doesn’t have to be cleaned as often or for as long to keep it humming, produced a water savings of 60 million gallons in fiscal year 1988-89 over the previous year, an 8.9% cutback, said Jack Powazek, head of operations at UCLA.

But there are limits. “We’re not going to tear up all the grassy fields and put in concrete,” he said.

Powazek said the university’s continuing conservation efforts include the installation of low-flow toilets and showers. Polymer implants, which retain 150 times their mass in water then sweat out moisture judiciously, are being embedded in the lawns around campus.

UCLA is in the middle of a 9-year program to replace its iron sprinkler system with sturdier synthetic piping that won’t leak. Timers have been installed and lawn watering is concentrated at night and in the early morning, when less evaporation occurs.

“We’ve already made a major effort to cut the amount of water we are using, and we are going to try and cut more,” said Powazek. But it’s questionable whether the Westwood campus will be able to reach the 10% suggested by the city.

It can’t be done, university officials said, citing previous stringent water conservation measures. “I think it would be irresponsible to say we could hit 10%,” Powazek said.

An even greater stumbling block is the yardstick year by which conservation is supposed to be measured--1985-86--a year that school officials say UCLA’s water use was abnormally low for reasons neither they nor the DWP can explain.

When the City Council was considering making the cutbacks mandatory with stiff penalties, Powazek discussed the issue with Mayor Bradley’s water aide, John Stodder. Powazek said he proposed using an average of 1987-88 and ‘88-89 as the base amount.

Stodder said that despite the DWP’s 1985-86 figures, the city is open to making exceptions where justified. “We want to reward them for doing good, not punish them for doing good,” Stodder said. “I’ve found out (water conservation) is more of an art than a science.” When the City Council recently rejected the mandatory rationing because voluntary conservation had been so successful, UCLA got a reprieve.

From what he has seen of UCLA’s self-described efforts, DWP Senior Water Engineer Jerry Gehe said the university appears to be taking reasonable steps to save water, though overall it is clear the campus is gulping more water each year as it expands.

Whether that is environmentally responsible is not the DWP’s call, Gehe said, but a policy matter for other officials to thrash out.

However, university officials insist they are eager to be good citizens of Los Angeles and conserve along with everyone else.

One way to do that, said longtime Westwood resident Wolfgang Veith, is to use so-called gray water, or recycled waste water from washing machines, bathtubs, sinks and showers, for irrigation. UCLA’s irrigation accounts for 16% of its water use, Powazek said. Veith said UCLA has the opportunity in its Long-Range Development Plan to build in piping systems to recycle water. No such proposals were included in the environmental impact report, he said.

In the area of innovation, Veith comes close to accord with UCLA’s Powazek, who predicted that there would be new technology to save water in the next 15 years--perhaps developed at UCLA or another research institution--if the machinery and its operators stay calm, cool and collected and the well doesn’t run dry.

Times community correspondent Dennis Romero contributed to this story.

TOP WATER CONSUMERS

Here are the biggest water consumers in Los Angeles, according to the city Department of Water and Power. The list is for fiscal 1988-89.

1. City Department of Recreation and Parks

2. Union Oil Co.

3. Anheuser-Busch Inc.

4. Los Angeles Unified School District

5. Los Angeles County

6. Los Angeles Housing Authority

7. UCLA

8. Caltrans

9. Department of Water and Power

10. Veterans Administration