San Diego Firms Take Variety of Steps to Reduce Use of Water

The view from the top floor of the San Diego Marriott Hotel & Marina on San Diego Bay shows water, water everywhere. Unfortunately, it’s salt water, and there’s not a drop to drink--or to flush toilets, fill the swimming pool, cool condensers or prepare meals.

Consequently, the hotel is scrambling to find ways to cut water use in order to meet a 30% water consumption reduction that took effect throughout San Diego on March 1 as water officials struggled to conserve dwindling supplies.

The drought, now in its fifth consecutive year, is causing hardships for most San Diego companies, hardships that are expected to intensify April 1 when the Los Angeles-based Metropolitan Water District will impose an unprecedented 50% cutback.

Marriott is installing water-efficient fixtures on faucets, showers and toilets that aren’t already equipped with low-flow devices. The hotel hopes to cut water use by 9 million gallons by replacing water-cooled ice machines with air-cooled machines. Kitchen helpers are “dry-scraping” dishes rather than rinsing them, and dishwashers are run only when full.

Across the county, other companies are also searching for ways to drastically cut water use. Some of the techniques are relatively easy and inexpensive, conservation experts said. But some companies will have to spend considerable time and money in order to meet anticipated cutbacks.

The San Diego County Water Authority soon will hold water conservation workshops for industrial and commercial water users. And the water authority hopes to form “audit teams” that will conduct on-site inspections at businesses that are struggling to meet the drastic cutbacks.

Marriott, like other companies in San Diego, responded to the water cutbacks by forming a water-conservation squad. Paul Filla, director of engineering at the bayfront Marriott, promptly targeted water use in the hotel guest rooms and restaurants, which were responsible for 65% of the hotel’s water use, which totaled about 9 million gallons in January.

The ubiquitous water pitcher and four glasses that typically sit on hotel meeting room tables are being replaced by centrally located water stations. The rationale: Most of the water at meetings is wasted, and glasses, even those that are not used, must be washed.

Marriott also is “re-educating housekeepers on how to approach cleaning by using less water,” Filla said. Senior housekeepers, for example, will no longer flush toilets during room inspections, a move that will cut water consumption by as much as 1 million gallons each year.

Throughout San Diego, companies are “really scrambling” to find ways to cut water use, said Bill Jacoby, water resources supervisor for the San Diego County Water Authority. “But that’s not something that you do over the weekend, or in two days.”

At Pepsi Cola Bottling Co. of San Diego, management has been working on water conservation for more than two years. Pepsi will stop watering plants and grass, but most of its cuts have to come from the bottling process, which accounts for more than 98% of the water that Pepsi uses.

The bulk of Pepsi’s savings will come from a high-tech bottling line that eliminates the use of cooling water and a “backwash tank.”

“We’ll save hundreds of thousands of gallons because we can fill the cans (with warm beverages) rather than using cooling towers,” said Pepsi plant manager Mark Kimmel. The backwash tank allows employees to recycle thousands of additional gallons each week that previously were dumped down a sewer.

Northern Telecom Electronics, which manufactures semiconductors at its Rancho Bernardo plant, will use increased water reclamation to move toward a 50% cut in water consumption by the end of 1991, said Richard Sloan, the company’s chief engineer.

“The nature of this business is extremely water intensive,” said Sloan, whose facility uses an average of 147,000 gallons each business day. The plant, which incorporated water reclamation technology when it was built in 1980, now recycles half of the fresh water it uses. Process changes under way will reduce average daily consumption to about 80,000 gallons a day, Sloan said.

“We invested $150,000 in the third and fourth quarters (of 1990) to reclaim more process streams,” Sloan said. “This is all after two to three years of work . . . in this business you have to look ahead.”

Longer-range planning also played a role at San Diego-based Kelco, the city’s largest industrial water consumer which uses about 3 million gallons of water each business day to produce industrial thickening agents. Several years ago, company officials grew worried that water might not be available so the company began planning major changes in its processes, said spokesman Steve Zapoticzny.

The company has spent more than $1 million on process changes that will increase the amount of reclaimed water that is used. Zapoticzny said the company expects to reduce water consumption by nearly 30% during March.

Scripps Clinic & Research Institution has hired a Northern California water conservation consulting firm that has proposed a blend of low- and high-tech steps to cut water use by 2.5 million gallons (or 30%) a month, Scripps spokeswoman Sue Pondrom said.

Scripps’ water conservation committee has agreed to stop watering grassy areas on its heavily landscaped campus. The committee said that watering of bushes, trees and indoor plants is to be “severely restricted,” Pondrom said.

Pressure pumps are being installed in photo labs to cut use by 3 million gallons a year, and low-flow toilets and urinals are being installed in order to cut water use by another 10.3 million gallons.

Scientists at Scripps are “agonizing” over the possibility of being forced to mothball laboratory equipment that uses heavy amounts of water, said Dr. Ernest Beutler, chairman, of Scripps’ Department of Molecular & Experimental Medicine.

The clinic is shutting down a water-cooled compressor system that delivers compressed air to laboratories and replacing it with tanks of compressed air that “are more expensive and less convenient,” Beutler said.

Scripps might also purchase electric motors to replace water pumps that are used to create vacuums for experiments.

Although water conservation in laboratories is possible, “no one is providing us with extra money” to buy equipment, Beutler said. “That means we have to cut the amount of research . . . (conservation) is going to cost us, no question about it. There’s a limit to how much we can absorb.”