In response to California’s drought emergency, OVS has put in place a series of measures aimed at reducing its water usage by 25% while modeling water conservation efforts community wide.
At both the Upper and Lower campuses, maintenance workers have installed flow timers on the sprinkler heads at the arenas, and attached satellite-based weather monitors to the OVS irrigation systems.
“For the past three years we’ve been installing low flow toilets and water heads,” said Mac Lojowski, director of facilities and grounds. “We’ve been focusing indoors. Now, our focus is outdoors.”
Governor Brown asked for a 20% reduction of water usage, but OVS plans on doing better than that. For the past two years, California has been in the midst of a drought that has left many of the reservoirs depleted. In some small towns, there is an estimated months’ worth of water left. The Casitas Springs Reservoir is estimated to be about 30% full.
Until the recent rain that passed through about a month ago, this was considered the worst drought California has ever seen. Now, it is ranked third, with an expected three months of continued dry weather.
“Everybody at OVS needs to be aware that they are responsible for conserving water,” Environmental Science teacher John Wickenhaeuser said. “Whether it’s a student, a faculty member, an administrator, or a day student at home — wherever they are, all of us need to be really careful about how much water we’re using.”
Irrigation is the main source of water usage at OVS.
Over the past three years, maintenance workers have been planting native drought tolerant plants, such as rosemary, sage, and lavender, and will continue to do so. Additionally, they have been mulching everything, making reductions on the plumbing system, such as low-flow water heads and toilets, and raising awareness of the water emergency.
The Lower riding arena uses 1.5 million gallons of water a year, while the Upper arena uses 865,000 gallons a year. With the installation of the flow timers, maintenance workers hope to decrease that amount by as much as 50%.
The flow timers on the sprinkler heads at both campuses are designed to allow the equestrian coaches to determine how many gallons they wish to expend on watering the arena. Once that amount of water has been used, the sprinklers automatically turn off.
The satellite based weather monitors installed on the fields at both campuses monitor the amount of precipitation in the air, and automatically adjusts the amount of water used to irrigate the fields accordingly. They also cut the water use from three to two days a week, and reduce the overall water usage on the fields by 33.333%.
With those improvements in place, Mr. Lojowski said OVS will reach its goal of conserving their water usage by 25%, if not exceed it.
“As far as the Ojai Valley goes, OVS is leading the way in water conservation,” Mr. Lojowski said. “We are an example to neighboring schools in our community.”