Poway Unified School District coping with water conservation demands

The drought and its new restrictions are raising challenges for everyone in the San Diego area, and the Poway Unified School District isn’t excluded.

The sprawling district faces more of a challenge than most, having to look at reducing water on 39 campuses, and juggling two different sets of water restrictions — San Diego and Poway.

Its 4S Ranch campuses are irrigated with reclaimed water. That community is served by the Olivenhain Municipal Water District.

Trying to reduce water usage is nothing new to the district. In fact, PUSD has been working to save water for several years now.

“About four or five years ago, we were in a Level 2 drought, with water use restrictions and days and times we were allowed to water,” said Mike Tarantino, the director of facilities, maintenance and operations for PUSD.

“We saved about 15 percent at that time. When the drought restrictions were lifted, we never went back to our nasty old habits. The only time we increased our watering schedule was during hot periods.”

Tarantino now faces a new challenge: reducing the district’s already reduced water usage 32 percent in Poway and 16 percent in San Diego. Doing so will require some tough choices, said Tarantino.

“I know we live in a desert,” said Tarantino. “We started being very wise during the modernization of (school) sites, taking out grass areas and putting in concrete, planting areas and artificial turf. With the drought restrictions that have gone out to Poway residents, it’s going to be very tough to keep turf alive.”

Tarantino said that the City of Poway has told him they want the sports fields at the schools kept alive, so while the district isn’t strictly held to the day and time watering restrictions, they still have to reduce their water usage in Poway by 32 percent.

Tarantino said the district has reduced its watering down to 75 percent of the estimated optimal watering requirement for turf, three days a week. For non-essential turf areas, Tarantino has ordered watering to be done at 50 percent two days a week.

The district is also working to reduce water runoff through aerations and multiple watering start times (for example, watering for 15 minutes twice a day, rather than 30 minutes once a day, which gives the soil more of a chance to absorb the water).

Tarantino said he has tasked his crew with coming up with a list of projects that could be done at each school site to eliminate non-essential turf, where artificial turf or planting areas with mulch could be put in instead. “It’s nice to have turf, and it’s pretty, but folks, we live in a desert,” said Tarantino. “There’s a whole gamut of things we need to look at, implement and get going.”

An example of the water-saving implementations the district could undertake is Design 39 Campus, the district’s newest school. It was designed to be water-efficient, with planting beds with bio-soil, artificial turf, Bermuda grass and other drought-resistant landscaping choices. While technically feasible, converting other school sites to bio-soil, which is made up of layers of gravel that purifies water runoff and prevents it from being wasted, it would be a major undertaking, said Tarantino.

Tarantino said he and his crew were also looking at the district’s central irrigation system, which controls the irrigation for all school sites, and seeing if they could make any improvements to make it more efficient. Tarantino said it will probably be several months to see if the changes he and the district are implementing will work. “If they do, we’re in better shape than I thought,” said Tarantino. “It’s going to be an interesting time.”

There are also several San Diego school sites that are near reclaimed water lines, said Tarantino, and he is looking into seeing if they could find the funds to hook the sites up. “There are grants (for this purpose) but we need the money up front. We did one site three years ago, and we’re still waiting for the $20,000 grant for that. It will be tougher to (hook up the sites to reclaimed water), but we’re going to look at those options.”