With all the hype on campus about being environmentally friendly, you would think the campus would be going green on the outside as well as on the inside.
Conserving water is a big part of helping the environment. We are often told to turn off the water while brushing our teeth or to turn the shower off while shampooing. The University has even installed water-saving automatic toilets and automatic faucets in some bathrooms. But what about saving water outside?
Yes, that means the sprinklers. You may not recognize them as such because they don’t quite sprinkle water. They are more like geysers spouting water. While the University has many trees and plants that need to be watered, these sprinklers water the sidewalk instead. Sidewalks aren’t living, and cement doesn’t need to be watered after it has completely dried.
It might be the students’ fault that the sprinkler heads have been kicked off so they spout instead of sprinkle, but shouldn’t the University be fixing that? The University spends so much money on planting trees and flowers and keeping the grounds neat, so why not fix the sprinklers? The flowers aren’t going to stay bright and alive if they don’t get watered and the sidewalk is only going to get flooded as it continues to get watered.
Another item related to the sprinklers topic is that they are often on when it is pouring rain. Rainwater isn’t dangerous. The plants will be fine if they drink rainwater as opposed to piped-in water. It’s a waste to have the sprinklers on when it is raining because when it rains here in the Northeast, it pours…and floods.
Yes, the sprinklers are probably set to a timed system which automatically shuts them off. Therefore, at some point, someone has to set that system-which means it can’t be too difficult for someone to shut the system off for one evening.
There’s no reason our campus’s many sprinklers shouldn’t be working properly. Spouting sprinklers also make it difficult for pedestrians who weren’t planning on swimming across the sidewalk to get to class. So in continuing with its promise to go green, the University should consider conserving water by fixing the sprinklers and turning them off when its raining.