T he hottest thing in water savings turns out to be the coolest thing of all. Businesses and buildings with cooling needs (think office air conditioning, industrial processes and power generation) can cut water costs by 40 percent by outfitting cooling towers with a new conductivity controller.

For those unfamiliar with such things, cooling towers are common in manufacturing facilities and office buildings, and use flowing water to attract and remove heat from the air conditioning or processing system. Standing all of 6 inches high, the conductivity controllers serve as water quality watchdogs, removing impurities (or dissolved solids) so that the water can be used again rather than flushed away after one use.

The controller is just one of many items offered through Metropolitan’s Save-A-Buck program, which rewards commercial property owners for replacing high-water using devices with more efficient models.

Consider the case of General Atomics, a nuclear research/consulting firm with more than a million square feet of buildings to keep cool on 50 acres near La Jolla.

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“Our controllers were antiquated,” GA construction manager Steve Bickett said. “Even worse, we didn’t have two of the same kind. We had to train operators on how to use 14 different models.” In some cases, when someone retired, the company lost the one person who knew how to operate that particular device.

“We needed to upgrade to one consistent controller,” Bickett said.

Steve Mayer, a chemical consultant working with GA, recommended replacing the controllers through the voucher program offered by San Diego County Water Authority and the Metropolitan Water District.

Bickett sold his boss on the idea, because the voucher program would cover two-thirds of the cost. That was three years ago, and water savings isn’t the only benefit. “We’ve also seen reduced downtime for cooling tower and HVAC maintenance,” Bickett said, “and it has made my job a lot easier.”

Hollywood Saves
General Atomics knew it needed to make a change. But at the Guest House Inn in Hollywood, Hargovin Desai didn’t know that saving water could be a gold mine.

Like most people, Desai hadn’t thought much about toilets unless they needed cleaning or repairing.

In contrast, Metropolitan’s Bill McDonnell has thought a lot about toilets, and can talk about the benefits of high efficiency and dual flush models like some men talk about classic cars and the 1947 World Series.

“Our focus is water efficiency, but most businesses owners are just doing what they do—running their business,” said McDonnell, who oversees Metropolitan’s commercial and industrial water conservation program. “So the chances of the hotel owner saying ‘Hey, I want to save water and cut a chunk out of my day to figure out how to do that,’ are not realistic.”

With population growth projections in this semi-arid region pointing to a possible strain on the limited water supplies, getting businesses like the Guest House Inn to conserve water is a priority.

Hotel manager Desai said installing 32 ultra-low-flush toilets netted him a $3,840 rebate, but even more impressive was the savings he saw on his water and sewer bill.

“I probably wouldn’t have switched toilets without the rebate, but the rebate program has helped my business save more than $1,000 per month,” he said. “I must have been wasting a lot of water.”

The largest customers of the Save-A-Buck program are schools, universities, Laundromats and hotels, where business owners can incorporate the switchover of appliances during routine upgrades.

“If they are going to buy new toilets for the hotel and upgrade the equipment, we tell them, ‘why not go the extra step and buy the one-gallon or dual-flush toilet,’” McDonnell said. “The rebate for a high-efficiency toilet easily makes up the difference between the standard model and the high-efficiency one. We tell them: ‘we’ll help you go to the next level.’”
For more information about the program, check out www.mwdsaveabuck.com.

Here are more ways to save water made easy.

Since 2002, Metropolitan's Save-A-Buck program has provided information about water-saving technologies, and provided financial incentives for commercial toilets, cooling towers, water-pressurized brooms, re-circulating X-ray machines, commercial toilets and high-efficiency clothes washers. Rebates range from $60 for each pre-1992 water-guzzling toilet to $500 per cooling tower conductivity controller replaced or installed. More than $4.5 million has been spent so far, saving an estimated 23,230 acre-feet of water. An acre-foot is 325,851 gallons of water – enough water to serve two Southern California households for a year.