Water Champions Program Helps Schools Conserve

How can communities partner with schools to conserve water? Better yet, can we train students to be changemakers in their own schools, giving them both the technical and community engagement experience to quantify water usage, make recommendations, and engage the school board and their fellow students?

Most South Jersey residents do not know that the aquifer from which we get our drinking water is currently in a deficit, having more water taken out than is being put back in through the rain. Coastal communities have an additional danger, wherein saltwater fills the void left by this aquifer overdraw, a process known as saltwater intrusion.

By teaching students about the issues facing our local water supply and the various ways in which we could make changes to conserve water, students can be inspired to make changes in their own lives, in their school, and in their community. American Littoral Society has been working with schools in the region to help create Water Champions of students and staff.

Audits Help Students Set Priorities

Through the Water Champions program, students are given this information and walked through the process of doing water audits of their own homes, their school, and local businesses. These audits involve doing an inventory of all of the water using fixtures, the rate at which they use water, and how often they are used. By gathering this data, they can identify areas of improvement, either through technology upgrades or behavioral changes. For example, schools may have older, less efficient bathroom or kitchen fixtures that could be updated to modern, WaterSense-certified fixtures. Through grant money provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, schools and local businesses can fund some of the upgrades identified by the students as having the greatest potential impact on water conservation.

Through the Littoral Society’s Water Champions program in Ocean City, students at the High School decided that the Intermediate School had the greater potential, being older and with less efficient fixtures than the High School, identified the most frequently used restrooms, and grant money was used to give high efficiency fixtures to the identified boys and girls restrooms. In Lower Cape May Regional High School, grant money will be used to update their most frequently used restrooms, and thanks to the efforts of the students the school board decided that the most efficient thing to do would be to update all of the restrooms in the whole district while they are at it this summer!

Sustainable Jersey Green Teams can get credit through this and other water conservation education programs through this action: