Southern Oregon University in Midst of Comprehensive Sustainability Plan - Students Tackle Water-savings from the Ground Up

By Julie French, Ashland Daily Tidings

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After piecing together sustainability efforts over the past several years, Southern Oregon University is putting a new comprehensive plan into place that includes partnering with several outside groups to make sustainability a core university value and become one of the most sustainable schools in the nation.

The school outlined a strategic plan last fall with the help of Dick Wanderscheid, director of electric utilities for Ashland. In addition to the city, SOU also plans to work with the Bonneville Power Administration, the Oregon Department of Energy and the Oregon University System, among others, to meet its goals.

SOU assigned Larry Blake, formerly the associate vice president for facilities management, to serve as the full-time director of campus planning and sustainability to lead efforts to reduce resource consumption and greenhouse gas production across campus operations, search for and employ innovative green technologies and revise curriculum to offer training in sustainable industries. The program is designed as a pilot whose results — both the effectiveness of new technology and changed behavior of faculty and students — can be studied by the academic side of the university and potentially replicated around the Northwest.

The strategic plan also outlines goals such as boosting energy and water efficiency, promoting alternative transportation, increasing recycling and green purchasing, adding green design for new buildings, exploring sustainable food production and encouraging more sustainable lifestyle choices among students and staff. Green efforts can also be used to recruit environmentally-minded students, according to the plan.

The school has already taken steps such as installing solar panels on the library roof, adding more classes with a focus on sustainability and offsetting all greenhouse gas emissions by purchasing Green Tags from the Bonneville Environmental Foundation which fund development of alternative energies.

The university is also compiling a greenhouse gas inventory to pass along to the university system chancellor's office and is analyzing its water usage and preparing to install automated irrigation systems so lawns can be watered at night when less water is lost to evaporation, he said.

The next big step in the process is an audit by Bonneville to determine what resources the university currently uses, including electricity and natural gas, Blake said.

"We're hoping the energy audit will provide more direction," he said.

By partnering with Bonneville, the university will also be able to take advantage of their expertise and try new technologies that so far have not been used on college campuses, he said.

Wanderscheid is helping to facilitate the relationship between the university and Bonneville as part of ongoing efforts to conserve throughout the city, he said.

"We've done lots of things with the university over the years," he said, naming examples such as lighting retrofits, water-saving measures in housing facilities and recycling initiatives. "We've worked with them for many, many years, but this is more of a comprehensive refocusing on the university that has never happened on a large scale like this."

Even projects that aren't directly related to electricity are still beneficial to the city, he said. Encouraging students to take alternate modes of transportation, for example, will help with congestion and parking throughout the city.

"Trying to make the university more sustainable in all of the things that they and their students and faculty do, it's much bigger than just the city, and it's much bigger than energy conservation," he said. "It's the whole gamut, but the city can benefit by helping them."

SOU Students Tackle Water-savings from the Ground Up

By John Darling, The Mail Tribune

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With students taking the lead in research and planning, Southern Oregon University is starting a project to replace lawns with drought-tolerant and native plants that require 50 to 75 percent less water.

"Way too much water is being applied and there's excessive runoff," said SOU's new landscape supervisor, Kathi Sheehan. "We have to be cognizant of native soil and plants in this semi-arid region."

The plan, a capstone project of five seniors in Environmental Studies, was presented to the SOU Sustainability Council a few weeks ago. The council's chairman, Jon Eldridge, vice president for student affairs, said the strategy will go forward.

"It's great when students take the lead in research to make changes on campus that make for a smaller environmental footprint," Eldridge said.   SOU already has some xeriscaping (areas that use very little water) by Hannon Library, Central Hall and the Science Building, but the ongoing student project will plant in front of Cascade Hall, with hopes of steadily expanding as new generations of students take it on, said professor Eric Dittmer of Environmental Sciences.

SOU sits on a slope and releases much runoff water that contains chemicals, which ends up in North Mountain Park and Bear Creek, where it exacerbates water-temperature problems in the stream, said Dittmer.

Xeriscaping and reduced watering results in less-compacted soil, less runoff, and more water percolating through the ground to Bear Creek, said Environmental Studies senior Braxton Reed, demonstrating the proposed xeriscaping plot by Cascade Hall. The area is too steep for easy mowing or relaxation.

Eldridge said the heavily watered campus is not using, wasting or spending a lot of money on city water, because it gets almost all of its water from Talent Irrigation Ditch.

"It's there for us, whether we use it or not," he added, but "our grounds folks are eager to work with students to xeriscape and reduce our consumption."

Sheehan, who has degrees in environmental landscaping, said she's launching a project to measure and more appropriately meter water use based on humidity and temperature, and to augment grass with xeriscaping that is sensitive to the environment.

The expanses of SOU's lawn serve a positive function, she noted, because it keeps down dust, cools the campus and allows evapotranspiration through plants into the clouds.

The landscapers will install native plants and some from the Mediterranean region, which is much like the Rogue Valley, said Reed. Interpretive signs will be placed to educate students and encourage student work in real-world projects.

When the current project is finished, Reed said he's got another one in mind. SOU has a lot of groundwater and streams that got buried during campus building years, and he'd like to see those brought back to daylight and used.

Dittmer said a big, grassy quad is a positive recruitment tool for new students, but he'd like to see it eventually filled with a solar array that tracks the sun all day.