Green Seed Fund Project

In the 2009 Climate Action Plan, the University’s vision was broken into five issues known as the grand challenges. This project falls under the final goal of maintaining and building infrastructure and facilities “to insure the highest level of integrity, compliance and stewardship.” More specifically, this project aims to reduce the amount water purchased by the University of Washington by using rainwater harvest to supply irrigation water. Furthermore by capturing rainwater in a cistern and using it for irrigation purposes, this project reduces the amount of water being discharged into Lake Washington.

Proposal Objective (1): Remotely monitor the quantity and quality of rainwater collected in the cistern and soil moisture to allow for continuous data and more accurate representations of the quantity and quality of rainwater resources.

This objective is designed for Objective 3 (O3) of the Environmental Stewardship & Stewardship Office Strategy Map for 2013-2016 that aims to improve operational performance through measuring and monitoring performance.

Proposal Objective (2): Create an empirical model and design recommendations for rainwater supplied irrigation control systems that can be implement across the UW campus.

This object is aimed to reduce the amount of potable water purchased by UW as well as reduce the amount of untreated water following into Lake Washington through the storm drains.

Irrigation water has a major impact on the amount of water used on the UW Seattle Campus. The Each summer water usage spikes due to the increased amounts of irrigation. Husky Sustainable Storms and other initiatives around campus have proven that stormwater is a problem if not properly treated particularly at the University of Washington where stormwater drains are piped directly to Lake Washington. The intent of this study is to collect data from which an empirical model and detailed design recommendations can be made for larger projects or application on other areas of campus.