Rainwater Harvesting at Universities. Case study: Valle de las Palmas

Abstract

Rainwater harvesting systems have become a necessary strategy in universities to reduce water consumption and to achieve efficient use of water resources, particularly in semi-arid areas, where the use of these systems is ideal and innovative for sustainable water management. However, the design and implementation of these systems needs to be well planned and cost-effective as well as compliant of the needs of the specific college campus. This work proposes to implement this technology for the design of a rainwater harvesting system at the Valle de las Palmas academic unit: the Faculty of Engineering and Technology Sciences (FCITEC), in order to take advantage of the area’s Winter rainfall, and to be used on the landscape areas of the campus. There is evidence that certain universities have obtained significant savings and a decreasing demand for water from their municipal hydraulic networks, such as the Federal University of Pará, in Japan and the Federal University of Viçosa in Brazil. The FCITEC is located in the municipality of Tijuana, Baja California; a region considered as semi-arid, with long drought periods, high temperatures and a short season of Winter rainfall. Baja California’s main source of water supply comes from the Colorado River, representing 80% of the state’s water supply while 20% comes from underground aquifers. Due to the limited rainfall in the Colorado River basin, water levels have dropped significantly in recent years, affecting the city of Tijuana since, during hot seasons, the public water system implemented rotation practices which provoked many neighborhoods to run out of water (including the FCITEC). Therefore, it is a priority to consider water collection systems to take advantage of winter rains as a sustainable and profitable short-term solution for water management in universities, thus reducing the demand for consumption from the water supply network and contributing to the environmental sustainability of water resources.