Efficiency Practices At UConn

I do believe this is my first post concerning my home-away-from-home.

Efficiency at UConn. Let me first state that the preceding statement is a total oxymoron. I have never in my life seen poorer standards for conservation of resources. I'll start with water, since the school managed to recently dry up a river, then move to heating, since that is of the most concern to me right now (it being very cold outside).

Not long after school started, students recieved an email from the university pleading with them to conserve water, since the nearby Fenton river had recently been run dry by a combination of drought and UConn's increased pumping of it. A few days later, we recieved a congratulatory email saying that the school had cut 150,000 gallons of water usage from its peak daily total of over two million gallons. That's something to be commended, for sure.

The problem is that most of the cutback came from the university itself, not the student body, and I was unable to notice a single thing that was different. In the email, they claimed to only water the atheletic fields at half capacity, and to put off washing university vehicles. What disturbs me is that they were able to cut out 150,000 gallons of water usage, daily, without any noticeable side effects. Usage was just that wasteful in the first place. The university's long term solution is to upgrade it's pumps on the Willimantic river, which can handle larger demands than the Fenton. Furthermore, water usage will increase in the coming years with the further additions that UConn has planned, most notably the Mansfield Downtown project, which, according to blueprints, will add nothing to the water demand, though it will have a plethora of water fountains, bathrooms, and other water-usage facilities.

The problem with the heating, at least in the dorms, is that the system is so old it is unable to fulfill it's function effectively. There is no control system on the heaters in our rooms, only a dubious knob that seems to have little effect on the volume of air coming out. There is no temperature control, or, more importantly, shutoff. The air coming out is exceedingly hot, which forces all the rooms to open their windows to alleviate the heat. Therefore, the university has succeeded in violating the number one rule of air temperature control: "Don't try to air-condition (or, in this case, heat) the outdoors."

If the university would spend a few million dollars renovating the system to be more efficient, millions of dollars (of taxpayer and student money) could be saved each year on wasted heating. Even something so simple as allowing individual rooms to shut off and turn on the heat at their discretion could serve the purpose adequately. Instead, the university presses ahead with new projects aimed at expanding the college's prestige and image, deferring what should be routine maintenance until later and putting off renovations indefinitely. Recently, the heater in the Arjona building broke. What should be a routine repair will instead take three weeks because the system is so old the parts have to be found, not ordered.

It is essential that government institutions conserve resources, especially when the amount of resources is tremendous, as is the case with UConn. Energy efficiency is seven times as effective per dollar as the construction of new power plants, yet the government presses ahead with a two-pronged offensive: Urging consumers to conserve (government hypocrisy in action, once again) and building over 200 new nuclear power plants. It is absurd that a power-generation system proven unsafe nearly twenty years ago at Chernoybl would be viewed by the administration as the power source of the future. If public institutions would lead the way in conservation, we would not need to build these time bombs.