Tomorrow’s Advocates

Standing in front of classes filled with landscape architecture students is always an unpredictable proposition: You just never know what their young minds will bring to the education process, the only constant being that they’re always full of surprises.

Each and every time I’ve had the privilege of starting a new semester with a fresh group of students, however, it’s never long before one of them will ask me about how ecologically sound watershapes really are or can be.

Truth be told (and as you’ll see in what follows), this has become something of a sore subject for me. So when the question inevitably comes, I pause, ponder a bit and finally tell these eager young people that most watershapes have a relatively large carbon footprint – but, I hasten to add, “at least they use less water than irrigating a lawn of similar size.”

Their reaction to my response is always less than enthusiastic: I’m never surprised by their disappointment, but I must say that I’m a bit put off when they get openly hostile.

INGRAINED SKEPTICISM

One thing I’ve learned time and time again is that environmental concerns stand tall in the minds of these students – and it’s been that way for several years now.

In that time, I’ve also learned that they are angered when companies (some in the watershaping industry among them) bombard them with messages about how “green” their products are: They see right through the convenient labeling and know that many of these companies are doing nothing beyond cynically tying their marketing campaigns to an environmental star.

Unfortunately, in fact, these students are already seeing the term “green” as a near-meaningless cliché and greet this advertising with lots of skepticism. And I have to admit that I’ve come to agree with them in most ways.

My students see the need to preserve the environment as nothing less than a fundamental mandate and solemn commitment that defines both their personal lives and the way they want to approach their future careers. I find myself being inspired by their sincerity, passion and uncluttered idealism as I move forward in my own work in designing watershapes.

At the same time, I find myself wondering if the watershaping industry has even the slightest idea of what this clear-eyed (and ultra-hard-edged) attitude implies for the future of its products: It’s a universe in which lip service to the environment and fresh “green” labeling on the same old products just won’t cut it.

And all of this is happening against the backdrop of a marketplace that is pressing all of us in the design and building professions toward environmental soundness.

Over on the architecture side of things, for instance, today’s practitioners currently face tremendous pressure from end users to make their projects truly “green.” This is especially the case with commercial projects, where property owners and managers are after tax incentives in the form of the LEED points granted by the United States Green Building Council (USGBC).

LEED, which stands for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a system of assessment and certification that is already a hugely powerful tool in determining a site’s environmental and economic status. Talk about ingenuity: No matter whether or not commercial real estate developers care even slightly about the environment, they are all rabidly inspired by the idea of saving money on property taxes. Those properties earning LEED points, they know, receive substantial tax breaks.

The USGBC has declared its intention to have all new construction certified in this way, the goal being to reduce humankind’s imposition on the planet. And it seems this organization has the clout to do precisely that.

One of the most compelling beachheads for the program is the fact that every architecture and landscape architecture student in this country is being indoctrinated in the value and significance of the LEED system – the upshot being that all of their study projects reflect green building practices and that lots of their questions for their instructors pointedly pursue straight information about environmental performance.

PATHWAYS OF CONSUMPTION

In developing a curriculum for my students, I am and constantly forced to consider and address the relationship of watershaping to the environment. In all candor, I believe that the overall picture is currently rather bleak: Not quite hopeless, but not quite hopeful, either.

Professionals from a broad range of industries are now calculating how ecologically sound something is by tallying up British thermal units (Btus) to determine the total expenditure of the earth’s resources required for the implementation of a task or process. (We should all be familiar with Btus, which watershapers use to describe the output of a heater. That has changed, however, and now the term applies in a much broader context.)

With watershapes, these Btu evaluations consider the rate of consumption involved in the manufacturing and transporting of products; in the on-site activities related to product or system installation; and in the long-term operation and maintenance of the product or system. Obviously, this is a complex calculation, so for our purposes here, let’s do as I do in my classroom and break things down in simple, comprehensible ways:

[ ] Manufacturing and Transportation: Pumps, pipes and concrete are all made from raw materials extracted from the earth. Strip mines, for example, yield metals and minerals we use to make copper-based components such as heat exchangers or electronic controls.

Once these products are created and assembled, they are set atop rail cars or trucks and transported to distribution houses where they sit in air-conditioned facilities in anticipation of being loaded onto smaller vehicles for delivery to job sites.

All of this accumulation of consumption happens before we ever see these products, so the deck is pretty well stacked before we can do anything about it. Be that as it may, these objects are finally there for us to uncrate, after which the cardboard and polystyrene packaging is whisked away by yet another vehicle to a garbage dump.

[ ] Construction: Work trucks assemble each day in a parking lot, after which contractors and crews spill out onto roads and highways to tackle a day’s work.

Once on site, these people variously cut up and form lumber, pour concrete and release the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) of their PVC glues into the atmosphere. They also produce plenty of trash that fills dumpsters to the brim, then even more trucks will come and haul these bins to landfills, where eventually all of that material will be painstakingly buried by gas-guzzling machinery.

[ ] Operation: The expenditure of Btus continues – perhaps forever? – once the watershape is completed. The owner buys chlorine, operates the pumps, backwashes hazardous materials into the sewer system and adds potable water to the vessel to overcome evaporation and splash out.

I don’t need to attach a single number to this summary for just about anyone to recognize that watershapes, by the very nature of the processes with which they are produced and maintained, are not what could be called “a regenerative component in the consumption cycle.”

For all their inherent beauty and benefits, in other words, our products are net users of rather than net contributors to the environment. As a consequence, I believe – as do my students, who will be making decisions about what to include in their projects for generations to come – that our goal, now and immediately, should be to find and implement ways to minimize our Btu consumption and become LEED-points-worthy participants in the ecosphere.

NOT EASY BEING GREEN

Taking all of the above into consideration, I think it’s time for watershapers to start thinking about how we can all be far more responsible to the planet we occupy. This is not about tree hugging: This is about economic survival in a marketplace in which our output is on the wrong side of a massive, irresistible historical trend.

We must, in other words, do all we can to relieve the bleakness of our current environmental profile.

We need to start thinking deliberately about products and materials we use in our projects, reduce waste generation on our job sites and design systems that are more easily sustainable for the long haul. In short, we need to revamp the common watershaping ethos, stop making jokes about environmentalism at trade shows and, instead of talking a green game when it’s convenient, must start living the life and walking the walk.

In a recent column (April 2009), I wrote about how we need either to overhaul the watershaping industry or watch it die all around us and mentioned a couple of new concepts and green-leaning technologies we need to integrate into our collective design palette. If the pool industry in particular does not take this seriously and start addressing the trend toward energy efficiency and the growing demand among clients for us to reduce our carbon footprint, we will sit powerlessly as other industries pass us by.

Right now, many of the landscape architects among us are leading the charge for sound environmental practices and have been asking for quite some time why they’re being asked by the watershaping industry to use methods and materials that were introduced in the 1950s. As they seem it, simply putting a green-leaf symbol next to a new pump in a catalog does not make it green, and they are seriously questioning whether watershapes in general and pools and spas specifically will ever be environmentally sound enough that they can be recommended as parts of projects.

It makes me think of all those U.S. automakers that ignored the green movement and left if to foreign companies to develop and market more fuel-efficient cars and trucks. The Toyotas of the world are enjoying quite a ride now at the expense of pillars of the American economy such as General Motors, which kept making bigger and more powerful vehicles at a time when gas was getting more expensive and global warming was in the headlines on a daily basis.

It’s a case study that should teach us something.

We need to open our eyes, pick up the pace and step into line with modern times. The era of consumption at will is gone: Ecological responsibility is now the dominant (and probably permanent) design criterion and will only become even more significant as time passes.

THE GREEN MACHINE

So how do we shape water in planet-friendly ways? As I see it, watching our consumption of Btus is the starting place in identifying what we need to do to become more responsible.

To start with, careful designs save energy:

[ ] Hydraulic systems that move water at four feet per second, for example, use less electricity than those that do so at ten feet per second – an indisputable fact. This means using big pipes, but it also means using smaller pumps because it takes less force to push the same volume of water through a larger diameter. So in a more important sense, hydraulic efficiency translates to lower energy consumption.

[ ] Careful design also means a clear-eyed evaluation of filtration technology: Cartridge systems waste less water than sand systems – and both of those options are easier on the environment than diatomaceous-earth systems, the cleaning of which involves the disposal of a distinctly hazardous material.

[ ] Among other things, I’m also now an advocate of using simple water effects rather than big waterfalls and other large water displays. Not only do these smaller-scale systems reduce evaporative losses, but they can be more aesthetically pleasing as well.

[ ] Then there’s chlorine in its various forms. Calcium hypochlorite, for example, is flat-out dangerous (it can explode when improperly mixed with water) but is still commonly used along with a range of other shotgun-method sanitizers. As an alternative, there are a number of effective saltwater chlorine generators as well as a long list of other, more efficient methods of delivering oxidizing agents to water.

In addition to the obvious points listed above, we should also focus on the materials and products we use around watershapes to make things greener. Besides an obvious decision to use non-endangered, renewable wood species, for example, it’s also a good idea to investigate use of recycled wood and plastic products. The use of recycled concrete is another possibility.

I’ve already written at length about using variable-speed pumps, LED lighting and the abovementioned salt-chlorine generators, and it’s my belief that using these products every time we shape water will make a difference not only in the project at hand but also by inspiring other watershapers and suppliers to follow suit. The key is to work with less environmentally abusive materials and products and to select only those that reduce our work’s detrimental environmental effects.

In building, there are additional choices to be made that influence site conditions and pollution-causing activities – and some of them simply make sense, such as setting up carpools to get crews to job sites, minimizing trips off site through careful planning and combining visits to various suppliers into multi-stop runs. These are all about lowering emissions and reducing the carbon footprint, and everything counts!

As much as we can, my crews and I are also preassembling products and features in our shop: No vehicles are used, needed materials and tools are close at hand and it’s also easier to consolidate recyclables (including packing materials) for efficient processing. These measures may seem insignificant, but every one of them helps the planet.

FINDING A DIRECTION

Also of significance in the environmental impact our products have is how they perform once installation is done and we leave the job site.

If a watershape is poorly designed and installed, there’s little anyone can do to redeem it short of pulling it out and replacing it. But even some worthy projects are undone after the fact by careless owners or poorly informed service technicians. I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve visited past projects and discovered that ozone systems or UV sterilizers or chlorine generators have been disabled by a pool operator or technician who preferred working with liquid chlorine.

I blame education (or a lack of it) for such actions, but I also lay the charge at the feet of facility managers and homeowners who don’t take ongoing, active interest in seeing to the use of products and systems intended to make their watershapes greener.

If I sound discouraged, it’s only because of what I have observed in the recent history of an industry with which I’ve been involved for a very long time. Every landscape architect and most landscape designers know all about the LEED program, but I’m convinced that relatively few pool designers and builders do. Architects live by this point system, while so far as I can tell, precious few watershapers even know it exists!

If I have a hope in all of this, it’s that a few watershapers I’ve encountered are paying attention and spending the time required to understand what this is all about. More of us need to bend in this green direction, and those who do – watershapers and suppliers alike – need our support and encouragement.

We all need to pay attention to this trend and watch how it unfolds in industries remote from but related to ours: They are blazing trails that will make it easier for us to follow, and we also need to recognize that there’s a whole new generation of potential watershapers who are being taught to embrace these principles and won’t be shy about pushing those who don’t get in line completely off the path.

This is no time to bury our heads in the sand. If freshman landscape architecture students are already aware of the magnitude of this trend, I for one am inclined to listen to what they have to say. They may be just 18 or 19 years old, but they see what’s coming: From their perspective, we who’ve been in the business a while are part of watershaping’s past: They are pursuing its future.

Talking green is easy, as we should all know by now. Living and working that way will eventually be painless, but getting there will require us to relearn processes, rethink purchasing habits and retrain our crews and subcontractors. And if you’re harboring thoughts that you can coast into the future doing things the same old way, think again: Our clients and a whole array of government agencies are coming close to insisting that we rise to a new level without delay.

If we are already prepared for the change when that moment comes, it will be far easier to profit from this new working environment in the future.

Mark Holden is a landscape architect and a landscape and pool contractor specializing in watershapes and their environments. He has been designing and building watershapes for nearly two decades, and his firm, Holdenwater of Fullerton, Calif., assists other professionals with their projects. He is also an instructor for the Genesis 3 schools and at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona. He can be contacted at [email protected].