Leveraging Water to Reduce Student Enrollment Just Bad Policy

It has been suggested that the City of Santa Cruz limit the "water footprint" at UCSC as part of a policy to ensure sustainable growth with respect to the number of new students the university accepts for enrollment each year. This coming year, the university will increase enrollment by 650 students and while that seems like a significant number which might well place added pressure on the city's ability to provide fresh water, that number does not accurately reflect the relationship between growth and water use which seems at the heart of the above-described position.

Any analysis of the issue must start with the understanding that UC Santa Cruz is the city's biggest water customer consuming between 150 and 200 million gallons annually over the past two plus decades. That represents about 6 percent of the total Santa Cruz Water Department service area demand. But not only is our university the biggest customer, they are also among the most responsible. During the recent (and to a large extent ongoing) drought, the campus cut water use by 27 percent, exceeding the city's Stage 3 Water Emergency reduction goal of 25 percent.

In point of fact, campus water use per capita has declined for more than a decade. The campus baseline use - a three-year average from fiscal years 2003-2005 - is 14,200 gallons per person a year. In fiscal year 2012, the campus used 9,100 gallons per person, a 36 percent reduction from the baseline. Today's per capita use is at about 8,400 gallons per year, a 40 percent decline from the baseline. And more relevantly, total annual campus water use is 20 million gallons less than 20 years ago, even though campus population has grown.

Last year our local institution of higher learning provided a quality education to more that 17,000 students, a fact of which we, as a community, should be immensely proud. In light of the university's good faith and measurably successful efforts to be a good water partner now and in the future, enrollment growth of less that 4% should not be the basis for a policy that not only endangers a mutually beneficial partnership, but also reduces the opportunity for a quality education and the social advancement that it can bring.