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KN:
Hi everyone. My name’s Katie Newcomb, and I’m excited to
present this webinar today. The topic is ‘Water
Conservation, the Water Footprint Team, and the Status of
the Top Ten Actions Letter.’ Today we’ll be talking about
irrigation conservation, rainwater harvesting, water
efficiency measures, top ten actions results and tips for
success. And we’ll begin with an introduction to the Water
Footprint Team. So I’m happy to introduce Dan Golub, he’s a
biologist for the team’s enterprise unit in Pennsylvania,
and he’ll be giving you guys an introduction to the Water
Footprint Team. So Dan, whenever you’re ready.
DG:
All right, thanks. You can go ahead and move to the next
slide there. So, I’m going to talk a little bit about the
Sustainable Operations Collective Water Footprint Team. The
purpose as you can see on the slide is to provide a more
accurate estimate and account of water consumption
nationally. Currently we only pay for and meter some of our
water and the water that we report to USDA and then up to
CEQ and the Department of Energy are all based on the water
that we paid for. But we know that we have in some cases
some fairly large buildings that have their own wells that
may be metered but are not being paid for, and therefore
are not considered when we submit this estimate upwards to
[CUOCA]. So that’s a little bit about the state of our
estimate.
So for this team we’ve got three outcomes and corresponding
measures of success. First outcome is to develop a water
use estimation tool for these buildings that are supplied
by Forest Service-owned water systems, as opposed to
municipal systems. A couple years ago, Sarah Baker and I,
who we co-lead this Water Footprint Team, we have been
working on this water estimating tool for a couple of
years. About two years ago we got data from about 45
buildings that were 5,000 square feet and larger, that were
metered and on municipal systems, so we have good data for
those buildings. And the types of buildings spanned from
bunkhouses and offices to visitor centers, warehouses, and
whatever type of buildings we have that are over 5,000
square feet. I think in the end we got rid of warehouses
because I, there’s very little associated water use. But we
did have a couple of fire related units that we included in
there. So we used this data and determined what kind of
water saving measures they had in place, such as low flow
toilets or low flow faucets, or rain barrels, or any of the
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kind of water conservation measures that facility managers
and building managers can take. And we got full time
equivalents for the population of the building, water cost
and consumption, square footage of the building and
building type. And sort of separated everything out that
way and tried to develop sort of like a baseline use by
square feet, and then figure out which of the water
conservation measures were in place, and how much those
measures could eventually save.
But because we only had 46 buildings and we didn’t have all
data from all buildings, it, we just didn’t have enough
data to really make a tool that was robust that would
really reflect any real use by other people that are trying
to use this tool to estimate. So we have kind of a plan to
use data out of [INFRA] and data out of the National
Financial Center for a larger number of buildings, and to
get better estimates for these water conservation measures,
and take another go at this tool. I know last year, and
Sarah, if she were here, could probably talk with more
detail to this, but last year she did sort of iteration
number two of this tool, and it was a little more focused
and I think it, it was a little bit better but still not
what we wanted. So as outcome number one, we want to try to
tackle this water estimation tool and get something out
there for folks to use. It’s not perfect, because a lot of
times when things are based on population, the only way
that you can really show savings is by reducing the
population in the building. And so it’s not a very good way
to show the results of these efforts that we’ve been
making, agency wide. But maybe with the, with a better way
to get estimates out of the water conservation measures
that people implement, we can start seeing some results
that are not just based on employee populations, you know,
in order to show some real reduction.
All that said, there really is no substitute for getting a
meter reading. That’s really the best way to see how much
water has been used in an individual building. But
sometimes these buildings are fairly rural and you know,
may take a half day’s trip or more for someone to go out
and read this meter. So that’s not always feasible. So
having an estimation tool like this, we’re hoping may be
useful for folks out in the field.
Outcome number two is to have this outline put together of
a water consumption reduction strategy. And this will be
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very similar to this energy consumption reduction strategy
that we’ve been on, or that I’ve been working on with a
slightly different group, although there’s a lot of overlap
in the participants. And for the energy reduction strategy,
which this water strategy will reflect, we get [deputy]
areas together and figure out what outcomes we want, what
are the goals of the strategy; how, what individual actions
do we want to take to reduce consumption. And that’s sort
of just a brainstorming session where we come up with some
actions. After we get these actions together then we assign
deputy areas and staff areas within those deputy areas,
with individual names connected to them so that it’s very
clear who’s responsible for making sure these actions
happen. And then below the staff level we identify an
individual, and that ends up being someone like me, who is
kind of at the worker bee level, where we get these actions
sort of assigned according to, you know, the, what is our
subject matter of expertise, and as these actions are
implemented, the, it’s, the plan moves forward. And we’re
starting to see some movement with completion of some
actions on the energy plan and it seems to be working well.
So with luck the water consumption strategy will do the
same thing, and as some actions start being implemented we
can really start to make some strides in reducing water
consumption. And then the third outcome there is just to
coordinate with the communications team. That’s fairly self
explanatory. We just want to get these tools and the
strategy out to people so they can see what’s going on and,
you know, even provide some input if people are interested.
You can go ahead and go to the next slide. So this is, I
just wanted to show everybody the numbers that we’ve been
recording [up] in the past few years. This is water cost.
And so this is at a fairly accurate reflection of costs. I
don’t know where the ’07 numbers came from but I got the
numbers together for the 2010, ’11 and ’12. And you see
that there is an increase in consumption each year. It
should be said, though, that I cannot really vouch for the
accuracy of these numbers, because the invoices that come
in are, they can include everything that’s on a bill from a
municipality, in the cases where the water is from a
municipality. And so that can include trash, sewer charges,
administrative charges, as well as actual charges for water
consumption. And the way that, the way that the NFC system
works right now is that they get these invoices in, take
the entire cost of the invoice, don’t break it out by
water, trash, sewer, or whatever. And just apply a cost per
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unit factor to the number, and that’s how they report
consumption. So the costs do reflect the invoices, but the
invoices don’t show only water consumption. So you really
have to keep that in mind when you’re looking at these
numbers, because you know cost per gallon or, there are so
many things that can affect this number that really don’t
relate in any way to water consumption. But all that said,
again, this is what has been reported because this is the
best we’ve got at this point. Next slide please.
And so this is the agency-wide gross square footage of our
facilities that we’re reporting water usage for. That’s
relevant because we are ultimately judged on a water use
intensity number, which is gallons per gross square foot,
and so our, the gross square footage makes a big difference
in that. In 2007, USDA gave us the number for the Forest
Service but in the other years, ’10, ’11 and ’12, that
number came from Washington Office Engineering. And so in
2007 that number was a little bit higher and so the water
use intensity was kind of spread out a little thinner over,
over a larger number of gross square feet. But in ’10, ’11
and ’12 that number has stayed fairly consistent. So if you
go to the next slide, Katie, we can see that this water use
intensity was higher in ’07, which may have been due to
costs or, you know, again I’m not sure where that cost
number in ’07 came from. But ’10, ’11 and ’12 we’re seeing
that water use intensity increasing because of the cost
increase, while the gross square footage stayed consistent.
So that’s where things stand from, up to now. In about,
we’re thinking about five months or so, there’s a new
invoice management system that’s coming online where they
will have the ability to differentiate on those water bills
between actual water consumption and those other charges,
like administrative, trash and sewer, and others. And so in
the future, we, I think this gross square footage number is
pretty good. It’s pretty accurate. But our water costs and
with that cost per unit factor applied, therefore our
consumption, has been going up and we just don’t know how
to really interpret those numbers in the future, starting,
well, starting hopefully this year, we will be able to
really get I think a better picture of our actual water use
for those facilities where we are actually paying a metered
cost per gallon. And then with this estimation tool, if we
can get that fairly well put together and feel good about
the number of its outputting, we, I think, in just,
starting with this fiscal year onward, we should have a
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much more accurate picture of our water consumption. And
as, you know, if people do connect meters to some sort of a
web based system or if people are feeling compelled to go
out and read these metered systems that we’re not paying
for and we can actually get them real numbers, that’s only
going to help improve our estimates in the future. So it’s,
in the past we’re, I’m not real happy or confident with the
way that the numbers look, but from now on I think we’re
going to have a much, a much nicer picture. And we can
really make the more informed decisions about where and how
to implement some actions that are going to make a real
difference in our overall consumption.
And that’s it for me.
KN:
Great. Thanks so much, Dan. It’ll be exciting to see what
your team, how your team’s deliverables progress. So thanks
for your time.
DG:
Sure thing.
KN:
If you guys have questions for Dan, we’ll take questions
about halfway through and at the end of the webinar. So if
you have questions please just note them. You will have a
chance to ask those in a little bit.
Now I’d like to present our next speaker. It’s Michael
Alexander, the Assistant Forest Engineer at the Lake Tahoe
Basin Management Unit, and he’ll be talking about
irrigation conservation. So whenever you’re ready, Michael.
MA:
All right, well, thank you. I’m just going to present a
little information about one of our buildings here at the
Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit. It’s our supervisor’s
office, and it housed a good portion of our employees. If
you want to go to the next slide please. So the – our
supervisor’s office was constructed in 2003. The
consumption at our facility was primarily for the office
employees. There’s not a really large field contingent at
the office, it’s mostly the hundred or so employees that
use the break room and the occasional shower. And also the
irrigation at the facility. Beginning in about 2008, about
five years after construction, the irrigation in the
parking lot and around the grounds began to deteriorate and
become more prone to leaks, although the leaks that were
observed generally weren’t that alarming. They were at
times of course spraying into the air, and those are the
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types of leaks that we were able to respond to quickly. But
it generally was just deteriorating, even after only five
years. Next slide, please.
So we fortunately are metered at the building and by the
utility district, and so we were able to track with the
meter water consumption. And generally we observed
obviously that in the summer the consumption was getting
worse and worse each year, so in 2008, in the summer, we
were using on average 33 gallons per person per day. In
2009 that jumped up to 47. And in 2010 it became 143
gallons per person per day of occupying the building. So
obviously during the winter and spring and fall the
consumption was, was much lower. And so if you go on to the
next slide. We looked into the Federal Energy Management
Program Water Use indices and they suggest that at an
office facility we should be consuming approximately 15
gallons per person per day. That’s not to be confused with
say residential consumption, when people are at their
homes. Those are usually in 150 to 200 gallons per person
per day, but just the consumption in the office should be
in the 15 gallons per day, per person, which is similar to
what we had been metering in the off season.
It’s pretty obvious to us that it was our irrigation system
that was contributing to the, essentially the wasting of
water, as it become, as it became deteriorated and exceeded
its useful life. So in 2011 we simply didn’t turn the
irrigation system on during the summer. And if you go to
the next slide, this shows our water consumption in the
summer of 2011, in 2012 it essentially eliminated the
wasted water. We went down to around 13 gallons per person
per day, or 11 per person per day during the summer of 2011
and ’12. So we’re in line with what we’d expect to consume
at a facility such as this. Do you want to go to the next
slide?
So because of this, because of our shutting off the
irrigation at our supervisor’s office, we’re now consuming
approximately 250,000 gallons less per month during the
summer season, and this translates to a savings to the
agency of approximately $2,000 per year, compared to the
consumption in 2010. Since this time we have not irrigated
landscaping at many of our administrative facilities.
There’s a few sites that have a small lawn. But we’ve
generally been just irrigating less and less. Vegetation
here at the supervisor’s office responded accordingly, and
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some plants died, some trees died. But generally the plants
that were able to sustain their existence without
irrigation, they’re doing just fine. Next slide.
So we look at our other sites and how do we know when we
have a water leak at an underground water system? We got a
picture of one of our sites, one of our employees that
helped us shut off a leaking system that it, that took
place in the middle of the winter. We would have no idea
that this leak occurred other than it was enormous. So I
don’t know how much water was lost during this leak. Some
of the other leaks are much more subtle. But whenever you
see ponded water on the surface, or enormous amounts of
water flowing on the surface, there’s a pretty good chance
that there’s either a leak or it’s a natural seep. But
these are in locations in Tahoe where we would never expect
to see seeps such as this. So these are a couple pictures
of real obvious underground water pipe leaks. If you go to
the next slide, please.
So here’s a couple pictures of less obvious. The one on the
right, on asphalt, was just a small amount of ponding on
the surface of the asphalt. And it was from a one inch
split, and the water loss was tremendous, but the soils
were so porous that the, it took a very long time for this
leak to make its way to the surface. Another picture here
on the left, with a corroded pipe. There was water visible
at the surface, but it was more the fact that there was
lush vegetation in a location we wouldn’t expect to see any
vegetation, it really clued us in to the fact there was a
leak. And this is a four inch pipe, and the hole in the
pipe was a little bit smaller than a dime. But the pressure
was probably 80 pounds per square inch. And so the amount
of water that could leak through that, 24 hours a day,
seven days a week, 365 days a year, is considerable. So
next slide please.
So this is my last slide. Some of the conclusions that we
have come up with is that most water leaks here on our unit
are generally related to irrigation systems. They are not
necessarily installed to the same standards as a drinking
water system: they’re close to the surface, they’re more
susceptible to freezing, they’re more susceptible to
breakage, and really they’re not a priority for
maintenance. So too often they become neglected and a
source of leaks. The other obvious source of leaks are old
water systems that are beyond their service life. Old
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system that are either corroded, were not necessarily
installed properly, to have enough clearance to the ground,
so they might be disturbed from trail construction activity
or other issues. And what we’ve been doing is trying to
identify the leaks and one measure is to have meters
installed. And of course a meter that’s installed doesn’t
do you any good if you’re not able to read it. And it’s
very time consuming to travel around and record the meters.
But at our larger sites we’ve been doing that at least once
or twice a year, and more frequently helps identify either
leaks or perhaps some uses that aren’t very efficient. And
of course if anybody were to, we had several times when the
public comes to us and says wow, we see this ginormous
amount of water flowing from your water tank, or from a
faucet that’s broken, or even the small leaks. We see that
ourselves, our maintenance staff or the public points that
out to us, and either just ponding on the surface, flowing
water, or like I said unusual vegetation really keys us in
to water leaks.
But that’s pretty much all I had. If there’s any questions
we can either take them now or later.
KN:
Great. Thanks, Michael. That’s a great example of a way to
significantly reduce your water use. And I think we have
time for just a couple questions, so if you guys press *1
on your phones, if you have questions for either Dan or
Michael, or you can type into the notes as Melanie
explained at the beginning. But we probably just have time
for one or two questions. And Melanie, it looks like
there’s one over the phone?
MOD: Yep, I will unmute that line.
LP:
This is Lara Polansky, National Sus Ops Program Manager.
This question is for Michael. What a fantastic case study.
And I’m so glad to see this project out of Region 5, which
is my home region when I’m not on detail. The question I
had really it’s mostly to some [UNINT} efforts that I’ve
seen related to their scaping. Do you have any concept of
the return on investment one might get from investing in
xeriscaping, such that irrigation is not needed. We’ve seen
an example of $2,000 per year savings compared to before
the irrigation was shut off. But xeriscaping of course is a
cost as well. Any idea of what that return on investment
might be?
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MA:
Well, yeah, it’s, it’s hard to say because at some of our
sites we have well water, and the only, really the savings
is pretty small because you’re just talking about the
energy to pump the water. Here we’re on a utility district
and the cost per gallon is considerable. So I think one
you’d have to really look for the cost. You’d have to look
at, if you’re, you know, what your, what your cost is per
gallon. But also I guess to go beyond this is that if we
really are trying to just conserve water that, it might be
cheaper to pay for the leak rather than to go through and
replace water systems. I know that’s kind of a pessimistic
approach, but some of these water systems that we’re
operating are forty to fifty years old, and the replacement
value is millions of dollars. Unfortunately it’s probably
cheaper just to be paying for more water as it leaks into
the ground, but that’s not at all what we’re trying to do.
So as far as the irrigation goes, I think it’s a nice
thing, it’s not necessarily, not that it’s a luxury but
it’s something that we can easily shut off, and not see a
considerable loss in our ability to perform our mission.
Such as, you know, we can’t shut off water to our buildings
where our employees occupy. We certainly can’t shut off
water to our fire hydrants when they're necessary for
protection of facilities. But the irrigation to landscaping
is something that we can certainly reduce. And I’m not a
vegetation expert but I know that we do have a lot of
people that are suggesting alternatives, plants and shrubs
that are more sustainable and more natural in the [UNINT]
environment rather than putting something in that requires
us to irrigate.
LP:
Excellent. Thank you Michael.
MA:
Thank you.
KN:
Thanks for your question, Lara. That might be a topic of a
future webinar. I don’t have any return on investment
numbers but I do know of case studies where people have
gotten local extension services involved or had local
schools volunteer to help plant new plants. So that might
be something that we can explore on a future webinar. And
Melanie it looks like there’s one more question, so we’ll
take that last question and then we’ll move on to the next
speaker.
MOD: Okay. [Zakir], your line has been unmuted.
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KN:
Are you there, [Zakir]?
MV:
I don’t have a handset.
KN:
We can hear you now. We can now.
MV:
Oh, you can hear me now? Okay. I did not actually have a
question, I was trying to type a question. Yeah, I think in
response to one question, on the what do you do when you
have well water versus what do you do when you buy water? I
think that was very well said, that sometimes that maybe
you're better off probably, if you don’t have money to do
the project, to let the leak go. I think that is a pretty
good response for the systems that you own, depending on
the, the size of the leak. So that’s the only comment I had
on that one. But I was typing a question, on –
MA:
Yeah, we’ve, unfortunately we’ve drained a, say, a 500,000
gallon in a matter of hours because of a leak.
MV:
[UNINT]
MA:
We also, we’ve put in a lot of low flush toilets and low
flush, or low consumption shower heads, and those are all
fantastic. You know those save .6 gallons per flush, you
know, and those are great. But man, as far as, you know, a
six inch line flowing under 100 PSI, it drains a half a
million gallon tank in a matter of hours. That’s a huge
waste of water, so we’d like to avoid that as much as we
can, but these older systems are just, are really prone to
leaking.
MV:
So what took so long to address that problem?
MA:
Regarding the landscaping at the supervisor’s office?
MV:
Right.
MA:
Well, you know, it’s interesting because, you know, we
were, in Engineering it was pretty easy for us to shut the
irrigation system off, but there were a lot of employees
that really liked the vegetation that we had at the
building, so it was, it did take a little while to, for
people to accept the fact that, you know, we had some trees
that died, and some plants that died. But once we got past
that first year no one’s really come back to us and said
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anything. Especially when we were able to make the case
that we were just wasting enormous amounts of water.
MV:
That’s a tradeoff.
MA:
Yeah, for sure.
MV:
Well, thanks for sharing that.
MA:
Thank you.
KN:
Thanks for your question, [Zakir], and thanks, Michael. If
you have time and can stick around till the end in case
people have more questions that would be great.
MA:
Okay, super.
KN:
Thanks. And so now I’d like to present our next speaker.
Dan Ray is the District Fuel Specialist on the Smokey Bear
Ranger District of the Lincoln National Forest, and he’ll
be sharing his water harvesting project. So Dan, whenever
you’re ready.
DR:
Okay. Thank you very much. You can go to the next slide.
And I don’t see a picture on that one. Oh, there it is.
Okay, what we did here on our, on the Smokey Bear Ranger
District on the Lincoln National Forest was we put in for
the regional micro grant program, I believe it was in 2010.
We wanted to start doing rainwater harvesting. So we used
the money to buy – in the picture you see a big black
plastic tank, and that holds 5,000 gallons of water. So
basically it’s pretty simple, we put it next to the
building, to one of our large buildings on the ranger
station, the engine base, and then you go to the next
slide.
And then we paid to have some gutters put on the building.
There weren’t any originally, so we had the seamless
gutters put on, and – along both sides of the building –
and then, go to the next slide. And then they join together
and we pipe them down into the 5,000 gallon tank. So here
you see him, the contractor, he’s taking the gutters and
feeding them together in this PVC pipe, and then, go to the
next slide. And here he is getting it all flowing into the
tank. Go ahead, go to the next slide. And this is basically
the finished product. You can see the gutters just blend in
with the building. A lot of folks already have gutters on
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their buildings, or, you know, it’s a fairly normal thing
to have or put on your building. And then you just feed it
into the top of the tank. What you can’t see is that the,
coming out towards the top is an outflow, or an overflow
pipe, to feed back into the ground. And then at the bottom,
you can see, we’ve got our discharge fitting that we put on
there. And I did buy kind of a specialty discharge fitting
that was kind of expensive, from one of our fire, Cascade
Fire, a company that makes fittings for fire engines and
stuff like that, so we could hook it up to our engines and
it would be, you know, fit right to their draft hoses. Next
slide.
The rationale behind doing this project, we are located in
Southwest, it’s very arid, dry spring and early summer
months are when we have most of our employees on, like most
probably rangers, ranger districts in the Forest Service.
The fact that we are in the mountains, though, we’re in the
Sacramento Mountains and we receive a substantial percent
of our annual rainfall in the monsoon season, which is midJuly through mid-September. So we get a lot of moisture,
only part of the year, and then our winters are kind of,
the last ten years have been pretty sketchy. We used to get
lots of snow in the ’80s and ‘90s, and then after about
2002 it’s been pretty sketchy about how much moisture we
get from snow. So we like to capture a lot of that rainfall
during that, those couple months of the monsoons. And next
slide.
Rationale continued, our heavy monsoon rains do tend to
cause damage due to fast moving runoff. We are located in a
town, in the town of Ruidoso so there’s also lots of
pavement and roads and concrete as well, so you get these
huge thunderstorm downpours, and then it collects and runs
down the roads and sometimes we have flooding in the
residential areas and then erosion problems in the forested
areas. So that’s another reason, is the amount of that
heavy rainfall. If we capture some of that, it reduces the
amount that’s going to go far down the road and contribute
to problems. Our facilities have large roof areas, so
collecting lots of water is pretty easy for us. And
rainwater harvesting has been becoming more popular over
the last ten years in this area, as people’s wells are
drying up, their water table’s dropping, and the flow is
going down out of their wells. So we look at ourselves as
being, you know, a part of the community, even though we
are actually, we are on a well system, we are basically
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right, you can’t tell that, you know, technically we’re on
a national forest but we’re basically in town, so that when
the town goes on water restrictions, you know, we like to
kind of not be throwing water everywhere on our lawns for a
nice green lawn, and you know being a bad role model. So we
figured we’d put on some rainwater harvesting tanks and use
it as an educational tool. Next slide.
Some of our specs that we came up with, one inch of rain
will produce .625 gallons, a little over a half a gallon of
water for every square foot of roof you have. Our engine
base is twenty – ah, 2,732 square feet. So if it were 2,500
square feet, kind of round down to an even number, we could
harvest an estimated 33,000 gallons, 33,708 gallons of
water from you know considering an average annual
precipitation. Of course our storage on that one tank is
5,000 gallons, so that’s as much as we can store at that
one time. Go ahead to the next slide.
Costs, our proposal that we requested through the regional
micro grant program, we asked for $3,500. We spent most of
that on the tank itself. It cost almost $3,100 for the
5,000 gallon tank. Another $1,700 was spent on the
installation of the gutters and the pipes to get it into
the tank. And then that discharge fitting cost about $650.
So in total costs, it was $5,444 for this 5,000 gallon
rainwater harvesting system. Extra funding, we just took it
out of district and forest money, you know, for the gutters
and such. Next slide.
Okay, I think this will go to, okay, and then after our
next year, or after our initial year, we decided to
replicate the same thing on, on another work center on the
district, about 30, well about 20 miles away from here,
where there’s another engine base during the summertime. So
you see another 5,000 gallon tank and slightly different
but you can see where we’re collecting water off of both
ends of the building and running it down to, or both sides
of the building and running it down to the one end and into
the 5,000 gallon tank. Next slide.
Go ahead to, that’s just the close-ups, and we’ll go to the
next slide. Okay, some of the water uses that we decided
to, that we would use this water for is for filling fire
engine and fire prevention truck tanks, washing district
vehicles, trailers, firehose, and assorted equipment, and
landscaping. So basically that way we could use this
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rainwater that harvested, use it right out of the tank,
we’re not filtering it, we’re not drinking it, anything
like that. We’re just, non-potable water for engines, fire
engines and things like washing vehicles and equipment
which, which we generally use a power sprayer hooked up and
gets high pressure and wash vehicles. And then landscaping,
for the final thing. Next slide.
Okay, here’s a photo example of the, one of our engines
that’s just backed up to the tank, and they just hook up
this, their draft hose right to the discharge fitting, and
open the valve and draft and it’s as simple, it’s as simple
as pulling up to a hydrant or pulling up to a pond or a
Fol-Da-Tank that they would on a fire. Next slide.
And this shows, we hooked up a – and this is just kind of
to demonstrate the ability to hook up sprinklers, and that
sprinkler is just using gravity to feed it. And, but if
you’re doing extensive landscaping or farther away or up a
slope you would want to add some pressure to that. You
know, add a pump to pressurize your water coming out of
that tank. But this right here is just from gravity. And
you can see the black pipe coming out of the top of the
tank is our overflow, so when it gets to that level, it, we
just pipe it back down into the ground and tie it back into
a culvert for rainwater that you’d, that kind of guides the
runoff in general. Okay, next slide?
And we ended up adding a third building. This is our main
office building, and in 2010 we started a people’s garden
at our ranger station, a community garden. And we received
a different grant from the RC&D Council to go ahead and put
a 3,000 gallon tank and put a gutter on the building. And
we use this exclusively for watering our plants and our
garden, so all our vegetables and stuff that we raise in
the garden is, generally we start out with the rainwater
and they love it a lot more than our well water because our
well water has a lot of minerals in it. And then when we
drain this 3,000 gallon tank, the engine guys will pump
water from the 5,000 gallon tank nearby and refill the
3,000 gallon tank. And when that’s done if we haven’t
gotten to monsoon season yet, we’ll switch over to well
water. Next slide?
And here’s just another picture of the garden in the
monsoon season as things are growing really good, and you
can see the tank in the background. Next slide. And the
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other year we ended up putting up a solar panel you see
just up on the roof above the tank, to facilitate using
just an RV pump, which will give enough pressure from that
tank water to give standard pressure to, like you would out
of your house faucet, and to facilitate watering the garden
much better. Next slide.
A couple of side projects we did that I threw in here
because I felt it related to water conservation and maybe
other forests or land management districts out there. We
did acquire, me and my coworker acquired through excess
property from an air force base, about 115 solar panels
that were never used, and on our district of course is
really arid, and we have, we do have cattle grazing on the
forest. We have permittees that have some of these. We’ve
got these old windmills that are either broken or require a
lot of maintenance. So what we’ve started doing is putting
up the solar panels and running a solar powered pump down
in the well, and then feeding that water up into a storage
tank and using the storage to right of the old windmill
structure. And that ends up being a lot less maintenance
and so just another use. Next slide.
And what we’re looking at here is another thing that we do,
our wildlife folks do is they get together with New Mexico
Game and Fish, that collects a certain portion of money
from hunting licenses and put it back to habitat
improvement. And this is basically rainwater harvesting out
in the middle, you know, out in the woods. We set up these,
generally they’re 3,000 gallon tanks, metal tanks, and
they’re fitted with these aprons that collect, so the
surface area is a lot larger. Collect a lot of water, the
wings collect a long of rainwater and it flows down to the
center where there’s a hole, and fills up the take, and
then we’ll run in out to a wildlife drinker for wildlife
habitat improvement. Next slide. And here’s some of the
results from the water from that tank going into a drinker
in the wildlife use. Next slide.
Other water projects we have, our supervisor’s office is a
fairly new building and they use waterless urinals. I have,
I don’t work down there all the time but I use them when I
go down there. I have heard some people complain about them
but generally if you don’t, a lot of folks do chew tobacco
in this part of the country, so as long – that was one
problem is to keep people from spitting their chewing
tobacco into the waterless urinals. So that can cause
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problems. But if they’re well maintained, you're not using
any water, whereas traditional urinals are using at least a
half gallon, up to a gallon or even more for those old
fashioned urinals. They don’t overflow. They don’t smell if
they're treated right, so you kind of have to train your
employees to, to not just throw anything in them. And
they’re also touchless so it reduces risk of spreading
germs. And then also the sinks and showers are, have all
low flow heads as well. And next slide, unless that’s the
last one, not sure. Okay.
FV:
That’s the last one.
DR:
Okay. All right. And that’s, I think that’s all I have.
KN:
Great, Dan, thank you, that is a cool case study and I like
seeing how it started with one micro grant and then you
guys just kept expanding on it, that’s really cool.
DR:
Right. And I do need, one thing. I’m sorry about that.
Some, if folks want to replicate this, they do need to
check with their laws. I know Colorado may have changed
theirs but for a while I believe they were not allowing
rainwater harvesting, and I believe it was tied to water
rights. If you’re collecting rainwater that’s falling on
your property it’s really stealing water that would have
gone into a stream down below and somebody else might have
those water rights. So I think that was a fairly old law,
and I think it was changed, but folks in different states
or different water districts probably need to check. But
it’s becoming more acceptable and more widely used in the
Southwest.
KN:
Great, thanks. Yeah, I know here in Oregon they changed the
law so we are, it’s okay to harvest rainwater now. So if,
Dan, if you have time to stick around I think we’ll have
one more speaker go and then take questions for you?
DR:
Sure, that sounds good.
KN:
Okay, thanks. So I’m happy to introduce our next speaker.
Jessica Richardson is a NEPA Planner on the Fremont-Winema
National Forest. And she’ll be talking about different
water conservation measures they use to reduce their
footprint. So Jessica, whenever you’re ready.
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JR:
Hey everyone. I hope you guys are all doing great today. Go
ahead and go to the next slide please. So I, you know, a
lot of these projects have kind of been on the bigger
scale. I decided to go the opposite direction with our
project. I thought, what could we do that can make a huge
impact but doesn’t necessarily have to be something that
someone has to tend to. And so we decided to go the route
of replacing some of our showerheads in our bunkhouses and
individual residences, as well as the kitchen and bathroom
aerators. We also decided to tackle some of the, you know,
the amount of water that toilets use can vary depending
upon your make or year that it was made and stuff. So we
thought okay, let’s figure out a way to decrease the amount
of water that our toilets use. So we went and put some fun
little devices called Toilet Tummies or you may have seen
in years past your parents or grandparents use five gallon
drum – buckets, or, not buckets but one gallon milk
containers or something along those lines. All very similar
ideas. And adjustable flappers. Next screen please.
So after changing all of those things we realized some
major savings. All of our stuff had to be estimates just
because we’re one of those funky rural areas that’s not
necessarily metered or metered accurately. So ours are
based on just general estimates on a per person basis. So
you can kind of look through here and see the toilet,
shower, faucets, some of the basic things that you would be
doing in either your private residence or some of the
facilities that get used in the general areas or the main
office. Now, so all of our stuff was based on pre-19, early
‘90s, early ‘80s models. So before you can see, our average
for toilets was 623 gallons, and this is on a monthly
basis. So that’s per person, per month, they were using 623
gallons to flush a toilet. By installing the devices that
we did, we could realize a saving of 329. And I won’t go
into each of these but mainly the thing I want to focus on
is, the shower heads that we had installed used about seven
gallons per minute. When we changed those with ones that
only used 1.5 gallons per minute, we realize a savings of
5.5 gallons per minute. That’s a pretty huge savings,
especially when you start extrapolating that out.
The kitchen aerators that we replaced, we replaced them
with 1.5 gallons per minute. They were using three. So we
realized a savings of 1.5 gallons per minute, as well as
the bathroom aerators actually were even a greater savings,
reducing it, saving us two point, excuse me, two gallons
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per minute. So when you extrapolate all of that out and all
of these numbers here that you see in the table, although
you don’t see it there, it’s an estimated savings of over
2,500 gallons a month. This also includes minor other
things that aren’t displayed in the table, because I wanted
to focus on what we – talking about. So it’s a pretty major
change. Next slide please.
Some of the important things that kind of came out of this
project is, you know, there are no project is going to be a
slam dunk, nothing is going to be perfectly laid out in
front of you. One of the, some of the things that we
realized when we were tackling this problem is just how
many different kinds of devices we would need. For the most
part, aerators, all the same general, you know, kitchen or
bathroom faucet. But when it came to looking at toilets,
you know, the Toilet Tummies didn’t necessarily fit in
every single make and model toilet that we had. So you
really have to look at what products you have when you want
to do something on a small scale like this and just replace
little things. Look at what you have, how many different
companies are you going to have to buy from. Because if you
have to start buying from a lot of different companies
that’s increased shipping costs, which is increased
packaging, which is not helping to reduce a footprint. You
also have to think, because of where we are, we’re so
rural, you know, if we need anything that requires outside
contractors, it’s an additional charge on our time and we
have to plan things a lot better to try and have them do
more than one project at a time.
So it’s not just when you’re planning a water project it’s,
or any kind of these projects, it’s not just one aspect
that you have to look at. You have to look at, okay, am I
saving in this area only to be increasing costs in this
area or increasing my footprint in this area or in this
area. And so that’s why we chose to go kind of smaller,
because it was things we could do in house, it was things
that we could handle and control within our own abilities
and within the local sources that we had.
So the other big part of this project that we did was, we
didn’t want to just do these things and then no one really
knows that we did them. So we wanted to educate our zone
employees and get the information out to them, what did we
do, why did we do it, and how did we go about doing it. The
link that you see on the bottom of this page is actually,
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it’s a Forest Service link, and it provides quick little
things that you can put up, energy saving ideas that you
can put up around bunkhouses, which we’ve done to try and
encourage and reinforce this. Next slide please.
And then you know I went around and asked a couple people
before I did, created this, just to see how much of that
information you know, how much of the information that
we’ve been sharing and getting out to other employees is
sticking with them. So I went around and polled people in
the office and asked them what kind of ideas they could
come up with with saving water. And these were some of the
basic ones that they came up with. As you can see, it’s
really just simple things, maybe it’s things that you
already do every day, but to give you an idea of how big of
an impact they can make, you can see here. It says, turn
off the water while you brush your teeth, save four gallons
a minute. Well, that’s just a minute. Let’s extrapolate
that out a little bit. So let’s say the average person, and
this probably is a bit much, but let’s say the average
person takes five minutes to wash, to brush their teeth,
and they leave the water running. That’s 20 gallons per
brush. If they brush their teeth two times a day, let’s
say, you’ve got 40 gallons. If you do it seven times a
week, or for seven days in a week, you have 280 gallons
just to brush your teeth. And you can see there, just
shaving, turning off the water while you shave, how much
you can save. So it can give you an idea of these little
things, can have really big results.
Next slide please. So that’s extent of my PowerPoint but I
don’t know Katie wants to do questions now or hold off to
the very end, but, I’m –
KN:
Thanks, Jessica. That’s a, those are great examples of
things that we could do at almost every Forest Service
office. And I think we have time, so if you guys have
questions for Dan or Jessica, please press *1 on your phone
or type it in the “notes”. And while we’re waiting for
people to dial in their questions, I do have one question
for Dan. It’s, someone typed it in the notes. And it says,
did Dan consider installing a green roof to catch runoff as
another alternative. That’s Dan Ray, sorry.
DR:
Oh, I’m sorry, is that a suggestion? Or – we have not done
that here but –
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KN:
I think it was – it was just they, they were just wondering
if you’d considered it or what you thought, I think.
DR:
I would, actually our buildings, the way they’re set up is
probably, probably the best, easiest thing for us to do is
the way they're laid out is to just do the rainwater
harvesting with the tanks. I think the green, those green
roofs are good if you have those big buildings with the
flat roofs and stuff like that, is, from my limited
knowledge.
KN:
Great, thank you. And Melanie, are there any questions over
the phone?
MOD: I believe [Zakir] would like to ask another question. I’ll
unmute the line.
KN:
Thanks.
MV:
Can you hear me?
KN:
Yes, we can.
MV:
Dan, thank you for the presentation, that was really cool.
And good to share. Just one thing, one caveat, I’m glad
that you mentioned about the local rule, because they have
been changing due to water shortages. But the point I want
to make in addition to that is that that’s a very cool
thing, [UINT] that the water is in shortage. To be looking
at the cost effectiveness. Is it possible that if you have
any specs or drawings that you can send us to the, to the
[NTBC] or [UININT] because we have that [UNINT]? On the, on
the rainwater system?
DR:
Oh, okay. You’re asking if I could send some facts on this
type of project too?
MV:
Yeah, if you had developed any drawing or specifications to
do that project. Because [UNINT] we do not have to reinvent
the wheel, if they do consider a project like that. If
there is a water shortage. Yeah.
DR:
Yeah, I can, yeah it’s a fairly simple project and it, and
it would be pretty much the general specs of how much
rainwater you can collect from an inch of rain on a square
foot of roof space or collection space. And then actually
they’re fairly simple projects, very easy to do, and then
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it would be catered to the specific area. If you’re
somewhere farther, you know, that’s cold, quite a bit of
time you might want to consider a tank that you can
actually bury. And actually I’ve used those on my personal
house. And the ones here that are exposed haven’t cracked
under, under, actually we had some arctic weather two years
ago that burst a lot of water pipes in our town, got down
to below negative, well, -20 to -30 degrees here, which is
abnormal, and burst a lot of people’s water pipes in town.
But our water tanks were fine, although we don’t use them
in the winter, we just insulate the output valves. But my
personal house, I’ve got buried tanks and I had, you know,
I was one of the few people that didn’t have bursting pipes
or, from freezing pipes. So. But I, yes, I can send that to
you.
MV:
Yeah, I understand, yeah, seemed like a fairly simple,
simple project. So if you do it in house then probably
there is not, not a whole lot that you have to do with a
contracting, then. Yeah, so. Ah, well, I just wanted to ask
if you had any additional information that you wanted to
share. Especially if we are in a water shortage area. Yeah.
Which I don’t think I have a problem in this week, in this
region. It might even – thanks.
DR:
Okay, thank you.
KN:
Thanks for your questions. So we have three questions that
have been typed in, so I’ll ask those three and then we’ll
move on to the last topic. The first one is for Dan Golub,
and it says will the new NSC system allow consumption to be
shown in gallons instead of costs? Yeah. So you can see
actual consumption.
DG:
Yup.
KN:
Okay, great, that was easy. Thank you.
DG:
Sure.
KN:
The next question is for Jessica. Did you have any,
experience any issues from installing the aerators in
having the hot water take too long to reach the faucet.
JR:
We didn’t actually experience anything like that. In fact,
you know, I was concerned that some of the comments we’d
get back is oh, I don’t – you know, especially with
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relation to the shower heads is, oh the flow of water in
the shower just is horrible now. And we got quite the
opposite, everyone who used them were like, it’s so much
better than the old ones! So. Yeah, I didn’t experience any
kind of problems, especially with relation to hot water.
KN:
Okay, great, thank you. And then the last question before
we move on is for Dan, and is how did you keep debris out
of the water tanks.
DR:
Okay, that’s a good question and it is a challenge and you
do have to clean the gutters, or you know, it’s better to
clean the gutters. We have pine trees so we get a lot of
pine needles build up in the gutters themselves. And then
actually just under the lid of the tanks there’s a, there’s
a mesh wire basket that you can open up and it collects
that debris, and so every once in a while you take the top
off and clean out that basket, and put it back, and it’s
not –
KN:
Okay, great, thank you for that answer. And so if you guys
have questions for those speakers who have already gone,
please hold them till the end. I think we’ll move on to the
last topic and then open it up for questions for everybody.
Oh, it looks like you, Jessica had one more slide, it’s the
sources for her calculations. So that’s available there if
anybody wants to look at those. So the next topic is the
Top Ten Actions letter. And this topic will be covered by
myself, Katie Newcomb, and Betsy Ballard. Betsy is the
Resource Coordinator on the Stevensville Ranger District on
the Bitterroot National Forest. So Betsy, whenever you’re
ready.
BB:
Okay, thanks. I’m happy to be here. I did some analysis of
the Top Ten Actions, and the letter that was sent out from
the Western Collective Regional Foresters who at the time
the letter was sent out were Region 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and
10, and the Rocky Mountain Research Station. This letter
identified ten readily implementable actions that we could
all take during that fiscal year. And they’re just a good
place for any forest to start as far as actions from the
Climate Change Scorecard. The focus on the Top Ten Actions
was to meet federal requirements, supporting the Climate
Change Performance Scorecard, and identifying actions that
engage all employees.
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And the results from these actions underscore the power of
simple behavior changes that we’ve kind of talked about
throughout this presentation with water, and some of the
other examples are increasing the fuel efficiency of the
Forest Service fleet by just one mile per gallon could
reduce the agency’s fuel bill by $13 million annually.
There’s several other examples there and on the web site,
where the calculations are available, of these savings.
Next slide please.
This is just a slide that shows the focus areas of the top
ten action items. Their different classes are energy,
water, fleet and transportation, waste prevention and
recycling. So this is again a subset of the, all the
actions in the Climate Change Scorecard. Just an example of
the, a few of them, is that energy, number one, has the
initially utility bill cleanup been completed, and has your
unit identified the top energy using facilities. A water
example would be water number nine, are your, does your
unit hold water awareness activities annually and share the
water savings progress and opportunities with employees?
And a waste prevention and recycling example would be
number five, does your unit retain recycling proceeds to
reinvest in additional sustainable operations activities?
Next slide please.
So the, again, some more sustainable operations action
examples are, energy number six, we kind of talked about
this with water, but with energy you could install
occupancy sensors and smart strips, and could meet the
action items, we’d have to do it in 40, or in 70% of the
buildings that the employees occupy. In this instance it
was 48 of the 64 buildings. Other things you could install
would be vending misers, or LED exit signs. In this example
there was an estimated kilowatt and cost savings of five to
50% and that equates to, well, up to $5 million. And again
there’s an example of the savings when, when we minimize
paper use, when printing and copying documents, you can
just minimize your printing or print duplex, and that can
result in an estimated cost and paper savings of 20 to 30%
or up to $2 million. Next slide please.
This slide shows just an analysis that I did by breaking
out the data from the Climate Change Scorecard. I broke out
the data for just the top ten actions for all the forests
and the different regions that reported. Let’s see. The
data table displayed shows kind of my interpretation of the
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narrative data that was provided and also there was some
yes/no data from spreadsheet G. So as a result trying to
interpret this data, I developed a kind of a yes,
partially, category, where for example in the E1 category,
people had done some work on the energy audit is mostly
completed but not done, or possibly in waste and recycling
number five, they have a recycling program that may not
have specified reinvestment in sustainable operations. So
it was just on the bottom of that chart you can see my kind
of ‘yes-p’ results. Next slide please.
This is [UNINT] to a table showing the list of the Top Ten
Actions and the results from the data analysis I did. And
it shows the number of Forest Service units implementing
the action item with a positive yes, and then a percent of
I believe it was 112 units, percent of the total forest
units that completed that action. So you can see there’s
kind of a wide range of completion. Next slide please. And
this next slide is just a more visual way to present the
data in the other table. And it shows for instant the
energy six bar, which was using energy efficient
technologies. Let’s see. Let me look at my notes. In 75% of
the buildings it was the lowest percent accomplishment,
less than 10%. And whereas the fleet, 11, which was the
video teleconferencing, showed the highest accomplishment,
which was way over 50% of accomplishment. So this just kind
of shows where we’re able to accomplish some of the top ten
actions, and then maybe where there’s room for improvement
in a few of those. Thank you. Or next slide please.
And I think Katie will be taking over from this slide.
Thank you.
KN:
Thanks. Thanks, Betsy. These Top Ten Actions are, have been
analyzed for how much they can reduce our environmental
footprint and increase our cost savings so that’s why we’re
taking a closer look at these, and Betsy’s analysis
combines the narrative responses with the appendix to your
responses, which is, it’s a lot of work. So thank you,
Betsy. Now I just wanted to go over some quick case studies
that, case studies quickly that we have looked at on, in
webinars in the past.
We’ve actually covered all of the Top Ten Actions on this
peer learning series, so I just wanted to provide a quick
overview of where you guys can find that information in
case your unit is still working on some of the Top Ten
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Actions. So these are just links, and this webinar will be
available to all the participants afterwards, so I just
wanted to make sure that you guys all had these links
directly associated with the Top Ten Actions results. So
this first slide covers the utility bill cleanup and energy
efficient technologies, which were two topics we covered at
the beginning of the calendar year in 2012. Power down
computers and lights policy, and water and energy awareness
activities were also covered. So you can see the links to
those two topics on this slide. Excuse me. We, in a webinar
about tackling the low hanging fruit we talked about
utilizing webinar and VTC technologies, and several
different creative ideas to post the fuel economy for all
vehicles. So, those were actually both in the same webinar,
so there’s just one link here, and you can access
information for both of those.
And then fin-, sharing eco driving trips and retaining
recycling proceeds were also both covered. Forests shared a
couple different innovative ways to share the eco driving
tips. And then the recycling proceeds includes all of the
detailed information you’d need to set up that program on
your unit. So you can see the links are there. And the last
Top Ten Actions is minimizing paper use, which was covered
in a webinar last year. And then I also just wanted to
provide a link to the SusOps internal web site, in addition
to the peer learning series, there are several other
resources where you can use fact sheets or posters, or just
read different case studies that we have covered here. So I
wanted to be sure to include that link to the internal web
site when providing these resources.
One thing we also wanted to touch on was tips for region
wide success. We’ve noticed that support from leadership
and communication were two of the most important things
when regions were successful in completing these Top Ten
Actions, so we wanted to share some ideas for how you can
garner support from leadership and then communication,
which includes sharing an official letter with all your
employees about completing the Top Ten Actions, on all the
units in your region. Sharing results at RLT meetings.
Asking leadership to participate on Green Team conference
calls or Green Team meetings. And then there’s several
different communication options that you can see on the
screen. And a few other ideas are inter-unit competition;
I’ll talk about an example of that in a moment. And then
focusing on a few different items each year, so if it seems
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overwhelming to tackle all ten actions in one year, your
region can decide which ones are priority for this fiscal
year, and then tackle different ones next fiscal year.
And then finally if the Top Ten Actions are included in the
Green Team action plans they’re made a priority on your
unit. So it’s important to make sure they’re included.
And then I just wanted to use Region 10 as an example of
Top Ten Actions success. Part of the things I’ll touch on
were done by Region 10 as a whole and part of them were
done by the Tongass National Forest. But what the Tongass
has done is very applicable to any region. The first, you
have seen the green box as an example of a blurb from the
Deputy Regional Forester. And she included the Top Ten
Actions Challenge in an email to all of the employees. So
having that continued leadership focus on these Top Ten
Actions helped Region 10 prioritize those actions for the
year. And then they, the Tongass National Forest actually
completed all Top Ten Actions in FY ’12 so they are keeping
the idea going that they’ll focus on specific actions each
year, and moved on. So you can see on the bottom of the
slide that there’s a letter to all the employees and
they’ve chosen the next three actions from the climate
change scorecard. But if your unit hasn’t completed the Top
Ten you could use a similar letter to highlight the ones
that you want them to prioritize. And with that Top Three
Actions letter the Tongass included fact sheets. There’s a
‘did you know’ fact on the right side of the slide is about
sorting and disposing of junk mail, and getting rid of junk
mail is one of the items that they are focusing on for FY
’13. So as you can see by sharing fact sheets, sending
official letters from leadership and then just having
leadership included in informal communications such as
email, has really helped prioritize the Top Ten Actions on
the Tongass and in Region 10 in general.
So that’s all Betsy and I had for you guys for the Top Ten
Actions. If you’re interested in region-specific
performance just drop me an email and let me know and I can
provide that data for you. And I just wanted to put a plug
in for our next peer learning webinar, which is actually
number 17. It’s Wednesday, April 3rd at 10 a.m. Pacific, and
it will be covering the Leadership and Sustainable
Operations database, unveiling the energy reduction plan,
and then talking about lessons learned from the Sustainable
Operations Collective greenhouse gas tracking team. So we
have about nine more minutes of the webinar so I’d just
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like to open it up for questions for any of our speakers.
So again, as a reminder, press *1 to ask a question over
the phone, or you can type the question in the ‘notes’ on
your screen. So Melanie, do we have any phone call
questions?
MOD: I do have [Zakir] again. So I’m going to unmute his line.
MV:
This question is for Dan, I don’t know if Dan is still
online, Dan Golub? We may have –
DG:
Yeah, I’m here.
MV:
Dan, my question is on the energy and water data. I mean,
does it, two parts, one, a question’s a question. So we
are, last year I heard that it was going to be somewhat
done on the data, if you clean up the [nasty reports] that
are on the, [UNINT], and I don’t think that happened. But
now you’re saying that to moving to, and next year we will
have better data?
DG:
The Sustainable Operations tool, I’m not sure exactly when
I said that I would be cleaning that up but I think that
was probably awhile ago. I realized a while ago that it was
going to be impossible to do that. There’s too many errors,
there’s too much data, and it takes really manually combing
through to really identify the errors and then fix them in
the tool. And just because they’re fixed in the tool
doesn’t mean that those errors are not going to recur in
the future, because they are, the tool is just a reflection
of the data from the NFC system. And if there are errors in
the NFC system, those are just going to just be reflected
in the tool. So if there’s, if you see errors in data that
pertains to you or accounts that are relating to your local
area, I would suggest that you talk to a budget person or
whoever is in charge of that account through [TUMS]. And
that’s how the errors can get fixed, through the NFC system
or, if it’s at the utility, then you have to go to the
utility. But the errors that are in the tool are the errors
that are at NFC.
MV:
Yeah, I understand –
DG:
[UNINT] this new system will have sort of, when an invoice
comes in, they’ll scan it and they extract, they say, up to
140 pieces of data per invoice. And then they run a little
audit on the numbers to make sure that everything adds up.
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And all of that stuff doesn’t happen now. It’s so much
simpler now, because the system they used was really
initially meant to be an accounting system, not an energy
or utility management or tracking system, and so it’s just
really limited in what it can do. Whereas this new system
is meant to do what we need it to do, and yeah, I think
it’ll be, the data that we see coming out of that system
would be much, much better.
MV:
Okay, then [UNINT] –
DG:
The data, the vendor, as a service, will look into those
errors with the utility, and try to resolve those errors
between the vendor, the NFC vendor and the utility. So you
know the Forest Service or the person on the local unit who
manages that account won’t really have to do that, thaey’ll
just get a notification that that has been done on their
behalf and the problem has been resolved.
MV:
Yeah, my question was not, it’s impossible to clean, clean
up the data at your end. My question was about the NFC
[UNINT] the data. I heard, I mean, that there was going to
be a contract to clean up the data at the NFC end. [UNINT]
from the Washington office, [UNINT] the office. So that, I
know –
DG:
You mean the old data?
MV:
Right.
DG:
Previous years’ data?
MV:
Yup.
DG:
I don’t think there are any plans to change what, at NFC.
There may be an effort by this vendor to go through the old
invoices, which are still stored at NFC, and scan through
those and apply these, you know, these algorithms and
everything, and, and try to get more accurate historic
data. But the real effort at this point is for now and into
the future.
MV:
Okay, so you’re talking about that big contract, that
[UNINT] energy to [UNINT] right.
DG:
Sorry, I didn’t catch that.
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MV:
You’re talking about the contract that we had to do the
first energy report in 2006 or so. Anyway, that’s okay. On
the energy plan and water plan I had one comment and a
question. How is that going to be [UNINT] and analyzed so
we have it right?
DG:
How is the plan going to be analyzed?
MV:
How the plan is going to be reviewed by the people. Like
for example if you have energy plan, so who is preparing
that plan and how that will be revealed by the experts
before it gets down to the implementation level?
DG:
Well, there are a lot of –
MV:
Energy plan and water plan.
DG:
Okay, energy plan and water plan are two separate plans,
but the energy plan is already underway. We have gotten all
of the deputy areas and staff areas and individuals
identified and actions identified and assigned, and things
are moving along with that. The water plan, and as far as
how analyzed, just, it’s [not] exactly analyzed, it’s more
of like a brainstorm of what do you need for your deputy
area, what do you need for your deputy area, who is the
person to get it done, and let’s do it. And so needs are
identified by the people who have identified a need for
their own, you know, for their job duties. And then we
figure out how to meet that need. And I think the same
thing is going to happen with this water plan. Sarah Baker
and I will be working on this plan along with input from
other people, including the Water Advisory Board, which I
think you’re a part of. And with them and with facility
engineers and with Sustainable Ops folks, it’s really open
to suggestions from anybody that wants to make a suggestion
on things that they need to get their jobs done. And what’s
a possible solution. And, you know, if you identify a need
and a solution then you’re probably going to be the person
that gets assigned to do it, as far as you can, and then,
you know, your supervisor or a staff area or deputy
director in that area can assist with greasing the skids to
get this work done. But you know whoever needs the work
done will identify that. And I don’t think there’s, I’m not
sure we’re exactly, what you mean by how the plan will be
analyzed. But that’s how it’s developed, and that’s how
the, you know, it kind of moves forward.
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MV:
Yeah, I mean, my question –
KN:
Dan, this is Katie. Oh, I’m going to jump in really quick.
The Energy Reduction Plan is the topic for the April peer
learning webinar, so if you have questions about that
you’ll have a chance to talk with I think people on that
team and the two detailers who are leading that effort. So
I think that if you have questions on the Energy Reduction
Plan they might be answered in April.
MV:
Okay, that’s fine, but he had those [key topics]. Because I
want to see that on the front end, if there’s a plan
[they’re coming] that he has to implement, that it has to
be reviewed by people so that we do not end up creating
another [to] data that is not as good as we thought should
have, could have, would have. That was my question for Dan,
can he [UNINT] with that, like energy report with energy
experts, energy managers, and water report with us, what
needs to be done. That was the only question. [UNINT]
That’s it. Thank you.
KN:
Yep. Thank you very much for your question. And I don’t see
any other questions online. Are there any other questions
over the phone, Melanie?
MOD: I am not seeing any further questions either, Katie.
KN:
Okay. Well thank you very much to all of the speakers. I
appreciate your time today. And thanks for all the
participants. You guys ask great questions. And tune in
next week, when we’ll be talking about the Energy Reduction
Plan, if you’d like to learn more about that. Thanks for
your time.