Florence Moore (FloMo) residence halls kicked off Stanford Water Wars, an inter-dorm water conservation competition, Sunday. Each hall’s water consumption will be measured from Feb. 12 to March 12 through an Aquacue Barnacle, a water management product that claims to record the amount of water used with at least 99.5 percent accuracy.

 

The over 450 undergraduates living in FloMo will participate in the month-long event, sponsored by Stanford’s Green Living Council (GLC), Student Housing and the Silicon Valley company Aquacue. A similar competition at the University of California-Merced showed promising results; students reduced their water consumption by 14 percent and saved 89,000 gallons of water overall.

 

The winning residence hall in FloMo will receive $1,000 in prize money.

 

The GLC, founded in 2007, selected Aquacue’s products as the basis of this year’s competition in order to bring a more modern, technical approach to conservation on campus, according to a GLC press release. Students will have access throughout the month to real-time data covering the water use in their dorms. Simultaneously, the GLC will host multiple events to educate the residents about daily conservation techniques and the importance of water conservation.

 

The seven residence halls, which were specifically selected because FloMo dorms have separate water lines, will compete in six groups to determine which dorm can save the most water per capita. Paloma and Mirlo residents will compete together due to the fact that they share a water meter.

 

FloMo Water Wars is part one of a two-part Stanford Conservation Cup hosted by the GLC. Part two will be an electricity conservation effort running March 2 to March 23.

 

— Jordan Shapiro