Pressure Washer tank being filled with AC CondensationAs you can imagine, keeping a park the size of SeaWorld clean is a constant challenge. Maintaining cleanliness while conserving water - well, we've had to get creative. Cleanliness isn't an option. Add to that caring for our award winning landscaping and water conservation seems monumental. Not so! I have the good fortune to work with a group of people that have a "can do" attitude that never ceases to amaze me with their ingenuity.
After hours the Park Quality team washes pathways, patios and stadiums, to ensure that the park is clean upon opening the following day. They accomplish this using water from our Ski lake, re-claimed filtered water and water collected from air conditioning condensation. Along with these methods of conservation we have worked to reduce water usage by 50% during drought. Using a reduced schedule, less hosing, more pressure washing, (which uses less water than regular hosing) and increasing water reclamation, we are able to maintain the quality of our park and use less water.
On a typical night our trailer mounted pressure washing units with a 200 gallon water tank will fill up at one of several AC condensation collection tanks. Once full, they head to the area to be cleaned and get set up. This includes placing sand bags to block drains and create collection ponds. Using a simple canister filter and pumps, they vacuum the waste water from the pressure washing, filter it and back into the tank it goes for re-use. Under good conditions, they can collect 50% - 70% for re-use and will do that until they re-fill with either more condensation water or water from the lake. So far, we have re-claimed over 70,000 gallons using this simple method and over 100,000 gallons from AC condensation!
Our Landscape department hand waters pots and baskets, (up to 1,000) and depends on our irrigation system to handle the rest. Now the Landscape Team comes in at 4:00 AM to begin hand watering our 165 acres of landscaped park. They also use condensation water when available. Just like the rest of the city, we have reduced use of our automatic irrigation system, reduced some plantings, and increased hand watering to maintain our quality.
All of us at SeaWorld San Antonio want to do our part to conserve water, not just during drought, but always. We also want to maintain the highest level of quality during all conditions so that we can offer all of our guests a quality experience and a park we can all be proud of.
Well, got to go, burning day light!
To see more photos of how we conserve water, check out our Flickr photo set.
