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# City talks go down the drain
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/city-talks-go-down-the-drain/
- Published: 2005-07-26T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T07:31:19.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Government & Politics, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*New urinals estimated to save money, water*

*By ROBERT FATURECHI Special to the Daily Press*

COUNCIL CHAMBERS — In an effort by City Hall to become more environmentally friendly, the conversation among elected officials will boil down to urine.

The Santa Monica City Council will consider a measure tonight that would make way for non-flush urinals in private developments around town.

Proponents of the measure hope the new urinals — which are estimated to save 40,000 gallons of water a year per fixture — will reduce Santa Monica’s reliance on imported water.

“The technology has been available now for a number of years,” said Craig Perkins, the director of environmental and public works management for City Hall.

Though the water-saving fixtures already are in place at City Hall and other public places in Santa Monica, current plumbing code requires all bathroom fixtures in private developments to have a water supply.

The City Council is being asked to make an exception for non-flush urinals.

“Outside of the U.S. this is very prevalent,” Perkins said. “In Australia it’s hard to find a urinal that isn’t a waterless urinal.

“The U.S. is sort of lagging behind in the times.”

While traditional stalls flush urine down with jets of water, new non-flush urinals get rid of the yellow stuff through a trap seal that flows into a gravity drainage system out to the sewer.

One concern swirling in the minds of non-flush pessimists is odor, though that argument may have gone down the drain after a recent UC Los Angeles study.

The research team discovered that non-flush urinals and traditional bathroom stalls produce comparable odors and bacteria growth rates, according to a City Council staff report.

“Odor is always a very personal thing, but I’ve been using these in City Hall the past three years and I believe there’s no difference in odor,” Perkins said. “Bacteria really needs water to thrive so (waterless urinals) can actually reduce odors.”

Though Perkins estimated that the new urinals cost about a couple hundred dollars more than their traditional counterparts, he said the extra expense would be more than made up for in water savings.

Maintaining the non-flush urinals requires special training but costs the same, he added.

“It takes a little bit of training in terms of maintenance, but we’ve gone through that with our custodians at City Hall and it’s all very doable,” Perkins said.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 26, 2005.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/072605.pdf?ref=smdp.com)