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.