CINCINNATI, Ohio — The Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden is highlighting their efforts in sustainable water use ahead of World Water Day on Saturday.
“We’ve been at this for two decades now and have reduced water use dramatically,” said Mark Fisher, Cincinnati Zoo’s VP of facilities and sustainability, in a press release. “The million-gallon capacity stormwater tanks buried under the five-acre elephant habitat that opened last year have taken us to the next level and helped us get closer to our goal to be net zero in water consumption.”
According to the zoo, they’ve saved more than 2 billion gallons of water in the last two decades. They’ve done this by watching their water use, fixing leaks, installing stormater retention tanks and implementing hydroponic farming to grow the animals’ food.
In addition to saving water, it also keeps the bills down.
“We’ve been updating controls and metering throughout the Zoo and moving toward building a ‘live picture’ of our utility use,” said Mallory Geresy, Cincinnati Zoo’s net zero project manager, in the release. “These utility management efforts have prevented at least 100,000 gallons of water use.”
The zoo is also working on water management with their partners in the South Rift of Kenya, the South Rift Association of Land Owners (SORALO).
“We are impacting water security on the community level through capacity building around water quality and listening to daily hardships of individuals to help motivate significant changes,” said Arianne Smith, Cincinnati Zoo’s aquatics manager, in the release. “We’ve been given the opportunity to make a huge impact on water quality and water resiliency within the community in the SORALO landscape, while our team has also been inspired by different water management practices led by SORALO's teams.”
The Rain Barrel Art Auction will begin next week, allowing people to make bids on painted rain barrels on display at the zoo. The proceeds benefit environmental education for both the zoo and savelocalwaters.org, according to the release.
