Hydronarratives: The Confluence of Water and Environmental Justice

Current Water Consumption in Sports Stadiums

As traditional stadiums stand right now, sports stadiums are not environmentally friendly. They create tons of waste, specifically with water. Water is essential for playing fields and other processes in a stadium like restrooms and concession stands. “Nick Hansen with RecycledH2O (2015) notes: An NFL football field is 57,600 square feet (360' by 160'). This field size needs approximately 36,000 gallons of water, if one inch of water is to be applied to the entire field. (Extra grass along sidelines means more water used.) To put this into perspective, if your family of four uses 1400 gallons per week, 26 families would use the same volume of water that a football field will use for 1'' of watering.” Watering a field also occurs on a routine schedule, meaning that a field uses thousands of gallons of water regularly and often.

In addition to the playing field using gallons upon gallons of water, other processes to make the stadium more appealing use tons of water. These processes could be watering the landscape, pressure washing the seats, installed cooling systems, and flushing a toilet. Not only do stadiums use multitudes of water, they also lose water due to leaks in the systems. “The EPA indicates that the national average for water lost to leaks in potable water delivery systems is 14%.” In a giant sports stadium, leaks could come from “Hidden drains, faucets left running or even backup cooling systems that are not monitored” and “can lead to substantial water loss.” While these processes are important to keep a stadium running, it is important to note that the unsustainable practices can and should be changed to be more efficient and greener.

Knowing the baseline of a stadium’s water consumption is the first step to becoming more efficient and sustainable, especially when it comes to water consumption. There are many alternate processes and solutions to these problems like use reduction. As Roger McClendon, Green Sports Alliance executive director, states, “Use reduction impacts the resource you are trying to protect- in this case potable water- and reduces the long term operating costs related to the resource, opening more opportunities for further water use reduction.”

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