When Old Torrance resident Howard Fischkes peered out his window one morning, he was peeved to see what appeared to be a flagrant example of water wasting.
Several large sprinklers, their timers apparently broken, were pumping out water indiscriminately on the expansive lush lawns of the American Honda campus across Torrance Boulevard.
“They had been running for over an hour and there’s a lot of overspray out to the sidewalk and also the street,” Fischkes fumed in a voicemail left at the Daily Breeze. “Apparently, big corporations such as Honda don’t care about the drought.”
Not so, said Marcos Frommer, manager of corporate affairs and communications with Honda North America.
The water Honda uses to irrigate its 100-acre campus — about 40 percent of its area is landscaping, including a soccer and softball field —is recycled water from West Basin Municipal Water District.
West Basin extended a pipeline to Honda and, since January, that has enabled the company to stop using potable water for irrigation. That works out to a savings of about 2.5 million gallons a month.
“We are hearing from our associates and we are hearing occasionally from Torrance residents that they’re wondering why Honda has these big green lawns in the middle of a drought, which is an obvious question,” Frommer said.
“Whether it’s the lights in these lobbies, which we changed out to LEDs, or the stationery fuel cell which powers part of our campus, we’re always looking for ways to reduce our environmental impact.”
The treated water Honda uses would otherwise be sent out to sea, said Joe Walters, West Basin’s recycled water manager.
But about 10-12 percent of the water discharged from the Hyperion sewage treatment plant near Los Angeles International Airport — about 40 million gallons a day — is piped to a recycling facility in El Segundo.
From there it is treated again and eventually flows through a 120-mile network of pipelines and reaches about 300 large water users such as Honda and Toyota, Walters said.
Other customers include the city of Torrance and Torrance Unified School District.
The city uses recycled water at 52-acre Columbia Park, 3-acre Descanso Park, 5-acre Paradise Park and brand-new Pueblo Park on Del Amo Boulevard (West Basin’s recycled water pipeline passes right by it), among others.
School campuses irrigated with recycled water include West High, Anza Elementary and Magruder Middle. West Basin is in the process of adding South High and Calle Mayor Middle to the network, Walters said.
“Right now, we are busier than at any time in the 15 years since I’ve been here,” he said. “We currently have something like 50 new customers that we’re working with.”
As a result, West Basin residents have reduced their potable water usage by 27 percent since 1995.
The approximately 165 billion gallons of recycled water sold since 1995 is equivalent to the amount of potable water Los Angeles uses in a year, according to figures supplied by the district.
Torrance residents as a whole are benefitting from Honda’s reduction in potable water usage given the mandatory cuts in usage ordered by the state.
Potable water usage in the city in the first five months of the year declined 11.5 percent compared with the same period in 2013, city officials said recently.
In addition to using recycled water, Honda has installed high-efficiency sprinkler systems and drip irrigation in plant beds, said Garth Sellers, manager of North American corporate facilities for Honda.
Installing native habitat also is under discussion.
As for Fischkes, he was suitably impressed when told Honda’s use of recycled water could potentially save 45 million gallons annually.
“That’s a lot of water,” he said.
Honda, meanwhile, is looking at adding a few more signs in more visible spots so word gets out to more people about its reduction in water use, drought or no drought.
“Clearly, we haven’t told our neighbors enough about what we’re doing here,” Frommer said. “We want Torrance residents to know that we are aware of the drought and we’ve taken substantial measures to reduce our water usage.”
