Flamingos are dirty birdies.
“If you see them in the wild, they’re typically standing in pretty mucky water,” said George Pond, the Denver Zoo’s vice president for planning and capital projects. “It’s not clear blue.”
At the Denver Zoo, it used to take more than 40 million gallons of water a year to flush out the flamingo exhibit.
But zookeepers discovered a few years ago that they could cut their water use in half and still keep the exhibit from smelling like a sewer plant.
Today, as a result of a $50,000 project upgrade, the exhibit uses about 1 million gallons of water annually.
That’s just one of the many changes zoo staff members have made to reduce water consumption by about 75 percent since 1999 – a development that Denver Water says holds a lesson for all its customers.
“They’ve saved about twice as much water as any of our other customers,” said Donna Pacetti, a supervisor in the utility’s conservation department.
As part of the 10-year conservation plan, utility officials want other commercial customers to follow the zoo’s lead.
For the zoo, the water-conservation efforts started in 1999 when an audit revealed it was using about 300 million gallons annually at a cost of $154,000.
“It was pretty shocking,” Pond said. “Honestly, until then, I think we didn’t really understand just how much water we were using.”
Challenged by a 100-year-old infrastructure, the zoo fixed leaks and then decided to tackle the water-sucking flamingo exhibit.
In addition to installing a recirculating system that keeps the water in a closed loop, zoo staff also built a wetland to help filter the water.
“In the end, we got a healthy biological system that provides an even better habitat for our flamingos,” Pond said.
Zoo officials also improved the filtration systems on the sea lion and polar bear exhibits.
Those reductions have led to a water savings of 225 million gallons a year, dropping the zoo’s water bill to $38,000 in 2005.
Next for the zoo is revamping the North Shores duck pond – which uses almost as much water as the flamingo pond did – and expanding the use of recycled water it purchases from Denver Water.
Pond said the zoo will probably begin using recycled water for irrigation as well as water used to hose down animal exhibits.
“Our priorities have always been taking the best care of our animals and providing a great experience for our visitors,” Pond said. “What we’ve learned in recent years is that we can do those things while using substantially less water.”
Staff writer Kim McGuire can be reached at 303-820-1240 or kmcguire@denverpost.com.
