Sprinkler breaks ‘almost every day’

At around 3:30 a.m. Tuesday morning, a sprinkler broke just west of the Communication and Journalism Building, and the resulting trail of water stretched about 470 feet down Central Avenue before falling into the drain near University Avenue.

Willie West, manger of grounds and landscaping for UNM’s Physical Plant Department, said sprinkler heads break and leak almost every day. He said these water-wasting mishaps are usually the result of vandalism.

“Probably what happened is one of our homeless was sleeping in the area and the sprinklers came on and got him wet,” he said. “Or somebody from one of the bars that had passed out. It happens very regularly on that side of campus. They get wet, they get mad, and they get up and break them.”

West said main campus contains 4-5,000 irrigation systems and about 30,000 total sprinklers. He said PPD has four employees who check and repair the sprinkler systems at least once a month.

He said the sprinklers west of Communication and Journalism Building run on a newer, more-efficient system than the other ones on main campus, but they waste more water when someone kicks the top off of them.

“It’s designed to allow the soil to take in water a lot longer without run-off,” he said. “It’s a very good system so we can have good, long run times. What happens though, unfortunately, is when one of our heads gets broken, it does run for a longer period of time.”

He said his department usually runs the sprinklers at night, which is in compliance with city lawn-watering regulations. The city mandates that after April 1, residents can’t water their lawns between 11 a.m.-7 p.m.

He said PPD has to operate outside of those regulations when there’s a chance temperatures will drop below freezing at night because the water from the sprinklers will freeze.

“If we get a little bit of ice on the sidewalk, we have a slip-fall,” he said. “We err on the side of caution. In the fall, we’ll start watering during the day more, earlier because we can’t risk those nighttime temperatures.”

West said even though the numerous lawns on campus use a lot more water than desert landscapes, lawns are more user-friendly.

“Our grass areas are used extensively — if you go to the Duck Pond, go to Johnson Field, or any of the areas outside of classrooms,” he said. “You’re not going to see people playing Frisbee on gravel.”