Associated Press
ORANGE, Calif. — Inmates at Orange County’s largest jail will get low-flow toilets and shower valves with timers as part of a wide-ranging effort to save water amid the state’s four-year drought.
The conservation plan at the Theo Lacy jail also includes tearing up 3,000 square feet of grass and replacing it with decomposed granite donated by the county’s public works department, the Orange County Register reported Saturday.
Deputies Bill Wagner and Wayne Hicken, who make up the county’s only jail sustainability team, say they hope to save 775,000 gallons of water every month at Theo Lacey. The facility constructed in 1960 sits on 18 acres in Orange and holds 3,000 inmates.
“When these buildings were built, when you had (empty) space, you planted grass and that’s what filled it,” Wagner said. “No one really sees those areas, so we tore out the grass that no one saw.”
New toilets being tested decrease the amount of water flushed from 3 to 1.6 gallons. It would cost about $24,000 to install the low-flow devices on the 1,186 facility toilets and take about 300 hours of labor, according to the newspaper.
Shower fixtures are getting an ongoing overhaul, with new, water-conserving timed shut-off valves being installed as old valves break. So far, 145 valves have been replaced with 82 to go.
Each new valve costs $6,000. It will cost around $50,000 before all Theo Lacy inmates will have to press a button every minute to continue showering, the Register reports.
The shower makeovers continue an earlier water-saving move from back in the early 2000s when officials replaced 1,131 sinks with automatic, timed shut-off valves.