Michigan State University senior Kristen Cain says she couldn't believe how wasteful her dorm mates were during her freshman year. "Every other time I walked into the bathroom, someone had just walked away from a running faucet."

Cain says that she was never a crusader for energy conservation, but when she got to college, the waste was just so apparent.   "You couldn't miss it.   What's so hard about turning off the faucet?"

But what was so clear to a 17-year-old student appears to be a little fuzzier for top brass at Spartan Stadium who are struggling to balance environmental responsibility with cost effectiveness.

To reduce lines, the men's rooms in Spartan Stadium feature
trough-style urinals that constantly run water.   Due to the volume of attendees during a four-hour game, the constantly running urinals actually use less water than flushable toilets, stadium officials say.    The troughs were also most likely the cheapest system available in the 1950s when they were installed.  

But during a game, the troughs flow water even if a bathroom is empty. This unused water is treated the same as "dirty" water, andis carried through the sewer system to a treatment plant.

Even after the game, some toilets continue to run, although there is confusion about how many are left on or for how long. Gus Gosselin, head of maintenance for Spartan Stadium, says that the toilets are most certainly shut off, although he does not shut them off personally. Doug McDonald, maintenance supervisor of the MSU Physical Plant, which produces all of the water used on campus, says the water going to the bathrooms is not shut off after a game.

An inspection of the stadium roughly two hours after the Nov. 6 home game revealed that the truth may lie somewhere in the middle.   In one bathroom only one of the urinals was still running, but it was running at full strength.  

Part of the reason this problem may go unchecked is the lack of water metering anywhere in the stadium. The university produces its own electricity and water at the MSU Physical Plant, meaning it doesn't have to pay an outside company for utilities.   And without a meter keeping track, there is no incentive to curb wasteful practices.

"The costs are so low that there just hasn't been much emphasis on tracking consumption," McDonald said.

If the costs are low enough that no one cares about tracking them, then why care about wasting water?  

"Cleaning and producing water means a lot of power," says Jim Meyerle, an education specialist for Urban Options, an East Lansing non-profit energy conservation advocacy group.

"The earth is running out of energy, and when the cost of energy goes up, the cost of everything goes up," Meyerle said.

The earth will reach peak oil production sometime between 2005 and 2008, he said. And irresponsible water consumption at Spartan Stadium is one piece of a very large picture of irresponsible utility consumption by Americans in general.

"Americans are five percent of the population, but we consume more than 25 percent of our energy resources," Meyerle said.  

How long before we start to feel the effects of reckless energy use?  

"The indicators are already starting to show up.   Just last month we saw the largest jump in food costs in the last 15years," Meyerle said.   "I believe we're about 12 months away from seeing energy costs starting to increase general production costs enough that people are going to have to start noticing."

What little utility consumption data is available for MSU suggests that Meyerle may be right. The university's water consumption cost in 2000 was $1.75 per 1,000 gallons, according to Gosselin.   By 2004, that cost increased 46 percent to $2.56 per 1,000 gallons.

With costs on the rise, one alternative for Spartan Stadium may be "dry urinals."   Dry urinals look similar to standard flushable urinals but do not use any water, relying instead on gravity to carry away waste.

"Urine is 97 percent water, so why use a gallon or more of water to get rid of it?" said Jay Troger, a representative of Falcon Waterfree, a Grand Rapids, Mich.-based company that produces dry urinals.   "Dry urinals drop utility costs to almost nothing, require far less maintenance and are more sanitary than trough-style urinals.   It's sort of like,' why wouldn't you make the switch?'"

But Gosselin says the cost benefits of dry urinals in Spartan Stadium simply aren't there.    

"We're talking about a system that gets used eight times a year," he said.   "When you consider the cost of retrofitting all of the urinals and plumbing, you just don't see any payback."

Monetary payback, that is, and money is a prime concern.      

"Being a public institution means we're dealing with public money," Gosselin said.   "If we spend a bunch of money replacing anything, then we have to be able to show that there was some sort of savings. And the savings just isn't there on a system that gets used eight days a year."   

Gosselin does say that dry urinals make sense for new construction and that he has even replaced several traditional flush urinals on campus because the dry system reduces odors.    And although not in charge of the decision, he believes dry urinals are being installed in the new addition to the stadium.

Whether new construction goes with dry or flushable urinals, the trough-style is a thing of the past, Troger said.

"In most states, trough-style urinals are against code," he said.   "They simply use too much water and have too many sanitary risks."

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