Drought affects campus
With temperatures reaching 100 degrees and above, Indiana felt the effects of a nationwide drought, which caused crop failure and led Indianapolis and Marion County to institute a water ban.
This ban prohibited watering lawns and filling swimming pools, restricted companies and farmers from using irrigation systems to water plants, and more.
Under the ban, educational institutions were only allowed to water athletic fields that would be needed in the fall. This part of the ban hit the University of Indianapolis hard.
Groundskeepers were forced to hand-water plants, such as these shrubs, due to the instituted water ban. Photo by James Figy
“We had to restrict that [watering] down to three days a week only: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays,” said Director of the Physical Plant Ken Piepenbrink. “It [watering] had to be after 9 o’clock in the evening, so that we cut back on evaporation.”
An exemption allowed groundskeepers to hand-water plants, which happened on a three day per week rotation. Although other projects kept physical plant personnel busy, the ban slowed normal projects.
“We haven’t been able to replace [plants] like we usually do during the summers—bushes, shrubs, things like that,” Piepenbrink said. “Roberts Hall, for instance…we’re not going to do any landscaping there until more in[to] the fall. We normally would have wanted to go ahead and put that in.”
Senior theatre education major Caitlyn Spires worked as a summer resident assistant and saw first hand the effects of the watering ban on campus.
“Part of campus looked really green because of the sprinklers. But wherever there wasn’t a sprinkler the grass was brown. It [the difference] was basically night and day,” Spires said.
This summer’s record temperatures did not affect the way the Physical Plant worked, according to Piepenbrink.
“It’s one of those things where it was hot but wasn’t humid hot. Humidity is the one that kills you, the one that drains you,” Piepenbrink said. “Plus our people, especially our grounds guys, are coming in early, at 5 o’clock in the morning, to do their work.”
Recent rainfall has helped revitalize the landscape around UIndy.
“We’ve been lucky. It’s greened up a lot in the last couple of weeks, because we’ve gotten some rain, which shows that we had pretty good turf before, that it’s been able to bounce back,” Piepenbrink said.
Spires also saw the effect in the way the campus looked before and after the rain.
“Between the construction with Roberts and all the dry dust, you could see the dirt in the air. The south side of campus was a mess,” Spires said. “When it finally rained, everything looked healthier and cleaner.”
