Public Forum:
By Guillermo Ramirez
Southwestern College (SWC) has installed waterless urinals in most of the men’s restrooms. While the water saving figures is not clear because there are not water meters installed in each restroom, the odor in the men’s restrooms is disgusting.
Waterless urinals are being removed from bathrooms nationwide because of the odor and damage to the pipes from concentrated urine.
Waterless urinals use zero water and rely on filters to block the odor of urine and of the sewer. Regular urinals use about one gallon of water per flush and drain it into the sewer pipe, a water trap blocks the odors. Waterless urinals were invented in Germany. The Waterless Company’s website claims that their urinal “saves on average 20,000-45,000 gallons of water a year.”
Melissa Conrad Stöppler, MD indicated in medicinenet that urine has an ammonia scent, and odor because of the food we eat. Certain medications may change the smell of urine too and finally diseases, such as bacteria from urinary infections, give urine a foul-smelling odor. Urine, after being released by the body, cultures bacteria and decomposes quickly which increases odors. Waterless urinals can retain urine creating an environment that helps bacteria multiply resulting in offensive odors.
According to attorney Shari Shapiro, foul odor from waterless urinals has led to many cases of legal disputes because construction and building codes have not been updated to the new green policies of Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design (LEED) a green building certification program that recognizes best-in-class building strategies and practices such as reduced water use. Shapiro reported, in greenbuildinglawblog, many cases of halts and removals of installations of waterless urinals in several cities around the nation because of odor in the restrooms and stinky scale buildups in drainage pipes.
At Southwestern College, like everywhere else, the bathrooms are equipped with air vents and fans to move the odors outside.
But the building designers calculated the ventilation in restrooms according to the bathroom size, the number of sanitary units, and the number of users of watered urinals. When SWC installed waterless urinals plumbers ignored the need to recalculate the size of ventilation equipment in those restrooms. Consequently, odor is an obvious problem now. According to Abraham, a SWC student, “the bathrooms stink” and sometimes give him “itchy eyes and discomfort while in the restroom.”
Ricardo, another student at SWC, suffers from ulcerative prostatitis and uses those urinals every two hours: “I feel horrible when I go to the restroom at SWC.” (During the interview in the restroom # 2365 there was a urinal overflowing on the floor.)
The saving in water costs needs to be carefully analyzed because there are other expenses associated with waterless urinals.
Chemicals for these urinals include: sealer, primer, and cleaner which sell for $75 a gallon in average; and these products might also harm the environment. One of the two plumbers at SWC said “the selling point was the 40,000 gallons less, but the vendor did not mention about we would have to upgrade or retrofit the ventilation.” According to James Krug, CEO of Falcon-Waterfree Technologies and/a former Disney Channel vice president, the waterless urinal is a good business invention because every 7,000 uses the urinal requires a new cartridge that sells for about $40.00 (reported in Wired Magazine by Joshua Davis “Pissing Match: Is the World Ready for the Waterless Urinal?” The U.S. Army in October 2007 said yes to the waterless urinals in all its new constructions, but later found problems with the plumbing. The City of Chicago ordered to teardown all zero water urinals because concentrated urine caused severe damage to plumbing pipes at City Hall and in the O’Hara airport, ‘Green’ Experiment at City Hall Stinks | NBC Chicago reported. The use of the, donated, zero water urinals was not tested enough for corrosion and its use did not account that users would poor coffee and drinks down the pipe, Environment Department spokesman Larry Merritt said . There is a concern that these urinals become a health risk factor because at SWC I found urine stopped in one of those urinals for a week and the odor was horrendous.
SWC installed thirty waterless urinals one year ago. Since then at SWC urinating requires a nose clip to hold the breath while doing business in the men’s room. Hopefully, new ventilation or water-flush urinals shall be installed soon to provide a fresh air to students in the restrooms. An online search of the Southwestern College’s website returns no results for statistics on urinals or waterless money savings.
Guillermo Ramirez, Student at SWC