Queen City Stimulus Flush
The City of Charlotte managed to land about $57 million in its scramble for federal stimulus money, but one request from the utilities department got flushed down the toilet. Literally.
Local officials had applied to the state, which administered distribution of the federal stimulus funds, for about $750,00 to pay for a toilet replacement program. The application, which was made as a request for money used to fund so-called “green” projects, was nixed because state officials put a priority on stormwater projects, said Maeneed Klein with Char-Meck Utilities.
“In my mind, it certainly was a green project,” Klein said. “It would have saved a significant amount of water.”
The program concept, as presented to city council last year, was to use the nearly $1 million in stimulus money to replace 5,000 high-volume flush toilets with low-flush toilets, with an emphasis on targeting older homes in “challenged” neighborhoods. After a three-month period, the program would have been applied across the city, or as utility officials put it in their presentation to council, “one toilet per residence, first come, first served.”
The program would have yielded an expected water savings of about 18 million gallons per year, Klein said. Older toilets, particularly those installed pre-80s, use about 7 gallons per flush, she said, while the newer models that the stimulus money would have been used to purchase use only about 1 gallon.
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