For decades, southern and eastern Wisconsin has struggled with hard water due to the region’s geology. Students at UW-Whitewater are feeling its effects.
From damaged hair to dry skin, the city’s hard water seeps into students’ daily routines, affecting campus life.
Whitewater is located in what is known as the “Limestone Area” of the state. When groundwater moves through limestone, calcium and magnesium minerals enter the water and alter its hardness. Culligan, a water treatment products company, reports that Whitewater’s grains per gallon (gpg) in the water is 17gpg, which is categorized under “very hard water.”
Despite no state regulation forcing cities to soften their water, UW-W maintenance personnel still soften hot water for the sake of their equipment and the students. But it is simply not economically feasible to soften cold water on campus.
“Last year, we went through 4,284 bags of salt, which is 171,000 pounds,” Maintenance & Repair Supervisor Dale Blackwell said. “That’s just doing the hot water. If we had to actually soften everything, you could probably quadruple that amount.”
Chad Ahrens, the Interim Director of Facilities Planning and Management, added that they spent around $27,000 on softener salt over the last year in order to maintain every building on campus. Water softeners are also consistently being replaced due to a state project that provided several new softeners for the university in all academic buildings, Wells Hall, Tutt Hall and Knilans Hall.
“They hadn’t completely failed yet, but we knew going forward, they would within the next five years,” Blackwell said. “That’s why we put the project together and replaced everything.”
Upham Hall also received a new reverse osmosis system for the labs, which significantly improved water clarity in the building. RO systems separate water molecules from other molecules, improving water quality. But these systems are common for singular households, and it is impossible for a reverse osmosis system to work for all of UW-W, let alone the costs to maintain a system that large.
Overall, the budget is the biggest constraint for the university. To completely fix the hard water issue, every building would need new piping, cold water softeners to be installed on top of the hot water system, and salt costs would quadruple. The university would be spending millions of dollars to fix one problem.
“Not to be a negative person, but it’s not going to happen,” Blackwell said. “You can talk to any commercial facility out there; softening cold water in any large capacity is just not done.”
For any other issues regarding maintenance, students can fill out work orders themselves at https://www.uww.edu/adminaffairs/fpm, or they can notify their Resident Assistant or Complex Director of any issues.
