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by Keith Miller
 In an era of increasing concerns about communities’ ability to provide ample treated freshwater to citizens, waterparks face quite a public relations challenge. As people see large amounts of freshwater being used by businesses whose primary purpose is to provide recreation and entertainment, questions sometimes arise as to whether it is a wasteful use of water, especially in areas prone to or stricken by drought.
Certainly, at first glance, waterparks would seem to be massive users of freshwater. After all, their wave pools, lazy rivers, water playgrounds, hot tubs, and splash pools are full of the stuff. But there’s a big difference between having large amounts of freshwater and consuming large amounts, and for waterparks, that’s a crucial distinction.
“After the initial fill, waterparks in general use a surprisingly small amount of freshwater,” says Eric Hansen, director of development services for Hotel and Leisure Advisors (HLA). HLA conducted an analysis of water usage by waterparks, and Hansen presented the results in an April 2008 article titled “Is Water Conservation at Waterparks Considered Oxymoronic?” The research showed that water loss in waterparks occurs in four areas: evaporation, splash out, deck wash down, and backwash loss. Each gallon lost through maintenance and topping off is replaced by a new gallon of water from a well, a municipal supply, or whatever source the park uses for freshwater.
Evaporation is an issue for outdoor waterparks, but really not for indoor facilities. Splash out is usually caused by guests, and as the term implies, refers to water being splashed out of the attractions. Deck wash down is a maintenance activity involving the cleaning of waterpark surfaces. Backwash is the use of water to clean the filters of the water system; it is probably the least apparent cause of water loss but is actually the greatest source of it. These four areas collectively account for only 2 percent to 3 percent of daily water use in a waterpark. The remaining 97 percent to 98 percent is reused or reclaimed.
“It would be very hard to find a waterpark that doesn’t have some type of reclamation in place,” notes Hansen. “Remember, they’ve paid to treat the water chemically and often to heat it, so if they can reclaim it, that’s more efficient for them.” Thus, water conservation means lower utility bills for waterparks.
Further, HLA’s research showed waterparks account for only 15 percent to 20 percent of the total water usage at a resort. Guest rooms, restaurants, restrooms, laundry, and other components make up the balance.
How They Do It
So it’s definitely in the interest of waterparks, in both financial and public-perception terms, to conserve freshwater. But what are some of the ways they accomplish this? The most prominent method is water reclamation. This involves making sure water used in all of the attractions is recaptured once it drains out and is returned to the system for filtration and reuse. This includes not only water used for slides, wave pools, and other attractions, but for decorative applications, as well.
Wild Wadi Water Park (www.wildwadidubai.com) in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), has numerous themed waterfalls throughout the park and that water is recaptured. “We ensure that all waterfalls in the park return the water to our system, thereby conserving water,” says park general manager Chris Perry.
Wild Wadi, like many waterparks, also employs splashguards, which prevent water from being splashed out by swimmers. This includes waterslides, which can be designed to prevent water from sloshing out over the sides when riders hit turns at high speeds.
Little can be done about water lost due to evaporation. The wash down of decks and other spots as well as landscaping irrigation are other areas of somewhat unavoidable losses because most parks opt to use “new” water rather than the reclaimed water they’ve paid to treat, filter, and heat. However, more and more waterparks, like WhiteWater World in Queensland, Australia (www.whitewaterworld.com.au), are capturing stormwater runoff and using it for these purposes. WhiteWater World has two “detention ponds” that store 317,000 gallons of stormwater for use in landscape irrigation.
 As mentioned, generally the greatest loss of water in a waterpark comes from backwash, a maintenance process used to clean the system’s water filters. But some waterparks, including Wild Wadi, are addressing this area, too. “We’ve installed [Neptune-Benson] Defender filters, replacing our high-rate sand filters,” says Perry, “[and they] use considerably less water due to the technology of the new filter system by reducing the number of backwashes needed.”
Great Wolf Resorts of Madison, Wisconsin (www.greatwolf.com), with 12 indoor waterparks in North America, also employs the Defender filters. “Actually, they use 80 percent to 90 percent less water than traditional sand filters do,” says Steve Shattuck, the company’s director of communications. “We also use ultraviolet filtration.”
Conservation by Design in New Facilities
Certainly existing waterparks can be retrofitted with equipment like low-backwash filtration systems and splash guards, but new waterparks can be designed for conservation from the start.
“There’s certainly a huge perception that parks are extremely wasteful because there’s so much water in them and that there are huge losses,” says Nick Neuman, project development expert at Water Technology Inc. in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin (www.watertechnologyinc.com). “But over the years, sustainability has become very important, and we design for it with smart systems. We minimize loss by regenerative media filtration, and it’s a fantastic filtration system, and we see many clients that can use clean water for other purposes after it’s dechlorinated. We try to develop synergy with that water.”
The new Calypso Theme Waterpark near Ottawa, Ontario, Canada (www.calypsopark.com), utilizes an open filtration system designed by Aquatic Development Group, instead of sand filters in an enclosed tank. “This allows us to lower the water in the tanks a few times a week and rake the sand manually to remove sediments and extend its usability,” says Calypso Executive Vice President Sylvain Lauzon, “and this reduces the frequency of backwashes from once every four days to once every six days or so, thereby increasing system performance by 20 percent.”
Calypso also designed another water-saving feature into its operation—storage basins. The park is located in an area that experiences hard freezes during much of the winter, and most waterparks in such climates drain their attractions at the end of the season and refill them the following spring. But not Calypso. “We move the water around,” explains Lauzon, “and pump it from one basin to another basin and store it [over winter]. So we’re really only refilling 25 percent of the system in spring, and that’s about 2 million gallons we’re saving.” Plus, the new refill water that must be brought in comes from deep wells, not municipal water supplies; the same is true for landscaping irrigation.
In desert regions like the UAE, even deep wells may not be an alternative. So Wild Wadi utilizes another source: desalinated ocean water. “We receive freshwater from two sources—the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority (DEWA) and central plant services, which receives their water from DEWA,” says Perry. “All of this water is desalinated by DEWA and then sent to us.”
In areas experiencing or prone to drought, existing and planned waterparks often undergo intense scrutiny. In such cases, Hansen says education of both the public and local governments is important. “I actually did a drought management study for a waterpark because the local government required it,” he says. “I would suggest that any developer looking to build a waterpark hit the issue up front. A drought management plan identifies the practices that conserve water and then lays out what it will implement in case of a [drought conservation] declaration.”
Great Wolf Resorts’ approach to the subject of education involved setting up a website that explains how its program works. Says Shattuck, “We also partner with National Geographic Kids for children’s education and entertainment, and have a dedicated TV channel in the rooms called Project Green Wolf with environmental video programming designed for children. Guest feedback has shown us that environmental responsibility is now a big issue.”
Green Seal Certification Program
A few years ago, when Great Wolf Resorts developed Project Green Wolf to standardize its ecological efforts companywide, it also contacted Green Seal, a nonprofit group that helps organizations with their environmental efforts.
“The average Great Wolf Lodge has about 400 rooms, and water usage goes far beyond the waterpark itself,” says the company’s director of communications, Steve Shattuck. “A big part of Green Seal criteria is freshwater management. In the hotel portion, it’s things like swapping out showerheads and faucets, low-flow toilets, hosing down sidewalks, and daily linen service. We actually designed all this into the Concord [North Carolina] resort, our newest lodge, and designed our laundry facility to use 70 percent water reclamation.”
Green Seal’s certification program has a lodging component, but it doesn’t specifically address waterparks, so Great Wolf took the initiative. “Green Seal certification is an ongoing process, and they send someone to each of our facilities every year,” says Shattuck. “One of the things they were really impressed with is that we were incorporating our efforts on the waterpark side.” He notes that these efforts required rewriting the company’s Standard Operating Procedures, as well as part of the employee training program.
» Read more about this program in the June 2010 issue of FUNWORLD.
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Contact News Editor Keith Miller at kmiller@IAAPA.org.
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