Laughlin uses desert to save water

  • Published
  • By Kevin Elliott
  • AFCEC Public Affairs
TYNDALL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. --  The Air Force Civil Engineer Center recently announced completion of the first phase of a two-phase water conservation project at Laughlin Air Force Base, Texas, which is expected to save more than 61 million gallons of water per year and an estimated $500,000 in annual utility and maintenance costs.

A large part of the project involved removing most of the base's landscaping, which included water-intensive plantings, irrigation and turf grass, and replacing it with native desert plant species, rock features and a centrally controlled drip line irrigation system.

The process of utilizing native, drought-tolerant plants and landscaping to reduce water consumption is called xeriscaping, and has been implemented at a number of other Air Force installations.

Laughlin is located in a semi-arid ecosystem, just outside Del Rio, Texas, near the Mexico border. Average annual rainfall in the area is 19.5 inches per year, making water resources limited and artificial irrigation a necessity for conventional landscaping elements like Bermuda turf lawns.

Previous landscape design and irrigation practices on the base weren't tailored to the local climate. According to the ECIP form DD1391 submitted by the 47th Civil Engineer Squadron for the project, between 2003 and 2014, Laughlin was the highest water-consuming base in Air Education and Training Command, consuming an average of 216 million gallons of potable water each year. Most of that consumption came from conventional manual irrigation of 220 acres of base landscaping.

"The existing landscaping at Laughlin was water intensive and thus relatively costly in terms or resources," said Mark Dent, AFCEC project manager for the Laughlin xeriscaping effort, and a member of the AFCEC energy conservation investment program, or ECIP, team.

"It is not the most cost effective choice to grow large swaths of non-native grass and plants at a place like Laughlin," Dent said, "However, it is also important to enhance the decorum and professionalism of a military base through the landscape. Xeriscaping is an effective way to create a water-efficient landscape that can be both beautiful and less costly to maintain."

The xeriscaping effort includes reducing the footprint of irrigated landscape from 220 acres to 68, utilizing a centrally controlled irrigation system with solar powered smart radio frequency technology and targeted drip emitters, replacing Bermuda grass lawns with water-efficient Buffalo grass, and installing native plants, grasses and gravel mulch on the remaining acreage. This multi-faceted plan is expected to reduce Laughlin's water consumption by approximately 50 percent.

The drip irrigation system is key to xeriscaping success, said Philip Heikkila, a member of the American Society of Landscape Architects and senior project manager and landscape architect at Environmental Quality Management, Inc., the company hired to install the xeriscaping system.

"Through a centralized drip irrigation system, we can control the amount of water going to each individual tree and shrub," Heikkila said. "This means low, but very efficient, water use.  An hour of watering with drip irrigation amounts to less than a gallon of water per plant, and none of that wasted. Add to that we chose plants that naturally thrive in this dry climate and you have a much more sustainable and less expensive landscape."

The total cost of phase one was $3.6 million. Construction began in late May 2014, employing up to 25 workers at time, and was completed in February 2015. Phase II of the xeriscaping project is slated for execution in fiscal 2015.  Once both phases are complete, the project will have a 10-year payback period and a 15-year lifecycle. 

The project was funded through ECIP, a direct investment funding program managed by AFCEC and dedicated to water and energy conservation projects on Air Force installations.