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Florida Southern Adjusts Fountain Schedule To Save Water

Photo by BILLY TOWNSEND / The Tampa Tribune

The Frank Lloyd Wright Water Dome operates Wednesday at Florida Southern College at less than full capacity. The fountain has become a major attraction for the college, where officials are working to balance its appeal with responsible water use.

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By BILLY TOWNSEND | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 9, 2007

LAKELAND - Visitors from Michigan stopped by Florida Southern College a few days ago to see the newly restored Frank Lloyd Wright Water Dome. They found the clear, serene basin. But the 74 high-powered jets that make the fountain a dome weren't running.

"We just turned it on for about 10 minutes for them," said Terry Dennis, the college's vice president for finance. "They'd come all that way."

It's always been a challenge for Florida Southern College to marry the prestigious design of its Frank Lloyd Wright architecture with the day-to-day functions of a campus. The famously leaky and fragile Wright buildings are considered among the world's 100 most endangered monuments by the World Monuments Fund.

Wright's restored Water Dome poses different challenges for the college it has now come to symbolize. It works beautifully. Yet there are murmurs about waste, particularly at a time when water is at a premium in Lakeland and Florida.

College officials say they expected those concerns and they have answers.

Since it opened late last month, the Water Dome has run eight hours per day, as allowed under Southwest Florida Water Management District water restrictions. But the college is preparing to scale that back to three hours daily, seven days per week, spread over normal business and tour hours.

They hope a schedule will help assure that neither architecture lovers nor water users will feel cheated.

"We just want to be sure that we're doing our part to both demonstrate what a wonderful piece of architecture it is, without overusing it," Dennis said.

Watching The Water

The Water Dome is a basin measuring 160 feet in diameter. The water inside is kept 24 inches deep. At any given time, it holds about 260,000 gallons of water.

Its jets ring the basin and create the 45-foot-tall curtain of water envisioned 60 years ago, when it was designed by Wright, the influential American architect and designer whose work spanned seven decades.

When the fountain operates, water is sucked through new pipe fittings beneath the center of the basin, piped to a pump house about 100 feet away and rerouted back through the jets.

Water is not pumped out of the basin, but some evaporates or is lost in spray when the jets start to spurt. The college uses its own water, provided by Lakeland's municipal supply, to keep the basin full. Fountain water use shows up on the college's bill, just like water used by students in dorms.

The fountain did not require permitting through the water district.

Dennis compared it to a swimming pool, noting the college's Olympic-sized pool near Lake Hollingsworth uses far more water than the Water Dome.

Dennis said the college expects to drain and repair the basin roughly every four years. At those times, the water will be pumped through the college's irrigation system for use in watering the grounds.

Dennis said he doesn't know how much water it will take to keep the basin full throughout the year. But he said pools generally lose about a quarter-inch of water each day to evaporation.

If that's the case, it would take about 100 days for the Water Dome basin to dry out, meaning it would take 800,000 to 1 million gallons a year to keep it full. That's roughly equal to the combined use of six or seven typical households.

Dennis said the college will track the total amount of water used by the fountain.

And the college is subject to the city's consumption water rates, meaning the more water it uses, the higher the cost per gallon.

Reducing Hours

The fountain schedule isn't final yet because the college is still waiting for a back-ordered piece of equipment that will allow for automated management of the fountain. For now, college officials have to manually turn the fountain on and off and manually adjust the intensity of the jets, depending on wind conditions.

Volunteer docent Mark Tlachac, who gives tours of the college's Wright collection, said some visitors are perplexed to see that the fountain doesn't always run at full blast. On windy days, it has to be dialed down to keep spray from the jets minimal.

But Tlachac said the number of visitors jumped right after the fountain was unveiled and haven't diminished.

"We've had families drive up on the weekend with their kids all dressed in identical shirts to have their pictures taken in front of the fountain," Tlachac said.

It's not clear if the reduced hours of operation will discourage visitors, but college officials point out that the Water Dome is lovely even without its jets and their dramatic water effects.

The wide, clear pool with its wind-whipped ripples makes for a quiet place to sit, said Lee Mayhall, Florida Southern's spokeswoman.

"It's a really pretty sight," Mayhall said.

Reporter Billy Townsend can be reached at (863) 284-1409 or wtownsend@tampatrib.com.

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