Day 2 Taking a one hour drive down beautiful Highway 1 as it runs down the Pacific coast I arrive at the University of California-Santa Cruz, located in the foothills of Santa Cruz. this beautiful campus is almost the polar opposite from UCSF.

The campus of University of Santa Cruz is enormous in size at over 2,500 acres, and takes a crew of 46 grounds personnel to maintain. The land includes large prairie areas, heavily forested areas, and mountainous terrain. The setting and log cabin type architecture makes it feel like a mountain resort. Part of the reason I chose to visit UCSC was that it made Forbes list of "most Beautiful College Campuses" and was top 10 of greenest colleges in the nation according to Sierra Magazine. I met with Mr. Rodger Edberg, the Senior Superintendent of Grounds Services. He was kind enough to give me a one hour driving tour of the entire grounds, and showed me many of the challenges they face.

Maybe the greatest challenge currently facing UCSC is not water consumption, but regulations. Emission standards made it necessary to throw away old equipment they worked perfectly fine. Because they had diesel engines made before a certain date, they had to eliminate close to 100,000 dollars worth of equipment.

Strict recycling rules mean garbage has to be separated into cardboard, paper, plastics, metals, and compost material. The amount of equipment, personnel, and time spent doing this is on the scale of what a mid-size city around Milwaukee would require. Fifteen full time employees do nothing but collect and sort garbage everyday.

The campus irrigation system is large and very high tech. The campus is divided into zones. Each zone has irrigation clocks that determine when a set of sprinklers turn on and how long it runs. what is unique about this system is the irrigation clocks are all tied into individual weather stations. These weather stations measure temperature, relative humidity, wind, evaporation, transpiration, and precipitaion rates. These factors all determine when the irrigation system runs. It is all done by computers and insures you use the least amount of water needed to maintain a healthy plant material.

This large campus is run like a small city, and most of the driving forces to change on the campus involve green technologies. From recycling to emissions and water usage, these are all items that will soon affect all schools.