Optimizing Water Efficiency for Virginia's Hospital System 

Overview

The State of Virginia embarked on an ambitious project to improve the water and power resilience of the state’s hospitals in 2010. Utilizing a unique water assessment process authored by RethinkH2o founder Jim Siplon, the Virginia Hospital Association (VHA) commissioned studies of the more than 100 hospitals in Virginia with 25 beds or more. With site visits and data reviews at every location within the first year of the project, the VHA developed a project roadmap for emergency water systems and improvements at every state facility. The VHA then matched a variety of funding sources to individual hospital projects resulting in alternate emergency water systems and reuse schemes at more than 40 state hospitals. These systems involved a variety of alternate water sources including onsite wells, storm water catchment, industrial blowdown, rainwater capture and condensate to provide both treated emergency water supply as well as everyday water savings. These systems ranged in size from modest 20-30 gpm solutions to large scale solutions providing hundreds of thousands of gallons a day at some of the largest hospitals on the East coast.