Walking around Swarthmore College’s grounds, you can see patches of browning grass, contrasted bafflingly with a constant downpour of sprinklers. Despite the heavy artificial rain, the area’s significant lack of natural rain has put the school’s plantings and construction projects at risk. Without properly watered grass, fences would need to stay on campus for an extended amount of time to meet erosion regulations. Philadelphia recently received its first notable rainfall in six weeks, with 0.31 inches recorded at Philadelphia International Airport, the nearest weather station. This little rain — and rains recently on Nov. 19 and Nov. 20 — did little to alleviate the drought. At time of publication, there is a bonfire ban for members of the Swarthmore community and this October was the driest on record, with three fewer inches of rain than normal based on historic climate patterns. Typical annual rainfall is 40 inches, but this year, there have been four inches in the Swarthmore area since August. More weather map information can be found at drought.gov.
“We have very few irrigation systems on campus, because normally we do get fairly regular rains …” said Jeff Jabco, director of grounds and coordinator of horticulture for the Scott Arboretum, in an interview with The Phoenix. “When I keep looking for the weather report for the future, we’ve seen a lot of times we’re predicted to get something, and then you keep watching the weather forecast, and it just kind of disappears and you don’t get anything. It’s really frustrating for us, because we keep thinking, ‘Okay, we’re going to get rain. It’s going to go back to normal,’ and then we don’t.”
Watering the growing grass serves more than an aesthetic purpose. Currently, Swarthmore’s geoexchange well drilling is 50% completed. Government regulations require a certain percentage of ground cover, in order to prevent soil erosion and run-off. This would allow for the removal of fences and sandbags. Without proper germination — the process of a plant growing from seed to seedling — the removal of fences around campus has been delayed, even though the drilling in Mertz Lawn is complete. Future drilling near Parrish Hall and the Dining and Community Commons will require a second round of fenced lawns. Additionally, without an established root system, plants risk death during the winter frost.
“Ideally, if we had an inch a week and had that happening for a period of time, then things would be okay again,” Jabco said. “But this will be really hard for plants, too, going into winter after being so dry for so many months. I’d expect a lot of our younger plants are going to have more winter damage and maybe even death because of that.”
Grounds management is sprinkling only in areas that were under construction to put in geoexchange wells, as well as athletic fields for the safety of athletes. Any area where construction collects rainfall to water, such as around the Science Center, is long depleted and dry. Last year, the bottom of Mertz Lawn was filled with excess water due to drilling. But that water was deemed clean enough to return to the Crum Creek and is also gone, according to Jabco.
Sprinklers will remain a constant of campus life as the college maintains the arboretum and continually takes water from other sources, because the alternative is to watch every plant that has not adapted to survive droughts die. Jennifer Pfluger, visiting assistant professor of environmental studies, believes, in the absence of government action, wealthy individuals and institutions have to carry more responsibility for fighting and adapting to climate change. She believes Swarthmore has been “exemplary” in its response to climate change, including the 20X35 initiative and programs such as President’s Sustainability Research Fellows and Green Advisors.
“I have a protest poster in my home that says, ‘PANIC NOW.’ It’s oddly comforting,” Pfluger said in an email to The Phoenix. “I went to that climate protest a few years ago with my teenage daughter, and there’s nothing I’d rather do with other humans than be in solidarity against the climate crisis. I also keep the panic sign as my version of a motivational sign, to remind me daily that I am not doing enough — that we aren’t doing enough. Colleges should prioritize climate education more than they generally do — we need an all-hands-on-deck-type of pivot.”
Swarthmore’s new geoexchange system will decrease water usage once completed. The current system to cool buildings requires substantial amounts of water, Director of Campus Energy Jim Adams wrote, in an email to The Phoenix. Comparatively, although some water is being used for drilling, it is absorbed back into the ground after, and once the project is completed, no water will be used in the geoexchange heating and cooling system.
On Tuesday, Nov. 12, Andrew Feick, the associate vice president of sustainable facilities operations and capital planning, informed students that Mertz Lawn will remain closed and the “50 sprinklers with a spaghetti of hoses” will continue to be used to maintain the grass until winter begins. “Because overall rainfall remains deficient, we need to keep the sprinklers running, which renders the lawn unusable for recreation. Soon the average temperatures will drop and the grass will transition into dormancy, at which time we will remove the sprinklers and hoses and take down the fence,” Feick said.
However, the impact of the drought will continue long after fences are brought down in the winter. Planting projects have been canceled for next semester and year, and Jabco expects long-term impacts of this drought. Spring is a harder time to seed grass because seedlings are competing with weeds to establish and prefer colder weather.
“I would expect that a lot of the other areas of campus where we aren’t able to water or turf grass are going to be affected for a number of years,” Jabco said. “Lawns are not going to be looking as nice in those areas next spring. If you walk across them now, you see all the grass, basically the surface is dead, and so if the root system lives, it might be okay. Other than that, we’re just gonna have a lot of bare soil spots.”
As the college looks towards a future increasingly impacted by climate change, changes are being made to how the arboretum and grounds are maintained. For Pfluger, this means redefining the “standards of beauty” with climate-friendly practices such as naturalistic landscaping and green roofs, and prioritizing staffing time on certain areas of campus.
“The most important thing the college can do on its grounds is to maintain the largest part of campus, the Crum Woods,” Pfluger said. “The collective biomass of that ecosystem — both above ground and the magical, interconnected world of living organisms underground — is an impressive and beautiful thing, and by far the most effective carbon sink we have on campus.”
Pfluger also acknowledged the complexities of the trade-off between conserving water and maintaining the college’s plantings that help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Jabco agreed that discussions about how to adapt to climate change in horticulture are sparking currently. Gardeners must figure out how to plan for both extreme dry spells and heavier rains from hurricanes.
“That’s a big topic with everyone involved in horticulture and gardening; planting for what the future is …” Jabco said. “It’s going to be either a feast or famine and there’s either going to be too much rain, or not enough rain with more intense storms. That’s going to be a challenge.”
