Bakersfield College has taken steps to reduce water usage in this drought.

For three years now, BC has changed their water patterns starting with some replacements with toilets and have been making additional efforts to improve the BC water usage.

Amir Birjandi, Maintenance and Operations Director at BC, explains that he is trying to eliminate unnecessary grass areas by adding sod or bark instead.

Amber Chiang, Director of Marketing and Public Relations here at BC, said, “The drought doesn’t affect marketing, but it does change how we communicate about it and it has required that I learn about the drought and how BC wants to respond to it.”

This also affects the community’s perception of BC, which contradicts with the markets appeal.

Chiang said, “Sprinklers, for example, break every day which causes a perception problem. These things happen every day. By taking a picture of it and sending it to the media makes it a PR & marketing problem.”

During the summer the staff was messaged about the change in the watering patterns and staff will hand water trees.

“We have also asked them to report any sprinklers that have been running longer than necessary and not just walk by them.”

Chiang runs BC’s emergency notification system and oversees the all student list, only sends emails to students if its of broad importance, and asks students to report any broken sprinklers by sending her an email so she can pass it on to maintenance and operations.