‘One Water’ school opens

Blue Hole Primary School in Wimberley ISD opened to in-person students on August 19, 2020 as the first One Water School in Texas.

The project won the 2020 Rain Catcher Award from the Texas Water Development Board and has also already inspired additional One Water projects within the region including the One Water plan for the Wimberley Village Library.

The Pre-K through 2nd grade school was designed to focus on the efficient use and transport of water throughout the entire Wimberley community. The One Water approach for Blue Hole Primary was to reduce groundwater usage up to 90% less than typical school use as well as reuse water produced by the school. To do this, the district installed a 200,000-gallon rainwater and AC condensate storage tank and implemented an advanced system to reuse the captured water for irrigation and toilet flushing. The school also recycles treated wastewater on site to water playfields and landscapes and teats stormwater runoff with green infrastructure to reduce non-point source pollution. Efficient use of the system enables the management of all water – drinking water, wastewater, stormwater, and greywater – as a single resource, which is where the name One Water comes from.

Beyond the extensive environmental measures, the new school is a 90,600-square-foot campus. The $31.3 million bond project, given the go ahead by Wimberley residents in May 2018, has a capacity for 800 students in pre-k through second grade with 40 classrooms, a gymnasium, a library, a cafeteria and several smaller reading and math intervention classrooms.