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Water and stormwater

Water touches nearly everything we do on Boise State’s campus — from the coffee in the Student Union to the grass we walk across between classes. Across campus, crews from Facilities Operations and Maintenance and Landscape Services are putting water to smarter use, with the Office of Sustainability helping connect the dots and share the story.

Master Plan goals

Water conservation

Promote efficient and responsible water use across campus facilities, landscapes, and operations to enhance resilience to water scarcity and support long-term resource availability.

Stormwater management

Stormwater management should reduce flooding risk, protect water quality, and enhance campus resilience to extreme weather events through integrated design and infrastructure solutions.

Permeable pavers

Alumni and Friends Center parking lot using permeable pavers

Instead of traditional solid asphalt, the parking lot at the Alumni & Friends Center uses permeable pavers — porous surfaces engineered to let stormwater seep directly through rather than pool and run off.

Permeable pavers matter because they:

  • Protect groundwater quality by filtering runoff before it reaches the water table.
  • Promote natural, cleaner groundwater recharge.
  • Reduce the volume of stormwater runoff, easing pressure on storm drains and nearby waterways.

Eco-Turf

Eco-Turf in front front of building with tree.

Landscaping Services planted Eco-Turf — a blended mix of clover and drought-resistant fescue grasses — in select spots on campus, including the area directly behind Micron Center for Materials Research.

The benefits of Eco-Turf:

  • Requires significantly less water than a conventional grass lawn, saving both money and resources.
  • Requires less mowing.
  • Requires less fertilizer — clover is a natural nitrogen fixer, pulling nitrogen from the air and converting it into a usable soil nutrient, effectively self-fertilizing the turf.
  • More resilient to seasonal weather changes, and its drought-resistant vegetation minimizes fertilizer runoff into nearby waterways.

Water bottle refill stations

Water bottle refill station showing someone filling their bottle
  • Refill stations are installed in nearly every building on campus, encouraging Broncos to ditch single-use plastic in favor of reusable bottles.
  • Each station tracks and displays a running count of bottles filled/reused at that location — a small, visible nudge toward better habits
  • Every refill is one less plastic bottle purchased, cutting down on both plastic pollution and your personal environmental footprint

Geothermal water

Building sign for geothermal energy usage

Boise is home to the oldest and largest direct-use geothermal system in the country, and Boise State taps into it across 11 buildings on campus. Hot water drawn from underground hot springs near the foothills is piped to campus and run through heat exchangers, which extract the heat and transfer it into campus buildings.

How it works

  • After the heat is extracted, the geothermal water isn’t wasted — it’s routed into a return pipe and pumped back into the aquifer near the Military Reserve, replenishing the source
  • The same network of pipes also runs beneath campus sidewalks, using residual heat to melt snow in the winter
  • The system reduces the university’s reliance on natural gas for heating and cuts down on the need for manual snowmelt efforts

Buildings using geothermal water on the Boise State campus

Administration Building, Morrison Center, Mathematics Building, Student Union Building, Multi-Purpose Classroom Building, Interactive Teaching and Learning Center, Micron Business and Economics Building, Alumni & Friends Center, Center for Visual Arts, Environmental Research Building, and the Micron Center for Materials Research.

Want to get involved?

The Office of Sustainability’s Student Sustainability Fund offers grants of up to $5,000 for student-led sustainability projects, including water-focused initiatives. Visit the Campus Sustainability Challenge to learn more.