UNIVERSITY PLACE, Wash. – Security footage at University Place Primary School shows the water was running for nearly 30 hours, not the five days some neighbors told KING 5 Sunday.
"It is certainly not okay that our sprinklers were running for that long," Susie Whitlock, operations manager for the University Place School District, said Thursday.
Whitlock explained a piece of equipment did not work, which caused the automatic sprinklers to never turn off between 1:30 p.m. Saturday and 7:09 p.m. Sunday night.
At about 6 p.m. Sunday KING 5 sent an inquiry to the district.
"We certainly don't want to be annoying to our neighbors, and we don't want to have things malfunction that look bad, that look like we're not using our resources well," Whitlock said.
The school district said Monday crews shut off all the sprinklers in University Place Primary's parking lot area. Whitlock says they should not be turned on automatically until the parts are replaced.
Whitlock said the sprinkler heads in the area need to be replaced as well. The district took out bushes and replaced it with grass in the parking lot last year, but they never replaced the sprinklers, which meant much of the water hit the parking lot instead of the grass.
This week the district also said it changed the way it waters its property. Watering grass will be a low priority unless it is a sports field.
The district said that decision was made in a previously planned meeting with Tacoma Public Utilities. Whitlock maintains that course of action would have happened whether the KING 5 story aired or not.
Whitlock also called for a clearer line of communication for the community to reach the school district when there's an issue after hours or on the weekend.
"We can't get better at our jobs unless somebody gives us feedback that what we're doing is not working," she said. "We need to find a way for the community to be able to contact us."
