Alan Hancock College Fire Academy receives new water-saving equipment

LOMPOC VALLEY, Calif. --  The Allan Hancock College Fire Academy is relying on new technology to save a precious resource used for firefighter cadet training on Monday in Santa Maria.

The Direct Recirculation Apparatus Firefighter Training and Sustainability Unit (DRAFTS) Pump Pod is a self-contained, mobile tank that can continually pump water for training purposes and recapture the water for future use.

"What's it's designed to do is to recirculate water", said Bill Ward of the Simi Valley-based Pump-Pod USA, "it's 1,900 gallons in the tank and they can do all of their entire training evolutions, thousands and thousands, days on end with the same 1,900 gallons."

The DRAFTS Pump Pod is expected to save up to a million gallons of water used every year at the AHC Fire Academy.

"This is state of the art", said AHC Fire Academy Coordinator Andy Densmore, "we're able to reclaim water that would normally go down the storm drain."

Allan Hancock College secured California Community College grant funds to buy the $100,000 pump pod for the AHC Fire Academy at its Lompoc Valley Public Safety Training Complex.

"Instead of using the hydrant and wasting water, they can recirculate it with this", Ward said, "this will be the wave of the future because we cannot continue to keep using water and wasting it when we've got technology like this.  The water departments are looking for ways to conserve, provide rebates, efficiency programs, that's the way it's going."