Those water bottles in the stores will soon disappear. While many students purchase water at school in lieu of using the water fountains this luxury may no not be an option in the future. This is due to an idea still in the beginning stages. This idea is to ban the sale of water bottles on the Pierce campus.

This isn’t a new issue though. This has been going for a bit, though not in the Clover Park District. Other colleges across the US has enacted this including, Western Washington University or WWU.

This change wouldn’t be without a cost though. Lots of money would be lost with the banning in place. In WWU $60,000 was lost in the initial implementation. Pierce has, yet to have a direct plan but is working on figuring what they can do to alleviate the sales loss.

The college soon realized that they will need a replacement for all the water that is readily available on the campus. Water is sold in the Bookstore, and the Cafeteria,and the water bottles in the vending machines would be removed with the passing of the band.

Following what has worked for other colleges. They decided to replace the water fountains with something that the other colleges have been doing which are hydration stations and refillable water bottles. These would allow students to get water and allow them longer time between water breaks that many students take.

These machines have a filter that would remove anything in the water and on top of that it would be more hygienic, since they wouldn’t be used or had mouths near them. All they would need would be maintenance. That would require the proper staff to be taught to maintain these machines.

These are a big step so Student Government has decided to do a trial run on them and hope to install four hydration stations in the campus. Two would be located in the Health and Wellness Center and the other two would be located in the Cascade building.

Depending on the reception of these machines they would work to put in more hydration stations. These are being headed by Washington Community and Technical College Student Association or WACTCSA. They are pushing this to be passed by the States Legislature.