The U is “at a crisis point.”
That’s what U President Michael Young told legislators last week while discussing the rapidly declining state of the campus’ infrastructure.
“There are benefits to being the oldest university in the system,” Young said. “But there are major challenges (too).”
Young said that 144 of the U’s 243 buildings were built before 1970 and have deteriorated a great deal during the past 40 years. The problems are costing the U thousands of dollars a week and will take $100 million to repair, a burden that compounds the school’s financial troubles in light of next year’s 19 percent budget cut. But the state doesn’t have the money to do the U much good.
“It is inappropriate for me in any way to deceive this committee or the public that our capacity to continue to do what we’ve been doing at the trajectory we’re on...is possible with the current infrastructure we have,” Young said.
But $100 million in repairs is a sum that the state cannot afford right now, so the U has created a strategic plan to do the improvements in small increments, Young said. The U is asking for only $15 million.
Young said problems are getting more serious and more costly and will impact the state’s budget in the future.
“We are paper clipping and duct taping at what will be a serious cost to the state,” he said.
High-temperature water and electricity distribution pose the most problems for the U. Young said that last June, there were 65 buildings without heat or hot water because of major pipe failures. That square footage those buildings cover, about 4.6 million square feet, is more than Weber State and Southern Utah University campuses combined, Young said.
Cory Higgins, director of plant operations, said the U loses as much as 30,000 gallons of heated, treated water a day with the current pipes, a problem that has cost the U thousands of dollars a week.
The pipes will cost $5 million to replace. They have been in use for more than a decade longer than their average expectancy. In the past couple years, more than $2 million of repairs have been made to these pipes, Higgins said.
Higgins said there were 21 days in 2008 where major parts of campus did not have heat. In 2009, there were 105.
Young said this situation is worsening. In the past few weeks, 44 buildings on campus were without heat or hot water for days.
Also, in the past two fiscal years, there have been 22 electrical outages to one or more buildings, totaling more than 300 hours of power outage.
Sen. Curt Bramble, R-Provo, said no legislative decisions have been made yet. When the budget is finalized, the U will be notified of the amount they are given for these improvements.
k.harrington@chronicle.utah.edu
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