Looking into the future of fresh water
2 Oct, 2008 By: Ron Hall LM Direct!Made of red sandstone, Old Main is the oldest building on the Tempe campus of Arizona State University. The handsome, three-story structure was finished in 1898, more than a decade before Arizona became a state. It recently offered a historic setting for the Intelligent Use of Water Summit IX sponsored by Rain Bird Corp.
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True to the spirit of Rain Bird's previous summits, the panelists looked at water issues broadly. They shared perspectives on a range of topics, including water availability, pricing and fresh water's vital importance as a sustainable resource.
The issue of sustainability, in fact, framed the summit that lasted almost three hours — thanks to questions from the knowledgeable audience of about 150. This particular summit unfolded in partnership with the one-year-old School of Sustainability at Arizona State University. As the nation's first and only School of Sustainability, ASU's Global Institute of Sustainability advances research, education and business practices for an urbanizing world through trans-disciplinary degree programs that advance practical solutions to environmental, economic and social challenges of our day. Two key members of that School were among the four presenters.
The presenters were:
• Doug Bennett, water conservation manager, Southern Nevada Water Authority (SNWA),
• Jim Holway, professor of practice in civil and environmental engineering at ASU's School of Sustainability,
• Richard G. Little, director, The Keston Institute for Public Finance and Infrastructure Policy, University of Southern California, and
• Charles L. Redman, director, School of Sustainability ASU.
Bennett confined his remarks to water issues as they relate to the arid U.S. Southwest.
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"Thirty million people rely, at least in part, on Colorado River water," said Bennett. This includes his hometown of Las Vegas, which relies upon the river for 90% of its needs. Bennett added that the river also irrigates 1.8 million acres of land in the U.S. Southwest. In fact 75% of the river's water — which he claimed was over-allocated by between 15% and 22% — is used for agriculture.
As far as Las Vegas itself, 75% of its water is used inside of buildings and ultimately returned to the river. Twenty-five percent is what he described as "consumptive use," either for air conditioning or outside for landscapes. The resort sector, in spite of its lavish water displays, uses just 3% of the region's water. These water features, as eye-catching as they are, comprise just a tiny portion of the resort sector's overall footprint, he said.
Bennett says that outdoor water use — most of it for turf and landscape irrigation — during mid-summer strains the ability of water agencies in the Southwest to meet demand. Expensive water treatment and delivery infrastructure must be built and maintained to meet these few short weeks of peak demand, and the system is under-utilized the rest of the year, he said.
He said the SNWA has reduced peak, mostly outdoor, water use with tiered water rates (the more you use, the greater the cost), and offering incentives to property owners to install smart irrigation controllers, replace turfgrass on their properties with desert-adapted ornamentals and to install drip irrigation where appropriate.
"We as an agency cannot change the water use of Southern Nevada," said Bennett. "There has to be collaborative partnerships with customers, businesses and commercial interests."
A matter of choices
Holway said how people use fresh water comes down to the lifestyle choices that they make.
"There is water out there, but how do we want to use it?" he asked. "At what social cost, at what environmental costs?
"If we could cut down exterior water use, we could save a lot of water," said Holway. "We could. It's about choices. We could all cut out all of that and we could have three times as many people here and have no exterior landscape. Is that the quality of life we want?"
Holway said that agencies and central Arizona governments at every level must think and plan far into the future to preserve both its water resources and a lifestyle that people will appreciate. He said the region can meet its water needs, even if it continues to grow, if it makes the right choices. This will entail finding new sources of water, including transferring water between user groups and increasing the percentage of water that's retreated and reused.
"We need to have a vision," he added. "We've got to understand how we work as a region. We're a larger central Arizona region. We're a larger lower Colorado region. We have to work together. We have to get rid of the near-sightedness. We have to get rid of the short-sightedness."
Cost/value disconnect
Richard Little traveled from Southern California to speak at the Summit. He focused his remarks on the value of fresh water vs. its costs.
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"A lot of our public services aren't really priced to send appropriate signals to people," said Little, pointing out that cost of fresh water to consumer often doesn't encourage conservation, never mind reflect the true expense of the infrastructure (including maintenance, upgrades and new infrastructure to meet future demand) required to treat it and deliver it.
"If we disconnect the value of any commodity, in this case water, from the true cost, we tend to lose sight of how we use it," he said.
To demonstrate this point, Little asked how many within the audience at the Summit had changed their driving habits as the result of higher gasoline prices. Just about everybody in the room responded.
"The fact of the matter is that it was the price of the gasoline that caused you to alter your behavior," said Little, who confessed that he, too, continues to use perhaps more fresh water than he should because of its unrealistically low cost.
"There is very little (cost) there that is going to change my behavior one way or the other," he conceded.
"We do have an emerging crisis," he concluded. "We see it coming. We need to do something. I would maintain that if we put a little market discipline into the system, we might more easily achieve some of the conservation and sustainability goals we've heard about."
A global perspective
The final presenter at the Summit, Charles Redman, said that what is being learned in Arizona concerning efficient use of fresh water will hopefully help other regions of the world.
"We're pioneers. We're at the forefront of the water crisis," said Redman, who pointed out that one-third of world's population lives in regions suffering from severe shortages of fresh water .
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"The focus is on energy right now," he added. "Some people would say that water is a similar, parallel and, in some ways, more impending threat to world security and economic growth and to quality of life and prosperity globally."
Redman said that the world's population is expected to grow by another 3 billion people in the next 50 years, meaning that mankind will need more food as well as having to use it fresh water much more efficiently. This is a huge challenge, especially as the world moves toward more meat consumption, he said, pointing out that it takes 57 gallons of water to produce a pound of corn and 855 gallons of water ot produce a pound of corn-fed beef.
"There is reason to believe that we will need to produce double the amount of food by the year 2050 than we are producing globally today. That is a significant challenge to fresh water use," he said.
Redman said there are no easy solutions to the greater demands that will be placed upon the world's limited supply of fresh water, meaning that the world will be forced into better conservation of fresh water. There is no option, he said.
In Arizona, most conservation efforts will focus on landscape water use, but in the rest of the world conservation efforts will be directed at agriculture, on increasing the amount of food produced per gallon of water used.
Redman said that so far, central Arizona has been successful in managing its water, but that the region and the world face huge challenges in regards to the availability and quality of fresh water in the future.
"We need to look for new and important conservation methodologies," he added, "and some have to do with landscaping."
Rain Bird is already preparing for its 10th Intelligent Use of Water Summit for spring 2009. The likely site will be in Australia, the driest inhabited continent on Earth.
"Forums such as these, that provide a platform for some of the world's leading authorities to discuss their views, ideas and insights, are necessary for developing a better understanding of the type of changes we need to make before effective policy and programs can be implemented," said Dave Johnson, Rain Bird's corporate marketing director.
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