I was listening to NPR's Fresh Air the other day and heard a really interesting segment on the topic of our "thirst" for water. The interviewee, Charles Fishman, has just published a book on water as a resource. "The last 100 years has been the golden age of water in the developed world: water that has been safe, unlimited and essentially free," Fishman told Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "But that era is over. We will not, going forward, have water that has all three of those qualities at the same time: unlimited, unthinkingly inexpensive and safe." This echoes former ADWR director Herb Guenther's challenge to us that "the era of cheap water in Arizona is over."
I've long advocated - as Fishman does - that we should consider water the precious resource that it is. That may well mean that water should be more expensive; it certainly means that we should take more care in how we use it.
Then I read that APS was awarded the Energy Star Sustained Excellence Award for energy efficiency, for its program of home energy use audits. And it struck me: Why don't we think about water the way we think about electricity? I think we should. And if we did, it would mean at least three changes in the way we manage our water resources.
First, we would look at water as a finite resource that we can't afford to waste.
Why do we conserve energy? Some people do it because they recognize that many forms of energy generation use non-renewable resources like coal or natural gas (so conserving saves the resources). More people conserve because the utilities incentivize it - and Steve Nash says we should. Even more people conserve because electricity costs a lot and conserving means saving money (generations of us have grown up listening to parents' admonitions about turning lights out after leaving the room - for me, I learned at a very early age who paid the electric bill in our family, and it wasn't me).
We should conserve water for all the same reasons: because it's not (easily) renewable (while it is technically renewable, the renewal of our water supply is a long and inefficient process, and water often isn't renewed where it's consumed). And because it's not easily renewable, water utilities incentivize users to conserve - in part through conservation programs and outreach and in part by pricing water at a point where users feel the financial effects of leaving the tap running.
Second, we would value water efficiency.
The power utility industry has worked hard to develop (and promote) technologies that make the generation, delivery, and consumption of electricity more efficient. In Arizona, the Corporation Commission requires that regulated utilities meet aggressive energy efficiency mandates. But even where energy efficiency isn't mandated, utilities are spending money on the more efficient generation, delivery, and consumption of power.
If we truly viewed water as the finite, valuable, resource it is, we might be more willing to provide adequate incentives to consumers and water providers to spend money on technologies and programs that make extracting, treating, delivering, and consuming water more efficient.
Third, we would use different qualities of water (treated to different levels) for different uses.
I've written before about matching treatment level to use. In Arizona, for example, golf courses must be irrigated by reclaimed wastewater (still highly treated, but not drinking quality). Irrigating landscape with reclaimed water makes a lot of sense, and it's relatively easy to do - because it's pretty easy to build a separate system of pipes ("purple pipes" here in Arizona) to take treated wastewater just to sprinklers and bubblers (and not to drinking fountains).
We are beginning to take this principle to the home and business-level. New homes and commercial buildings can be built with two sets of water pipes running to them - one for drinking water to come out of the tap, showerhead, etc. and another to go to toilets, sprinklers and bubblers, etc. That way, we're using less drinking quality water for purposes that don't require it and, potentially, reusing more of our wastewater.
In fact, about 30-50 percent of a household's total water use goes outside to water the yard. Another 15 percent goes to flushing the toilets. Using reclaimed wastewater (treated to a quality standard fit for irrigation and toilet flushing, but not drinking) could reduce household demand for drinking quality water by 45-65 percent.
(I should point out for those who tend to get grossed out by the concept of reclaiming wastewater, most of the water we drink is reclaimed wastewater, just filtered by nature - from the wastewater treatment plant, through the ground, into the aquifer, to the drinking water treatment plant, to the tap. The water reclamation plant does a similar process, often to a higher quality, and more efficiently.)
At the end of the day, we'll never think about water the way we think about electricity (not on a wide scale anyway) until we recognize what a critical, and finite, resource water is. That should be an easy sell in Arizona - where the demand for water in Central Arizona (Maricopa, Pima, and Pinal counties) is likely to exceed supply within the next two and a half decades (see page 434 of our Infrastructure Needs and Funding report).
