What is it about water conservation?

What is it about water conservation that makes folks (chiefly old school water providers) so nervous in Colorado? There are a number of possible touch points, but frankly none of them hold up to intelligent scrutiny. When dealing with a valuable resource, it always makes sense to manage its use, and continually evaluate and re-evaluate the potential for wasteful and unwise practices. But a more thorough discussion of what this means is certainly warranted.

To begin with, water conservation needs to be looked at from both the perspective of the water provider and the water customer. Let's begin with water customers - those folks that use water in their homes (or businesses). I will not go into agricultural water use here, that will be saved for another day.

Water customers historically have not had a lot to worry about regarding their water use efficiency since water has been extremely inexpensive, and wasteful water practices came will little, if any, negative repercussions. Only situations that caused water damage - either from small leaks or from large leaks - were of substantial concern. Of course a leaking toilet can be annoying, as can a leaking faucet (think of those old Bugs Bunny cartoons with Elmer Fudd trying to sleep with the incessant drip, drip, drip), but the cost of the water was rarely, if ever a consideration in a water customer's decision to fix the problem.

Today, water waste has substantially more impact on the water customer's pocketbook. More efficient hot water delivery systems, lower water use washing machines and dishwashers, low flow shower heads and faucets all save not only water but fuels for heating water. With skyrocketing fuel prices, water use efficiency increasingly supports better home and business financial management. Given that home indoor water use, and many, many commercial and industrial indoor water uses are linked to heating water, any water conserving technology or best management practice has value that reduces energy, as well as, water consumption.

Outdoor water use is a whole other beast. In Colorado, roughly 50% of municipal water supply is used for outdoor uses - chiefly landcape irrigation. While no one suggests that aesthetically pleasing grasses, flowers, trees and shrubs, and recreationally available grass-scapes are undesirable, it is how these landscapes are planned, constructed and most importantly maintained that is a topic of substantial discussion and consternation. Grass for the sake of green, watered indiscriminately and wastefully is simply unacceptable in today's day and age. Although some communities and individual water customers feel a certain entitlement for cheap, free flowing lawn irrigation water, in numerous locations around the State, over watering of lawns has detrimental water quality impacts on those rivers and streams that receive irrigation return flows. In addition, there are a number of communities that utilize non-renewable groundwater and/or tributary groundwater (which requires treatment and augmentation) that can ill afford wasteful irrigation practices. Any community that pays to pump water to irrigate thin strips of grass along roadways and sidewalks, which invariably causes substantial amounts of water to flow into streets and gutters is clearly wasting community resources in a manner that is increasingly unacceptable to our citizens.

However, customers often do not understand the ramifications of their habits (such as their overwatering, watering on pavement and/or watering during rainstorms), and it is the duty of the water providers, non-profits, school districts, and the State to provide the education needed to enlighten and teach our citizenry about their responsibility to act in accordance with the realities of our water supply limitations. Even though most locations in Colorado utilize inclining water rate structures that "penalize" wasteful outdoor water use, a substantial number of home and business owners are oblivious to the workings of their automated sprinkler systems, and therefore their outdoor watering habits are controlled by a microchip that was programmed either by someone else or long enough ago that the owner no longer remembers what the watering intervals are or how to change them. Although many water providers benefit from increased water sales revenue due to these poor water irrigation practices, these clearly irresponsible practices must be controlled and eliminated. They are just not acceptable in communities that consider themselves aware and sustainable.

From a water provider point of view, indoor water savings can be a double edged sword. Many Colorado communities have direct flow water rights from rivers and streams, without dams and reservoirs. For many of these communities, reduced indoor water use may negatively impact the quantity and quality of wastewater returning to the community's wastewater treatment plant, and may have negative implications with regard to treated wastewater return flow credits that water providers rely upon to give them operational flexibility during periods of reduced streamflow. In simple terms, some communities with direct flow rights see water conservation as unnecessary since they perceive themselves to be in a "use it or loose it" kind of situation. (Noting that communities with dams and reservoirs can store "saved water", but communities without storage expect saved water to simply flow downstream to the next diverter.)

Increasingly, water conservation for the direct diverter communities makes sense, because there are increasing energy and treatment costs associated with delivering high quality drinking water to water customers and maintaining compliance with wastewater treatment plant discharge permits. As energy and chemical costs continue to increase, water conservation to reduce these costs will make sense.

Outdoor water conservation also makes sense for all of Colorado's communities, since for most locations, irrigation water is potable, and therefore comes with the tranpsportation and treatment costs. Even for those communities fortunate enough to have raw water supplies available for irrigation, pumping costs are substantial and are only going to be increasing.

But water conservation is more than the management of energy and treatment costs, or the wise preservation of non-renewable and/or limited resources. It is an increasingly important political position that all of Colorado's communities must embrace. Although most of Colorado's Rivers leave the State at one location, the most contentious river, the Colorado River, leaves the State in many locations given the number of transmountain diversions that carry water from the Colorado River Basin to the Rio Grande, South Platte and Arkansas Rivers. This reality ties and links Colorado's communities and water providers together like so many Lincoln Logs in a cabin. And much to the chagrin of Colorado's parochial water providers, they are inextricably linked via the Colorado River to communities like Las Vegas, Phoenix and Los Angeles - communities that have aggressive water conservation programs and initiatives.

Given all these reasons, and more that I have not fully explored in this post, it makes no sense for Colorado's communities to buck water conservation. Improved water use efficiency saves water customers money. It also saves on overall energy and treatment costs. Perhaps, most importantly, it provides the State and all its water providers the necessary political positioning that we need to deflect arguments from potential detractors that we do not know how to best manage one of our beautiful State's most precious natural resources. The importance of this positioning cannot be over emphasized.