"Shovel Ready" Water Conservation Infrastructure Projects

All the buzz right now relates to the President's stimulus package that is rightfully focused on America's infrastructure. American Society of Civil Engineers identified a $500 billion gap between infrastructure needs and funding last year, chiefly as a result of aging and poorly maintained pipelines, reservoirs, bridges and streets, and treatment facilities. However, many of these projects are not at the "ready" for construction - aka "shovel ready" ( the current term of art or science) - since there are first needs for studies and planning, permitting and procurement that could delay moving earth and fixing cracks and crevasses for years.

I do believe that the nation's infrastructure has critical needs, and repairing our water and transportation systems, as well as building new facilities to meet the needs of our growing communities are paramount to maintaining our quality of life and meeting our public health standards. However, we have critical infrastructure needs that I fear are not getting the play that they should, related to water conservation and water use efficiency that are in fact shovel ready and can boost the economy by creating jobs, reducing system inefficiencies, and helping to managing our water resources all at the same time. How bad can that be?

I speak of course of managing and tracking non-revenue water by the nation's water providers. Many, and perhaps a large majority, of the nation's water providers do not formally track non-revenue water in their systems. What is non-revenue water? It is the combination of water delivered by the water provider that is either metered by but not charged for (many park and rec departments get water deliveries but don't pay for it), apparent losses (for example when a meter under "reads" an actual water delivery), and real losses (related to leaks in the delivery system). AWWA estimates that real losses in most water provider systems range from 10 to 15% of total water deliveries. That means that as a community, we are investing in the energy and cost to treat billions of gallons of water a day, only to have it be lost in transit. And in some communities the combination of real and apparent losses exceeds 30% of treated water demand. Ouch.

One reason non-revenue water is untracked, relates to the cost of maintaining and upgrading customer meters. Another relates to the cost to install and manage automated meter reading (AMR) devices, which vastly improve the data collection component of leak detection. AMR has been shown to not only be useful to identify leaks at individual customer connections (like leaking toilets or broken pipes), but it also allows for tracking and identifying distribution system leaks.

The cost to install AMR technology is not inconsequential. Five thousand taps go for about $1 million, or about $200 per tap. Then there is the cost to develop a mechanism for data acquisition and mining, so leaks can be identified and managed, and billings can be supported. New meters, which for large taps (2-inches or greater) should be installed at least once per every five to ten years, are also an expense that some water providers can ill afford.

But what is the cost of not maintaining meters and upgrading to AMR technology? If it is 5% of the nation's drinking water, that is perhaps 3 billion gallons of water a day or slightly over 3 million acre-feet per year, lost from our water provider distribution systems. Just in Colorado, reducing real losses from by 5% of total M&I water deliveries could provide for about 40,000 acre-feet per year. That is about $800 million in lost delivered water costs in today's water market. These are savings that can be realized in a matter of years. What is the planning horizon for a new 40,000 acre-foot reservoir in the state?

New meters and AMR installations are shovel ready, installing and managing the data they obtain creates jobs, and responding to the data saves water. Can we afford not to move toward a substantial investment in managing our non-revenue water?

There are other water conservation related projects as well - toilet replacements, showerhead and faucet aerator upgrades to high efficiency equipment, cooling water tower retrofits and operating improvements, irrigation system improvements, just to name a few - that can be implemented to save water today, without permits or substantial planning needs, and at a fraction of the cost of new water deliveries. Seems like we have plenty of options to improve our water use efficiency as part of the stimulus package. I hope that the word gets out.

GWI and Project WET

Project WET (which stand for Water Education for Teachers) has been in Colorado since the mid 1990s. The mission of Project WET is to reach children, parents, educators, and communities of the world with water education. This organization has programs in 49 states and 26 countries across the globe, and reaches tens of thousands of school children each year.

The way that Project WET works is that it executes Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) with Host Organizations in specific geographies. These Host Organizations are empowered to lead Project WET in their defined geographies, by administering and promoting Project WET, and establishing a delivery system to distribute Project WET materials through workshops and other events.

Due to changes and challenges in state and local funding resources, the past organizational structure in Colorado for Project WET was in need of being revised. After an exhaustive and deliberate search process, members of the past advisory committee and the Board of the Colorado Watershed Network (the past Host Organization) selected Great Western Institute to carry on the legacy of Project WET in Colorado.

Great Western Institute is pleased and thrilled to be selected to take on this important responsibility. Last year, Great Western Institute was instrumental in bringing Project WET into the Douglas County school system, and has been helping municipalities and special districts across the state include Project WET as part of their water conservation programs. Project WET also has a strong nexus with local and regional stormwater permiting efforts mandated by the MS4 permtting process, and K-12 water education needs in general. Overall, Project WET supports local edcuational efforts by facilitating and promoting awareness, appreciation, knowledge, and stewardship of water resources through the dissemination of classroom-ready teaching aids and the establishment of internationally sponsored Project WET programs.

Great Western Institute is looking forward to establishing a regional network of program coordinators that can help expand the breadth and use of Project WET in Colorado. If you or someone that you know has an interest in supporting our efforts, or may be interested in a position as a regional coordinator, please do not hesitate to contact us.

While Looking for Water Conservation Content for Upcoming ProGreen Expo in Denver Next Week,...

Pagosa Spings Water Audits Move Forward

Great Western Institute (GWI) has successfully initiated a demonstration SMART WATER audit program for hotels and restaurants in Pagosa Springs, working with the Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD) and Environmental Dimensions, a local consulting firm. The demostration program is part of the newly developed PAWSD Water Conservation Plan developed by GWI, Harris Water Consultants and Environmental Dimensions through a grant from the Colorado Water Conservation Board.

GWI lead the audit team in characterizing water use in various local hotels and restaurants, looking at customer uses, facility heating and cooling, outdoor irrigation, and kitchen and food preparation operations. Opportunities for water and related energy savings were identified and discussed with the facility owners and/or managers, focusing on capital investment, rate of return and payback periods. In nearly every facility, owners and managers were extremely eager to learn about water and energy savings options - some with capital paybacks with timeframes as little as weeks to months.

Most water and energy savings identified by GWI involved retrofitting and/or replacing fixtures and/or appliances that would reduce cold and hot water use without changing customer or employee behavior. In some cases, GWI was able to install new fixtures utilizing materials donated by its various corporate sponsors during the audit, instantly saving the businesses money and the District water.

GWI and the rest of the audit team will be returning to Pagosa Springs in the first quarter of next year to provide the business owners with full reports regarding the costs and benefits of various business specific water conservation programs. GWI will also be working with PAWSD and Environmental Dimensions during that same period to plan for a larger role-out of the SMART WATER audits for commercial and residential customers in the area. Thank you to PAWSD, Environmental Dimensions, Home Depot and SSI, as well as the local businesses in Pagosa Springs for helping to make the SMART WATER audit program a success.

Governor's Freeze on Spending and Water Conservation

Here we sit about just over 4 months into the State's 2009 fiscal year, and given existing economic issues and impacts, which are very real, the Governor has put a freeze on various State outlays related to professional services and new hires. We are clearly in difficult, and in many ways, unprecedented times, and this is exactly the kind of executive decision that is needed to keep the State solvent and functioning.

Unfortunately, due to either a legislative or administrative misstep, one important grant fund, the Water Efficiency Grant Program, has been frozen as well. This grant program provides much needed financial support to water providers for purposes of developing and implementing meaningful water conservation plans. The grant program can also be accessed, in some cases, by non-profits for educational purposes. As a non-profit, I am more concerned with water providers not having funding than non-profits, for the following reasons.

To begin with, many water providers, especially those that are special districts (e.g., water and sanitation districts, water districts, municipal districts) operate with a very small staff providing vital water and wastewater services to ther customers. These organizations need financial help to get water conservation programs to be more than some bill stuffers and other general educational activities. They generally need cash to hire a consultant to prepare meaningful water conservation plans and they need cash to implement those plans. The first stages of meaningful water conservation planning and implementation requires that water providers take a hard look at themselves and their customer's water use and management, and to look explicitly at the cost of doing (and not doing) meaningful water conservation. This is labor intensive work that requires a commitment of resources and expertise. Most water providers can get an outstanding plan in place, including cost benefit analyses, for $15 to 20K,... but having this cash can be very challenging to find in already strapped budget thus the importance of the grant program.

Once a plan is in place, water providers need help with implementation. Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD), for example, is installing an automated meter reading (AMR) program in concert with a meter replacement effort starting this year to help collect better customer water use data. The meter and AMR equipment will support more accurate billing, improved leak detection, and better characterization of non-revenue water. It will also help to better characterize customer water use, especially for seasonal residences and large commercial users. This effort is costing PAWSD hundreds of thousands of dollars with the majority of the costs falling in the next year. They have benefited from a loan to support this capital outlay.

Castle Rock on the other hand utilized Water Efficiency Grant funds to conduct audits of their largest commercial customers, including HOAs that only have irrigation use. These audits identified nearly 80 acre-feet of potential water savings based only on more appropriate outdoor watering practices for 8 irrigation accounts. (At $500 per audit, the savings at these 8 locations may provide Castle Rock with saved water at a cost of about $50 per acre foot.)

Both of these projects illustrate a fact that appears to exist with respect to Colorado's current status of water conservation - we are in a data collection mode in many geographies. We need better data regarding customer water use, non-revenue water, and system leaks before we can launch our most cost effective programs. The Water Efficiency Grant Program is exactly the kind of State support that is needed in many locations to help collect the vital data and allow water providers to identify what water conservation programs will create the most cost effective water savings.

The sooner the Water Efficiency Grant Program becomes available to the water providers, the better our state will be with regard to long term water resource management.

Lend Lease Company, Windy Gap and the Role of the State

The State has spent millions of dollars developing the Statewide Water Supply Initiative (SWSI) as a means to understand and evaluate local, regional, and even statewide water supply options and needs. Although SWSI did a yeoman's job pulling together disparate data and information into a succinct presentation of the status of Colorado's water needs, it seemingly failed to find projects and processes that would address the expected gap between available water supply and the growing water demand of our thirsty residents. SWSI did list "identified projects and processes (called IPPs)" within its covers; however these three years later have yet to produce one IPP successfully.

Is this the fault of the State or the SWSI process? Perhaps,.. perhaps not.

Enter Denver-based Lend Lease Company, a subsidiary of an Australian development company, that has recently indicated that it will pull out of a 3,670 acre Arapahoe County development if a sustainable water source if not identified by the end of this year (see Lend Lease letter to the State Land Board at www.blogs.RockyMountainNews.com/rebchook). What is interesting about this developing water story is the lack of its mention in the SWSI report - that being that there are locations in Colorado that private developers will find "undevelopable" due to the lack of available sustainable water supply. Perhaps the State role is not to identify such situations, and leave these types of discoveries and business decisions to private investors and non-profits. It just seems that a Statewide water planning analysis should in some way indicate the challenge of delivering sustainable potable water as potentially limiting to private investment, at least in the short-term.

Water conservation is also of concern to the State, as evidenced by the news release from DNR Director Harris Sherman and CWCB Director Jennifer Gimbel on October 9th calling for more water providers to prepare water conservation plans and implement more meaningful water conservation. Why then did the SWSI Team not perform a very rigorous analysis of the role of water conservation in managing future water demands (it simply assumed that future demands would be reduced by 12% from current demands), or indicate the status of water conservation planning in the State (which as Director Sherman indicated, less than 25% of those that should have plans do). It should be the State's role to call out those entities that are not in compliance with the State's regulations, even though it is perceived by some as being unreasonably harsh.

Without the State shining a bright light on our lack of meaningful water conservation planning, we run into a situation that water providers are self-policed regarding water conservation. What is the result? As Gretchen Bergen points out in her Colorado Voices op ed piece in this Sunday Denver Post, "most Windy Gap (water) recipients lack progressive (water) conservation goals." In fact, some of those entities looking to increase transmountain diversions from the Colorado River via the Windy Gap Firming Project do not utilize something as simple and effective as inclining block water rates to discourage excessive water use, including Loveland and Broomfield. Appropriately priced water is one of the hallmarks of responsible water conservation programs. Greeley and Longmont have draft water conservation plans under review by the State; that leaves hundreds of thousands of North Front Range citizens without meaningful water conservation programs available to support their needs.

The key project proponent for the Windy Gap Firming Project, Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District (or Northern Water), does not have the power or authority to require those entities that receive its transmountain diversions to have meaningful water conservation plans. This further begs the question regarding the State role in helping, and in some cases shaming, water providers into water conservation planning and implementation. Given that the IPPs contained in SWSI are not finding their way to ready implementation (in part due to a lack of meaningful local water conservation efforts), and that private developers are questioning the nature of available sustainable water supply in some location in the Front Range, doesn't more meaningful water conservation truly make sense allowing our communities to stretch their current water supplies and improve local water supply sustainability sooner rather than later?

Is it time for the State to bring out a bigger regulatory instrument, or will our water providers begin to read the writing on the wall without a legislative hammer? It doesn't look like we have a lot of time to figure this one out.

Water Conservation Planning

Kudos to Director Sherman of the Colorado DNR for bringing attention to the long standing issue of Colorado's water providers non-compliance with Colorado Revised Statute 37-60-126. According to the statute, Colorado's water providers should have had "new" water conservation plans filed with the State prepared in accordance with the 2004 legislation (HB-04-1365)beginning July 1, 2006. Two key circumstances have kept the vast majority of those that should have plans from developing new plans and submitting them to the State.

First, some entities created plans in response to the State's first water conservation requirements that came to exist in 1991. In response to the 1991 act, about 70 entities and organizations submitted water conservation plans to the State. Truth be told, only a handful of the plans submitted to the State in the 1990's provide for any meaningful water conservation, in part because the state of the science has moved substantially forward since that time. In addition, the new requirements specified in the 2004 act allow for more meaningful water conservation planning to occur. Specifically what is meant by the phrase "meaningful water conservation?" Meaningful water conservation requires that entities implement water conservation programs which are measurable and verifiable, and create water savings that are sustainable. Very few (a dozen or so) Colorado water providers have water conservation plans that include a rigorous characterization of water supply limitations and expected future demands, quantified water conservation goals that are based upon water supply limitations, and measurable water conservation program outcomes.

Second, there is no penalty for not submitting a water conservation plan to the State, unless an entity is looking to obtain funds from the CWCB Construction Fund account or a loan from the Colorado Water Resources and Power Development Authority. Instead of using a "stick" that would fine or otherwise penalize those entities that are required to have plans but refuse to develop and submit them, the State chose to use a "carrot." The carrot as it exists right now is that only those organizations with approved water conservation plans can receive grant funding from the CWCB water efficiency grant to implement water conservation measures and programs. This grant fund has been used successfully to purchase high efficiency toilets in Northglenn, purchase irrigation control equipment in Castle Pines North, and conduct water conservation workshops all across Colorado training and educating water resource managers, consultants, elected and appointed officials and interested citizens.

To move our water providers, and the customers they support, toward more meaningful water conservation, we need our water resource and district/utility managers to better understand the value of water conservation. For example, in most locations in Colorado, there are dozens of water conservation programs that can produce "saved water" at a cost of less than $5,000 per acre-foot. There are dozens more that can produce saved water at a cost of less than $10,000 per acre-foot. Given that water providers throughout Colorado are looking at replacement water costs (which include the cost of raw water, water transmission and treatment) at values from $15,000 to 45,000 per acre foot, clearly it is in the business interest of all water providing organizations to look seriously into water conservation planning and analyses. Far too often water conservation is neglected (Re: red-headed step child), but those days must be put behind us if our water providing organizations are going to be held to furnishing the best and most cost-effective, sustainable water supply to their customer base. This is the metric that all Colorado citizens are owed and must demand.

Although it is reasonable for the State to wait a bit longer to see if Colorado's water providing entities will rise to the challenge and develop and implement meaningful water conservation plans (which means budgeting and funding meaningful water conservation measures and programs), it may not be far off when the State will be forced to create a legislative "stick" that requires water conservation plans and defines implementation schedules. It will only take one or two failed water development project permits to create the need for legislative pressure, especially if the permitting process is befuddled because of a lack of meaningful water conservation planning. No less than 4 EIS projects are currently progressing in Colorado, and more than half of them have received some negative press due to the lack of demonstrable water conservation efforts by the project proponent(s). This is not the time to disrespect the power and benefit of water conservation as a vital part of any water utilities resource management efforts. It is rather the time for new and progressive measures to be earnestly evaluated and incorporated into the way that Colorado manages its natural resources responsibly and conscientiously.