Study says conservation can double
water supplies for drought-stricken cities

By Steele Wotkyns
for Headwaters News

This summer, as pure water from my neighbors' well-watered lawns flows every few days in front of our Flagstaff home, my frustration has been building.

Our own landscaping needs little water: My wife Rita and I were happy to inherit from previous homeowners a riot of California poppies, punctuated by red-hot pokers and hardy hens and chicks.

This summer, a season of exceptional drought across the region, it's me and the neighbors I worry about.

The National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln data show that Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, and New Mexico are in the midst of a drought so severe it occurs only once or twice every 100 years.

Many sites have experienced the driest months since the turn of the century, when records began.

But a recent study shows cities and towns how they can cut their water use 30 percent to 50 percent, without sacrificing anyone's quality of life.

Part One of the North Central Arizona Water Demand study found 23 efficiency and conservation measures that it said could increase the amounts of drinking water available to Flagstaff and 14 surrounding communities in the Grand Canyon gateway region.

The study, conducted by the Rocky Mountain Institute for the Coconino Plateau Water Advisory Council and released in June, concluded that conservation can be considered a new supply of potable water that could preempt the need for costly supply projects and additional water-supply infrastructure.

"Effective programs across the country have shown conclusively that water efficiency and conservation should be considered a 'supply' of water."

-- Rocky Mountain Institute's June 2002 study.

In light of the study, and in the midst of the drought, it is interesting to witness the different levels of reaction and awareness between, for example, Flagstaff and Santa Fe.

Flagstaff is taking steps to ensure residents have adequate water and use it more wisely, but our collective understanding of living in a drought in a 7,000-foot-high desert seems scant compared with Santa Fe residents'.

In the past few years, rainwater collection barrels, low-flow showerheads, and low-flush toilets have become fashionable in the City Different. Santa Fe is enforcing strong water-use restrictions: washing cars only once a month and watering landscaping once a week, with fees to penalize violators. Lawns in Santa Fe are dead or dying. A main reservoir above town has been alarmingly low for a few consecutive years.

Meanwhile, Santa Fe leaders have agonized over how to make the Las Campanas golf community just north of the city get in line with other residents and businesses, and reduce water use.

Flagstaff was forced this year to implement water restrictions for the first time since it passed its 1988 water ordinance. Residents water their landscaping on an odd-even schedule according to their address, during morning and evening hours. Washing vehicles is also restricted.

One water supply, Lake Mary south of town, is at 10 percent capacity; it's so low it barely resembles a lake at all. Meanwhile, a huge, thirsty lawn downtown fronts our new county courthouse. The lawn is being greeted in the local paper by protest letters.

The RMI study noted Flagstaff's preference for green grass and landscaping: "Compared to many parts of the southwestern United States, there is a low to very low incidence of irrigated landscape in most portions of the study area. Flagstaff is one exception; rates of landscape water use there appear to be higher, perhaps approaching the incidence of irrigated landscape in other Southwest cities."

The study said proven measures can dramatically cut water use in Flagstaff and across the region: efficient showerheads and faucets, high-efficiency clothes washers, high-efficiency dishwashers, fewer areas of turf, low-water plants and xeriscaped gardens, efficient irrigation systems, rain sensors, soil moisture sensors and automated customer leak detection.

Drip irrigation is one of the showiest and proven measures. Properly done, this technique supports native landscape gardens at substantial water savings. And rainwater harvesting is a nifty technique that can be increased both at a consumer level and commercially.

A splendid example of rainwater harvesting is at the Arboretum of Flagstaff, a living museum highlighting the Southwest's native plants. New arboretum buildings have rainwater-collection systems and cisterns with a 13,500-gallon capacity, making it much easier to maintain landscapes of native plants, even during drought.

The RMI study also notes that the reclamation of wastewater in the area can reduce water demands on precious ground water and surface sources.

About 16 percent of total water in the study area comes in the form of reused wastewater. The community of Tusayan just south of Grand Canyon National Park uses wastewater to meet 40 percent of its water needs. Other communities on the Coconino Plateau are also planning to increase wastewater use.

"Effective programs across the country have shown conclusively that water efficiency and conservation should be considered a 'supply' of water — an already developed resource that when tapped can help defer, downsize or avoid altogether new water supply infrastructure," the report concludes.

The drought shows us the folly of wasting water in an arid climate. The RMI study, the leadership shown by institutions such as the Arboretum at Flagstaff, and the measures Santa Fe and Flagstaff are implementing give us hope of conserving half the water we might otherwise waste.

Perhaps being ever mindful of water in these high deserts is a basic tenet of what Wallace Stegner described as "a society to match the scenery."

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Drought is widespread, but reactions vary

By Greg Lakes, editor
Headwaters News
Aug. 28, 2002

The superlatives are getting common: worst drought in a century, driest since the Dust Bowl, longest dry spell in decades. The depth and breadth of the drought is unarguable; what varies is how communities are coping.

At one end of the Rockies, Alberta ranchers are forced to sell hundreds of cows, decimating the herds it took years, and in some cases, generations to build. Wheat prices are at their lowest level in three decades and farmers expect to harvest half a crop, at best.

The shortage of water and the dire effects have prompted many Albertans to question long-standing practices that go unnoticed in normal years.

A provincial government report concedes industry must find other ways to force oil and gas from deposits, instead of injecting massive amounts of ground water.

The report cited rising public anxiety and increasing criticism from farmers, municipalities and public interest groups, who say companies are draining aquifers that could supply cities and water crops, to inject pure water into deep wells from which it will never be recovered.

Alberta's environment minister is expected to release a new provincial water policy this fall, but he's not yet saying how it will address the oil and gas industry.

Others are less reticent:

"Ground water is really a critical reserve in this province," David Schindler, an ecology professor at the University of Alberta, told the Globe and Mail. "Just handing off 26 percent of it every year to be injected thousands of feet down, where our children and our grandchildren are never going to see that water again, is really pretty foolish."

The report also recommended the province start charging fees for water use and that it withhold grants from cities, such as Calgary, that have no water meters.

In other hard-hit areas, Santa Fe County officials want a moratorium on new wells in some areas to slow the drop in local water tables and the rate at which existing wells are going dry.

Denver officials imposed surcharges on the city's biggest water users and banned all lawn watering after Oct. 1. But as they warned residents of more stringent measures likely to come, critics were saying water resources had been squandered and the get-tough measures were too little too late.

Colorado's ski resorts over years have bought up water rights, built reservoirs separate from those that supply municipal needs and have spent thousands on cloud seeding, all of which may help resorts stay solvent in the state's driest year since 1890.

The city of Vail has restricted water use for public lands and private lawns, but Vail Resorts spokespeople say they'll have plenty of water to make snow and open on time.

Phoenix and surrounding cities won't impose restrictions this year, although reservoirs to the north are woefully low. City officials say they've made enough improvements in the past to weather a temporary drought, and the Central Arizona Project canal is running full. Critics call that a shortsighted approach, and note forecasts that this may be the beginning of a prolonged dry spell.

But perhaps the best example of what could happen across the region is in Las Vegas, one of the fastest-growing cities on the continent that is about to exceed its available water for the first time.

The area averages four inches of rain a year, and while the casino fountains are remarkably efficient, the city's rampant growth and profligate waste will soon create a shortage, according to a government report.

Las Vegas got 300,000 acre-feet of Colorado River water in 1928, when allocations were made and the city was a dusty town in the desert. But this year, 1.5 million residents are expected to need as much as 20,000 acre-feet more.

Lake Mead, the city's source, is at its lowest level since 1964, and some researchers say global warming will mean consistently lesser flows from the Colorado high country in years to come.

City officials claim they can provide enough water for current uses and expected growth through 2050 -- if the city meets its conservation goals.

But that hasn't happened in at least the past three years, and last year alone, 10.4 billion gallons of water was wasted, according to the report.

For some critics, the bottom line is that Las Vegas must stop growing or dry up entirely.

"With dwindling water supplies, global warming and other factors, I think Las Vegas will become the 'Apocalypse Now' of the American West," David Hogan, rivers program coordinator for the Tucson, Ariz.-based Center for Biological Diversity, said in a must-read Associated Press article in the Salt Lake Tribune.

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Headwaters News is a project of the Center for the Rocky Mountain West at the University of Montana.