It sounded like the ideal water conservation project: Line the leaky All-American Canal and save billions of gallons of water yearly.
Instead, the project landed in court with two lawsuits against it.
It happens frequently with conservation efforts. Challenges arise to measures that seem, at first blush, straightforward, easy, logical or simply the right thing to do.
Unexpected lawsuits, opposition to new technologies, or even basic retail market forces can slow water conservation.
The low cost of water itself argues against conserving water. So does the need to master new technologies, equipment, maintenance techniques and—in the case of outdoor landscaping—different plants.
A review of some of the challenges illustrates how even the best water conservation ideas can run into time-consuming and costly obstacles.
Lawsuits—All American Canal
Built in the 1930s, the 82-mile, All-American Canal carries Colorado River water to the Imperial Valley and nine cities. With Arizona limiting access to that water, lining 23 miles of the canal with concrete will stop waste, deliver 22 billion gallons annually to San Diego and still meet legal limits.
But one person’s waste is another’s resource. In 2005, Mexicali farmers and business owners sued in federal court to stop the $251-million project. Canal seepage feeds more than 100 underground wells that water 3,000 acres of Mexican farmland and keeps a dozen Mexicali lagoons alive for recreational use, they argued.
A second lawsuit in 2006 by two Imperial Valley farmers and the group, Protect Our Water and Environmental Rights, protested the canal design as too steep and likely to trap humans and animals trying to cross the waterway. The canal issue has even come up in talks involving President Bush, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Mexican President Vicente Fox.
Encouraged by a favorable court ruling in July, “we’re continuing to move forward,” said John Liarakos, spokesman for the San Diego County Water Authority, the canal-lining project overseer.
Opposition to New Technology—Waterless Urinals
Meanwhile the SDCWA is waiting on a ruling from the American National Standards Institute on waterless urinals. The urinals let gravity do the work of running water and an oil cartridge serve in place of the water trap to prevent sewer gas backup.
In California, waterless urinals are allowed when cities specifically grant their use. The city of San Diego did so in 1997 and boasts of having them in their sports stadium, churches and schools. The SDCWA sought to make it easier for cities statewide to use waterless urinals by removing city-by-city approval.
But plumbers and pipe fitters unions put a crimp in that effort, arguing that waterless urinals are unsanitary and that oil cartridges can fail. Studies by waterless urinal manufacturers show the opposite.
“The whole thing is going before the ANSI, which looks at plumbing fixtures and adopts the nationwide Uniform Plumbing Code,” said Toby Roy, water resource manager with the SDCWA. “Instead of us having to debate the effectiveness of this barrier at our board meeting, it’s more appropriate to debate at that forum.”
Even without opposition to new devices, market forces can pose barriers.
Market Forces—Toilets and Smart Controllers
Today, the 1.6-gallon-per-flush toilet is standard. Manufacturers are designing and testing more efficient, dual-flush models, but they’re not producing them in quantities needed for big-box, retail stores where most people shop.
The issue in big-box stores is turnaround and volume, said Tom Pate, technical advisor for the California Urban Water Conservation Council. These stores buy 10,000 toilets at a time and aren’t going to try five new items in a store to see if they sell.
“It’s the type of product that you keep for 10 to 20 years,” added Bill McDonnell, a senior resource specialist with the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. “If they don’t get the high-efficiency model, you’ve missed the higher water savings opportunity.”
With smart irrigation controllers, even more obstacles exist. These weather-based irrigation controllers use weather data to help set irrigation run times and schedules, unlike the old-fashioned irrigation timer that runs at a set time, rain or shine.
Because public awareness of smart controllers is low, small companies that make them lack a foothold in big box stores. Information about where to buy them often only exists online on Web sites like Metropolitan’s bewaterwise.com.
“Not a lot of folks go to a Web site to buy irrigation controllers,” McDonnell admitted. That’s one reason why Metropolitan and the Family of Southern California Water Agencies have begun a radio and television ad campaign to tout the devices.
Expensive & Complex Technology
Besides availability, cost is another challenge to widespread use of new water-saving technologies. Smart controllers average around $200 apiece, compared to only $24 for a typical irrigation timer. That creates resistance, not only from consumers, but also from retailers unwilling to tie up $2,000 to stock the higher-priced item.
Price differential also shows up in high-efficiency washers that can range from $800 to $1,200. Such washers are inherently more expensive because of the chassis design and the significant amount of engineering, said Charles Samuels, general counsel for the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers.
“They’re not going to be $200 or $300,” Samuels said.
New technologies are also more complex. To work well, smart controllers must be installed in an irrigation system equipped with low-flow sprinkler heads or drip emitters (sprinkler heads for drip systems), balanced to avoid overspray or dry areas. The system needs to be properly maintained with no leaks or broken emitters. Finally, true savings require landscaping with water-saving plants. All of this adds complexity and additional costs.
“The big challenge in landscape is that it’s not something you do just once,” said Vickie Driver, resources specialist with the SDCWA. “It’s a real education mountain to climb to get people to make all those changes.”
Cost of Water
Those changes are all the more hard to make when the cost of water is cheap.
Some say water districts have been such efficient and successful water distributors that the general public rarely feels the true scarcity of the resource. Many water agencies are now trying to capture the attention of those who can afford to pay for water and don’t really care about the cost, Pate said.
“They want a brilliant green lawn, they want a powerful flush toilet and if shower heads are restricted to low-flow, they put in four showerheads,” he said.
For thousands of small businesses with office buildings and landscaping, “it’s cheaper to over irrigate than to do it efficiently,” added Driver, who said water costs take a back seat to higher business costs, like operations, marketing, personnel, taxes and insurance.
“Why should anyone do water conservation if water is cheap?” asked Tom Chesnutt, a water conservation consultant with A&N Technical Services.
Because it’s politically risky to raise water rates, increasing the base price of water is not a popular move for cities or water agencies to take, Chesnutt said. But water customers have shown a willingness to have a reliable water supply and accept measures that guarantee that supply, even when higher rates are involved. For example, San Juan Capistrano successfully implemented a water-budget rate structure due to water shortages in the early 1990s. Water use was reduced by more than 20 percent, it was accepted by customers and it was widely perceived as having succeeded, Chesnutt said.
Water districts themselves may have conflicting attitudes about water conservation efforts. The same district that creates water conservation efforts may also be the same district searching for new sources of water for future growth.
The state’s investor-owned water companies, which provide service to 20 percent of the state’s water users, found themselves for years disincentivized to pursue aggressive water conservation efforts under a rate system regulated by the California Public Utilities Commission. The PUC set rates for three-year periods with no adjustments. Plus, rates were linked to earnings projections, which had to be met. So, the more water they sold, the more earnings water companies received.
But in December 2005, the PUC introduced a new rate system that allows for rate adjustments and tiered water rates. The new rate structure will give private water companies more flexibility, so that conservation isn’t a money loser for them, said Jack Hawks, executive director of the California Water Association.
Attitudes
Finally, one of the toughest obstacles to water conservation is individual attitudes.
“Over the past 10 years, we’ve picked the low-hanging fruit; we’ve got the people who care about conservation as an environmental ethic or to save money,” said Pate. “Now, we’re trying to capture another group of people who don’t really care.”
In some instances, water districts have overcome indifference with new tactics. After Metropolitan found only about 50 restaurateurs for its water-saving pre-rinse spray valves, the water district got a state grant and sent crews door-to-door to install the valves on the spot. The result was 20,000 new valves in place.
School education programs and even college programs are flourishing with the same water conservation message.
“It’s hard to be in a school and not at some point in time have some sort of program about the water cycle, where it comes from, how water is precious and how to save it,” McDonnell said.
In landscaping, Met has worked with homebuilders to put in water-efficient landscapes in model homes to give buyers an idea of alternatives to traditional front and back lawns. Water districts also offer free programs to educate Spanish-speaking gardeners and homeowners about water-efficient landscaping practices.
“We’re changing people’s behaviors and attitudes,” said Roy. “It’s a big challenge right now, but the biggest savings are there.”
Conclusion
For water districts, the challenges to water conservation efforts, like those cited above, could be increasingly more difficult to overcome in the years ahead, said Metropolitan’s McDonnell.
“In any industry, the low-hanging fruit are those people who are early adapters and industry leaders, the 2 percent or 3 percent who have the education about water conservation and will buy the most water-efficient product,” he said. “Now, 15 or 16 years out, we’re trying to get the next group of people to do it. It’s harder to get that 97 percent and there’s always a new hurdle.”
To overcome those hurdles, water districts across the state and nationwide, are constantly trying different conservation measures, including product distributions, direct installations, rebates, different rate structures, outreach, public awareness and public school and college education programs.
Ultimately, McDonnell said, a water conservation niche will be carved out in everyone’s busy lives and “the next generation of kids are more likely to be water conservation aware than we are.”
