Before the Well Runs Dry

Benson's Western swinging jingle is called "Observe & Conserve":

Let's have a conversation about water conservation.

It's all up to you and me. ...

Now the water that you see, my friend,

Before it comes your way,

Is treated at a treatment plant

That's workin' night and day.

Now that takes lots of energy

Producin' greenhouse gases.

So water less, it's for the best,

Before the moment passes. ...

The City Hall press conference also focused on the city's watering ordinance, which took effect in May and designates two days a week when folks can water their lawns and landscapes (see "Keeping Off the Grass"). The ordinance is the first in a list of tactics that Austin Water Utility plans to employ in its ultimate goal of conserving 32 million gallons of water per day, which in theory would offset 19,000 tons of CO2 annually. (Pumping and treating water accounts for about 60% of all power used by city departments, and about half of Austin's electricity comes from carbon-intensive coal.)

Other conservation measures under consideration include large-scale reclaimed water projects, possibly mandatory point-of-sale toilet retrofits for real estate, and ordinances requiring sprinkler audits and minimum soil depths, to prevent excessive runoff by top residential and commercial water users. (See the map, "Water Hogs," below to view who's sucking the most water around town.)

Despite such measures, not everyone is persuaded that the utility, or the city, is doing enough. "Any discussion of water conservation cannot be detached from Water Treatment Plant 4," said Colin Clark of the Save Our Springs Alliance. SOS calls the $500 million plans for a new water plant outrageous and points to Los Angeles, which, according to a New York Times report, has been able to use roughly the same amount of water over the past two decades even as it has grown by 750,000 residents, thanks to its aggressive water conservation program. Clark said the city's push for WTP4 – expected to begin preconstruction near the intersection of RR 620 and RR 2222 later this year – isn't supported by its own water-demand data. Clark pointed to a slide from a 2006 Water Conservation Task Force presentation posted on the task force website, showing citywide water needs only to reach 250 million gallons per day by 2015, well shy of the city's current 285 million gallons per day capacity. According to SOS, the utility's public outreach ought to be focused on telling people either to conserve or else to expect estimated rate increases of 12-15% to pay for the new plant. WTP4, Clark says, will ultimately just enable more wasteful lawn watering.

WATER HOGS: As this 2006 drought-year map shows, residential water usage was greatest not only in heavily populated areas of Central Austin but also in neighborhoods west of MoPac, where swimming pools and vast lawns rely on large amounts of water. These neighborhoods are in the city’s Drinking Water Protection Zone, which includes watersheds and sensitive environmental features that contribute to the city’s drinking-water supply. Also indicated, most of the top commercial water users are in the city’s Desired Development Zone, east of I-35.
DOWNLOAD A LARGER PDF OF THIS MAP

"Conservation has already been built into the 2015 projected completion date of Water Treatment Plant 4, the year when we're forecasting we'll need its additional output," responded Council Member Lee Leffingwell, who has led the council's conservation efforts. The 2006 data referenced by SOS, he said, is neither current nor does it take into account the city's policy of maintaining a 10% additional treatment capacity buffer. A water plant with Lake Travis as its source, like WTP4, has been in the works since 1986, when WTP4 originally received bond funding, Leffingwell said. He explained that the city will save money processing Lake Travis' cleaner waters and WTP4's high elevation will save energy and money by eliminating the need for additional $10 million pumping stations to serve North and Northwest Austin.

"We were able to preserve Bull Creek [WTP4's originally planned location] largely because of conservation," said Daryl Slusher, the former City Council member who has served as the Water Utility's assistant director for environmental affairs and conservation since last summer. When it came time to break ground on WTP4 – originally proposed at the headwaters of Bull Creek, on the edge of the ecologically sensitive Balcones Canyonlands Pre­serve – council was able to delay plans by one year to search for a new location, based on the estimated water-demand reductions anticipated from the initial recommendations of the city's Water Conservation Task Force.

Critics argue that additional emphasis on conservation would produce greater savings and therefore even less need for a new plant, but council and city staff have replied that the city has to move forward on resource planning based on its best population and demand projections. In 2005, Leffingwell noted, the city projected it would need new treatment capacity by 2011. The plan at the time was to build a small plant on Lady Bird Lake, downstream of the city, and to follow two years later with WTP4. Conservation, he said, eliminated the need for the Lady Bird Lake plant and ultimately delayed WTP4 by four years. Slusher noted that WTP4 will also make up for lost capacity as other aging plants, such as the Davis plant in Central Austin, are taken off line for repairs. Leffingwell emphasized that WTP4's construction will be in phases, with its initial 50 million gallons per day capacity being only a fraction of its designed 300 million gallons per day intake capacity at complete build-out. "What a good conservation program can do," Leffingwell said, "is delay the need for future additions to that plant."

But SOS Executive Director Bill Bunch argues: "The only way WTP4 can ever even remotely make financial sense is to assume that we will need a Phase II and Phase III. The enormous cost of the intake and delivery tunnels simply cannot be cost justified by the initial 50 million gallons per day phase." Bunch said much more can be done to avoid burdening ratepayers with "a facility that is 'needed' for the sole purpose of lawn and landscape watering for 10 or 20 days out of the entire year."

When it comes to planning, Bunch insists the city must "determine an ultimate service area and need, rather than simply assuming that consumption will continue to increase forever." With better prioritized investments in proven conservation strategies, Bunch said, "we could easily accommodate growth and push [the need for WTP4] to 2030." He calls for steeper peak water rates, arguing that current rate increases for exceptional use aren't enough to discourage those mainly responsible for peak demand: wealthy homeowners overwatering in August and September. Bunch also recommends "alternative compliance" for water conservation companies that set up efficient automated watering systems for large commercial businesses. He says that while the two-day-per-week water scheduling makes sense for most users, it's counterproductive for conservation businesses. "Since these companies can turn their customers off and on remotely via the Internet, the city should be cooperating with conservation businesses to use them as an extremely effective peak load management technique." Currently, Bunch said, they're being told by the city to "screw off and follow the two-day schedule."

Makin' Water

"When we save water, we save energy," said Leffingwell. In 2006, council passed a group of H2O-saving recommendations based on the work of the task force, aimed at cutting use by a cumulative 1% per year for a decade. (Critics charge that this goal is simply too modest and, moreover, that for planning purposes, the city uses water-use projections of only 0.5% cumulative yearly savings through conservation, thereby skewing demand projection numbers.) Since that time, the Citizens Water Conservation Implementation Task Force, made up of governmental water users, developers, property managers, environmentalists, and business managers, has been working to turn the initial recommendations into city policy.

Public outreach – including Ray Benson's exhortation – is one of the recommendations in action. Another one is the watering ordinance enacted in May, expected to save 6.2 million gallons per day. Water Utility Director Greg Meszaros summarized the success of the watering ordinance and other ongoing water-saving measures, such as free sprinkler-system efficiency audits and conservation-minded changes to local plumbing codes, in a June 29 memo to City Council (See "How We're Doing.") He also described the Water Utility's broader conservation strategy, including major plans already under way to use reclaimed water for large-scale irrigation needs.

Most of Austin's treated wastewater is currently released into the Colorado River. In a project intended to replace the use of drinkable water for irrigation, the wastewater will instead be piped to the Mueller development (in about a year) and the University of Texas campus (within two). While a few area golf courses already irrigate with treated wastewater, Slusher said larger applications could ultimately save up to 5.9 million gallons per day and may eventually be added at the Capitol and Downtown. An ordinance requiring mandatory point-of-sale efficiency retrofits for toilets, certain industrial appliances, and rain shutoffs for sprinklers is expected to go before council in September. A follow-up measure would limit water use at car washes. The toilet retrofits alone, Slusher says, could save more than 2 million gallons per day. In the future, Leffingwell says, the city may look to large-scale rainwater harvesting and storm-water reuse tactics now being researched by the Water Utility.

Slusher was appointed in part to help the Water Utility emulate the successful greening tactics of its municipally owned counterpart, Austin Energy. He described the civic paradox of encouraging customers to use less of the only product the Water Utility sells – a product whose proceeds also help bankroll the city's overall budget. (Transfers from Austin Energy and Austin Water Utility currently provide nearly 20% of the city's general revenues.) "As a public utility," Slusher points out, "we have a broader responsibility than pulling in money for the city." That said, "The utility is seriously planning what a successful conservation program would mean to the bottom line." According to David Anders, the Water Utility's assistant director for finance, last summer's ample rains caused the utility to end up $25 million under its budgeted revenue – thereby affecting the amount transferred to the city's General Fund. Similarly, conservation results in short-term losses that are difficult to budget, he said, "but there's no dispute that conservation's long-term cost savings are a bigger benefit to the city." It's a balancing act that will persistently come into play over the next decade, as the city tries to conserve energy and water resources while simultaneously identifying revenue substitutes for the income currently generated by its municipally owned utilities.

"One of the most direct ways Austinites can help reduce Austin's CO2 footprint is to reduce water use," said Slusher, who was closely identified with environmental issues during his time on the council. "We're working with Austin Energy to utilize as much renewable energy as possible," he said, "while simultaneously reducing the utility's electricity use by installing more efficient water pumps." With increasing public awareness of climate change, Slusher said, people also need to recognize that "not only is water treatment an intensive user of power, but power production also uses lots of water." He added, "A huge part of what I'm doing at the Water Utility involves making the connection that less water use equals less greenhouse-gas emissions."

Resource management, especially in a time of rising costs and increasing environmental concerns, is always a question of balance. By pursuing both simple and elaborate conservation measures, as well as the construction of WTP4's first phase, city planners hope to achieve equilibrium between conserving resources, controlling costs, and mitigating the overall ecological impacts. Asked about the argument that new mandatory water conservation laws will only create more overreaching bureaucracy, Leffingwell acknowledged that we indeed have plenty of water in Lady Bird Lake. But, he said: "Just because the water is there doesn't mean we have to take it. We've got to be aware that we're not the only ones who depend on the Colorado River." For Austinites to fully appreciate all ecological and economical benefits of water conservation, Leffingwell said, a change in mindset is required. "It's something I'm beginning to see, and I'm very optimistic about it."

For more information on residential and commercial conservation, rebates for high-efficiency washers and toilets, rainwater collection (including rain-barrel sales), and irrigation evaluations, as well as Water Use Management Ordinance details and info on watering days, see www.cityofaustin.org/watercon.