Conservation, No? Say it Ain’t So
Posted May 6, 2010 in Living Sustainably
Within the next few days, the Board of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, the wholesale water supplier to over half the Golden State’s population, will consider budget-cutting proposals designed to shave $20 million from its pending budget of about $1.3 billion. No surprise there – the economy is down, homebuilding is down, and water sales are down. Met needs to tighten its belt.
What is surprising is that one of the candidates for the cut is Met’s regional water conservation program – the funds used to help homeowners and businesses across the region use water more efficiently. This program happens to be budgeted for, let’s see, about $20 million. Hmmm. Pretty convenient! If conservation gets thrown under the bus, the board and staff won’t have to look anywhere else for potentially painful choices to rein in spending.
The problem with this “logic,” however, is that water conservation actually helps hold down the cost of water, and will play an even greater role in this regard in coming years. As I mentioned in a previous blog, several factors, including rising costs for the electric power needed to lift Met’s massive imports of water across mountain ranges, are putting upward pressure on the cost of wholesale water. Locally developed resources, especially water conservation measures that permanently reduce demand (effectively becoming a “supply”), are available in SoCal at less cost than the cost of acquiring, transporting, treating, and distributing extra water brought into the region. Plenty of water users get this math, and Met’s conservation programs have many willing participants.
In April, several environmental organizations, including NRDC, submitted a letter to the General Manager Jeffrey Kightlinger and the Chairman of the Board of Directors Timothy Brick urging them to maintain the regional water conservation program at its budgeted level and implement the most cost effective options first. Investments in improving the efficiency of water use are among the most economically responsible options available to Southern California.
Less than 6 months ago, the Governor signed into law a bill requiring urban water consumption to be reduced 20% by 2020 on a per capita basis. Met supported the bill. So did NRDC. But now, even as the region continues under water use restrictions, and businesses and families are urged to cut back their water use, the Met board is seriously considering cutting support for water conservation. What message will that send to customers, the Governor, and the rest of the state? And how many fingers will it take to send it?
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Comments
Matthew Lyons — May 7 2010 12:43 PM
If MWD does reduce its conservation budget, we strongly encourage MWD to fully-fund the member agency initiated programs, as opposed to programs like toilet rebates.
Over the last couple of years there has been a dramatic reduction in water use throughout most of Southern California. This achievement had little or nothing to do with things like toilet rebates or technical assistance by MWD. It had everything to do with individual water agencies aggressively pursuing the kind of conservation needed in their service area, such as saturation-style promotion of conservation and restricting landscape irrigation.
The cities of Los Angeles and Long Beach, much of the County of San Diego, and, no doubt, many other parts of Southern California achieved reductions of 15-percent or more. Our challenge is to maintain these reductions; a goal that will not be accomplished by issuing more toilet rebates.
The future of Southern California water will be starkly different than its past: gone are the excess water supplied we enjoyed on a nearly annual basis. Southern California must think of wasting water as smoking cigarettes; in the last few years we have come a long way towards kicking the water-wasting habit, we must not start “chain smoking” again. To accomplish this individual water agencies need the resources necessary to aggressively pursue the kinds of conservation programs that work best in their area.
Additionally, one of the problems with many of these rebate programs is, although we know how much they cost, we don’t know how much water is actually conserved by them. For example, if we assume about one acre-foot of water is conserved for every 4 residential WBIC rebates, but it turns out that only about 1/3rd of the WBICs are installed and programmed correctly, and that few of these maintain their self-adjusting properties when water agencies impose certain watering restrictions, we may be conserving not one acre-foot, but perhaps as little as 1/5th an acre-foot or less. Similar kinds of problems are present in most other rebate programs. So we can “assume” we’re conserving huge amounts of water but are, in actual fact, conserving very little…at a time in our history when achieving measurable conservation is essential.
Dr. James Singmaster — May 7 2010 02:24 PM
Southern CA and many other coastal areas with water supply problems should be developing solar energy mirror systems for distilling of sea water that can be a very low cost program as almost no polluting fuel energy would be needed. Also no chlorine treatment would be involved so no ozone depleting vapors will be released. I urge NRDC to start calling for getting water this way that will also stop construction of environment disturbing dams. In southern CA people ought to be concerned about getting their water supply locally as the aqueducts supplying the water from northern CA might get broken in a big quake. Where will they be then. Dr. J. Singmaster
Joe Friday — May 7 2010 03:56 PM
When it is time to cut spending, you focus on the essential, on your core business. In the case of this agency, they should be focusing on obtaining, treating, and delivering water. Period. When they start spending millions on non-core activities, whether conservation or anything else, they are straying out of their area of expertise. Assume that millions spent in such areas could easily be going into PR campaigns. That means paying outside "specialists" to advertise and promote messages. How can you tell these messages are working? When do you figure you've spent enough on doing something - especially if you don't have any great way of measuring the impact of your campaign? I don't want my water supplier getting into the advertising business any more than I want a pastry chef sitting in for my heart surgeon. Sometimes you have to look past what sounds bad and ask for more accountability and closer stewardship of resources. Let a water company stay in the water business, where they belong.
Emily Green — May 7 2010 04:51 PM
Amen to the post and the Long Beach comment. Metropolitan began its outdoor conservation program 8 years ago after a then record low year on the Colorado River. That record low has since been followed by the lowest sustained recharge of the system in recorded history. Armed with priority rights and additional supplies from the Bay Delta and Owens Valley, Southern California didn't have to push conservation anywhere near as hard as Southern Nevada, whose programs are living proof of how effective they can be.
Another reason to push conservation, as the post states, is energy conservation. We are caught in a vicious cycle where energy production to pump and treat water is pushing climate change, which in turn is steadily reducing inflow into the Colorado, and reducing hydro-electric capacity.
Beyond quantity, there is the added problem of what happens when storage reservoirs are low and the pollutants become concentrated; you then not only have scary supply problems, but water quality problems thrown in. This is little discussed but poses a looming crisis for Met.
So, teaching, promoting and, yes, funding, water conservation is now a crucial aspect of water management. Thanks for putting your oar in at a timely moment.
David Zetland — May 7 2010 05:31 PM
No, you have your accounting wrong. Met sells water at an average cost that reflects total system costs divided by total deliveries. If deliveries fall (conservation!), then revenue falls, and prices have to go up. That's unpopular with Met and member agencies.
If they cut conservation, then they save money AND do not deliver less water. Wow, average cost down and prices needn't rise.
Their accounting is at fault, of course, and I've been pointing this out since I wrote my dissertation on Met (http://ssrn.com/abstract=1129046).
There are several ways to get what YOU want.
1) Have Met set higher prices based on value, not cost, and use the revenue to cover lower sales (reversing the traditional order).
2) Auction Met water among member agencies, with a kicker ($ rebate) to those who use less than average water.
I'm happy to discuss the details of these ideas with you, or you can read my blog :)
http://aguanomics.com/search/label/MWDSC
Cheers!