Water: Sustaining, allocating it key to Tucson area’s future
by B. William Poole on Nov. 07, 2008, under Local
Jay Cole checks the water level in a 27,000 gallon tank that helps him and wife Carol Townsend achieve water sustainability. They collect all of their water from their roof.
Jay Cole and his wife, Carol Townsend, are pretty sure they have water sustainability licked.
When the West Side retirees built their home five years ago, they put in a $35,000 cistern and rainwater collection, filtering and purification system.
“For the past three years, we’ve collected 100 percent of the water we needed for our household use,” said Cole, a curator emeritus for the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
The couple collects and stores the water in an underground backyard tank. The 10-foot deep cistern has 8 feet of water in it now – more than six months worth – every drop coming from rain that fell on their roof.
But figuring out sustainability on a larger scale is a tougher nut to crack.
A six-month supply for all of Tucson Water customers would require a tank with a surface area of 1 acre and a depth of about 62,300 feet.
Arizona – and by extension Tucson – is at the front lines of sustainability. With 80 percent of the people in the intermountain West already living in cities, many of those cities are projected to keep growing. Tucson is among them.
The Pima Association of Governments, whose projections are used by city and county planners, foresees a metropolitan Tucson population of about 2 million people by 2050. We now have just more than 1 million.
That Tucson will grow is not disputed by most planners.
“The question is whether we are going to emerge as a leader in smart growth,” said Josef Marlow, a resource economist at the Tucson-based Sonoran Institute.
Water planners will eventually have to decide who gets the water and how much it costs – issues that have already led to intergovernmental disputes in Arizona.
Even just defining sustainability in the context of city and county government might be impossible, said Jim Barry, chairman of a city-county committee trying to craft a framework for the metro area’s water future.
“I’m not sure we, as a committee, with the time and resources we have available, could do it,” Barry said. “We might have to punt.”
The Tucson-Pima County Water Study Oversight Committee has been collecting information for a report to city and county leaders. The report, which the committee plans to complete by February, will attempt to define sustainability where water use is concerned.
Though the word sustainability conjures environmental images, sustainability traditionally rests on three “legs,” Marlow said.
This triple bottom line consists of environmental, social and economic factors. Considering cost is vital to achieving long-term sustainability, he said.
Marlow cites Las Vegas, where casinos seemingly waste water along the strip in elaborate fountains and gondola rides. If you bring economics into the picture, the picture changes.
“The strip uses 3 percent of their water, and look how much money that brings in. That’s a pretty darn efficient use of water,” he said.
But in Tucson, the City Council earlier this decade rejected a plan for a Slim-Fast factory largely because it would have used a lot of water, which highlights the local nuances to water decisions, said Lesli Liberti, director of the city Office of Conservation and Sustainable Development.
The key is to find where the community wants to balance financial value and water.
“That’s where we’re challenged,” Liberti said.
Tucson should look at water as an investment and planners need to consider the economics of using water – not just the environment, Marlow said.
“It’s important not to completely shut down any chance for economic development solely based on a water policy,” he said.
Liberti agrees. Water policy has to fit within a broader concept of sustainability that takes into account the environment and community’s needs and goals. That allows room for more than just environmental concerns, she said.
“It’s not just about water versus population growth. It isn’t just about environment. That’s why you can have a concept of sustainable development,” Liberti said.
Economics is a big part of sustainable development, Michael McNulty of Southern Arizona Leadership Council told the city-county committee Oct. 29. It’s important to quantify the value of water, he said.
Local governments should “promote policies that facilitate allocation and reallocation of water resources to highest value uses that yield the greatest economic, social and environmental net benefit for the region,” he told the panel on behalf of a coalition including real estate and builder trade groups.
Choosing uses will be the key to deciding our water sustainability future, Liberti said.
“Sustainability isn’t just about deciding what the end goal is. It’s about how to get there,” Liberti said.
Southern Arizona faces an uphill battle in choosing a sustainability future, partly because the region has a high degree of fragmentation of governments, said John Shepard, a deputy director at the Sonoran Institute.
If policies are enacted before governments are on the same page, problems will arise, Shepard said.
“You’re quickly going to have a huge fight on your hands,” he said.
The city-county effort is a big step toward unity in policy direction, Liberti said.
“We talk about being a sustainable community but we haven’t really engaged in a comprehensive dialogue,” she said.
The dialogue happening at the city-county committee is a step in the right direction, but it is not enough, said Sharon Megdal, director of the University of Arizona Water Resources Research Center.
“That discussion is going to have to be broadened,” Megdal said.
In the end, the area will need a shift in local values to really conserve water in major ways, and that requires input from all directions, Marlow said.
“That’s the whole reason for the regional discussion.”
The cistern in Jay Cole and Carol Townsend's backyard helps them store and use water they collect from their 5,000-square-foot roof. It's enough water to maintain a small swimming pool.
A corner of Jay Cole and Carol Townsend's garage holds the tanks and valves that let them treat the roughly 110 gallons of water they use every day. They also use reverse osmosis to purify their drinking water.
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ON THE WEB
Sustainable Tucson: www.sustainabletucson.org
Sonoran Institute report on sustainable water management: http://sonoran.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=174&Itemid=204
Tucson Office of Conservation and Sustainable Development: www.tucsonaz.gov/ocsd/
Tucson/Pima County Water Study Oversight Committee: www.tucsonpimawaterstudy.com
Pima County Development Services Building Safety and Sustainability Division: www.pimaxpress.com/Building/default.htm
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