In my newspaper reporting days I once saw a sign in a town hall that compared the price of water to beverages like milk, beer, soda pop, and orange juice. Water, the sign said, cost “four gallons for one cent — delivered.”
The point was to tell residents that water was a bargain and the water utility was doing a great job. But in a way it was also telling people that water was not necessarily to be valued or respected — it was essentially free.
Look at the situation today. The Southeastern U.S. is parched. The Southwest has been that way for a long time (on a trip a few years ago, I was astonished to cross a bridge over the Rio Grande and see only a pathetic trickle). A candidate for president talked last year about tapping the Great Lakes to supply New Mexico.
Unequal distribution
There’s no doubt: Some regions have plenty of water, while others do not. Spreading water around is not logistically easy, nor is it environmentally sound. And yet, perhaps even those of us who live in areas of abundance (such as the Great Lakes basin) should learn to respect and treasure water as much as those who have to water their golf courses with recycled sewage.
Municipal agencies, especially in water-scarce areas, are doing the job. Leak detection and water conservation programs have become standard currency among water utilities. (This issue of Municipal Sewer & Water highlights such initiatives in Iowa City, Iowa). But maybe it’s time for more homeowners — no matter where — to start taking water as seriously as their utilities do.
Think of it. Home heating fuel and electricity for cooling have become quite expensive, yet most of our homes are not nearly as energy efficient as they could be. What, then, of water? It’s still extremely cheap (at least in many communities). It takes a major event, such as a large and long-lasting leak, to cause a spike in a typical water bill. So why would people bother to conserve?
Without thought
Where I live, in a city on Lake Michigan, water is both cheap and abundant. We run a pipe out into the lake, bring the water in, use it, and send it back. I have never seen anything resembling an emergency water restriction, like a ban on car washing or limits on lawn sprinkling.
My wife, and the kids (until they grew up and moved on), were quite profligate with water at times, letting the tap run while doing dishes, taking long showers, running the hose carelessly when gardening. It annoyed my conservative nature, but I let it go, partly for the sake of domestic harmony, and partly because I couldn’t make much of a case that it was “costing us a fortune.”
In truth, it’s not as if we “use water up” by pouring it into the sink and running it down the drain. It just goes back to the lake. What we conserve by breaking bad habits is mainly the energy to run pumps and the dollars to treat water and sewage. Still, I can’t help thinking it would be healthy for all of us in water-rich areas to treat water with the kind of respect those in dry areas give it.
Is that a little bit like being frugal with food for the sake of the “starving people in China?” Maybe, but in the end, solutions to water scarcity are going to take some measure of empathy, some political compromises, and yes, some expense. All of that comes easier when people come to the resource with a similar degree of respect.
A new town hall sign?
It’s hard to preach conservation when a resource costs, in the grand scheme, next to nothing. It would be foolish in too many ways to count to inflate the price of it artificially in order to encourage wiser use.
Maybe a better sign for our town and city halls would be a map of the United States — or the world — colorized to show the areas where water is truly scarce. Some of us may have water, some may not, but we’re all in this together.
