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Talking Sprinklers, Desal, and Water Reuse
A Conversation with Conservation Expert Amy Vickers
by Stephen Hochbrunn, NEIWPCC
Amy Vickers doesn’t have anything against lawns. But her vast knowledge of the way we use and misuse water in this country has led her to crusade against an all too common practice—overwatering.
“Lawns aren’t the problem,” Vickers said during a phone interview. “It is the relationship to them that is sick. And it’s getting more unhealthy every day. Sadly, in New England, outdoor water use is the primary source of water waste in many communities.”
Based in Amherst, Mass., Vickers is an engineer, water conservation consultant, and author of the Handbook of Water Use and Conservation (WaterPlow Press, 2002), which the American Water Works Association has called “the most thorough reference ever published” on the topic. For decades, she has advised water supply systems, government agencies, businesses, and other organizations on ways to better manage their water. As a speaker, she is in demand. In March 2007, Vickers delivered the keynote address at the “Water for Rhode Island—Today and Tomorrow” conference in Providence, R.I., and her lucid comments there inspired our desire to hear more. We spoke with her by phone over the summer.
IWR: If everyone in New England, including those with private wells, suddenly cut back on lawn watering to just once a week, would that do away with the concerns in many communities about having enough water to meet demand?
Vickers: It seems like a real possibility. We don’t know as much as we need to know about why 70 percent of the river basins in Massachusetts are flow stressed. But a lot of anecdotal evidence from water managers in New England, particularly in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, points to one thing as being the likely culprit—automatic irrigation systems. Certainly we need to dig more to get hard facts rather than anecdotal evidence. But we should be on that road [to reducing lawn watering] because if we aren’t, we are going to continue to witness the diminishment of our fresh water here in New England. And that is totally unnecessary.
IWR: Aren’t many people already fairly responsible with their water use?
Vickers: The good news is that the average person tends to be more efficient, not wasteful in their use of water. It is the top users that we need to focus on, those homes where per capita water use is two, three, sometimes four times the average. I did a study for the city of Dallas, and found that the top 10 percent of users demand more than 400 gallons per capita per day, compared to the average demand of 110 to 115 gallons. When we really narrow in and focus on the problem, it is actually a minority of water users who are truly the problem. Those are the people we need to target with a conservation program.
IWR: But as you said in your speech in Providence, changing the behavior of the top users isn’t easy.
Vickers: They tend to be affluent, and the affluent typically don’t care about the cost of water. Raising the price won’t provide an incentive to cut back on use. I feel strongly that we need statewide rules on water restriction that are fair and apply equally to rich or poor. I know of at least one town that has an ordinance stating that if its watering limits are violated three times, the violator’s irrigation system is shut off. I think that is reasonable. People have to be given fair warning that they are flouting necessary conservation restrictions, but if they continue to do so, it is reasonable to shut off their irrigation system without shutting off their water lifeline.
That being said, I think part of the reason that watering rules aren’t always honored is that the public doesn’t understand them. When the public understands the reason for the rules, I think you see higher compliance.
IWR: Is reducing water use and waste sometimes not enough? In Brockton [Mass.], officials say they’ve done all they can to restrict outdoor water use and fix leaky old water pipes, but they say they still need more water. They’re going to get it by buying water from a desalination plant being built on the Taunton River. Is that acceptable to you?
Vickers: I can’t comment on Brockton specifically because I don’t know all the details. What I would say is that no community in America has yet to exploit its full potential for water efficiency. Where we see desalination in the United States I think we’re seeing a failure in responsible water management, i.e., not investing in a comprehensive water conservation program. I think there are still some water managers who are promoting water conservation with bumper stickers and blue balloons during National Water Week.
Today the fields of water efficiency and water conservation are far more sophisticated than they were even five years ago. They’re a science and an art today, and there really are no water systems in this country that have tapped every opportunity for conservation and efficiency. System leakage is still a common problem in New England and across the country. And many systems still don’t report accurately their true water losses. We need a fuller accounting of how well, or not well, water is managed before we put the seal of approval on desalination as our only remaining choice.
IWR: What about water reuse, that is, reclaiming wastewater by treating it so it can be reused for toilet flushing and other nonpotable purposes? Is that a viable option for easing the strain on water supplies?
Vickers: We are already seeing sophisticated water recycling systems in the high-tech and pharmaceutical industries, so they can use water and energy more efficiently and to insure a reliable stream of high quality water. In that regard industrial reuse makes a lot of sense. But we are also starting to see, in Florida and Texas and the Southwest, the use of reclaimed water for landscape irrigation. Now, if water conservation is your goal, absolutely it makes sense to reuse water. The problem is that in practice I think reuse has given people a license to use more. If you look at the per capita water use in Orange County, Florida—and I am doing a study on this right now—you’ll see it has some very high use levels because its reclaimed water is often underpriced. It is viewed as unlimited, so there is not an ethic about it.
If we eliminated water waste and just targeted our reclaimed water for high usages, such as industry, I don’t think we’d have to bear the cost of plumbing communities so reclaimed water could be used for irrigation. I would say we have enough water already, if we really scale back from the waste we now see.
IWR: Speaking of waste, how do you feel when it’s pouring rain and you pass a home with its automatic sprinklers on?
Vickers: The irrigation industry has been irresponsible in promoting products that were never meant to be used by the average consumer. The industry needs to grow up, get with the 21st century, and design irrigation products in light of the reality of today’s water supply issues.
I’ll mention something I’m working on in Florida, which requires rain sensors [on automatic sprinklers so they don’t irrigate during and after a rainfall]. You know what the problem is? A lot of the rain sensors don’t work out of the box. They’re made with cheap materials. They never function right. They’re not designed for the average consumer to install and operate properly. So, in Orange County, Florida, we’re working to get an amendment to require a working rain sensor.
IWR: Should we require rain sensors in New England?
Vickers: Yes, working ones. Actually,I think we need to step back on that issue. We need to be discouraging people and developers from installing automatic irrigation systems at all, because that is where the problem starts. A person standing in their front yard with a hose is generally an efficient irrigation system. They don’t use a lot of water. If everyone watered like that, we would not be where we are today. The problem is one of a misapplication of technology. These automatic irrigation systems are too powerful and often too poorly designed and too difficult to properly install, so they have low distribution uniformity. There are overlapping sprays, overspray, the whole bit. Much of the water, at least half, is wasted.
Remember too that healthy turf grass wants to go brown. It wants to go through a dormant phase. That’s part of a healthy plant cycle.
IWR: Is your message sinking in?
Vickers: Yes. The growing public awareness about climate change and the limited petroleum reserves at our disposal are making people more aware of water, food, and other natural resources.
The good news is America is blessed with abundant water resources. But we have a distorted view of how much water we need compared with how much water we’re currently using. If we cut in half the amount of water we’re wasting outdoors, the stories in the media that say we’re running out of water would go from the front page to the back page.
This is a problem we’ve created. It’s disturbing to see the damage being done, and we need to stop it.