From both an economic and environmental perspective water conservation makes tremendous sense—enacting effective water conservation measures will boost our water supply more quickly, cheaply and without the environmental and social implications of damming Georgia’s rivers.
Environment Georgia welcomes Gov. Perdue’s announcement of a bill to prioritize water conservation as an exciting development in a state that often turns its back on aggressive efficiency. As always the devil is in the details and the governor’s water bill contains no shortage of good ideas and ideas that fall far short of an effective mobilization towards real conservation.
Here is a quick run down of the meaningful sections and improvements that could be made-
Section 2:
The purpose of this section is to direct a variety of state agencies to look for ways to drive conservation and efficiency. Beyond required reports from each agency there is little else to actually guarantee a reduction in water use. The section unerringly avoids putting forth any benchmarks or mandatory reductions. It kicks the can when it comes to wide spread implementation of efficient irrigation, use of drought tolerant landscaping, gray water systems, outdoor watering restrictions and more by stopping short of anything close to a requirement. It even uses the frustratingly redundant phrase “Encourage voluntary…”
The good news is it actually requires these voluntary measures to go in to effect almost immediately unlike much of the rest of the bill.
Section 3:
The purpose of this section is to beef up the conservation and reporting practices of public water systems. Again we fall short of actually setting a benchmark (e.g. reducing system leaks by 5%) but friends at the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper are thrilled by the standardized reporting requirements—although they point out that the bill should be sure the water systems are actually required to submit their reports to the Environmental Protection Division (EPD), and that the reports be available to the public.
In this section we also see a slip in urgency—the EPD is given till 2011 to draw up standards and best practices and water systems don’t actually have to do anything that might catch leaks until 2012, 2013 if they are a smaller system.
Section 4:
This section sets up a voluntary monitoring program for surface-water withdrawals and can be chalked up as a victory to the agriculture industry. Some sort of program encouraging more efficient irrigation would have been more effective.
Section 5:
This section borrows heavily from Representative Judy Manning’s HB 158 and deals with sub-metering, or the separate metering of different units in a multi-unit building, which helps promote conservation by forcing water users to actually view and pay for the water they are using.
The bill would require buildings built after 2012 to include sub-metering. Unclear why this is something that can’t happen ASAP.
Section 6:
This section updates the building code to include more efficient plumbing fixtures. A great idea but I would advocate for making the upgrades before 2012, making the shower head requirements more strict (e.g. the bill should also include a limitation on the number of shower heads) and requires upgrades in piping which decrease the water that you waste waiting for the water to heat up.
Section 7:
This section requires high-efficiency cooling towers be used after 2012 and is the only nod to the immense amounts of water power production uses in Georgia. An obvious opportunity for improvement would be to require more energy efficiency and renewable energy alternatives that use less water.
Section 8:
This section sets up a committee to study reservoirs. Not surprisingly this is another section that goes in to effect before 2012.
