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Saving Water (and the Earth) Couldn’t be Simpler

Posted on April 14, 2008 | Filed Under Outreach, Water Conservation, Water for Life

Chas Offutt, Director of Internet Strategy
Technology & Rivers

This has nothing to do with technology, but nonetheless the #1 New York Times bestseller, “50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save the Earth,” is back with an updated version that joins forces with 50 leading environmental organization.

And, American Rivers, is proud to be one of the organizations chosen to be partners in this project. Pretty cool, our ‘Drop by Drop: Water scarcity already affects every continent, and 4 of every 10 people on Earth‘ is listed #23.

I must admit, I didn’t even read the first one, but I will definitely pick up a copy and write again. However, in the mean time, anyone have any feedback, reviews and/or insight?

New report on Washington’s water future

Posted on April 3, 2008 | Filed Under Clean Water, Global Warming, Northwest, Water Conservation, Water Supply, Water for Life

Amy Kober
Northwest Outreach & Communications Director

From my office I can see the peaks of the North Cascades, which in some places are covered with 40 percent above average snowpack. This is good news for the salmon, farmers, fishermen, and boaters who depend on water in our rivers through the summer.

But scientists tell us that with global warming and population growth, drought and water shortages will become more and more common in the coming years, even in the traditionally wet parts of our region.

That’s why we need to change how we think about and manage water. Our new report, Before the well runs dry: water solutions for Washington (PDF), covers the challenges – as well as commonsense solutions.

Solutions proposed in the report include:

Requiring the collection and reporting of basic information essential to smart water management
Securing adequate flow protections to support healthy rivers and streams
Closing loopholes that allow unsustainable water use and infringement of water rights
Requiring and promoting efficient water use
Promoting natural stormwater management
Requiring development to be consistent with a sustainable water supply
Preventing illegal water use

The report was created in partnership with Washington Environmental Council and Washington Rivers Conservancy.

Download the full PDF report or view the interactive report online.

Our Leaders Must Lead to Reduce Water Consumption

Posted on March 21, 2008 | Filed Under Water Conservation, Water Supply, Water for Life

Betsy Otto, Senior Director of Healthy Waters Campaign
Water Efficiency & Policy

I was reading the paper at a coffeehouse the other morning and having that slightly despairing feeling as I read the latest article about our rapidly evaporating (literally) water supplies. I kept looking for the paragraph that would highlight what civic leaders are doing to deal with the looming crisis. But it seems like many of our leaders have lost their nerve, or they just don’t know what to do.

They seem to alternate between Chicken Little shouting about how dire the situation is, and desperate calls for big, dramatic (and hugely expensive) engineering “solutions”…from the 1930s. We are in a completely different reality in the 21^st century, of course, but no matter. We want new dams and reservoirs, even if they won’t have any water to hold.

Whether we want to look at it or not, we are in a long, uphill battle to learn how to deal with the impacts of climate change, especially as it relates to fresh water. The good news is that we have solutions that we know work and they are right in front of us. The bad news, if you want to look at it that way, is that there is no magic cure, just lots of small, effective steps, which taken together…actually work.

I’m talking about communities investing in water conservation and efficiency. Before that image of Jimmy Carter in his cardigan telling us to turn down the thermostat pops into your head (if you’re older than 35), let me stress that I am talking about what can work right now.

Cities like Seattle and Austin and New York have quietly been reducing their overall water consumption by 20 to 30 percent by helping households switch to more efficient toilets, faucets, and showerheads, dishwashers and clothes washers. And I’m sure it doesn’t hurt to “snap that tap” either - like the creative video above shows.

So, back at my desk, still in a funk, thinking “Why aren’t we doing this everywhere???” -an email drops into my inbox from Jenny Hoffner, who runs our national water efficiency campaign from Atlanta. The night before, she notes, DeKalb County’s board (DeKalb is one of Atlanta’s big counties) passed an ordinance requiring homeowners purchasing a home to replace toilets and showerheads older than 1993 with low-flow versions when they reconnect to the water utility.

Read the full story, New Rules to Flush Out Old Toilets (The Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

American Rivers supported the measure, and sent email alerts to our members in Georgia. By retrofitting these older plumbing fixtures in its 165,000 pre-1993 homes, DeKalb will save nearly 9 million gallons per day - that’s nearly 10% of their current daily withdrawal. The ordinance was sponsored by CEO Vernon Jones and Commissioner Jeff Rader.

Even the small steps add up. And who says we don’t have leaders willing to step up with real solutions? We just need more of them.

For more information on the DeKalb County, view the “Retrofit on Reconnect” (PDF) Ordinance.

Sunset magazine feature on western rivers

Posted on February 25, 2008 | Filed Under California, Dam Removal, Global Warming, Northwest, River Heritage, River Renewal, Southwest, Water Conservation, Water Supply

Amy Kober
Northwest Outreach & Communications Director

The March 2008 issue of Sunset Magazine includes a story on the West’s rivers, featuring yours truly, and water experts from around the region.

It started back in the fall with a western water roundtable at Sunset’s office in California. They recorded the lively conversation and the magazine includes exerpts. To listen to the roundtable conversation in its entirety, click here.

The magazine also features three essays from writers Tobias Wolff (on the Skagit), Susan Orlean (on the Willamette) and Pam Houston (on the Colorado).

Kudos to Sunset for taking on such a big topic and handling it so well. I like how they include both information and inspiration, balancing the roundtable conversation with the three essays.

I hope the article helps readers appreciate our rivers a little more, and spurs some of them to take action.

Learn more: Read our Principles for Evaluating New Water Supply Projects (PDF)

Give A Green Boost To The Economy

Posted on January 30, 2008 | Filed Under Green Infrastructure, Healthy Waters, Water Conservation

Rebecca Wodder
President

What our economy needs right now is a whole lot of green: Green jobs, green projects and green investments that will boost local economies while improving our environment and quality of life. (read Katherine’s post, Ring Around the (Green) Collar)

Congress is looking at ways to jump-start the economy and avoid a recession. Recently, we’ve been hearing from a lot of governors, mayors, and economists saying that infrastructure investments are among the most powerful and enduring things we can do to grow the economy. Investing in “green�? upgrades to our nation’s sewage and drinking water systems may not sound sexy (know any Hollywood stars who want to speak up for sewage treatment?) but I’d argue it is the most important thing we can do to create jobs, improve clean water, protect public health and safety, beautify our communities, and revitalize our economy

Our nation’s pipes and sewers – many built 50 to 100 years ago – are old and quickly deteriorating. The report card released by the American Society of Civil Engineers on the state of the nation’s infrastructure gave a grade of D- to sewers and water treatment plants — very near failing. The Environmental Protection Agency warns that we could soon see sewage pollution levels that we haven’t seen since the 1970s. This means more waterborne illnesses, more beach closures and fewer opportunities for fishing and boating.

Investments to fix these outdated structures and systems would pump money into the economy and create tens of thousands of jobs — for every billion dollars invested in water infrastructure construction, 47,000 jobs are created. And it’s important to invest in environmentally-friendly public works projects wherever possible. Green approaches to managing water and sewage not only save us money, it brings all kinds of other benefits to people, rivers and wildlife.

Philadelphia, Chicago, Portland, New York, Washington DC, Seattle, and Los Angeles are already leaders when it comes to green projects. These cities are embracing green roofs, rain gardens, urban tree planting, and other ways to reduce storm-water runoff. Instead of funneling stormwater into a pipe, it can be used to cool buildings and irrigate landscapes, or simply allowed to seep into the ground to replenish streams and groundwater. If every city embraced these ideas, think of how many “green collar” jobs we could create.

Another great way to create green jobs is to boost funding for retrofits of old toilets, plumbing fixtures and water-using appliances to more efficient models. Much of the country is struggling with drought and impacts to their water supplies from climate change, so investing in water efficiency is a smart solution. Over a decade ago, New York City created jobs and dropped water consumption by 26 percent by installing more than a million low-flow toilets.

The bottom line is that green investments pay off. They can make our rivers cleaner, create green collar jobs, and make our communities better places to live. Our message to Congress: Want to jump-start the economy? Go green.

The post, Give A Green Boost To The Economy, was first posted on Trehugger.com.

Atlanta Journal Constitution Op-ed by American Rivers President

Posted on November 9, 2007 | Filed Under Global Warming, Southeast, Water Conservation, Water Supply, Water for Life

Rebecca Wodder
President

Today, the Atlanta Journal Constitution published my op-ed titled, Follow bigger cities: Waste not, want not (read or click on the gcast player to listen to the audio). The drought in the Southeast has caught the attention of many communities across the country, and for good reasons, as it shows that no region of our country is immune to severe water shortages.

Last week, I blogged on this issue and called for A New Era of Water Conservation. In my post, I suggested five things you can do to save water, save money, and ensure that we have sustainable water supplies and healthy rivers in our future:

Hold your elected officials accountable: Has your city taken steps to encourage water conservation? If not, urge your elected officials to take action. Cities should provide incentives for low-impact development and water-saving plumbing fixtures; improve pricing systems for water; implement appropriate guidelines for water use; and, develop sustainable long-term water plans.

Be water-wise around the house: Simple things, like running the dishwasher only when it’s full, washing only full loads of clothes, and taking shorter showers can save hundreds of gallons over the course of a week. And don’t forget to fix those leaky faucets — this can save you up to 100 gallons a day!

Install water-saving plumbing fixtures: The Environmental Protection Agency has launched its WaterSense program and some cities – like Seattle, San Francisco, Austin, New York, and many others – are providing rebates for installing high-efficiency toilets, low-flow faucets and shower heads.

Make your brown lawn a source of pride: How about we start a new trend –making a brown lawn a source of pride? A badge of honor that says, “Protecting my community’s drinking water supply and the health of our rivers is more important than a little patch of grass.�? We must come to grips with the fact that watering the lawn wastes a lot of water. As Sally Bethea with the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper in Atlanta, has pointed out, outdoor watering may account for at least 20 percent of the Atlanta region’s total water usage.

Use attractive, drought-friendly landscaping: If a brown lawn isn’t your thing, consider getting rid of your lawn altogether and creating a drought-friendly landscape. There are many beautiful plants that don’t require a lot of water. When you do need to water, turn to rain barrels – these simple containers collect the water from your gutters and downspouts.

Learn how you can support our work today.

A New Era Of Water Conservation

Posted on October 31, 2007 | Filed Under Water Conservation, Water Supply, Water for Life

Rebecca Wodder
President

It used to be that only people in the dry western part of our country had to worry about drought, and the rest of us could enjoy our lush lawns and long showers, believing that our water supply was endless.

Well, guess again. The extreme drought in the Southeast shows that no region of our country is immune to severe water shortages.

We’ve all seen the TV footage of the dry lake beds, and every day we hear about cities like Raleigh, NC that have less than 100 days of water left in their dwindling supplies.

As our country’s population grows, so do the demands on our rivers and lakes – where most of our drinking water comes from. Paving over watersheds with sprawl is paving our way to water shortages. Water runs off pavement rapidly, instead of soaking into the ground to replenish groundwater supplies. And, global warming is putting an added strain on communities’ water supplies.

Hoping for rain is not the solution. Building expensive new dams and engineering massive transfers of water from one watershed to another won’t solve our problems either.

We need a solution that will ensure sustainable water supplies for our communities, and keep our rivers, lakes and streams – the source of our drinking water – clean and healthy.

So it is time to call for a new era of water conservation in our country. We need to start treating water like the most precious resource we have – wherever we live. We need to realize that the more we waste water, the less water is available for our neighbors as well as the fish and wildlife in our local streams. Ultimately, wasting water hurts not only the environment but our local economies, recreation opportunities and our quality of life.

The director of one North Carolina water system told the Herald-Sun newspaper, “We should use water for essential uses only, because the water we don’t use for discretionary purposes, like watering your lawn, may be needed to drink or cook or shower next year.�?

Cities and states must step up and do their part. They should encourage water conservation through measures like tiered water pricing and by developing comprehensive water plans. And yes, they need to impose common sense restrictions. Austin, Texas is a good example – there, the city bans outdoor watering during the hottest part of the day, between 10am and 7pm, when water just evaporates rather than soaking in.

We as individuals can really make a difference in our daily actions. Here are five things you can do to save water, save money, and ensure that we have sustainable water supplies and healthy rivers in our future:

Hold your elected officials accountable: Has your city taken steps to encourage water conservation? If not, urge your elected officials to take action. Cities should provide incentives for low-impact development and water-saving plumbing fixtures; improve pricing systems for water; implement appropriate guidelines for water use; and, develop sustainable long-term water plans.

Be water-wise around the house: Simple things, like running the dishwasher only when it’s full, washing only full loads of clothes, and taking shorter showers can save hundreds of gallons over the course of a week. And don’t forget to fix those leaky faucets — this can save you up to 100 gallons a day!

Install water-saving plumbing fixtures: The Environmental Protection Agency has launched its WaterSense program and some cities – like Seattle, San Francisco, Austin, New York, and many others – are providing rebates for installing high-efficiency toilets, low-flow faucets and shower heads.

Make your brown lawn a source of pride: How about we start a new trend –making a brown lawn a source of pride? A badge of honor that says, “Protecting my community’s drinking water supply and the health of our rivers is more important than a little patch of grass.�? We must come to grips with the fact that watering the lawn wastes a lot of water. As Sally Bethea with the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper in Atlanta, has pointed out, outdoor watering may account for at least 20 percent of the Atlanta region’s total water usage.

Use attractive, drought-friendly landscaping: If a brown lawn isn’t your thing, consider getting rid of your lawn altogether and creating a drought-friendly landscape. There are many beautiful plants that don’t require a lot of water. When you do need to water, turn to rain barrels – these simple containers collect the water from your gutters and downspouts.

With the combined realities of population growth, paved-over watersheds, and global warming, we are facing, and will continue to face, unprecedented water challenges. But the future doesn’t need to be bleak. I’m actually quite hopeful — I believe we are going to see more and more communities across the country embracing a new era of water conservation, ensuring their citizens – and their rivers – are healthy and thriving for years to come. To learn more, visit our Watr for Life campaign page.

* This article was first posted on Treehugger, A New Era Of Water Conservation

Know any good films about water and rivers?

Posted on August 17, 2007 | Filed Under Healthy Waters, Northwest, Stories, Water Conservation, Water Supply, Water for Life

Amy Kober
Northwest Outreach & Communications Director

A colleague at Washington Rivers Conservancy asked me if I know of good films (short or long) that look at the issue of water shortages and water scarcity — especially in the American West.

So I thought I’d put the question out to all of you — if you have suggestions, please reply in the Comments section.

One suggestion I’ve gotten already is for a film called The Unforeseen — about the controversy surrounding Austin’s real estate development and its impact on the Edwards Aquifer and on Barton Springs (It’s co-executive-produced by Robert Redford who reportedly learned to swim at Barton Springs).

I’m sure there are other good suggestions out there!

Flowing Water in a Dry Land

Posted on July 18, 2007 | Filed Under Dam Removal, Endangered Rivers, River Renewal, Southwest, Stories, Water Conservation

Brad DeVries, National Media Director
Storyteller

I heard last night that the monsoon had finally begun in the central highlands of Arizona. If the rains keep up, and they should, creeks that have been dry for weeks will run once again.

When I was out there two weeks ago, it was a lesson in the power of desert rivers and even dry rivers to shape our cities and our dreams. My guide in Arizona was Ann-Marie Benz of Prescott Creeks who showed me Pine Creek and the natural bridge it cut through a huge travertine dam, the Verde River and the Southwest’s best comeback river story, Fossil Creek, pictured at the left. It was my first taste of the beautiful rivers that cut a swath of green through the vivid red sandstone and dark lava of the arid lands of the Southwest.

With Arizona and large portions of the region in the grip of a multi year drought, it’s not surprising that people were talking about water. Almost every conversation either started or eventually wound its way to a question, on which everyone had an opinion; do you think the monsoon will start today? Tomorrow? This week?

The current drought on my backyard river in Maryland, the Potomac, has at least a small clique of DC area whitewater kayakers similarly obsessed, clicking “refresh” on the local stream gauge and watching the weather in the vain hope that the river might rise. Last weekend’s Potomac Whitewater Festival was marked by low, low water and a grim search for waves, holes and other river features to host some of the world’s best playboaters. But most people in this area don’t even know the river is low and it is, undeniably, still a river to be reckoned with, as anyone watching the Festival’s Great Falls Race can attest.

It’s different in a dry place. When a brief teaser of a rainstorm rolled through Prescott, Arizona the last night I was there, the crowded bar suddenly emptied as ostensibly responsible adults rushed out onto the sidewalk to smile, laugh, and exult as the rain washed over them. Over us.

Even without water, the creeks that wind through Prescott define the city, as creeks and rivers do in most of our cities and towns. The weekend breakfast crowd at the Dinner Bell Café gravitates to the outdoor deck overlooking then-dry Granite Creek. Cyclists, runners, dog walkers and others seek out the shade and relative cool of the Watson Woods Riparian Preserve.

But even if intermittent, a river isn’t a river without water. That’s why American Rivers identified threats to the Verde River in 2006, naming it one of America’s Most Endangered Rivers. That’s why we’re so excited to hear about Santa Fe Mayor David Coss’ support for restoring water in the Santa Fe River, the Most Endangered River of 2007, which currently spends much of the year as a dry, weed-choked gulch.

Mayor Coss knows what all of us understood, standing out in front of The Raven with warm rain in our hair. We felt the water on our parched lips and realized that nothing appreciates flowing water quite like an arid landscape.

The thirsty earth soaks up the rain.

And drinks, and gapes for drink again.

Abraham Cowley (1618-1667), “Drinking,” 1668

Water — there’s nothing like it

Posted on July 12, 2007 | Filed Under Endangered Rivers, Outreach, Southwest, Stories, Water Conservation, Water Supply, Water for Life

Chelsea Lane-Miller, Associate Director of Outreach
Outreach Events and Activities

After we listed the Verde River in Arizona as one of America’s Most Endangered Rivers in 2006, I’ve been receiving email updates from the Center for Biological Diversity’s Save the Verde campaign. There are always interesting things in there that I’ve mentioned in a previous post, but one thing in particular stood out to me in the most recent update: they were encouraging people to blog and comment on newspaper articles because people actually do read these things! Seemed like an appropriate topic for a blog post.

I clicked on the link to the blog they suggested, which comments on articles in the Daily Courier, the local newspaper in Prescott, Arizona. I found one blog that was particularly interesting, because it was talking about Randall Amster’s article on living without water. I read the column, and immediately thought to my own experience with this.

I was living and working as a scuba diving instructor in Tortola, one of the British Virgin Islands. During the summer, we got a number of strong torrential storms, which often took out the power across the island. A particularly bad storm knocked out the power, and also the water. It’s a small island, and everything takes a long time down there. So when the water went out, it meant it was going to be awhile until it was back. I’d been without power for a day or two, and wasn’t really that concerned. But, I quickly realized that losing water is not at all like losing power.

I remember losing power when I was a kid — we’d find a flashlight and play shadow games on the walls. It was kind of fun, and we always had a way to see — either with a flashlight or with a candle. There is nothing fun about losing water. You can’t go to the bathroom, you can’t shower, you can’t wash your dishes. If you don’t have water in the fridge, it’s hard to brush your teeth. You have to make careful plans in order to live your day-to-day life, and it’s not fun at all.

Even though it is cliche, as the blogger mentions, it’s so very true. Water is life. Try living without water for a day and you’ll find out — there’s no replacement for water, and not having any or enough is no small thing. Which is why it’s even more important to do what Amster suggests in the last paragraph of his column:

We talk a lot about water, but don’t really see the big picture. Better resource management and creative conservation efforts would be good first steps. Ultimately, we need to reconsider our basic relationship to where and how we live, lest we find ourselves up a river without a drop to drink.

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