One Million Acre-Feet

(Originally posted on waterefficiency.net)

By Elizabeth Cutright
Editor
Water Efficiency


Last month, Dr. Peter Gleick (President, Pacific Institute) discussed California’s water problems, including the state’s need to come up with an additional 1 million acre-feet of water to fulfill current and future demand. In an article that originally appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Gleick does a wonderful job of discussing both California’s successes (25 years of improved water efficiency) and failures (less than 40% of all toilets in the state are low-flow or HET commodes).
Gleick goes on to discuss a series of reports recently completed by the Pacific Institute that “provide a comprehensive statewide analysis of California’s urban and agricultural water needs.” While the reports focus on California, I think the information they contain—including how existing technologies can be harnessed for immediate water efficiency results—is applicable to any community concerned about water resource management.
So how does one community go about finding an additional 1 million acre-feet of water? The Pacific Institute reports enumerate two effect starting points:
* 400,000 acre-feet of water per year by urban users conserved by replacing inefficient fixtures (toilets, showerheads, commercial spray-rinse nozzles, and washing machines) with their low-flow counterparts.
* The remaining 600,000 acre-feet per year of water can be saved through smart irrigation, regulated deficit irrigation, and converting orchards and vineyards to drip and sprinkler irrigation.
So what do you think? Do you have faith in smart irrigation technologies and low-flow fixtures? And is enough being done to make it easy and economically feasible for communities large and small to embrace these effective water conservation tools?
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(Originally posted February 8th, 2010 10:00am PST)