What’s Your Standard

(Originally posted on waterefficiency.net)

By Elizabeth Cutright
Editor
Water Efficiency

It’s an oft-repeated phrase: You can’t manage what you don’t measure. Nowhere is this more relevant than in the realm of water efficiency—how can you know if you’re effectively allocating your resources if you don’t have an accurate assessment of what those resources are? But there’s another side to this equation that’s a little more problematic: How do you determine the methodology behind your measurements and—perhaps more importantly—how do you develop the baseline that those measurements are compared against?
In other words: What’s your standard? More importantly, how do you develop that standard? The initial steps are pretty straightforward: Define what you will measure, decide how you will measure it, and then determine how those measurements will be used. Seems simple enough—collect some data based on a metric you’ve devised, then compare that data to the benchmark you’ve established, and voilà!
As is often the case, actually implementing those steps is a bit more complicated. Deciding what will be measured means prioritizing based on the goals you want to achieve and the activities you deem most important. And those judgment calls will be different for each community and organization.
For the water efficiency professional, water use is the top priority, but which use is the most important? Residential? Commercial? Indoors or outdoors? What about imbedded energy or source protection? If you’re a residential community, how much water use per household is a reasonable amount? Is it 59 gallons per day average determined by the AWWARF Residential End Uses of Water study? Is that total acceptable when combined with widespread low-flow fixture installation? Should outdoor water use be added to the mix?
Measurement methodology comes with its own set of challenges, because how you measure is just as important as what you measure. Do you measure based on past performance? Do you use a percentage reduction, or rely strictly on gallons per day? Do you base your metrics on regional demands (landscaping in the desert versus green lawns in the Pacific Northwest), or do you develop a national standard based on weather forecasting and interstate water rights? And if you decide on a percentage-based calculation, are you penalizing early adopters who have already reduced their water use to a point where any further progress will be incremental?
And if the first step of any water conservation initiative is to establish what is being measured and how it’s being measured, then the next step is to add meaning to that data in the form of easily identifiable benchmarks. Those benchmarks can be based on a set of predetermined goals (a desire to reduce overall water use by “X” amount for example) or specific needs (protecting groundwater resources). But how do you choose?
There are, of course, national and regional programs that attempt to set water use standards, but those organizations have undoubtedly fallen into the same pitfalls mentioned above: regional variations, nebulous baseline calculations, inadvertent penalization of early adopters. Community concerns should certainly be considered, but there’s risk that real needs could be obscured by special interests, and the competing requests of Balkanized entities focused on their own requirements.
If all this sounds overwhelming, you’re not alone. Stepping into the water efficiency standards debate is akin to peeling the skin off of that proverbial onion—every step you take triggers a whole set of considerations.
So what do you think? Does developing some sort of repository of verifiable data make sense? And if so, what should this repository include? And is it possible to create a set of regional and case-specific standards designed to promote water efficiency that include understandable metrics, easily accessible benchmarks, and incentives to encourage continued improveme