How Dallas Is Approaching Water Conservation as the Climate Changes

How Dallas Is Approaching Water Conservation as the Climate Changes

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How Dallas Is Approaching Water Conservation as the Climate Changes

Lake Ray Hubbard is one of the reservoirs where Dallas gets its drinking water. (Photo by Rhys Moult on Unsplash)

We’re about a month away from getting a first look at the city’s climate action plan, a document that will guide Dallas’ efforts to reduce emissions, conserve water, and improve the city’s overall environmental quality. On Monday, staff briefed a City Council committee on how that plan will approach water, and provided an update on ongoing efforts to conserve the area’s limited water resources.

The 30,000-foot view: The city believes it is conserving enough water to offset supply and demand shifts from climate change. It’s eyeing an extension of the Dallas Floodway and other tweaks to mitigate potential flood and drought impact, while monitoring for future action. It’s expanding or re-marketing conservation-focused programs you may not have heard about, while introducing new ones. And it’s continuing to develop more strategies in the name of improving our water supply.

Temperature increases are expected to bring evaporation and sedimentation losses that will vanquish about 70 million gallons of water from the city’s supply. On Monday, Dallas Water Utilities Director Terry Lowery told Council the city’s conservation efforts project to make it up.

Lowery says Dallas has made strides since the hot and dry summer of 2000, when the city used at least 600 million gallons of water over 75 days. And 33 times, it topped 700 million gallons in usage. In 2001, the city passed an ordinance restricting the time of day people can water their lawns and gardens using irrigation systems. Since 2012, when the city added a restriction that made it illegal to water more than twice a week, Dallas has only used more than 600 million gallons on six days. The restrictions have become a major part of the city’s efforts to conserve water.

Overall, Dallas offset a 10 percent population increase since 2001 with conservation efforts that reduced average water use per person by 30 percent. “That is a significant impact to our system and a very positive one,” Lowery said. “It extends the need for a very expensive water supply and it reduces pressure on our system.”

Projections courtesy City of Dallas

The next frontier? The city will begin to incentivize businesses to become more efficient. A first slate of rebates for water system renovations is up for Council approval on Wednesday. The incentives range from nearly $33,000 to around $87,000. If approved, the money will go toward three apartment buildings and Texas Instruments, each project resulting in between 7.5 million and 12 million gallons of water savings each year. Another eight rebates are pending.

“I get asked sometimes, ‘Why would you incentivize an ICI (Industrial, Commercial, and Institutional) customer? These customers have money to make these changes on their properties,’” said Holly Holt-Torres, the city’s Water Conservation Manager. “Well, companies have a limited amount of money in which to allocate. When they’re looking at where to allocate these resources, conservation and energy resources don’t necessarily come to the forefront.”

Dallas is eyeing a potential savings of 136 million gallons a year. Holt-Torres says the program could produce the city’s most significant water savings moving forward. Compare that to a projected 30 million gallons a year through a program that provides free irrigation evaluations. The city already saves 19.4 million gallons a year through “New Throne for your Home,” a brilliantly titled program in which residents can get old toilets replaced on the city’s dime. And staff says it plans to use data to target customers who may qualify for free, minor plumbing repairs, a program that currently saves the city 3 million gallons a year.

The dark spots show us the more flood-prone parts of Dallas. (Courtesy City of Dallas)

Consistent with the aim of the larger climate plan—officially titled the Comprehensive Environment and Climate Action Plan—the city says it is not singularly focused on the largest possible impact in terms of gallons saved; it wants a range of programs that offers something for everyone.

Conservation, however, is just one side of the coin. And the city will need to account for shifting flooding and drought conditions. On that portion, the city is still “evaluating policies affecting drainage and erosion and monitoring conditions related to drought,” says Susan Alvarez, assistant director for the city’s Office of Environmental Quality and Sustainability. “We have standing plans on how to implement various actions to mitigate those.” Staff also pointed to the ongoing Dallas Floodway Extension project.

Committee moved the briefing item along to Council with support. Full Council gets a look on Wednesday.

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Kids Are Learning to Conserve Water

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Ruthanne “Rudi” Thompson Is No Stranger to Utility Bills

In the past 13 years alone, the UNT College of Science associate professor has secured more than $7 million in funding from the City of Dallas to examine water usage data on thousands of homes with Dallas zip codes – allowing her to study and correlate the effects of education on changing behavior.

A “bill collector,” in her own right, each month Thompson and her team receive the bills’ raw data – no personal information is included – for the Environmental Education Initiative, a unique program sponsored by the City of Dallas program that’s saved billions of gallons of water from going down the drain.

The award-winning program is teaching young water users how to conserve and responsibly use this valuable resource. The initiative is led by Thompson, who works with teachers throughout Dallas to teach students in Pre-K through 5th grade about conservation through hands-on activities such as building mini aquifers in cups, creating water filtration devices and singing songs about the urban water cycle. They also get at-home tools, such as a miniature timer that lets kids measure and calculate how much water they save when turning the water off while brushing their teeth.

The program’s efforts are paying off. Each drop of water saved is a drop that doesn’t have to be cleaned at a treatment plant. Those drops can quickly add up to financial savings when factoring in the costs for equipment, maintenance, labor and other resources.

“It’s a savings of over $3 million a year and another 22-plus billion gallons in unused water for the city of Dallas,” she says. “It’s like shutting down the water treatment plant for at least 12 days every year. Our question now is to see if we can hand this off to other cities and water units.”

Most recently, Thompson received a $2 million grant renewal through 2024 from the City of Dallas, allowing her to continue her work. In total, it can be estimated that Thompson and her team, through the behavior changes tracked from residential water usage, have saved the city more than $31 million a 10-year period.

“We actually get the water usage data by zip code from the City of Dallas where we have taught students, and then we analyze the data to determine water use in the home before and after the intervention,” Thompson says. “We have found a statistically significant difference.”

“It’s a savings of over $3 million a year and another 22-plus billion gallons in unused water for the city of Dallas,” she says. “It’s like shutting down the water treatment plant for at least 12 days every year. Our question now is to see if we can hand this off to other cities and water units.”

For her, it’s an effort three decades in the making. When she started her first full-time position teaching high-school biology in 1986, she wanted to be the most effective teacher possible. However, when she asked for support materials, all she got was a five-year-old student addition textbook.

“One of the problems in schools is that there are all these great, hands-on lessons, but the teachers don’t have the materials to do them,” she says.

She vowed to change that one day.

When Thompson and a mentor at UNT were awarded the first Environmental Education Initiative grant as a test project in 2006, she leapt at the opportunity to help. A year later, she was in charge.

Now, through the EEI program, Thompson’s team provides direct instruction to students and leads professional development classes year-round for teachers and students in the Dallas, Richardson and Duncanville school districts, as well as local private schools. The teachers learn how to lead every lesson plan in the program and receive boxed kits that include everything needed for EEI teaching.

The goal is to create new behaviors while the students are young.

“Once a habit is made, it’s made,” she says. “If you have a good habit, you don’t stop – according to the data. The great thing about working with kids is they haven’t spent as much time making a bad habit.”

For each child who participates, an average of 502 gallons of water is saved monthly – a number that’s “far more than any one kiddo can do,” says Thompson.

“I like to call it guilt, but the academic term is intergenerational transfer,” she says. “We have found that the kids are going home and creating change in their families. Kids are so concerned about the planet, and they really want to have more say and to be able to help people conserve water.”

The key to the program’s success, says Thompson, is the resulting water usage data. She and her team measure the data continuously to ensure what they’re doing actually works.

“Education takes time to stick, but we have found that there is a saturation point – no pun intended. After about the third year, there is a point at which teaching more doesn’t equate to more water savings,” she adds.

Asked why more cities don’t have something similar, Thompson explains “it’s a big commitment. There are budget limitations”

“Cities are required by the state to have a water conservation program, but the state doesn’t mandate how much money they should spend or how they should educate their community,” she notes. “It speaks to how the City of Dallas is really taking on environmental responsibility at the local level. The city is at the forefront of leading the region on climate change and resource management and is very committed to sustainability.”

– Monique Bird

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https://www.greensourcedfw.org/articles/kids-can-learn-stop-wasting-water-says-unt-prof

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Large Cities Around the World Lead the Way for Water Conservation

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Water needs are rising. Are we ready?

Water conservation and management is one of the most pressing global issues of our century. While some areas suffer from too much water others are paralyzed by not having enough.

By 2030, the world is projected to face a 40% water deficit, and by 2050 2.3 billion additional people will be living in water-stressed areas. Meanwhile, flooding is causing extensive damages to cities, creating serious economic costs. In the US, for example, Hurricane Harvey damages totaled $125 billion and forced 890,000 families to seek federal disaster aid.

Federal and municipal governments are finally recognizing the scale of the issue and the need for immediate response. It’s not only smart ecological practice—it’s good business sense too. Research insights show that “fortunes are turning for the water sector.” With the sector’s valuation set to rise, profitable business opportunities will increase as well, according to research insights from DBS. The global water market is predicted to reach a value of $914.9 billion by 2023, with infrastructure plans underway in Saudi Arabia, China, and across Asia.

How Singapore has taken up the challenge

Cities like Singapore are leading the charge in developing innovative, technology-based solutions to water crises. The city-state has become a world leader in water recycling, an achievement born of a complex relationship to water security that’s deeply intertwined with its history and geography. An island with roughly the same area as Budapest, it has the third densest population in the world—and is adding millionaires faster than Hong Kong—but lacks the rivers, lakes, and open land that other cities rely on to source their water.

For decades, the city-state has imported up to half of its water supply from Malaysia. That agreement is set to expire in 2061, leaving Singapore at the mercy of nature. Incidentally, its water demand is set to double by then. Resourceful and innovation-minded, Singapore resolved to find a way to become self-reliant in its water use.

Singapore receives around 90 inches of rain per year—roughly double the global average—so naturally it has made rainwater catchment a priority. Surrounded by seawater, the port city has also invested heavily in desalination plants. But Singapore’s boldest and most forward-thinking move was its embrace of transforming wastewater into what it calls NEWater. Using a unique four-step purification process, Singapore forces water from drains and sewers through multiple filters and membranes. This process yields an endlessly replenishable store that exceeds health standards and currently makes up about 40% of the city’s water use.

The city-state is also rethinking water by focusing on plastic recycling efforts that contribute to reduce water use and water contamination. Although made from highly recyclable material, 91% of plastic bottles are not recycled and take 400 years to naturally decompose. Innovative businesses are leading the way in helping these efforts. Movements like Recycle More, Waste Less, led by the Singapore-based bank DBS, promote recycling for a more sustainable future by urging people to reduce, reuse, and recycle single-use plastics—an initiative that dually reduces water contamination and the amount of water used to make bottles. Thanks to these developments, Singapore is on track to achieve water independence by 2060.

Water innovation is going global

Other countries are also making inspiring and strong strides towards smart water management. In China, where landslides caused by flooding have proven fatal, plans are being implemented to build 30 “sponge cities.” These cities incorporate various projects like wetlands and permeable roads that can soak up and absorb flood water, keeping it from overwhelming residential areas.

Australia’s Melbourne has pioneered the city’s largest water harvesting system at the 19th century heritage Fitzroy Gardens, generating almost eight million gallons of useable water through a process that captures, treats, and stores stormwater.

In the US, Washington DC requires developers to retain stormwater runoff from their properties. If developers are short of their requirements, they can meet the remainder through buying credits from retention projects across the city. It’s an economically-motivated way to manage stormwater runoff pollution and spur investment in green infrastructure solutions. These and other cities are at the forefront of change, serving as laboratories for solutions which will secure the environment’s future, save lives, and boost the world economy.

Through the “Recycle More, Waste Less” campaign, DBS guides people towards leaving a better, more sustainable planetfor future generations. DBS’ focus on innovation is why it has been named the Best Bank in the World by Global Finance magazine. 

This article was produced on behalf of DBS by Quartz Creative and not by the Quartz editorial staff.

This material is provided for general and educational purposes only; it is not intended to provide legal, tax or investment advice.

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