The lower salt river. Photo credit: Isabel Menzel
(Published in Ahwatukee Foothills News)
http://www.ahwatukee.com/community_focus/article_50f220e6-ad8f-11e5-b6ce-53d5dd39048d.html
By Isabel Menzel
Water, our neglected and often forgotten lifeline.
Burdened my rising temperatures, the prevalence of drought has increased dramatically in the Southwest. It has led to voracious groundwater pumping, an unsustainable practice of our limited resource.
Our aquifers are sinking and the Colorado River, which has been a fountain of sustenance to the Southwestern states, is beginning to run dry. In some areas, where it once provided an oasis for communities south of the Mexican border, is now nothing but a cracked desert, robbed from life and use.
The drought in California has been consistent over the past five years and has severely damaged its $46 billion agricultural industry. Food prices have begun to rise and with it the concern of how Southwestern states will cope with the consequences of water scarcity.
Although this year’s anticipated El-Niño is anxiously awaited, there is no guarantee of more water. California residents have been forced to cut down their water usage by 25 percent and farmers have been looking to less water intensive crops, resulting in higher prices for certain popular fruits and vegetables.
As Arizona receives 60 percent of its fruits and vegetables from drought-stricken California, Phoenix residents are progressively searching for solutions to conserve water and save money.
Timothy Richards, an agribusiness professor at Arizona State University, has studied the drought’s effect on farmland and consumer-purchasing trends to discover which common fruits and vegetables will escalate dramatically in price.
According to his research, he expected the cost of common foods such as lettuce avocados, broccoli and berries to have the highest cost increase. For example, the cost of lettuce is expected to rise by 34 percent this year.
Food for thought
Although the cost of plant-based foods have increased and are predicted to increase further, the amount of water used for fruits and vegetables is only a fraction in comparison to the amount of water that goes into raising livestock.
To put this into perspective, the production 1 pound of corn is approximately 108 gallons of water, 1 pound of pork is 576 gallons, while beef production takes the cake with a whooping 1,799 gallons of water per pound. No, that is not just one thirsty cow; the animal is so resource intensive to raise because of the vast amount of vegetation it consumes in a day and the amount of water that goes into producing that vegetation.
According to the Arizona Farm Bureau, this year the cost of sirloin steak has increased from $5.98 to $7.65 per pound, a cost increase of nearly 22 percent.
Many farmers have already been forced to sell-off their livestock and switch to a more sustainable and less resource-intensive food source such as soybeans.
Considering that meat production depends on a vast amount of limited resources, many innovative companies have begun investing in creating plant-based alternatives. These mock meats not only pose less environmental concerns, but less health and ethical concerns as well. The solution acknowledges the drought issue and lays the groundwork for a more sensible, sustainable future.
Will Schafer, the marketing director of beyond meat, a company that produces plant-based meats, discussed how the California drought had a part to play in the increasing demand of meat alternatives.
“As different municipalities talk about water consumption, more and more people are learning about the inefficiency of animal protein and how you can get plenty of protein from different plant sources and our products would be one of those,” Schafer said. “It creates an incentive for more municipalities to educate consumers about that choice they have.”
Schafer said he suspects mock meats to become more affordable than the real thing down the road.
“When you compare the costs of our products versus the cost of meat options, it’s very cost competitive,” Schafer said. “As there is increasing scale and companies like us get better at it and smarter, costs will come down.”
He said that as of recently, Beyond Meat has become available in many of the mainstream grocery stores across the nation, so there is no longer the concern with the higher food costs of shopping at farmers market-type grocery stores that already carried many mock-meat brands.
“As of about two weeks ago, we are now in over half of the Wal-Marts across the nation,” Schafer said. “Also Target and Safeway, so many of those big national traditional grocery stores are getting on board and they are catering to many of the mainstream consumers that want these afordable options.”
Household tips
Considering less water-intensive dietary choices are not the only changes that can be done to drastically decrease your water usage. Household choices like switching to low water-use toilets, installing water-saving shower heads, washing only full loads of laundry and switching to a low water-use outdoor flora can save a remarkable amount of water and money.
One non-profit organization is going even further in working toward the goal of helping Phoenix residents implement solutions to conserve water.
Lindsay Ignatowski, program coordinator with the Watershed Management Group, said their organization assists homeowners, communities and businesses alike to implement sustainable landscaping.
They help residents preserve water and become more self-manageable and efficient, by replacing lawns with rain gardens and strategically planting trees to shade the hottest areas of their house to reduce electricity use.
“I know a lot of people in Phoenix think that we don’t get enough rainwater to make it worth while, but the statistic that we like to throw out that people really seem to resonate to is if you have a 1,000-square-foot roof, which is a pretty small home, and get 1 inch of rainfall, that’s 600 gallons of water that you can harvest,” Ignatowski said.
The organization allows for several ways that people can get involved. For starters, they host presentations to help residents develop a plan for their home and landscape. The next presentation, called Hydrate Tempe, will take place next year in January. They also have on-site consultations where a workshop instructor will come to your home and help you develop a sustainable water-management plan.
“We are an education-based group that also does implementation,” Ignatowski said. “So, we’ll either help you plan your project or help you implement it.”
The organization also hosts programs where volunteers in the community help people make changes in their home to conserve water. The entire process typically takes five hours or less.
Switching to a less water intensive lawn has many cost benefits from utility savings and governmental rebates.
“We have someone in north Phoenix that has a pretty large lot and she did a complete landscape restoration and her water bill went down from $120 a month to $20 a month,” Ignatowski said.
Government incentives
The government welcomes the conversion and the reimbursement can be very generous. The city of Chandler offers a maximum rebate of $3,000, or pay $200 per thousand square feet of grass removed, but the rebates vary according to municipalities.
The city of Tempe also offers rebates for using gray water. Gray water is recycled water from laundry machines and showers, which is then re-used for landscaping purposes.
Cathy Rymer, who works in the water conservation office of Chandler, works with Arizona residents to use their lawn irrigation systems more effectively. The company provides a water audit program, where they inspect residential homes for irrigation system problems, such as pipe leaks and improper use of irrigation timers.
“Last year in 2014, we in Chandler did 363 audits, and what we do is we track the water use one year per audit and one year post audit and we calculate the savings,” Rymer said. “For the audits we did in 2013, we saved over 17 million gallons of water.”
Although the cost savings of audits are significant, she noted that switching to less water intensive flora saves even more money when considering maintenance fees.
“Water is not the biggest cost-saving component,” Rymer said. “Grass uses a lot of other things like maintenance and fertilization that’ll cost homeowners time and money whether they do it themselves or hire someone to do it for them.”
Isabel Menzel 