Arizona’s innovation in meeting water demands

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.”

Chief sustainability officer in turning Phoenix green

(Published in AZ Big Media)

Mark Hartman, Phoenix’s chief sustainability officer, has already enabled significant progress in the past year since joining the City of Phoenix team.

Before his arrival, he worked as a lead sustainability officer in Vancouver, B.C., where he was well on his way to achieving his goal of making Vancouver the greenest city by 2020. His desire to expand Vancouver’s effective sustainability efforts led him to accept the position in Phoenix. Since then, Hartman has worked as a catalyst to develop a dialogue with various departments to improve the use of energy, water consumption, to provide cleaner air and to encourage communities to be more self-sustained and healthy.

Phoenix City Manager Ed Zuercher applauded on Hartman’s direction and leadership over the past year.

“The Office of Sustainability’s 2050 Goals will have a significant impact on our community,” Zuercher said. “ Under the direction of Mark Hartman, these goals will be a road map for the city to follow when it comes to sustainability efforts for water, waste, transportation, parks, aviation, public works and air quality. Our goal as a city is to educate, inspire, and empower residents to create a healthy, vibrant, connected community with equitable resources and a thriving economy.”

“As a next step, over the next, the Draft 2050 Goals will be brought to the public and stakeholders for comment and then brought back to City Council for consideration and possible adoption next spring. This type of long-term effort was exactly why the City Council authorized hiring a Chief Sustainability Officer,” Zuercher said.

“Cities could save $17 trillion by using more sustainable practices,” Hartman said. “There are just huge amounts of dollars available by not being so waste-focused and doing things that are more healthy for our society.”

Recently, Hartman worked with the fees sub committee of finance, efficiency and sustainability in developing draft goals for 2050. These included an 80 percent reduction in carbon and transportation emissions and working toward a zero waste goal.

When taking the economic side into consideration, Hartman stressed that businesses and taxpayers will save a significant amount of money by simply asking questions, thinking out of the box and stepping away from the practices that they are used to.

“What cities and businesses are finding is that there’s huge cost savings from actually not being such a waste-orientated society, where we’re really only using 20 percent of the goods we produce,” he said.

Hartman saved the city of Phoenix $1 million per year when he looked into the cost savings of using energy efficient LED streetlights. When he presented the expense report to the city council, the vote to switch to LED lights was unanimous.

Hartman said that living the way we are currently is ineffective, costly and ultimately unsustainable. It is taxing on our society and he has been dedicated to educating both students and businesses alike on a more practical road to a brighter future.

“If you take the total footprint of all the cities globally on an on-going basis, we would need one and a half planets to survive currently the way were living. By 2050 if we keep on this path, we’ll need three planets in order to survive,” Hartman said.

He said that businesses need to consider the use of recycled goods instead of purchasing them at the raw source. The switch would require some design for reconstruction, but ultimately it would result in both significant cost savings and drastic environmental benefits.

“Using materials that have already been produced is much cheaper for businesses than using them raw,” he said. “For example taking aluminum for raw materials as oppose to a tin can uses 20 times more energy.”

Brian Kocour, is president of the Phoenix Green Chamber, an organization that promotes sustainability for business in the community. He has had Hartman speak several times to educate businesses about the advantages of sustainable practices.

“Mark has given us his time to speak with the Green Chamber at lunch and learns and has provided us with a lot of insight on how the city of Phoenix has furthered along education on sustainability and how we can educate and bring awareness to businesses that look at our economy and our market,” Kocour said.

Hartman has also attended over 20 Arizona State University lectures to have a conversation with students about new and innovative sustainability solutions and how they can get involved.

“There are about 8-10 professors that want a city perspective because the students have all these wide-eyed ideas,” Hartman said.

One of Hartman’s major goals is to increase the use of renewable energy in the city of Phoenix. Over the past year, solar energy use has already increased from 6 percent last year to 7 percent. He plans to increase this to 15 percent by the year 2025, which is on par with the utilities goal through the commission.

“It is cost effective to use solar,” he said. “Currently there is a retail price of electricity as 11 cents a kilowatt-hour and the newest solar panels works out to five cents a kilowatt-hour.”

He stressed that ultimately we need to all work toward the goal of zero waste and 100 percent renewable energy, as global warming an issue that grows in concern and urgency with each passing day. To achieve this however it is essential to have someone that initiates the conversation about long-term goals.

“Our waste group can lead the way in achieving zero waste. It’s a very innovative group. It’s really just having someone say we need these long-term goals. Otherwise we’re just going to keep doing what were doing,” he said.

Hartman mentioned a study conducted by the University of Arizona and Stanford University that concluded that 70 percent of Arizona residents believe that climate change is an issue that needs to be addressed.

One of the biggest issues we need to focus on is our food consumption. Animals raised for livestock produce a destructive amount of methane and deplete our scarce water sources.

“Food is 50 percent of our carbon foot print,” he said. “A lot of that has to do with meat consumption. I really like campaigns like meatless Monday.”

A solution he mentioned is to encourage local food production, like farmers markets, which not only has a positive impact on the environment, but also people’s health.

“Huge amounts of our taxes are going into health care and it’s all hidden.”

The state of Arizona currently spends $35 billion on healthcare. If 1 percent of that, or $350 million, were used toward making healthy local food more accessible, it would have an incredible impact.

“The city of Phoenix just recently started a partnership with St. Luke’s Health initiative, we launched a national food policy coalition to double the amount of community gardens by 2020. We’re going to add five new farmers markets to the city of Phoenix.”

Hartman sets a positive example as someone that is creating solutions for one of our generation’s most pressing issues.

“What if the result of us being on this earth could actually make it a better place?” He said. “What if we could make a positive contribution to where the planet is actually better off because were living on it, instead of slowly deteriorating it?”