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From the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program: a new database detailing over 60 different “enabling technologies” for handwashing. I really could have used this when I was a Peace Corps Water and Sanitation Extension Agent in West Africa a decade ago.

An enabling technology is an external or environmental factor that influences an individual’s opportunity to perform a behavior, regardless of their ability and motivation to act. Often overlooked in the design of handwashing initiatives, enabling technologies have been shown to facilitate handwashing behavior in several studies.

The World Bank-administered Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) developed a database to provide practitioners with information on the various types of enabling technologies, including purpose, benefits, key product features and specifications, pictures or illustrations, and contacts for further information

Washing hands with soap at critical times – after contact with feces and before handling food – could reduce diarrheal rates by up to 47 percent (Curtis and Cairncross, 2003). However, rates of handwashing with soap remain low throughout the developing world and large-scale promotion of handwashing behavior change is a challenge

For more information on enabling technologies, click here, contact Jacqueline Devine, wsp@worldbank.org , or visit www.wsp.org/scalinguphandwashing.

Water pollution from grazing cattle is the subject of an article in the Journal of Water and Health by researchers at UC Davis titled, “Reducing the impact of summer cattle grazing on water quality in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California: a proposal.” Despite the fact that the journal is a publication is from the United Nation’s World Health Organization, the articles are not free, although I obtained a copy from the author Robert Derlet, MD. Here is the abstract. Read to the last sentence to get to their proposal.

The Sierra Nevada Mountain range serves as an important source of drinking water for the State of California. However, summer cattle grazing on federal lands affects the overall water quality yield from this essential watershed as cattle manure is washed into the lakes and streams or directly deposited into these bodies of water.

This organic pollution introduces harmful microorganisms and also provides nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus which increase algae growth causing eutrophication of otherwise naturally oligotrophic mountain lakes and streams. Disinfection and filtration of this water by municipal water districts after it flows downstream will become increasingly costly. This will be compounded by increasing surface water temperatures and the potential for toxins release by cyanobacteria blooms.

With increasing demands for clean water for a state population approaching 40 million, steps need to be implemented to mitigate the impact of cattle on the Sierra Nevada watershed. Compared to lower elevations, high elevation grazing has the greatest impact on the watershed because of fragile unforgiving ecosystems. The societal costs from non-point pollution exceed the benefit achieved through grazing of relatively few cattle at the higher elevations.

We propose limiting summer cattle grazing on public lands to lower elevations, with a final goal of allowing summer grazing on public lands only below 1,500 m elevation in the Central and Northern Sierra and 2,000 m elevation in the Southern Sierra.

This is the kind of public policy we need, based on peer-reviewed science and sound economics. The first author Dr. Derlet is a practicing medical doctor who became concerned about the impacts that grazing cattle have on the fragile land and water of the high Sierras. The Sacramento Bee ran a good article on the paper’s findings in April, Livestock waste found to foul Sierra waters:

As director of the emergency room at the UC Davis Medical Center, Robert Derlet always wondered what made people sick.

 Each summer, on hiking trips into the high Sierra, he brought that curiosity along, asking himself: Where do you get infections in the wilderness? The most obvious possibility, he believed, was the water.

 Now, after 10 years of fieldwork and 4,500 miles of backpacking, Derlet knows for sure. What he has learned – after analyzing hundreds of samples dipped from backcountry lakes and streams – is that parts of the high Sierra are not nearly as pristine as they look.

Nowhere is the water dirtier, he discovered, than on U.S. Forest Service land, including wilderness areas, where beef cattle and commercial pack stock – horses and mules – graze during the summer months. There, bacterial contamination was easily high enough to sicken hikers with Giardia, E. coli and other diseases. In places, slimy, pea-green algae also blossomed in the bacteria-laden water.

At issue is the tradition of cheap grazing permits from the Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. Many think that the costs to the environment and the public exceed the benefits of cheap summer grazing for a handful of large cattlemen.

When I corresponded with Dr. Derlet, he told me, “I have a 1 hr + lecture on “Water Quality in California: A case for adding new National Parks in the Sierra Nevada” I am willing to drive to the Bay Area to give this talk if you can get a minimum of 20 people to listen.” Anyone have any ideas for an organization with a lecture series that would be interested?

An argument in favor of creating a more cohesive federal policies: A Water Strategy for the United States, an article by Jim Thebaut and Erik Webb. It’s formatted like a journal article, but it’s not clear to me whether it was accepted for publication anywhere or just appears on various blogs.

The United States faces water stress and potential water disasters.

The only hope we have of establishing effective and to the degree possible unified water policies is to develop a set of goals and principles for water management to which we progressively conform our policies and actions.  The U.S. statement of goals and principles that underpin our international policies are more coherent than are the principles underpinning our domestic policies.
…
Presently, at the federal level alone, 20 agencies and bureaus, under six cabinet departments, directed by 13 congressional committees with 23 subcommittees and five appropriations subcommittees are responsible for water-resource management.

Jim Thebaut is the writer, director and executive producer of public television’s “The American Southwest: Are We Running Dry?” and “Running Dry,” a documentary about the global water crisis, and director of the Southern California-based nonprofit The Chronicles Group. Erik Webb is a PhD hydrologist at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico and a former Congressional Fellow with the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Via Aquadoc Prof. Michael Campana

San Francisco Chronicle editor Lois Kazakoff blogged yesterday on a lawsuit by the Kern County Water Agency, which represents some of the state’s biggest agribusinesses to eliminate striped bass from California’s Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta. As usual, great coverage of this issue comes from Mike Taugher at the Contra Costa Times, in a June 15 article, Striped Bass: Delta Villains?

Of course, big Ag water interests would like to shift attention away from the role of pumping and exports on the collapse of the Delta’s aquatic ecosystem. Time and again, they’ve tried to pin the blame for dwindling salmon runs on non-native species and inadequately treated sewage.

The truth is, there are multiple stressors: upstream diversions, pumping, pollution, and habitat destruction are ALL important. To preserve the health of the largest estuary on the west coast of the Americas, we need to address each one. A list of the fish that are threatened or endangered:

• Green Sturgeon
• Longfin Smelt
• Delta Smelt
• Splittail
• Fall-run Chinook Salmon

Eliminating pressure from exotic species may be among the things that we can get started on immediately. Installing proper fish screens at the outtakes and upgrading decades-old sewage plants will also help.

A National Research Council science committee, in its preliminary report, essentially said that there are a lot of different problems, and no one knows which is the most important, so we should probably try everything. Peter Moyle, a fisheries biologist at UC Davis, places the blame for the decline of native fish species on changes to the hydrology of the Delta. From the CC Times article:

The growing volume of water shipped out of the Delta changed its character. It became less of an estuary that could support salmon, smelt and striped bass and more of a freshwater system that favors largemouth bass, toxic blue-green algae, Brazilian water weed and exotic clams.

The change is largely due, indirectly, to the pumps that divert water to Kern County and elsewhere, Moyle said.

“The whole system has had a major shift,” Moyle said. “The ones that depend on the estuary — none of them are doing well.”

But none of these solve the problem until we begin to restore more of the natural volume and patterns of flow to the Delta. This graph shows how much freshwater flows into the Delta (from a presentation by the Bay Institute). In 2009, only 32% of runoff made its way to the Delta. The remainder was captured upstream for export to cities and farms around the state.

I’m intrigued by the use of “social marketing” to promote water conservation. Much of our water use in the western United States is staggeringly wasteful (lawns in Arizona?) or just inefficient (6 gallon toilets when low-flow models have been available for over a decade). How do you convince people to mend their wasteful ways?

An article in today’s NY Times, Finding the ‘Weapons’ of Persuasion to Save Energy, discusses electrical energy, but it directly applies to water as well. The article profiles the work of Robert Cialdini: “formerly of Arizona State University’s psychology department, he wrote one of the best-selling books on persuasion of all time. ‘Influence’ came out in 1984, and it’s reached five editions since.”

According to some researchers, the things people do every day — driving, showering, mowing the lawn — cause 33 to 40 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Experts say these actions are packed with cheap ways to cut waste, but mysteriously, people just aren’t doing them.

Cialdini thinks this is because the campaign has focused on money and moral appeals — things that motivate less than the weapons of influence.

Privatization is an issue in water policy that I follow with some interest, and occasional amusement at the overheated rhetoric on both sides. Prop 16on California’s June 8 ballot, has made me wonder at the way we talk about and think about water and energy  so differently. The fact is that today, most Americans pay government utilities for water, but buy power from private, for-profit companies.

Today, 89 percent of Americans have water delivered to our homes by a public water utility, essentially a branch of local or regional government. The other 11 percent of us buy water from a private company. With gas and electric, it’s the other way around: only 15 percent of us buy energy from public utilities, while the other 85 percent pay private, for-profit companies.

In the water world, there is strident opposition to privatization, from activists like Maude Barlow and organizations like Food & Water Watch. The argument goes like this: private companies value profit over all else, and can’t be trusted with something so essential to our life and well-being.

But water and power are both essential to life in America. You realize this very quickly if you live in a cold climate and forget to pay your heating bill. Yet we seem comfortable with private ownership and operation of our power grid and gas pipelines? Why the disparity in the way we think about water and energy?

I am agnostic on the issue of public vs. private utilities. Like most people, I want clean water, reliable energy, and reasonable rates. The management and administration of the pipes, power lines, and billing systems can be handled by government or companies. If government screws up, we vote the bums out of office. Likewise, private utilities are accountable to regulators at state Public Utilities Commissions.

This debate over public vs. private energy has taken center stage with Pacific Gas &Electric’s ill-advised California ballot initiative Prop 16. So far, PG&E has funneled $46 million into the June 8 ballot “New Two-Thirds Requirement for Local Public Electricity Providers Act.” I think Prop 16 is a terrible idea, hope it fails, and wonder why allowing this on the ballot was actually legal.

Why on earth should local government need a 2/3 vote to engage in the business of providing services to its citizens? Imagine if local governments had to hold a special election for every decision. Want to build a new municipal pool? Sorry, have to put it to the voters first.

It shouldn’t require the same super-majority as amending the state constitution. We’ve seen what a 2/3 voter requirement did with 1978’s Prop 13: among the 50 states, California has the highest per-capita GDP, but the third-lowest spending per person.

I called the ballot initiative ill-advised above, because it stands to seriously tarnish PG&E’s otherwise good reputation. I would advise them to consider the backlash from this brazen attempt to perpetuate its monopoly.

I generally had a good impression of the company before this. As a customer, I’ve never had any troubles; the power stays on 24 hours a day, and my bills are really cheap compared to other places I’ve lived. The company has a good recent record on the environment, having invested in renewables like wind and solar, and supported California’s climate legislation.

But their spending on Prop 16 has caused me to completely change my view. Before, I may have been hesitant to support my local government getting into the power business. After all, it is a complicated, capital-intensive, and risky. But that’s all changed. When a corporation wastes ratepayer money and manipulates public opinion to further its own interests, you have to conclude that they have become a “bad actor” and are no longer serving your interests.

I really like the newspaper or TV stories where they publish a list of the top water users in an area. Where I live, in California, we’re coming out of 3 years of drought, and water managers have been gnashing their teeth trying to figure out how to get people to cut back. Some say, just raise everybody’s rates. There are a couple of problems with that. For the über-rich, the price of water is no object. Bill Gates used 4.7 million gallons in 2001, and had a $24,828 water bill, and I don’t suppose that troubled him much. But perhaps we can “name and shame” them out of their profligacy? If nothing else, it sends a few publicists scrambling.

These stories must be a breeze to write. Just send in a written request to the water utility. If they drag their feet or refuse, have your legal department remind them that these are public records, and threaten them with Freedom of Information Act request or whatever the equivalent is in your state. Publish the list, and as much data on the property and residents as you can find. Use your archives, wikipedia, Google Earth, and Zillow. Express outrage and indignation. Conjecture on whether or not they even look at their water bill, or merely have their accountant pay it. Try to contact them for comment. Dutifully print the statement from their publicist saying how surprised they are, they had no idea, they’re looking into it immediately. Print a detailed map (bonus points for a Google map mashup in your online edition).

My favorite story was the one in the Las Vegas Sun in 2008. The city is entirely dependent on water from Lake Mead, the big reservoir on the Colorado River behind the Hoover Dam. Problem is, the reservoir has been half-empty for years, and some scientists have openly conjectured that it might never refill, what with climate change and all. In the midst of all this, Vegas’ imperious water czar Pat Mulroy launches an improbable scheme to build a 10-foot pipeline to tap groundwater aquifers in the arid lands north of the city. You can guess how well that went down with the local ranchers and wildlife lovers. Amidst this backdrop, you have a prince from Brunei who uses 17 million gallons per year. That would ordinarily be enough for like 200 American families, or about 10,000 in Kenyan. Right after the prince in the list is Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay, and a fellow Tufts alumnus. Oh, for shame, Jumbo, for shame.

Here’s a roundup of some of the stories I’ve found.

• Las Vegas, NV
• Sacramento, CA (boring because it includes institutions. We already know that power plants, colleges, parks, and jails use a lot of water.)
• Dallas/Ft. Worth, TX
• Vancouver, BC Canada
• San Diego, CA (another dull one because it includes institutional water users)
• Jacksonville, FL
• San Antonio, TX
• Kansas City, MO
• Austin, TX
• East Bay, CA (only reports water use for the agency’s board members)
• Seattle, WA
• Cobb County, GA (suburbs north of Atlanta)
• Santa Fe, NM (I especially like this one because they repeat the story every year.)
• Scottsdale, AZ (This one is no fun, because it doesn’t name names. Apparently, “a 2006 state law prohibits entities from revealing the names of top water users.”)

When I opened up my latest water bill from the venerable East Bay Municipal Utility District, or EBMUD, I found an insert about efficient landscape irrigation based on the concept of “hydrozones” (online here), which included this picture:

Are you kidding me? Maybe this is actually a screw-up: Is this the before picture, and someone forgot the after?

This can’t be their version of an efficient landscape with all that grass. I almost feel sorry for the three little “low-water native plants” tucked into the back right corner. And why so many high-water use flowers, probably all petunias and pansies and such?

We live in a Mediterranean climate; let’s live like it. Plants like lavender, rosemary, and sage thrive here. Many of them are bursting with color and they hardly use any water at all once they’re established.

Contrast this with what the Department of Water Resources considers water-efficient. There’s till a bit of grass for the kids to play, but it’s limited and surrounded by better plant choices. (From the free publication Water Efficient Landscapes, 1.2 MB PDF)

Or with these lovely designs from Santa Monica. (From Emily Green’s excellent blog Chance of Rain, which covers everything from dry gardens to water politics.)

It might even be illegal to install EBMUD’s landscape. Wait, illegal? Really?

Yup. In 2006, California’s legislature passed a law called the Water Efficient Landscape Ordinance. It mostly covers large commercial landscapes, but it also applies to new or remodeled homes with landscapes over a certain size. The rules are needlessly complicated in my opinion, but the intent is to limit the how much area is planted with grass or other high water-use plants. In other words, landscapes are subject to a water budget.

You go over your “maximum applied water allowance” and you may be subject to fines or a citation. The landscape in the EBMUD brochure is probably too small to be subject to the ordinance in most cities. But this mix of plant types would almost certainly put you above your water budget. It helps to have a degree in hydrology or agronomy to figure out how much you’re entitled to, but I digress…

My advice to EBMUD: wander over to the Bay Friendly Gardening website. Now—are you suitably embarrassed that our waste management agency is more thoughtful and progressive when it comes to landscapes?

You should be. People expect their water supplier to be a leader on environmental issues. In a recent poll, 91% of residents said “it was important for their water utility to be an environmental leader.” (See the 2006 report Stakeholder Perceptions of Utility Role in Environmental Leadership by the American Water Works Association. It’s not available online, but you can preview on Google Books.)

This isn’t leadership; it looks more like an entry on the FAIL blog. C’mon guys, the drought’s not over, and you can do better!

Lastly, with apologies to Aquadoc Michael Campana, I pretty much stole the title for this post from this (hilarious) post on his blog.

I really like no-flush urinals, and I’ve been promoting them in my talks about water conservation and efficiency. But this article from a newspaper in Arizona makes me wonder whether they’re ready for prime time: Doubts swirl over effectiveness of no-flush urinals.

The article has quotes from two of the leading minds in the water efficiency world.

Mary Ann Dickinson, executive director of the Chicago-based Alliance for Water Efficiency, a nonprofit that promotes water conservation, fears no-flush urinals will fizzle and deter other water-saving innovations just as underperforming low-flow toilets did in the early 1990s.
…
Al Dietemann manages a regional utility consortium in Seattle called the Saving Water Partnership that in 2002 started offering rebates to commercial water customers for installing no-flush urinals. The rebate program ended after Dietemann determined that more than half the 200 urinals installed under the program were removed by their owners within three years. Maintenance issues and costs were the main reason, he said, and involved all brands of no-flush urinals.

I just finished reading the excellent book, The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters by Rose George, and this story sounds familiar. She discusses the backlash against so-called “efficient” toilets that were mandated by federal law in 1992. The law was ahead of the technology, and American manufacturers weren’t ready to start making low-flow toilets that worked well, even though they had been the norm in Europe and Japan for years. The backlash by consumers created a black market for toilets from Canada, where toilets still used 3 ½ gallons or more per flush. People rightfully demanded, “If I have to flush two or three times, where’s the savings?”

When humor columnist Dave Barry wrote a piece called “The Toilet Police” in 2002, he tapped into a vein of populist resentment that lives on to this day. Despite the fact that today’s models are far better than ones sold ten years ago, grudges die hard and there are many that still want the federal government to “stay out of our bathrooms.” (Amazingly, this story still has legs, based on a reference in the NY Times.)

For water saving fixtures and appliances to deliver on their promises, they need to do more than just save water. I agree with hot-water evangelist Gary Klein that most people inherently want to save water, but care even more about comfort, convenience, cleanliness, style, ease of use, and low maintenance. This is how we should really be marketing water-efficient devices.

As Ms. George describes in The Big Necessity, the Japanese figured this out decades ago, creating toilets that not only use less water, but give you a refreshing spritz, play your favorite music, and can even take your blood pressure and monitor your health.

I don’t want to discourage anyone from installing waterless urinals. We need innovators and early adopters. I think they’re a great technology in the right setting. But perhaps mass market adoption is still a few years away.

Missed this when it came out in 2002, but probably still relevant. From the EPA: Cases in Conservation, How Efficiency Programs Help Water Utilities Save Water and Avoid Costs. 54 pages. (PDF, 560K)