For Immediate Release
Contacts: Tom Hegemier P.E., Chair
Central Texas Land/Water Sustainability Forum
Christy Muse, Executive Director
Hill Country Alliance
Build Water Smart Now
(March 17, 2014)
We felt
reassured by the fall rains, but most storms missed lakes Travis and
Buchanan. Now the empty clouds of drought hover and the water supply
clock ticks on. Drought again is a regular headline story: reservoirs
are 38% full, driest January on record, hill country
creek and river flows dwindle, most downstream farmers will not receive
water for an unprecedented third year in a row, once–a-week lawn
watering mandated for customers relying on LCRA supplies, increasing
water rates with less use, and a threatened lawsuit
to provide more fresh water to the river and bays to protect habitat.
Contrast
woeful water news with the following stories: Forbes magazine ranked
Austin as the fastest growing city for the fourth
year in a row, realtors stating that we don’t have enough houses to
meet buyer demand, another industry is moving their headquarters to
Austin, and the region’s job growth will continue to spur new home and
apartment construction. This growth tracks with
State Water Plan projections that the central Texas population will
double to over 3 million people by 2040.
While
we continue to reduce our water use, demands increase every day with
new homes of suburbia appearing on the horizon.
Each will require more water, with a considerable amount going to
establish and maintain hundreds of acres of new turf grass each year.
In this region, traditional home lawns typically consume 25 to 35% of
the annual treated water. Projecting into the future,
new residential yards could require up to 30,000 acre-feet per year by
2040—enough water to meet about 20 percent of Austin’s current demand.
Some
call for a moratorium on new construction to end water demand growth
until supplies rebound. But what is the economic
impact of that drastic measure, both now and long-term? Others
recommend that cities pay homeowners to remove turf grass and replace
with native plants. Las Vegas has had success with such a strategy and
Austin has a small-scale program but the program costs
will be high to significantly shrink demands.
 |
Courtesy of the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center
Photographers: Andy/Sally Wasowski |
One
tool now available to manage lawn watering at no cost to existing water
customers is “conservation landscaping.” It relies
on deep, high quality soils combined with native plants, trees, mulched
areas, and most importantly limited turf to reduce outdoor water use by
almost seventy-five percent. Water quality is improved as limited to
no lawn chemicals are necessary. These landscapes,
designed for our climate, improve neighborhood appearance and
marketability. A recent Statesman article highlighted one woman’s
natural yard in Manchaca: its summer-time color, neighborhood
attraction, and, above all, that it doesn’t require water even in
the hottest months.
Conservation
landscaping would be paid for by those that build homes rather than
existing rate payers. It would, of course,
be passed along to the cost of the home purchase. However, in only a
few years, the water savings compared to a traditional lawn covers this
increased installation cost.
Conservation
landscaping is one option in the “Low Impact Development” (LID) toolbox
that includes rainwater harvesting, permeable
pavements, rain gardens, and others that help new developments use
stormwater beneficially to reduce homeowner’s water bills and protect
aquifer and lake levels. The Central Texas Land Water Sustainability
Forum (CTLWSF), a committee composed of private and
public water resource professionals actively engaged in the LID water
discussion, underscores that LCRA has offered conservation landscaping
incentives since 2006 as part of their Highland Lakes water quality
protection program. The CTLWSF believes all central
Texas governing bodies should do the same through immediate action so
new development will reduce its water use. This could be done through
emergency rules and concise criteria to clearly define incentives and
methods to facilitate permitting and construction.
The
benefits will be both immediate, for the ongoing drought, and
long-lasting, as annual demands remain more stable. When
the next drought returns, as is inevitable, we will not be asked to
drastically change our water use as it will already be used wisely. By
managing our water growth today we can reduce future water supply needs
and rate increases.
We
ask that you join with the CTLWSF and encourage cities and utilities to
require all new homes and buildings to use conservation
landscaping. What have we got to lose? Our water, our economic future?
Tom Hegemier is the Chair of the Central Texas Land Water Sustainability Forum, a senior consulting water resources engineer
at RPS and a technical advisor for the Hill Country Alliance.
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