Understanding Future Uses of Roofspace and Defining An Early Path to Profitable Roof Estate Investing
February 16th, 2012
Via Think Progress, a report on a cheap, abundant resource that could help consumers save money and fight climate change: rainwater. As the article notes:
Residents in eight cities around the U.S. could collectively trim up to $90 million a year off their water bills with simple rainwater collection techniques, according to a new report.
Urban rooftop rainwater collection, often overlooked or discouraged by complicated regulations in major cities and neighborhoods, could help individuals and families save money while improving water quality, says the Natural Resources Defense Council in a new report.
“Even under conservative assumptions, the study demonstrates that each city modeled can capture hundreds of millions to billions of gallons of rainwater each year, equivalent to the total annual water use of tens to hundreds of thousands of residents.”
And the yearly savings could be far greater for Americans than $90 million. The eight cities profiled in the NRDC analysis are only a snapshot of the different regions around the country.
Over 44 billion gallons of freshwater are used by public water suppliers on a daily basis in the United States, with consumers representing one of the highest individual daily usage rates in the world (between 100 and 165 gallons). As climate change and population growth drain some regional water supplies, urban dwellers may be vulnerable to water shortages or price spikes.Much of the heavily treated, energy-intensive and perfectly drinkable water is wasted on tasks that could be used for non-potable supplies. For example, more than 11 percent of residential and 25 percent of commercial drinking water is spent on flushing toilets — over 2 trillion gallons a year.
NRDC has found that non-potable residential and commercial rooftop rainwater collection, which has been utilized in some regions of the US for some time to supplement residential outdoor activities, could be expanded to supply large cities with between 21 to 75 percent of their yearly water use.
The report lists four major benefits of capturing urban rainfall:
- Inexpensive, on-site supply of water that can be used for outdoor non-potable uses with little, if any, treatment, or for a variety of additional uses including potable supply with appropriately higher levels of treatment
- Reduced (or no) energy and economic costs associated with treating and delivering potable water to end users because capture systems often use low-volume, non-pressurized, gravity fed systems or require only the use of a low power pump for supply
- Reduced strain on existing water supply sources
- Reduced runoff that would otherwise contribute to storm water flows, a leading cause of surface water pollution and urban flooding
Lightly or non-treated, non-potable water, collected in rainwater basins, has the potential to replace nearly 80 percent of daily residential water usage (clothes washing, toilet flushing, and outdoor uses) that does not require drinking water.
Rooftop containment also has the potential improve water quality around metropolitan areas by preventing excess storm water (often filled with sewage, toxins, and chemicals that coat our sidewalks and streets) from washing into rivers, streams, and beaches. In fact, the EPA views urban runoff as “one of the greatest threats to water quality in the country,” and one of the leading causes of surface water pollution.
Unfortunately, rainwater collection is often hampered by overlapping and contradictory local regulations for non-potable indoor water use, which makes rainwater containment “overly complicated.” By addressing some of the simple rules than govern water use, rainwater collection could be a major factor in our ability to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
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5 Responses to Rainwater Collection Could Save Urban Consumers $90 Million a Year
While I generally approve of any effort to provide alternatives for urban water use, the idea that this would save huge amounts of money is laughably naive. Taking my own community (more suburban than urban) as an example, there is a simple relationship between the cost of water delivery, the amount of water used and the rate at which the costs are recovered. Use less water and the cost per unit increases, generally creating a political backlash for current office holders.
There are ways of preventing this, but it involves both local community and regional participation in setting goals. This is particularly true in California where urban users have the population (votes) and industrial scale ag has the ability to spin information like a perpetual motion top.
The latest version of this is playing out even as I make this comment with HR 1837 being “marked up” by the House Committee on Natural Resources this AM. The result of this would be to “privatize” a common resource.
So… your community has an unlimited supply of potable water that doesn’t cost anything to treat or to transport? Your community water supply has only fixed infrastructure costs?
Your sewer system similarly has no cost to treat or transport waste water?
Please do tell me where you live?
It sounds like you live at the bottom of a glacier (rapidly melting these days) and can just dump sewage into the river without treatment.Thinking about the equivalent cost of the energy it takes to get that water “up there” in the first place and the potential of yet-to-be-determined whole systems “blue-sky” ideas, that $90 million savings may ultimately prove to be a very low number.
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Educated at Yale University (Bachelor of Arts - History) and Harvard (Master in Public Policy - International Development), Monty Simus has held a lifelong interest in environmental and conservation issues, primarily as they relate to freshwater scarcity, renewable energy, and national park policy. Working from a water-scarce base in Las Vegas with his wife and son, he is the founder of Water Politics, an organization dedicated to the identification and analysis of geopolitical water issues arising from the world’s growing and vast water deficits, and is also a co-founder of SmartMarkets, an eco-preneurial venture that applies web 2.0 technology and online social networking innovations to motivate energy & water conservation. He previously worked for an independent power producer in Central Asia; co-authored an article appearing in the Summer 2010 issue of the Tulane Environmental Law Journal, titled: “The Water Ethic: The Inexorable Birth Of A Certain Alienable Right”; and authored an article appearing in the inaugural issue of Johns Hopkins University's Global Water Magazine in July 2010 titled: “H2Own: The Water Ethic and an Equitable Market for the Exchange of Individual Water Efficiency Credits.”