Can America's water suppliers keep up with the expansion of lawn acreage in fast-growing suburbs? Or have water supply managers already become little more than "lawn irrigation managers"?
That's the question raised over the past year by Amherst, Mass.-based engineer and water conservation consultant Amy Vickers, and her views have spawned a lively debate in the water supply and irrigation professions.
She launched the debate last year when the February 2006 issue of Journal AWWA, a publication of the American Water Works Association, ran an article by Vickers in which she questioned, as she put it later, "how long and at what cost can water suppliers continue to run the race from wells, rivers and reservoirs — and increasingly to wastewater plants and oceans — to haul in the tidal wave of water demanded in the service of lawn irrigation?"
She cited a US Environmental Protection Agency estimate that one-third of all residential water use in the United States is now devoted to landscape irrigation, adding that the figure rises to 50 percent in some fast-growing Sunbelt cities, many of which must scramble to keep up with rising water demands.
In her writings, Vickers proposes strong water conservation measures aimed at lawn irrigation, such as: limiting watering days, reducing or capping the areas of residential lawns where irrigation is allowed, strengthening Xeriscaping principles, reducing the "watering-in" of lawn chemicals, and promoting natural landscapes that are irrigated with rainwater only.
A few communities and water suppliers, especially those reaching the limits of their water supplies, have already adopted some of these measures.
Some members of the irrigation industry think Vickers has gone too far. Writing a response in the October Journal AWWA, Norman Bartlett, executive director of the American Society of Irrigation Consultants (ASIC), called Vickers' prescriptions "draconian" and insisted that supply and demand, through more progressive water pricing, and rapidly evolving irrigation technology, among other factors, will assist water conservation efforts.
Bartlett cites data showing that residences use about 10 percent of all water in the US, and that opportunities for conserving water are much greater in agriculture, which uses about half of available freshwater, as well as in industry, commerce and in sometimes-leaky municipal water networks. Meanwhile, ASIC President Dave Davis, in a recent message to his members, noted that the debate has been "a real eye-opener" in which some mistakenly think that "the irrigation industry is the enemy."
Interviewed by e-mail this week, Vickers told WaterTech Online she was surprised by the response to her writings and has received many messages of support from water supply managers: "More than a few water managers feel too much of their time is sapped having to babysit water supply problems caused by lawn irrigation," she says.
According to Vickers, one water manager wrote her, "We fight this battle every day with the developers who insist on installing auto-sprinklers and sodded lawns everywhere. We have come to the same conclusions as you." Another wrote, "I feel like I'm in charge of an irrigation system and not a public water supply."
While the debate continues, changes in lawn irrigation policy are coming "out of necessity," Vickers says, as public water systems are increasingly challenged to find new supplies, or revive or recycle old ones.
As examples, Vickers noted that the town of Franklin, MA, has helped restore a previously depleted pond by adopting a one-day-a-week lawn watering rule; on a much bigger scale, she adds, the Southwest Florida Water Management District recently imposed lawn and landscape watering restrictions.