In the last two posts I’ve argued that xeriscaping, and by extension many things we could do to conserve water, don’t make financial sense for a household to do, even though for the community as a whole water conservation does make sense. Dr. Nancy Holmes, a colleague at UBC, is studying the ‘Okanagan Aesthetic’. I asked her to give me a few thoughts on where our landscaping choices fit.

At a poetry reading yesterday, Bill Bissett—one of Canada’s most visionary and playful poets—said something that struck me: “If only we could devote our lives to taking care of water.”  How odd that sounded. We often speak of devoting our lives to taking care of many things—dogs, money, children, polar bears—but rarely water.  Some of us may take care of certain creeks or river banks or ponds – we will tend lovable, proximal places in our lives, but what about “water” itself, all of it- the linking, connecting, web of water we all live in?  Brendon Larsen in his book Metaphors for Environmental Sustainability (see page 103) outlines sociolinguistic research about the tendency of the English language to individuate mass nouns such as “water.”  Water is not a discrete object like a car or rock, for example, but nevertheless we quite easily talk about homogenous continua like water as extractable—a glass of water, a litre of water, a drink of water.  We are more likely to think of water in fragments and in separate containers and units (water in the tap, water in the bottle, water in the ocean) instead of water as a whole.

 Perhaps it is because we do this so often and so easily— we English speakers— that we see green lawns and lush orchards and huge golf courses as simple, detached units in themselves not as a form of water.  If we always spoke of water as the whole that it is, as immersive to us as air, would we begin to experience our own bodies as walking water, our eyes as floating light-filled bubbles, our fingers as crooked creeks?  And would those green lawns, orchards, and golf courses be as startlingly wet to our eyes as a lake, green expressions of our very own body’s water spilling and running over the landscape? 

I don’t think we can change how English works—though this is sometimes the role of poets, to shake English up and give us visions—but maybe we can begin to change how we see green lawns, lush orchards, and golf courses.  We can shift our aesthetic values to start looking at how our water exists in this place, the arid Okanagan.  Let me see my lawn as a great green pool lying loose and profligate on the landscape. Suddenly, that wet green thing burning in the heat of an Okanagan summer sun seems worrying.  Green, grassy water lying up and down every suburban street is awfully exposed, drying up like great sheets in the sun.  Why do we keep pouring our body’s water over them, as if they are the fevered brows of our children? Is a lawn that precious?

Now the prickly, dry hills that hoard the water in dry needles, spindly vase-like bunch grass, and crusty shells of moss seem so much more loving of water, less loose and wasteful and reckless.   The dry plants of the Okanagan seem to be more tender in spirit, more careful.  They are beautiful those brown, dry hills—they are austere, bent over the hot hill, collecting and nurturing their little bits of shade.  They are busy devoting their lives to water.

Thanks Nancy!

I think that a lot of the ways we use water are just routine things we do.  We don’t often debate the right and wrong of the length of our shower.  We spend the time in the shower thinking about the day ahead, not about how much water we should be using.  When we flush the toilet, we are more worried about the smell if we don’t – and hopefully doing a good job of washing our hands – than about how much water that flush will use.  Changing a habit takes a lot of work.  However, once it is changed, it doesn’t take much to sustain it. Changing those habits may involve a moral or financial calculation, or it may just be absorbed from what we see as common practice around us.  If we look around at the natural place we inhabit, we see that water conservation is just the natural way of life here in the Okanagan.  Being part of this place means conserving water.

In my own research, I’ve found that many people in Kelowna do devote time and money to water conservation. You can see some of the results as part of a presentation I gave recently (Canadian Water Resources Association presentation).  The tables that follow  summarize water conservation choices in Kelowna among the people I surveyed:

I turn my shower off when I soap up, turn the tap off when I am brushing my teeth and shaving, installed dual flush toilets in my house when I recently renovated, and paid a tidy sum for two high efficiency front load washing machines.   I’ve also been trying to cost effectively naturalize my yard.  I’ve done these things even though my water provider does not charge me based on volume.  Am I so financially naive as to make mistakes like this?

For me, when I think about it, I think water conservation is the right thing to do.  There are good moral arguments.  It contributes to the common good.  It also brings me in closer touch with this wonderful natural space I live in.  So, xeriscaping may not make a lot of financial sense, but how I choose to live my life is about a lot more than just padding my bank account.  If you’ve got a yard, how are you going to landscape it?

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Talking about the economics of xeriscaping from the perspective of the home owner did cause some discussion.  There were some really great comments, and I hope I start addressing some of them here.

I think that are at least two perspectives that need to be considered if we are going to understand the role of xeriscaping in water conservation.  From the perspective of the home owner, using the assumptions I made, it doesn’t make financial sense.  Xeriscaping an existing yard won’t pay back any time soon.  I think it is important to look at it from this perspective, as it part of the reason why xeriscaping can be a really hard sell.  Now, saving money isn’t the only reason to xeriscape, and I’ll try to talk about that in a future post.

For now I’ll stick with the economics, but switch to the perspective of the community.  I’ll play with Kelowna numbers again, because Kelowna does a nice job of keeping records. They have a great web page, Water Use Statistics.  These numbers are a good basis for setting up another toy example, this time to illustrate what xeriscaping does for the city as a whole.

The figure below shows the annual water use pattern for an ‘average house’ that I’ve just invented.

Average single family residence, around year 2000. Conventional landscaping, 640 cubic meters per year. With xeriscaping, 385 cubic meters pear year.

I’m assuming that with xeriscaping, outdoor water use is reduced by 75%.  In total, this means that the xeriscaped house uses only about 60% as much water as the conventional house.

Now taking the community perspective, a key issue is building capacity to accommodate growth.  Another issue is that capacity has to be built to accommodate the peak.  Expanding the total capacity to deliver water and accommodating a growing peak is expensive.  Lets say that to accommodate ten years worth of population growth in Kelowna, if everyone just had conventional yards, would cost $20 million on water infrastructure upgrades.

To build that infrastructure, the city would have to borrow money.  If the city can borrow money at an interest rate of 2%, then by delaying the $20 million upgrade by one year, they would save $400,000 on interest.  A fair bit of change.

The figure above shows how many homes we would need to reduce their outdoor water use by 75% in order to accommodate the new growth. The population is take to grow at about 2.5% per year.  There are 10,000 conventional homes to start.  If we buy space for the new immigrants, who I assume use the xeriscape amount of water, then by converting existing yards we can delay the capacity expansion by 20 years (where the total xeriscape line hits the original connections line)!

So what does this mean for the home owner?  Well, starting with the original 10,000 connections, delaying the capacity expansion by a year stops an increase in the water bill of $400,000 (assuming the city self finances this).  $40 per household.  That really doesn’t change the calculations in my earlier post.

However, maybe this would.  The city needs to convert on average 500 homes per year.  Dividing the $400,000 by 500 gives $800.  The city could give $800 to each of the 500 people who xeriscape their yard.  I’ve focused on xeriscaping here, but really what it boils down to is that the city has to be able to reduce the water use of existing home owners by enough to accommodate the growth.  That works out to about 3% each year.  So, if the city can find ways to reduce the water use of existing residents by that 3% for less than $400,000, it is a worthwhile investment.

I’ve also assumed that accommodating ten years of population growth costs $20 million.  That may be in the ballpark if we are starting with 10,000 connections.  However, the next capacity jump after this one will probably cost a lot more.  At some point there won’t be any more water in the Okanagan that we can use, after which the only way to make space for newcomers is to reduce existing water use.  When that time comes, someone who will put down half a million for a new house will hardly blink at paying an existing resident a few thousand dollars to xeriscape their yard.

So, does it make economic sense to xeriscape?  On the cash alone, probably not right now.  However, at some point in the future it certainly will.  For now, if we are going to encourage xeriscaping, we’ve got to look for those special cases where it does make financial sense, and where it doesn’t look, for other reasons.  More in a future post.

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Late last year I attended a meeting of the Irrigation Association of British Columbia here in Kelowna.  The meeting included many professionals from the irrigation industry, as well as a mixture of local government representatives and people from other sectors impacted by the irrigation.

The highlight of the event was their main speaker, Doug Bennet, from the Southern Nevada Water Authority (click to see the program).  Doug did a fantastic job of describing some of the challenges that his group faces, and provided some thoughts on how the lessons learned in Nevada may have relevance for the Okanagan.

Like Nevada, here in the Okanagan most of the water consumed by residential water users is used on lawns.  In fact, as Neil Klassen with Kelowna’s Watersmart program pointed out, most of the water used inside the home is simply recycled through the lake.  Most of what we put on our lawns ends up in the atmosphere, either passing through plants or simply evaporating.  So, for the city of Kelowna, saving water is pretty much all about reducing outdoor water use.  The most effective way to do that is to convert our landscaping to something that needs little or no water.

If getting rid of our water demanding lawns is so good, why don’t we do it?  In Kelowna, we pay for our water (click to see the rates).  Ripping out a lawn and replacing it with water conserving landscaping will reduce our water use.  But the complete economic picture also includes the cost of replacing the lawn, not just the savings on reduced water use.

To calculate the benefits, we need to estimate the water use, how much water will be saved, and what the impact will be on the total water bill.  This isn’t quite as easy as calculating the water saved and multiplying it by the water price because the price of water goes up the more water one uses.  In the summer, when water use is highest, the savings is also the highest.  The top chart in the figure below shows the water savings and financial savings for a household that normally uses 40 cubic meters per day in the winter and uses almost four times as much in July.  About half of this households water use is outdoor use, everything above the basic 40 cubic meters per day.  If this household reduces its outdoor water use by 75%, possible with Xeriscaping, then its water use would fall to the lower line in the graph.

Water Use and Water Charge for a hypothetical household that uses 885 cubic meters of water per year, almost half of which is used outdoors.

The lower half of the figure shows the monthly water charge that the household would face.  The rate structure used by the city means that the financial savings, as a percentage of the water bill, is bigger than the water savings.  This is meant to create an incentive to save water on those things that push household use up beyond basic needs, but to leave basic needs affordable.  For this hypothetical household, the savings is about $180 per year.  The savings won’t take the family to Hawaii in February, but it will give them a nice night out.

Are there any other benefits?  People who promote xeriscaping talk about the time savings.  Maybe two hours of weeding and trimming per month instead of eight hours of mowing the lawn.  If it would cost you $20 per week to pay the neighbour’s teen to mow the lawn, then this is another $60 in savings for each month, and maybe $360 or so per year if that lawn would have to be mowed for six months.  A bit ironic that the time savings is worth twice the water savings, even though we are promoting xeriscaping because of the water savings.  Of course, if you enjoy mowing the lawn – maybe it is an excuse to get outside, and maybe the rhythmic sound of the motor is somehow soothing – then this is not really a savings.

So we might save as much as $480 per year by converting our yard.  Now what about the cost?  A study by Kyra Dziedzic at the University of Lethbridge did a bit of a cost-benefit analysis of xeriscaping (click here).  Kyra found that the cost of xeriscaping a yard was around $8 per square foot.  Kyra estimated that for water rates in Lethbridge, xeriscaping would turn a profit for the home owner in something over 500 years!  If my hypothetical home has a 66 feet by 120 feet yard, half of which is lawn, then the conversion cost would be $31,680.  If we count the time savings, then it would take 66 years to pay this back.  If we don’t count it, then it would take 176 years.

These numbers don’t make xeriscaping an existing yard a very smart financial option.  Why then would anyone do it?  How can we get people to change?  Are there any policy tools we can use to encourage more xeriscaping?

I’ll continue some thoughts on this issue in a future post.  In the mean time, I’d welcome any thoughts you may have.  You may change my own ideas before I post again!

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I recently had the opportunity to hear from a selection of experts about some important water issues in the Okanagan.  I think that the pie chart below, results from the Okanagan Basin Water Board’s Supply and Demand Project, captures the essence of the issue.

Average End-Use of Water in the Okanagan Basin – 1996 to 2006 (Source: Okanagan Basin Water Board Supply and Demand Project)

This pie chart shows how we are presently sharing water among different human uses. One use that is conspicuous in its absence is the environment. The environment gets what is left over. If we want more water for any one of these uses, we either have to make the pie bigger – take more water from the environment – or reduce the amount of water in other uses.

More than twenty years ago a trio of authors with both legal and hydrological expertise published a paper entitled “Western Water Rights: The Era of Reallocation (Shupe, Steven J. et al, 1989).” I have recently heard other speakers, including Canadian water expert Bob Sanford, asserting the same point. Namely, we are no longer in a world where we can just keep taking more water from the environment. In some cases, there just isn’t any more to take. In other cases, to do so will be very expensive and have significant environmental impacts. We now have to face the much harder challenge of shifting water between users. This challenge is hard because it means that providing more water for some uses means there is going to be less for other uses. How can we make these reallocations so that nobody is left worse off?

The challenge of reallocation raises some hard questions that we have been doing our best to avoid since before the 1974 Okanagan Basin Study.  Fundamentally, are we putting the water we are using to its best use?  Agriculture uses more than half of the water, yet has declined to become a relatively minor direct contributor to the Okanagan economy.  In 2011, agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting combined accounted for about 7.2% of all businesses with employees in the Okanagan, and an even smaller percentage of all businesses (BC Stats 2012a, 2012b, 2012c).  The biggest engine for our economy is building houses for the new people we are attracting to the valley and then providing services to them when they get here.  When that inflow of new people and their money slows down, we panic and do whatever we can to get it going again.  So, should we pull water away from agriculture so that newcomers can have and use as much water as they want, which includes spraying three quarters of it on their yards?  Or is agriculture a vital part of what makes the Okanagan such an attractive place for people to come, so that cutting back the amount of water agriculture gets will itself slow this flow of new people and their money?

We are also demanding that our water be clean and safe.  However, we’ve become accustomed to not paying for it.  We are facing large bills to upgrade systems designed to deliver irrigation water.  We are also facing the fact that now there are more of us, we can’t all play in our watersheds and not significantly impact water quality.

Finally, our climate is changing.  That means when and how much water we can use is changing.  We are likely going to have to make some significant and costly changes to our water infrastructure, or economy, and the way we live our lives.  Do we have a moral duty to accept climate refugees from areas that can no longer sustain their population?  Must we protect agricultural land and the water it needs in case changing climates cause declining food production elsewhere?  Should we protect and restore natural habitats in the Okanagan, a vital corridor as species migrate northwards?

I am Dr. John Janmaat, an associate professor of economics and I currently hold the Leading Edge Endowment Fund chair in Water Resources and Ecosystem Sustainability at the Okanagan campus of the University of British Columbia.  The experts I recently heard from are a committee assembled from local experts and supporters to help me understand important water and sustainability issues here in the Okanagan and beyond.  I plan to periodically update this blog with my thoughts on things I learn about, most of which will relate to water and the Okanagan.  However, from time to time I may get carried away and talk about things like the Northern Gateway Pipeline and other issues in the news.  I also plan to invite contributions from my colleagues here at the Okanagan campus who work on water issues.

I’m also looking for feedback.  If you like what you read, please let me know.  If you don’t and/or you disagree, I really want to hear from you.  I am throwing out my thoughts, and I’m open to be convinced that my thoughts are wrong.

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• BC Stats (2012) “Central Okanagan Regional District.” Quarterly Regional Statistics, Second Quarter 2012.
• BC Stats (2012) “North Okanagan Regional District.” Quarterly Regional Statistics, Second Quarter 2012.
• BC Stats (2012) “Okanagan Similkameen Regional District.” Quarterly Regional Statistics, Second Quarter 2012.
• Shupe, Steven J., Weatherford, Gary D., Checchio, Elizabeth (1989) “Western Water Rights: The Era of Reallocation.”  Natural Resources Journal 29:413-434

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