UPDATE, Friday, 4-3-2013, 12:55 p.m.
It appears that Bremerton was the only Washington city to make it
into the top 10 in any of the population categories, according to
the
final list. (PDF 127 kb).
——
Bremerton residents pushed their city into the top spot among
hundreds of cities competing in the National Mayor’s Challenge for
Water Conservation.
Residents from cities across the country were asked to “take the
pledge” and do things to save water around their house. Bremerton
took first place among cities with populations from 30,000 to
100,000.
I don’t believe any other city in Washington state made it into
the top 10 for their populations, although Seattle came close. We
may know more later today, when the winners are announced on the
website My
Water Pledge.
“Water is Bremerton’s remarkable resource,” said Mayor Patty
Lent in a
news release (PDF 53 kb). “I appreciate the support of our
residents during this contest and encourage everyone to learn more
about their water and energy use at home. This contest was a fun
opportunity to learn about water-wise habits and create a more
sustainable environment.”
By being from one of the five winning cities, Bremerton
residents will be eligible for hundreds of prizes to be awarded in
the competition, sponsored by the nonprofit Wyland Foundation.
Prizes include a Toyota Prius, custom-designed lawn sprinkler
systems, low-flow shower heads and Lowe’s gift cards. Anyone who
submitted a pledge will be eligible for a separate drawing for a
$1,000 shopping spree at Lowe’s.
“The Mayor’s Challenge highlights the impact of each person’s
environmental efforts,” said Water Resources Manager Kathleen
Cahall in the news release. “The city’s prize for participating in
this contest is increased awareness about the importance of our
water resources.”
Last year, the first year of competition, Bremerton finished in
the top spot among medium-sized cities in Washington and third
among cities in the West.
In the National Mayor’s Challenge for Water Conservation,
Bremerton is leading all U.S. cities with populations between
30,000 and 100,000.
The water challenge, sponsored by the Wyland Foundation, asks
people to take a pledge to work for water conservation. Bremerton
Mayor Patty Lent has embraced the national competition by talking
about it often when she meets with community groups.
To take the pledge and boost your own city’s ranking in the
competition, go to www.mywaterpledge.com and fill
out a brief form.
Last year, Bremerton came in first among medium-sized cities in
Washington state and third among those in the West.
“Water is Bremerton’s remarkable resource,” the mayor said in a
news release. “I encourage all Bremerton residents to pledge to
learn more about their water and energy use at home. This
challenge, which runs through April, is an exciting opportunity to
learn about water wise habits as we engage in a friendly
competition with other cities across the nation to create a more
sustainable environment.”
Kathleen Cahall, Bremerton’s water resources manager, noted that
this year’s competition pits all like-sized cities in the country
against each other. Last year, the first competition was regional.
Now, there are five nationwide population categories instead of
three for each region.
Bremerton has not done as much personal outreach on the project
as last year, Kathleen told me, but the city has placed messages on
city utility bills and in electronic news letters; on BKAT, the
community access television station; and with flyers for students
to take home at schools within Bremerton’s water service area.
“It really takes no effort for us to be involved,” Kathleen
said, “and it is easy for our residents to learn about water-wise
habits and pollution-prevention.”
A federal water-quality permit requires the city to do public
education, and people can learn from the water challenge, she
said.
As an added incentive, the contest awards prizes to random
people who take the pledge.
The only other Washington cities currently in the top 10 are
Seattle, which is eighth among cities with more than 600,000
people, and Sequim, which is tenth among cities with populations
from 5,000 to 30,000.
Port Orchard is 14th among the 5,000-30,000 cities. Poulsbo is
119th and Bainbridge Island is 291st in that same population
category.
Cities in Washington that ranked within the top 100 in their own
population categories include Lacey, 15th; Bellevue, 19th; Tacoma,
42nd; Spokane, 48th; North Bend, 50th; Vancouver, 53rd; and
Bellingham, 62nd.
Sharing water resources over a wide region is an idea that goes
hand-in-hand with the Growth Management Act’s strategy of
concentrating population in urban areas while protecting rural
areas.
Of course, the first level of action is water conservation. But
the ability to take water from one aquifer with an adequate water
supply while protecting an overtaxed aquifer somewhere else makes a
lot of sense.
That’s the idea behind building new pipelines to connect
numerous water systems across a good portion of Kitsap County,
including Silverdale. I described the latest steps in this plan in
a story published in
Monday’s Kitsap Sun.
Thirty years ago — before the Growth Management Act was passed —
I recall talking to folks at the Kitsap Public Utility District,
who declared that they were not in the land-use business and had no
intention of getting involved in land-use battles. It was the job
of the Kitsap County commissioners to decide where to put the
growth, they said. The PUD staff and commissioners believed their
role was to provide water for the growing population, wherever it
goes. Check out this
Kitsap Sun story from Feb. 25, 2001.
The state’s Municipal
Water Law of 2003 clarified that the KPUD could deliver water
from one place to another throughout its service area — which is
all of Kitsap County. That allows water to be brought to developed
areas in North Kitsap, where annual rainfall is half of what we see
in the forested areas of Southwest Kitsap, where the Seabeck
aquifer is located. (See annual precipitation map on this
page.)
Many environmentalists have objected to certain portions of the
Municipal Water Law, especially sections that included developers
as municipal water suppliers — a move they say opens the door for
abuse by financial interests.
One of the big concerns in water management is that pumping too
much from an aquifer — especially a shallow aquifer — could disrupt
the subsurface flows and springs that maintain stream levels in the
summer and early fall. Adequate streamflows are needed for many
species, not the least of which are salmon.
With adequate monitoring, as needed for planning, experts can
track groundwater levels and streamflows to avoid such problems.
Pipelines allow aquifers to be “rested” when needed. And elected
PUD commissioners can be held accountable for their decisions
regarding the regional management of water.
Future water supplies and the right to use the water constitute
one of the most complicated issues in environmental law. A 2003
paper by the Washington Department of Ecology, called
“Mitigation Measures Used in Water Rights Permitting” outlines
some of the methods being used to protect natural systems and
competing water rights. Mitigation for use of the Seabeck aquifer,
which is an important water supply in Kitsap County, is described
briefly on pages 19 and 20.
This week, I looked for some interesting facts about water and
created the following 20-question quiz. Find the answers below
along with the various sources of the information.
Image: U.S. Department
of Energy
1. If an adult’s body is 70 percent water, what
percentage of water is an infant’s body?
A) 60 percent
B) 70 percent
C) 80 percent
D) 90 percent
2. How much of the Earth’s surface is covered by
water?
A) 60-65 percent
B) 70-75 percent
C) 80-85 percent
D) 90-95 percent
3) An average person uses from 80 to 100 gallons of
water a day. Excluding lawn-watering, the largest water use by an
individual results from:
A) Flushing the toilet
B) Cooking and drinking
C) Taking a bath or shower
D) Water fights Continue reading →
It seems as if it has taken forever for someone in Kitsap County
to put treated sewage to beneficial use, but a demonstration
project on Retsil Road in South Kitsap is just around the corner.
Check out my story in
Saturday’s Kitsap Sun.
Darren Noon of Pape and
Sons Construction Co. welds a section of "purple pipe" along Retsil
Road in South Kitsap, the first reclaimed water project in Kitsap
County.
Kitsap Sun photo by Meegan M. Reid
Local water experts were contemplating uses for highly treated
wastewater even before “low-impact development” became a common
phrase for infiltrating stormwater into the ground.
LID has caught on fairly quickly as a method of keeping polluted
stormwater from reaching our streams and Puget Sound. The concept
got an extra push from new stormwater regulations, which have
greatly increased the cost of conventional pipe-and-pond methods of
stormwater management.
The less-touted benefit of LID is groundwater recharge, which
boosts our long-range water supply.
Kitsap County’s Watershed Management Plan (PDF 147 kb),
developed in 2005, estimated that Kitsap County’s sewage treatment
plants release 8 million gallons of treated water into Puget Sound
each day. That’s enough to increase the base flow of 10 streams by
10 cubic feet per second, raise aquifer levels throughout the
county or launch a new industry without touching our drinking water
supplies.
“The most significant barriers to recycling wastewater are the
cost of infrastructure and additional treatment, as well as public
perception,” the report states. “Elected officials in WRIA 15 (the
Kitsap Peninsula) have expressed support for public education about
reclaimed water.”
The report mentions that highly treated effluent from the
Central Kitsap Wastewater Treatment Plant near Brownsville could be
used to supplement streamflows in nearby Steele Creek. But more
recently Kitsap County and Silverdale Water District have begun
working together on a plan to pipe the water into the heart of
Silverdale, where it can be used to water ballfields and
landscaping.
That’s also the initial plan put forth by West Sound Utility
District, as I mentioned in Saturday’s story. Using wastewater for
irrigation cuts down on peak demand, which is what drives water
utilities to drill new wells. Needless to say, drilling deep wells
comes at a tremendous expense — an expense that grows greater as
Kitsap County approaches the limits of its groundwater supplies in
some locations.
To many people, using reclaimed wastewater seems like a novel
idea, especially in an region known for its rain. People remain
squeamish about getting anywhere near sewage water, even if it is
treated. But I don’t believe it will take long for people to accept
the idea of using treated wastewater for irrigation, once they
realize it is treated to basically the same level as drinking
water.
On the other hand, drinking treated effluent becomes another
issue, even though it has been done indirectly for years in many
places. If you live in a town on the Mississippi River, your local
utility may be drawing water out of the river for your consumption
just downstream of where a sewage treatment plant is dumping its
effluent.
There are several other places where reclaimed water is mixed
with freshwater, such as in a reservoir, then drawn back out for
drinking. Ironically, putting the wastewater into a reservoir makes
it seem more palatable, even though it probably was cleaner before.
Treating the water in the reservoir is essentially treating the
wastewater again — although water is just water in the end.
A community in Texas made news across the country last week,
when reporter Angela Brown of the
Associated Press wrote about a new $13-million
water-reclamation plant to turn effluent into drinking water, the
first to be built in that state. Really, it is nothing new, as
Angela herself points out.
What I have not found anywhere so far is a direct use of
reclaimed water. That’s what you would get by pumping the highly
treated wastewater directly into a municipal water system’s piping
network. From a health standpoint, there would be nothing wrong
with that, provided the water could be shut off in the event of a
problem at the treatment plant. No doubt this kind of direct use
will be a little harder to get used to, even in areas where water
is scarce.
Alix Spiegel of National Public Radio does a nice job analyzing
the psychology behind the aversion to using treated wastewater and
why people are more accepting of indirect use. Read or listen to
“Why Cleaned Wastewater Stays Dirty In Our Minds .”
With all the creative people we have in Western Washington, I’d
like to see someone from this region enter a contest sponsored by
Rain Bird Corporation called “The Intelligent Use of Water Film
Competition.”
The last time the contest was held, in 2009, a video called
“Small Changes” earned the Jury Award. In my opinion, the film was
the best among all the finalists that year. But you can view them
for yourself on Rain Bird’s
website. Also, see also the winners for 2008 and
2007.
In the video player below, you can check out “Small Changes,” by
filmmakers Jennifer and Christopher Gandin Le. The film makes the
simple point that “Life without water is no life at all” and that
we are not destined to live with shortages if we learn how to
conserve water.
Water is the basic building block of life on Earth. Thankfully,
it seems that water is in plentiful supply in most places in our
country. Because of our vast water and sewer systems, it is easy to
overlook the fact that nearly 1 billion people in the world do not
have access to safe drinking water and that 2.6 billion people do
not have access to a sanitary toilet. We may not know that
thousands of people die every day, not from the consequences of war
but because of dehydration and diseases caused by lack of
sanitation.
“Our growing population’s need for water for food, raw materials
and energy is increasingly competing with nature’s own demands for
water to sustain already imperiled ecosystems and the services on
which we depend…
“The theme of this year’s World Water Day, ‘Clean Water for a
Healthy World,’ emphasizes that both the quality and the quantity
of water resources are at risk. More people die from unsafe water
than from all forms of violence, including war. These deaths are an
affront to our common humanity, and undermine the efforts of many
countries to achieve their development potential.”
Last week, I wrote about a meeting between water officials on
the Kitsap Peninsula and hydrologists from the U.S. Geological
Survey. The USGS folks were floating the idea of studying the
geology and available water supplies across the entire Kitsap
Peninsula. (See story in
Thursday’s Kitsap Sun.)
Surface waters of
Kitsap.
I’ve covered water resources for years, and one of the big
questions in the context of growth and development has always been:
“Will the area have enough water to support growth.”
It’s a question I’ve asked local water managers since I arrived
here in 1977. Their answer is generally something like this: “We
should have enough water far into the future if we manage it
carefully.” My latest story, published in the
Kitsap Sun Oct. 3, described a relatively low-water year ending
in October.
Most of Kitsap County’s water comes from wells. Consequently,
managing water carefully means conserving what we’ve got, allowing
our rains to soak into the ground and, in some contexts, being able
to move water from areas of lesser supply to areas of greater
supply. The map of surface waters at right can be found on the
Kitsap County
Web site.
Water is one of the big environmental issues of our time, and it
will grow more important as long as the population continues to
grow. Most people in the water business would like to know more
about underground water supplies, so a study of the peninsula’s
water resources would be valuable. Experts also realize that
studies of this kind are only as good as the data that go in. That
involves using measurements from hundreds of wells and well logs
(soil layers) across the peninsula. You may want to check out
similar
studies conducted by USGS.
This topic also appears to be interesting to Kitsap Sun readers,
because the story I wrote last week was rated the most popular on
the Web site for two days running.
As with many environmental stories, the first comments to be
posted seemed skeptical of the whole idea that caused me to write
the story:
Crownvic (the first comment): “This is another
one of these greeny try-to-scare-the-hell-out-of-you articles.
First of all, almost all water wells pump from an aquifer 100 feet
plus deep and have absolutely no effect on surface waters due to
the impervious layers top and bottom…” Continue reading →
I have no intention of making Watching Our Water Ways an
All-Serious, All-the-Time blog, so I’m always on the lookout for
some humorous stories and videos on the subject of water.
I’m going to try to make lighter topics a weekly feature of this
blog, which I’ll call Amusing Mondays. Please contribute any
amusing water-related topics that you come across. They may be
stories, cartoons, photographs, videos, just about anything. (If
copyright is an issue, we’ll have to link to someone else rather
than running the raw text or images.)
For today’s entry, I came across this cool human-powered
hydrofoil water scooter. You need to watch two short videos, the
first from the manufacturer.
