Massive water savings from modern building standards

Over the next 50 years, nearly half of America’s freshwater basins may not be able to meet the monthly water demand, with shortages anticipated in the central and southern Great Plains, the Southwest, and central Rocky Mountain states. Phoenix is at the center of the water conservation crisis in America. State officials are limiting new housing construction in the Phoenix area that depends on groundwater to help close the 4% gap between supply and demand in the coming decades.

Growing challenges from extreme weather events and urban sprawl require innovative solutions for water management locally. Rapid urbanization puts stress on centralized systems, creating significant difficulties for infrastructure. Historically, we have relied on centralized systems and solutions, but today they are increasingly overburdened.

The city of Phoenix recently approved new water regulations for businesses that use 250,000 gallons per day, with tougher restrictions for those using more than 500,000 gallons per day. New water conservation policies laid down in 2023 regulate non-functional turf, outdoor irrigation, and swimming pools, and help preserve native flora. Although Phoenix has the right priorities with utility-scale solutions, including smart irrigation, reclamation and storage, water loss prevention, and aggressive water use reduction goals, more can be done to improve water-efficient building standards.

A new University of Miami Report charts the water savings in Phoenix for one- and

two-family dwellings through 2029, based on adoption of four conservation strategies contained in the International Water Conservation Code Provisions (IWCCP), produced by the International Code Council. The report focused on:

• Adoption of more efficient plumbing fixtures.



• Rainwater harvesting, treatment, storage and reuse.



• Graywater treatment, storage and reuse; and



• HVAC condensate catchment, treatment, storage and reuse.

 

The potential water savings from rapid adoption of these modern codes is astronomical. Aggregate water savings in Phoenix from integrating these four strategies into new home construction alone is more than 7.3 billion gallons by 2029. If the strategies are adopted in new homes, plus just 5% of Phoenix’s existing homes, water conservation levels would exceed 23.55 billion gallons by the end of the same time frame.

The rapid adoption of modern building standards in Phoenix must be prioritized as a necessary and critical complement to utility-scale solutions. The new research available shows that massive water savings are possible in the very near term through a standards-based, decentralized approach, which relieves pressure on existing infrastructure, helps avoid the significant investments needed to build new infrastructure, and offers a tailored and nimble policy approach that can be fine-tuned at a much more granular level. As the report demonstrates, rainwater harvesting, condensation harvesting, water-efficient plumbing fixtures, and graywater collection and treatment for reuse can all significantly reduce the burden on drinking water utilities in Phoenix.

To maximize water savings from building standards, however, we need to apply them consistent with the application of other construction codes, both during new construction practices and during renovation efforts in existing homes that affect these systems. This is even more important in the Phoenix area, where limitations exist for new residential home building.

Public awareness campaigns can help by encouraging responsible water usage practices across all homes, fostering a reinvigorated culture of conservation and sustainability in Pheonix communities. Everyone plays a part in water conservation from one and two-family dwellings, to the largest corporations, requiring hundreds of thousands of gallons to operate.

Water experts in Arizona recognize the need for a modern, cost-efficient standard governing the impact of buildings and structures on the environment. The IWCCP promotes water conservation through safe and sustainable construction practices, offering a clear path for achieving this goal in Phoenix neighborhoods.

Building-level approaches offer Phoenix residents enormous opportunity and flexibility to meet the challenges of water conservation head-on. They provide state and local policymakers with a ready-made toolkit to integrate lasting water conservation measures in new and existing communities. With so much riding on finding lasting solutions, we can’t afford to leave anything on the table.

Esber Andiroglu, Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering and School of Architecture, University of Miami, is the lead report author of, “Standards Save: A Water Conservation Summit.”

 

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