That Big Dripping Sound

  • According to the EPA, US homes waste 1 trillion gallons each year from leaks (Photo courtesy of the EPA)

Today begins “Fix a Leak Week.” It’s probably not in your calendar. It’s a new effort from the US EPA to encourage people to take a closer look at their plumbing. Tamara Keith reports:

Transcript

Today begins “Fix a Leak Week.” It’s probably not in your calendar. It’s a new effort from the US EPA to encourage people to take a closer look at their plumbing. Tamara Keith reports:

(sound of dripping)

It turns out that drip drip drip of a leaky faucet can really add up.

(sound of toilet running)

A running toilet can waste up to 200 gallons a day.

Michael Shapiro heads the water division at the EPA.

“A typical home will leak up to 11,000 gallons a year. About the amount of water that will fit into a home swimming pool, for example.”

Most people can handle doing the repairs themselves. Jim Loviss is the plumbing manager at Strosneiders Hardware in Bethesda, Maryland.

“Sometimes it’s a washer, sometimes it’s a hose or a supply tube. Most times it’s simple. It’s being able to shut the water off and find out where the problem is and solve it.”

But, he’s not expecting a rush on washers and toilet flappers just because the EPA has declared it “Fix A Leak Week.”

For The Environment Report, I’m Tamara Keith.

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Stimulus Money to Save Water?

  • Obama delivering the American Recovery and Reinvestment speech on Thursday, January 8, 2009 (Photo courtesy of the Obama Transition Team)

One group wants part of the economic stimulus package to plug up some leaks. It says old toilets and leaky water pipes below city streets are wasting water. Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

One group wants part of the economic stimulus package to plug up some leaks. It says old toilets and leaky water pipes below city streets are wasting water. Chuck Quirmbach reports:

The group is called the Alliance for Water Efficiency. It’s made up of plumbing manufacturers, contractors, city water systems, and enviromental groups.

They want about ten billion dollars of the economic stimulus package to go to shovel-ready projects that conserve water.

Alliance board member Susan Stratton says the work could include everything from century-old city water pipes to replacing many older, water-wasting toilets in private homes.

“This requires the skills of a plumber and it requires retailers and wholesalers to deliver products. These are things we know how to do. There are people in the work environment who have these skills and can ramp up pretty quickly.”

Stratton says cutting water use would also save energy by reducing power use at water utilities.

For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

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Big City Recycles Rain Water

Rain barrels are catching on as a simple way to capture water for the
garden. Some people are going even further to save water. They’re piping
rainwater into their indoor plumbing. Ann Dornfeld reports:

Transcript

Rain barrels are catching on as a simple way to capture water for the
garden. Some people are going even further to save water. They’re piping
rainwater into their indoor plumbing. Ann Dornfeld reports:


For years, the rain that fell upon Seattle’s city hall vanished almost as soon
as it hit the roof. It gushed down to the street and washed away oil and
heavy metals left by passing cars. In minutes, the rain became toxic waste
that flowed into the city’s waterways.


These days, Seattle’s new city hall doesn’t let rainwater slip away. This city
hall puts rainwater to work.


(Sound of toilet flushing)


City Councilmember Richard Conlin demonstrates one of the building’s
rainwater-filled toilets. It looks perfectly normal. Conlin says that’s not
always the case:


“It actually does get discolored, particularly during the leaf season, or
when the rains first start in the fall. And so for a while we had notices
in the bathroom saying ‘don’t pay attention to the fact that this water
is discolored. It’s because it’s recycled rainwater.’ But I think people
have really gotten used to it now.”


Rain that doesn’t get absorbed into City Hall’s green roof is channeled to a
million-gallon tank in the basement. It goes through a series of filters, then into the pipes. It’s called a rainwater catchment system.


“Right now we’re using it for pretty much all of the non-potable
functions that we have in City Hall. It’s probably good enough quality
to use for potable functions, but we aren’t going to go there because
we have great water that we get in the city and we’d have to do some
treatment in order to meet legal standards.”


Conlin says the city installed the rainwater system as a way to
practice the conservation that city leaders preach.


Bob Scheulen is a member of the choir. When he and his wife built their
house several years ago, they built a hollow concrete patio that stores
7,000 gallons of rainwater.


Scheulen says despite Seattle’s rainy reputation, droughts are common in
the summer:


“Basically there’s two choices if people want to continue to
use water as the population grows: the city can either build a lot more
reservoirs and drown more land or people can conserve water or be
their own utility for those summer months.”


Scheulen lifts a metal hatch on the patio floor and sticks his head inside:


“I bet we can see how full it is right now. Oh, it’s gettin’ pretty full. It’s
probably 60% full. A couple more
rainstorms and it’ll be probably completely full.”


The family’s washing machine uses rainwater, and they flush their toilets
with it. But Scheulen says what uses the most water is the garden:


“This year we did not run out of water but last year I got a little
overzealous in watering my flowers and I did run out. (Laughs)”


Mike Broili says that kind of awareness is exactly what most Americans are
missing. He runs Living Systems Design, and he installed Bob Scheulen’s
filtration system. Broili says he learned how much water he uses when he
lived in a cabin in Alaska. He hauled his own water for 15 years:


“And when you have to carry your water, you become really
sensitized to how much you’re using and how you use it and where
you use it.”


Broili says you don’t need to live in a rainy climate to run your home on
rainwater:


“There’s enough water that lands on the roofs even in the Southwest
to supply their needs.”


Broili admits the rainwater catchment systems he builds are pricey: 1500 to
15,000 dollars. But he says his clients recognize the value of water:


“Of all of the water on the planet, and this is a water planet, 7/1000ths
of it is actually available for human consumption. That’s a tiny, tiny,
tiny portion.”


Broili says as the population grows, pretty soon the only affordable way to
get water will be from the sky.


For the Environment Report, I’m Ann Dornfeld.

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Ten Threats: Concrete Shores

  • Hardened shorelines protect buildings, roads, and homes, but many developers say a more natural method should be used. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Along many Great Lakes cities, long concrete or stone seawalls protect property against
wind and wave erosion. It’s a hardening of the shoreline that some people say is
necessary to protect expensive real estate. But some scientists and environmentalists say
it’s part of one of the ‘Ten Threats to the Great Lakes. They’re worried those concrete
seawalls are not only hurting the environment… in the long run, they’re hurting the
economy. Lynette Kalsnes has this report:

Transcript

In our series ‘Ten Threats to the Great Lakes,’ we’ve been looking at how humans make
changes that affect the health of the lakes. Lester Graham is our guide through the series.
He says the next report shows how far we’ll go to try to manage nature:


Along many Great Lakes cities, long concrete or stone seawalls protect property against
wind and wave erosion. It’s a hardening of the shoreline that some people say is
necessary to protect expensive real estate. But some scientists and environmentalists say
it’s part of one of the ‘Ten Threats to the Great Lakes. They’re worried those concrete
seawalls are not only hurting the environment… in the long run, they’re hurting the
economy. Lynette Kalsnes has this report:


(waves lapping against concrete wall)


In the middle of a miles-long concrete shoreline, there’s a tiny beach. Steve Forman points
toward a small bluff at the base of a tree. The professor of earth and environmental sciences at
the University of Illinois at Chicago says the sand, grass and dunes help soften the impact of
waves and rain.


“This kind of relief is what you’d see in many natural coastlines, a coastline like this can
accommodate change better than one that’s been concreted up.”


Just feet away, the concrete picks back up, like a stark white runway that bisects the land and the
lake. Concrete revetments like these in Chicago are a familiar sight in urban areas across the
Great Lakes.


Roy Deda is with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps manages much of the
construction on public shorelines. Deda says hardening the shore is one way of protecting against
erosion.


“Where hardening of the shoreline is important and used, is where you have an existing
community in an urban area like Chicago. You have a lot of development in place already, and
basically you’re protecting what’s been built over a long history.”


Deda says it protects property. But scientist Steve Forman says using concrete walls comes at a
cost: the destruction of natural systems that are often helpful.


Forman says wetlands and stream valleys normally act like a sponge to absorb high lake levels.
They also release some of the water back when lake levels are low. Forman says concrete can’t
buffer those fluctuations.


“It makes the extremes potentially even more extreme in terms of lake level variations.”


So, when there’s a rainstorm, Forman says the water runs off the concrete quickly… instead of
being absorbed across sand or wetlands slowly.


He says the same thing is true for the water flowing into the lakes from rivers.


Discharge into rivers can go up by 50 times the amount it would if natural areas buffered the
rivers.


“Any time we change the landscape from its natural components, we also change the plumbing of
the Great Lakes. We change the way water is routed in and around and through the Great Lakes
as well.”


It’s not only rushing rivers and lake levels that cause problems.


When the shoreline is hardened… the wildlife and organisms that once lived there disappear.


Cameron Davis is with the Alliance for the Great Lakes. He says many rare species live in that
narrow ribbon where the land meets the water.


“When we harden the shorelines, we basically sterilize them in a lot of ways, because we’ve not
providing the kinds of habitat and cover that we need for many of them.”


And beyond the effect on wildlife… hardening the shoreline can also be a bad economic decision.


Steve Forman says permanent structures built near the shores are not as stable as they might seem
when lake levels are high and winter storms cause big waves that erode the land underneath them.


“When the lake levels go up, the erosion rates are just phenomenal…what you see are hanging
stairs everywhere, instead of stairs that take you down to the beach, they’re hanging over the lake,
basically.”


That’s why scientists and planners are taking action. The Alliance for the Great Lakes’ Cameron
Davis is calling on planners to balance protecting the shoreline … with preserving ecology.


“Frankly I don’t think shoreline planning across the region is that great. There really is no single
unifying policy we’re all using to guide what our shorelines ought to look like.”


He’s hoping that some cities will experiment with restoring natural areas along their shorelines…
He says we need to see if in the long run, nature can do a better job of protecting the shores.


For the GLRC, I’m Lynette Kalsnes.

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