From The Palm Springs Desert Sun (Ian James):
Deputy Interior Secretary Mike Connor said some of the White House’s objectives include encouraging more recycling of wastewater and promoting investment in water treatment and desalination technologies.
“From a technology standpoint, the administration views this as similar to the great strides that it’s made in the renewable energy area, where we set goals of reducing the costs of solar energy,” Connor told The Desert Sun in an interview by phone last week.
“I think in the area of water, given the impacts of climate change, the issues associated with long-term droughts, questions about sustainability, we’re striving to make and promote those types of investments to help us build resiliency in the long term,” Connor said during a visit to Las Vegas, where he attended a conference on water law.
The White House announced its new “water innovation strategy” last month and plans a summit on March 22, which is World Water Day, focusing on potential solutions to the country’s water challenges. The White House said in a fact sheet about the initiative that with improvements in efficiency, better management practices and more widespread adoption of water reuse technology, “we have potential to considerably reduce water usage by 33 percent.”
Federal officials said that would bring the U.S. more in line with other industrialized nations and could also reduce the country’s carbon emissions by decreasing the amounts of electricity needed to treat and pump water.
Another of the administration’s aims is to encourage research and development to bring down the costs of recycling wastewater and desalinating seawater.
“The overall goal is to achieve ‘pipe parity,’ where you could take these technologies, make available good quality water supplies that can compete with other water supplies,” Connor said, “so that we’re expanding the available resources for water consumption while also promoting efficiency wherever we can.”
During a Dec. 15 meeting at the White House, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced the creation of new Natural Resources Investment Center, which will be responsible for encouraging private investment in infrastructure projects and facilitating local water-exchange deals in the West.
“We recognize there are limits to the resources that the federal government can apply towards these water resource challenges,” Connor said, “so we’re trying to promote more public-private partnerships.”
One big reason federal officials are confident it’s possible to reduce the nation’s water footprint is that it’s been done before. Due to improvements in efficiency and conservation, total water use in the United States has decreased in recent years even as the population has grown. Researchers with the U.S. Geological Survey have estimated that the country’s water use in 2010 was about 13 percent less than 2005 – the lowest level since before 1970.