Land Use and Water Efficiency
Tagged: Land Use
Out here in the West they say “water is Gold.” That’s because new development cannot happen without it, and because all the cheap supplies of water were bought long ago. While there is a thriving private market in water rights, reliable water supplies are very expensive – and they get more expensive each year. That pushes private developers and local governments to try to squeeze the most out of whatever water rights they control. As a result, many larger western cities have Water Departments or Authorities devoted to estimating how much water will be needed to support future growth and how efficiently that water can be used. Many of those same cities, of course, have Planning Departments that are also planning for future growth. Perhaps surprisingly, however, land use planners sometimes ignore the water supply assumptions (“that will all be worked out at the subdivision stage”) or use growth assumptions significantly different from those being used by water supply planners. At the same time, water supply planners often do not know what land use mix and density assumptions are being used by the land use planners or how those assumptions will influence water demand.
Over the past few years, Clarion Associates has worked with Colorado local governments, the Keystone Policy Center, and the Pace Law School Land Use to try to improve coordination between these two crucial planning efforts and to integrate tools and incentives to improve water efficiency in new development. Here are some of the baseline findings and guidelines emerging from that work.
- Ensure that land use planners and water supply planners are using the same assumptions about land use patterns, intensities, and per unit water consumption rates for different types of development. This often requires continuous coordination, since the assumptions in both planning efforts can change frequently.
- The biggest water consumption savings seem to come from the “Big Four” initiatives:
- Ensure that the building code or water code includes aggressive requirements for water efficient appliances and fixtures
- Adopt a block billing rate structure for water – with baseline needs for a water efficient household priced reasonably but rates for those who exceed that level of consumption price significantly higher
- Restrict the amount of irrigated landscaping permitted in all new development by limiting the percentage of lot area that can be irrigated or by applying a “water budget” sufficient to support only that amount of irrigation. The limits can and should be different for different types of development.
- Allow and encourage development of small lot single-family, townhouse, and moderate density multi-family development. A number of studies show a significant correlation between lot size and water consumption per dwelling unit.
- Ensure that as new water efficiency measures are introduced the assumptions used by both land use and water supply planners are updated to ensure they remain as accurate as possible.
The following resources provide more information on these emerging best practices.
https://www.clarionassociates.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Keystone-Colorado-Water-Dialogue.pdf
https://www.keystone.org/our-work/environment/colorado-water-and-growth-dialogue/
https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/cowaterplan/integrating-water-land-use-planning
