City leaders evaluate surprising ideas for water conservation

Paul Robbins said he had two main goals when he presented his water conservation ideas to the Resource Management Commission this month. “First is to convey a sense of urgency,” he said. “Austin is as little as 15 years and one bad drought away from dry lakes and a water crisis. This is not science fiction, and water efficiency is the best alternative we have.”

Robbins, a City Hall regular and the commission’s vice chair, said his second goal was to identify areas of lost potential in existing conservation strategies. He said he aimed to address a “sense of complacency that since some of our water conservation programs have been successful, there is little room to improve.” He added later that he wanted to acknowledge Austin Water’s successes as well as their challenges.

Austin has seen recent decreases in per-capita water use per day. Robbins credited this partly to the water utility’s conservation efforts and partly to Austin Water’s increasing rates and investments. He was critical of Austin’s controversial Handcox Water Treatment Plant, which is scheduled for upgrades. “In a very real sense, the high cost of the plant became a kind of a conservation device discouraging consumption,” he said.

A spokesperson for Austin Water told the Austin Monitor that the Handcox plant is needed for the city to maintain a minimum of 235 million gallons per day combined available capacity from its treatment plants. This goal was established to bolster Austin’s resilience during extreme weather events.

Robbins started his recommendations by targeting Austin’s commercial irrigation rates. He compared Austin to other large Texas cities which charge high premiums for this type of irrigation (ranging from 12-122 percent). “Austin supposedly has a slight premium during the summer, but when the cost to the monthly base fee was averaged in, there was actually a summer discount of 2 percent (for commercial irrigation),” Robbins said. He also recommended the city implement rebates for commercial landscape retrofits, like the rebates that exist for residential areas. He noted that commercial landscapes use an average of nine times as much water as residential landscapes.

Additionally, he suggested maximizing existing commercial inspection programs that mandate periodic inspections for car washes and cooling towers. He said the city can bring in more revenue by enforcing fines when the inspections discover violations.

According to Robbins, 12.5 percent of Austin’s leaked water in 2023 came from outdated iron and polybutylene pipes. He suggested that more of Austin’s 3800 miles of water piping should be replaced.

“Massive replacement… is not cost effective in the literal sense unless it’s viewed on a 100-year timeline,” he said. “Pipes can last more than a century.”

Robbins wants to implement rebates for businesses to convert to more efficient commercial laundry and dishwashing machines, estimating that there are 10,000 of these machines in Austin. Robbins is also a proponent of water-saving toilet replacements. He said around 140,000 outdated, water-wasting toilets remained in Austin in 2012, when a prior rebate effort by Austin Water was abandoned.

The report also highlighted some existing strategies that Robbins believes have great potential and can be improved. Austin Water’s “Bucks for Business” commercial rebate program yielded a significant uptick in 2024, with 24 million gallons of savings — six times more than the previous three years combined. “Adding more staff and third party vendors that package conservation retrofits have helped get this extra savings,” he said. Additionally, Austin’s Building Code requires six inches of soil to be placed in disturbed areas of new residential landscapes. Robbins likened the water retention effect of the additional soil to a sponge. He believes this requirement can be better enforced or expanded.

Robbins also said there was more conservation potential in Austin’s reclaimed water system. “At its full potential, reclaimed water could supply about 764,000 more Austinites,” he told the commission. He recommended funding the expansion of the system by supplying reclaimed water to large consumers first, like Samsung, and picking up other customers along the way.

Finally, Robbins highlighted what he described as a “dearth” of local information related to local conservation efforts, including a need for updated public maps of the existing reclaimed water system.

The commission seemed to be generally receptive to these ideas. After a brief procedural discussion, Chair Charlotte Davis suggested Robbins draft a recommendation for the body to vote on before moving the ideas to the City Council or the water utility. “I’ll be happy to draw something up,” he said.

Council Member Ryan Alter, who chairs the Council’s Climate, Water, Environment, and Parks committee, told the Monitor he appreciated Robbins’ efforts.

“Right now, nearly half of our water is used for irrigation and much of that is for commercial irrigation,” he said. “We must get serious about conservation, and the best way to do that is simple: make it pay to save water, and make it costly to waste it. If you’re careful and responsible, you should see that on your bill. If you’re wasting thousands of gallons to keep a lawn green in August, that shouldn’t come cheap. And if you’re a business that wants to replace water waste with efficient equipment, we should help you do that.”

A representative for Austin Water said that six of Robbins’ strategies overlap with initiatives that are already planned or in progress as part of Austin’s updated Water Forward and Conservation plans, which the City Council adopted in November. “These include efforts to expand reclaimed water use through the Go Purple Program, supporting landscape transformation, and increasing overall conservation measures,” they added.

The spokesperson told the Monitor that Austin Water will be reaching out to Robbins to discuss items for possible consideration in future updates to Austin’s Water Forward, Conservation and Drought Contingency Plans.

Photo made available through a Creative Commons license.

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