64 TECHNICAL
usual rain, coupled with higher than normal temperatures, drought quickly followed.
Unlike a dense urban environment, drought conditions in a state such as Montana can have an outsized effect on the local economy, particularly on key businesses like agriculture and tourism, with impacts ranging from the failure of spring crops to truncating access to parks and other recreational amenities because of wildfires.
Temperatures in Montana have risen earlier in the summer and at times sharply, causing difficulties in monitoring soil moisture. In 2017, the town of West Glacier received 11 inches of rain above its average of 40 inches, and still saw wildfire-related evacuations in the summer, due in part to Montana’ s second-worst fire season on record.“ When people hear about a global average increase of two degrees, it doesn’ t sound like much,” Downey says,“ but in some areas, that global average conceals much greater local changes.”
When learning about BBC stories citing Miami as one of the world’ s cities likely to run out of water, local officials were surprised, but not because there wasn’ t already acute awareness about the need for water conservation in Southern Florida. According to the Miami-Dade County website,“ It may seem odd that South Florida would have to worry about‘ not enough’ water,” its website reads.“ After all, we get about five feet of rain during any given year! Some places in the country would take a decade to see that much water.”
The city’ s drinking water is provided entirely by wells, which feed five treatment plants. The groundwater that flows in the Biscayne Aquifer benefits from natural filtration; however, in 2015, the state legislature voted to authorise funds for alternative water projects. According to Doug Yoder, deputy director of the Miami-Dade Water and Sewer Department, where other cities were facing water shortages because poor planning and overdevelopment were surpassing the ability of municipalities to deliver water, Miami faces issues related to the potential of salt water intrusion.“ It’ s an apple to oranges comparison,” Yoder says.
In 2007, per capita water usage in Miami was 155 gallons per person per day, or 587 litres, substantially higher than the current goal in Cape Town. The city set a 20-year goal to reduce overall consumption by 20 million gallons a day.
“ Our objective is to reduce per capita water consumption as much as we can,” Yoder says, citing the fact that two-thirds of Miami’ s water comes in the‘ wet’ season from May to October. Yoder says that the trends have been encouraging so far, with current consumption down to 140 gallons per person per day.
Miami-Dade has been strongly advocating for the use of reclaimed water to reduce discharge and ease pressures on the drinking water supply. The domestic wastewater can be put to a variety of uses, including irrigating golf courses, flushing toilets, and augmenting wetlands. Yoder says that the regional agencies that regulate water use permits have been imposing restrictions, including limiting the frequency of irrigation to two days a week, and requiring building codes to incorporate ultra-low flow fixtures. Technological advances have improved the ability of the city to detect and repair leaks.
“ Due to conservation, low-flow fixtures, more dense development patterns, and immigration and development slowdowns during the recession, we are currently about 40mgd below where we thought we would be in 2007,” Yoder says.“ We currently produce about 320mgd on average. We have deferred some planned water supply capital projects as a result of the decline in water demand.”
On a more national level, the Environmental Protection Agency“ actively monitors the US Drought Monitor( http:// droughtmonitor. unl. edu /) and provides resources to help water utilities become more resilient to drought,” according to an EPA spokesperson. On its website, the EPA offers a map of drought conditions, organised into seven regions and accompanied by a week’ s look forward.
Also available from the EPA is the Drought Response and Recovery Project for Water Utilities. In addition to offering strategies for identifying alternative sources of water and managing customers’ water demands downward, this website includes six case studies“ describing the experiences of small and medium-sized drinking water utilities that successfully responded to drought.”
For its part, IAPMO has also published its own Drought Toolkit: A Community Guide to Achieving Water Efficiency Today, available on its website for use by city councils, state construction boards, and local planning and development departments at http:// www. iapmo. org / Drought _ Toolkit / Pages / default. aspx.
In Cape Town, the word Limberg uses to describe the city’ s response is‘ resilience’. Cape Town“ has adopted a stance where reduced rainfall and increased climatic uncertainty are our new normal,” she says, making resilience“ a cornerstone of future operations. The resilience approach is one based on the diversification of our water mix and one where we increasingly rely to a lesser degree on surface water from dams. This unprecedented drought has shown us that we need to become tougher to absorb climatic shocks and to thrive despite extreme events.” PA
September 2018 Volume 24 I Number 7 www. plumbingafrica. co. za