"We are truly humbled that the City of Santa Fe has recognized the WERS development team," said Mike Collignon, Executive Director of the Green BuilderĀ® Coalition. "It's a testament to the extensive work everyone has conducted to bring a practical water efficiency program to areas looking for assistance."
The WERS program is a performance-based, interactive water conservation tool for new and existing homes. It uses a scoring scale of zero to 100, with zero being the most desirable. The program analyzes indoor water usage, as well as rainwater and greywater usage. The City of Santa Fe has passed a resolution calling for its addition to their green building code. The New Mexico legislature and Governor recently added a water efficiency requirement to their sustainable building tax credit and will look to the WERS program for assistance. Numerous communities and green building programs are looking to utilize this innovative program.
At last count, I have 50 manuals on my website! A majority of these are for the US and I am sure I don't have them all. When rainwater catchment was first reappearing on the
scene as a viable water source, these guidelines were clearly necessary
to educate and provide guidance for the masses. But given that was over
two decades ago, can't we stop creating new ones? Read full article >>
The Rio Grande River near Isleta Pueblo south of Albuquerque (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Santa Fe is in the midst of one of the worst droughts in recorded history and city officials have announced that they're considering new water conservation measures. The above-normal precipitation we experienced in recent decades does not seem likely to return any time soon. So where do we go from here?
Santa Fe water officials and folks living here have already done
a splendid job reducing the gallons used per capita per day (GPCD). This number
when we first started recording it back in 1998 was 168 and it is now around 109,
a stunning decrease of over 35 percent.
Historically, Santa Fe has maintained a low GPCD that other cities have struggled to achieve (e.g., Las Vegas 222, Phoenix 185 and Tucson 177 GPCD). Our historically low GPCD is most likely due to a culture of water conservation that discourages lush landscapes in our high desert environment. We also don't have much agriculture or industries that require a lot of water within the city limits that would drive up our water consumption numbers.
Albuquerque in comparison was at a whopping 251 GPCD in 1995 when the city started its water conservation efforts. They are now at 150, a 39 percent decrease.
How to continue to drive down the GPCD is the the challenge. Read More >>
"We've had the water tested and it has passed with flying colors. People could do this simpler by using the village water and coming up with a lot better water by bringing it in and filtering it at certain stages to take out certain mineral and additives, and then running it through an ultraviolet light system. The unit we had installed was developed for NASA and Carl Parsons happened to buy directly from the designer."
"We both feel better, but maybe it is psychological," Tom said.
"The last 14 years on the Colorado River, she says, have been the driest years since records began being kept in the late 1800's, and based on tree ring studies among the driest 14 year periods in the last 1,200 years.
"If you say climate change doesn't have an impact, you're smoking something," Castle concludes.
The time for trying to prove we are in a record drought is over. It is time to start moving forward to a New Normal.