The Rocky Mountian Institute in collaboration with Planning and Management Consultants, Ltd., reviewed existing water use, water conservation, and alternative supplies on the Coconino Plateau (Flagstaff and surrounding areas). The study suggests water efficiency, wastewater reuse, graywater reuse, and rainwater harvesting measures and implementation strategies appropriate for the region.
The study reviews how water is provided and used for residential, commercial, municipal, and industrial purposes on non-reservation lands of the Coconino Plateau. In addition, it describes and evaluates water conservation activities in the study area, and summarizes current and anticipated implementation of alternative supply systems. The cities and towns considered include the following:
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Bellemont Doney Park (including Timberline, Fernwood, Cosnino, Winona) |
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Flagstaff |
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Flagstaff Ranch |
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Forest Highlands |
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Fort Valley |
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Grand Canyon Village |
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Kachina Village |
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Mountainaire |
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Page |
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Parks |
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Red Lake |
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Tusayan |
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Valle |
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Williams |
The RMI reports the total water demand in the study area amounted to roughly 5,842 million gallons, or 17,930 acre-feet in 2000. Water use is predominantly residential and commercial. Because of the strong tourist-oriented economy of the region, hotels and other tourist services are significant portions of water demand in many communities.
Parks, golf courses and other community landscapes are substantial water users in Flagstaff, Page, Williams and the gated communities of Forest Highlands and Flagstaff Ranch.
Irrigation of private landscapes in most communities of the study area appears to be somewhat reduced, compared to more urban areas of the southwestern U.S. In the more rural communities, substantial numbers of homes have no irrigated landscape.
Industrial and institutional (e.g., university, hospital, etc.) uses are substantial only in Flagstaff. Water use in the study area varies significantly from season to season.
Landscape irrigation, seasonal home occupancy and tourist traffic result in substantially higher water use in the summer than in winter. For most communities, demand in the peak summer month is about 1.5 to 2.5 times greater than in the low winter month.
Many communities in the study area rely on ground water for most or all of their water supply. A few communities, notably Bellemont and Fort Valley, have access to perched aquifers at a depth of a few hundred feet. Well depths in other locations are much deeper, from 600–1,100 feet in the southeast (Mountainaire and Kachina Village), to over 3,000 feet in the west and north (Williams, Valle and Tusayan). Drilling deep wells is costly (over $1 million per well) and risky. Groundwater pumping has also raised concerns over potential impacts on the seeps and springs along the south rim of the Grand Canyon that are supplied by regional aquifers.
Three study area communities use surface water. Page relies entirely on surface water
from Lake Powell, though the city is about to develop its first groundwater wells. Williams was
entirely reliant on surface water until a few years ago. Its five reservoirs are unreliable in
extended dry periods. Williams now has three producing wells. Flagstaff also uses surface water.
In wet years Lake Mary has provided as much as 70 percent of the city’s water supply. In most
years it provides less, and has come close to drying up in a few years. Page and Williams treat
most of their surface supplies for potable purposes and use some raw surface water for golf
course irrigation. Flagstaff treats all of its surface water for potable uses.
Rainwater harvesting is another important alternative supply. A five-acre Hypalon catchment basin at the Grand Canyon airport in Tusayan provides virtually all the potable water used by the airport complex and a dozen nearby homes. This system meets 6 percent of the total water demand in Tusayan. A second notable system is under construction at Flagstaff Ranch. It will use a French drain (a trench filled with gravel and bottomed with a perforated pipe to capture drainage) to divert local pavement and subsurface runoff to a holding pond for golf course irrigation. It is likely that a number of individual homes in the study area, particularly in water hauling locales, practice rooftop rainwater harvesting, but the contribution of these systems cannot be easily quantified. In addition to increased rainwater harvesting and expanded use of centralized wastewater facilities to reclaim water, the future will likely see onsite wastewater treatment and graywater reuse making contributions to local water supplies. The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) has recently enacted regulatory changes that will make use of onsite wastewater and graywater supplies more permissible and less costly. The potential for alternative supplies to meet an increasing portion of total water demand in the study area is significant and merits further study.
According to this study, Flagstaff has the most extensive and notable water efficiency and conservation program. Its efforts are commensurate with those of other similarly sized and situated water utilities. Flagstaff’s educational programs—e.g., televised public service announcements, newspaper inserts and school programs—also benefit other Coconino County communities by raising conservation consciousness beyond the city limits as well as within. Williams has recently made important strides in building an efficiency and conservation program. Page, for its size and concern over adequacy of current supplies for future growth, is remarkable for not having implemented a serious water efficiency and conservation program. In most other communities, conservation rate structures, or simply the high price of water, provide the main motivating factor for customers to implement water efficiency measures or practice water-wise behaviors. It appears that high prices have become a conservation tool mostly by default, because of the high cost of providing water in this region, rather than as a conscious water conservation strategy. Only Doney Park Water Company (DPW), Flagstaff and Kachina Village have what the study team considers to be effective conservation rate structures.
With a few exceptions, active intervention to increase water efficiency by local water providers or planning and building officials is very limited in the study area. Active intervention includes incentives such as rebates, giveaways and bill credits; regulations on fixtures, landscape, irrigation systems, etc.; audits and technical assistance; system measures such as ongoing distribution leak testing; and other programs. Even educational programming—a fairly low-cost, but largely passive approach—is nonexistent or thin in many study area communities.
The county and some local governments do have in place some regulations on fixtures. However, in almost all cases, these regulations are vague—they simply require “low flow” fixtures, without specifying flow rates. Thus, local plumbing standards, unless more vigorously specified and enforced on a case-by-case basis in development reviews, simply default to the national plumbing standards in place since 1994. Those standards no longer represent best available technology.
Much more could be done in the study area with respect to water-efficient technologies and water-wise behaviors and landscaping choices. The potential for study area stakeholders to produce significant additional water savings in existing development, and to reduce the water demand of new development, is significant. This report identifies 23 efficiency and conservation measures—technologies and management practices that reduce water demand—that are probably appropriate in the study area. Additional industry-specific measures would be available in the commercial, institutional and industrial sectors. The report also identifies 20 applicable implementation techniques—ways of encouraging or requiring end-users to adopt efficiency and conservation measures. These measures and programs should be further studied for their suitability and water savings. Some are appropriate for implementation by individual water systems, while others could be mounted through regional cooperation.
