By Kay Nolan
For WisBusiness.com
Creators of a newly developed Water Impact Index, which provides industries and communities with a “blue footprint” or “water footprint” analysis similar to carbon footprint analyses, say their data suggests Wisconsin should focus on conserving its water resources and should base future political and business decisions not only on how much water an industry or service uses directly, but on that industry or activity’s overall impact on water supplies.
Veolia Water North America, a water and wastewater management firm that partners with the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District, unveiled its Water Impact Index method on Monday at the Milwaukee Water Council’s annual Water Summit, attended by industry professionals.
Veolia completed its first “blue footprint” by analyzing Milwaukee’s municipal water cycle. Veolia spokesman Scott Edwards said a team of scientists and sustainability experts in Chicago and Paris spent six months analyzing data from MMSD, the city of Milwaukee, WeEnergies, and other water utilities in the Milwaukee area. But the firm hopes to promote the methodology to other businesses, and even envisions future labeling of products or services according to their water impact results. Businesses with desirable indexes could use that as a marketing tool or to prepare for possible federal environmental mandates and avoid penalties.
Veolia President and CEO Laurent Auguste said that in order to calculate the full impact of an industry or other human activity on water resources, it’s not enough to simply measure the volume of water consumed. The “blue footprint” method takes into account indirect water use, such as that needed to produce the industry’s energy needs. It also factors in the amount of pollution by an industry, which in effect, uses up local water by making it unusable. If the industry or activity requires water to be transported, the carbon footprint created by the transportation component is also factored in, as is the amount of “stress” placed on a water resource by an industry or activity.
The results can be surprising.
For example, Auguste said, a “blue footprint” analysis that compared the production of tomato sauce vs. peanut candy showed that tomatoes require far less water to grow than peanuts. Looking at strict volume use of water, a community might want to promote tomato crops over peanuts. However, because peanuts grow in forested areas where water is replenished by rain, the overall impact on water resources is the opposite, the study found. Tomato fields typically need irrigation, which drains local water supplies, and fertilization, which adds to the carbon footprint of the operation.
Auguste told business leaders that although past economic development has favored states with relatively low water resources compared with Wisconsin, that trend might turn around as water becomes more scarce.
He said a water impact study comparing California with Wisconsin at first showed that Wisconsin was drawing down more water per capita annually than California, in large part, because of Wisconsin’s heavy power plant production. But Auguste said a complete water impact analysis showed that because California’s water use creates far more stress on its water resources and because that state uses a lot of energy to transport water long distances, the actual negative water impact on California’s water resources was 50 times higher than Wisconsin’s.
The fragility of water as a natural resource should not be underestimated, he said.
“Milwaukee has been a pioneer in understanding freshwater as an asset,” he said. “It is the first city to be recognized by the United Nations for its action toward freshwater management.”
But factoring in the carbon footprint also matters, Auguste said, in promoting the Water Impact Index.
“From a resources perspective, we are about to witness the end of the world as we know it today,” he said. “Many experts estimate the global peak of oil production will be reached by 2015, which is basically tomorrow. We are very far from being able to replace oil with renewable energy. In the meantime, gas and coal will be the only alternatives to oil. This will mean more CO₂ emissions.”
In some ways, water is an even more limited resource, Auguste said, because unlike oil, water has no substitutes. “And unlike oil, transporting water in large quantities is not an option,” he said. Further, water resources can be depleted in two ways: through consumption and by pollution.
Auguste said the “blue footprint” analysis has already bolstered Veolia’s business decisions. He touted a plan by Veolia and MMSD to harness landfill gas at Milwaukee’s Jones Island sewage treatment plant to offset electricity use, a plan, he said, that has the potential to reduce the plant’s carbon footprint from energy use by 60% by 2031 and would also reduce the plant’s water impact index fourfold. The energy savings will be well worth the capital costs of the project, he said. Based on the impact study, Veolia will also step up efforts to reduce combined sewer overflows and develop wetlands to reduce flooding.
Other decisions may not be so cut and dried, he said. For example, a community has to weigh the benefits of reducing phosphorus in water with the increased carbon emissions created by the additional water treatment process.
“At the end of the day, this is a political decision,” he said, but said that a water impact analysis can be a useful tool.
