Gray-water ordinance good policy

By Rodney Glassman

Water conservation will always be needed in Tucson. With Arizona sitting at the bottom of the Colorado River and our city located at the bottom of the Central Arizona Project, as shortages are declared on the Colorado River it is our city that will be dramatically impacted.

The City Council has committed to requiring gray-water plumbing on all new residential construction. The time has come to turn our commitment into reality.

Gray water, which is defined and regulated by the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, is created from residential water uses such as baths, showers, washing machines, and bathroom sinks and is mostly suited for the subsurface irrigation of non-edible landscape plants. It differs from black water, which is the name used to describe water flushed from toilets and water from kitchen sinks, garbage disposals and dishwashers.

According to the Tucson Water Department, more than 45 percent of the water used in single-family residences is for outdoor landscaping. Yet the average Tucson home can produce enough gray water to satisfy its own irrigation needs for a yard planted with native species.

This past spring, the City Council created a stakeholder group with members ranging from the Tucson Association of Realtors and the Arizona Builders Alliance to the Tucson Audubon Society and Sierra Club. For more than eight months, the group met regularly, receiving presentations, exploring concepts and identifying the best ways to create a policy ensuring that all new homes would be “gray-water ready.”

Yet when the group’s “draft” ordinance was presented to the City Council, the Southern Arizona Home Builders Association, which helped draft the policy, spoke against the concept.

In a guest opinion in the Arizona Daily Star, a representative of the home builders wrote, “Well-intentioned members of the Tucson City Council want to mandate a requirement for gray-water systems within the city limits. The logic is that homeowners, at a later date at their expense, might install the additional piping and hardware to complete the gray-water system.”

The council couldn’t have summed it up better ourselves.

After meeting with members of the council, SAHBA wrote, “We endorse the concept of gray-water harvesting and are officially removing our public and formal opposition.”

Organizations from across the community agree that “plumbing” for gray-water systems places conservation firmly in the hands of the homeowner, where it belongs.

While we must be sensitive to the fact that there is a crisis in the homebuilding industry, the City Council has a responsibility to ensure that the new construction of today facilitates the green living of tomorrow.

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Source: The Arizona Daily Star

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