A program in Austin, TX, spurs water conservation practices.
Rights and RainfallPeople in Austin have always had a special appreciation for water. “Every summer around the beginning of July things start to get dry,” says Dan Strub, Water Conservation Program Coordinator for the city. “You can go for six to eight weeks with very little rain. That’s something folks around here are conditioned to expect.” But he cautions, “Sometimes we don’t get the spring rains or we don’t get the fall rains, and that really impacts the lake level. Water is a valuable commodity; it must not be taken lightly. Austin is a growing town, doubling every 25 years from as far back as anybody can remember. With that growth comes more demand for water.”
Austin is the major municipality in the Lower Colorado River Basin, and there is growth all around. According to Strub, that growth has spurred new competition for water. Rice farmers downstream of Austin also have a claim on the river basin’s resources, he says, “with very senior water rights.” Strub says that the more distant municipalities, “such as San Antonio to the south, and a couple of other cities to the north, that don’t have quite as much water,” are also a consideration; growth in these areas could place an even tighter squeeze on the regional water supply. As to where Austin might turn when its supplies start to run low, Strub says the options are limited, and, besides, “Texas water law makes inter-basin transfer very difficult.”
In light of the rising costs and increasing demand for water, Austin entered into a contract with the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA), the state entity that manages water rights in the Texas Colorado River Basin. Under the terms of the agreement, finalized in 1999, Austin prepays for water above the run of the river water rights of 150,000 acre-feet, up to 201,000 acre-feet. However, once the city’s water consumption reaches the 200,000 acre-feet-per-year threshold for two years running, the municipality will be required to pay market rates for all water consumed above 150,000 acre-feet. Strub says Austin, which currently consumes approximately 170,000 acre-feet of water per year, faces “a projected hit of between $8 million to $13 million.”
Conservation At Home
Influenced by these realities, the City’s Water Conservation Program, which began in 1983, has evolved into a familiar feature of public life. Among other measures, Austin has adopted a Water Use Management Ordinance, which includes three stages of seasonal water restrictions to promote conservation under extremely dry conditions. When in effect these regulations comprise: prohibitions on daytime watering of commercial properties, promotion of voluntary residential watering schedules, and efficiency standards for outdoor non-essential water use.
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Photo: Freescale Semiconductor |
Austin introduced further conservation measures in 1991, with plumbing code changes, requiring a maximum flush volume of 1.6 gallons per flush for toilets sold within the city. Two incentive programs, the Free Toilet Program, and the Toilet Rebate Program, were initiated in 1993, to help customers replace older, water-wasting toilets with new, more efficient models. Both toilet programs also require participants to install water-efficient showerheads, which are provided free of charge by the city. Additional programs offering incentives for homeowners to install water efficient appliances have been accompanied by educational efforts and regulatory measures. Many of these programs are widely accepted with broad participation among in the residential sector.
Industry Joins the Cause
According to Strub, the city’s commercial, industrial, and institutional sectors account for about 34% water consumption year round. But, Strub says extending the Conservation Division’s efforts to address inefficient water use in the commercial sector has been an ongoing challenge. The Water Conservation Division’s Commercial Industrial and Institutional (ICI) Rebate Program was initiated to address this challenge.
As an essential production input, water is often far from a discretionary item in commercial operations. Yet, in spite of the central role of water in production, Strub says most commercial processes “are not designed to be terribly water efficient,” but Austin’s rebate program has begun to change that. Encouraged by the city’s rebate initiatives, area businesses have begun to explore innovative water efficiency strategies as a means to improve their environmental performance, while enhancing their profitability.
Complex Processes, Simple Formula
Processes may vary from business to business, but the Austin ICI Rebate Program is based upon a simple formula. “For every gallon the user saves on a theoretical peak-use day—for instance, a hot, dry summer day—we give them a one-dollar rebate, up to $30,000,” Strub says. “For the next 20,000 gallons saved, we give them 50 cents a gallon, until they max out with a one-time, per-project, rebate of $40,000. Participating companies may develop any number of discrete projects, for which they may be reimbursed by the city, up to a maximum of $40,000 per project.”
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Photo: Freescale Semiconductor |
| A clean room environment for the fabrication of silicon wafers |
According to Strub, the program recently provided such a rebate to Freescale Inc., the global maker of semi conductors, spun off from Motorola a few years ago. The company operates two silicon wafer manufacturing facilities in Austin, and water is an essential input at multiple points in the chip fabrication processes. With $6 billion plus in revenue, the company produces the 8-inch round silicon wafers that are used in a wide array of electronic components. “The chips are imprinted with patterns using a lithographic etching process similar to a photographic process,” explains Glaston Ford, company spokesperson. “The process takes place in a clean room environment, 100-times cleaner than a hospital operating room. It’s an extremely complex manufacturing environment with extremely small feature sizes and patterns, so, it is of paramount importance to maintain process control, and quality control over every aspect of the manufacturing environment.”
The work requires ultra-pure water, which, in actuality, is none other than city water purified by Freescale, using the company’s own reverse osmosis (RO) technology. “Water is vital to the process; you can’t operate a chip plant without a robust stable water supply,” Ford says. For proprietary reasons, Ford is not able to divulge specifics, but he says, on average, a wafer fabricator might use “in the range of 400 to 2,000 gallons of water per minute,” adding that a wafer plant operates at this capacity 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Typically, after being used for single purpose in the fabrication process, this water is customarily treated as waste, neutralized onsite, and discharged to the city sewer system.
Reject or Save
“The plant went online in 1990 with quite a few recycle and reclaiming processes engineered into the initial design,” says Cindy Ortega, an engineer at Freescale, who works on operational issues. However, she adds, the company is always on the lookout for new efficiencies.
Armondo Garza is a mechanical engineer with Freescale, who helped to develop the reuse initiative. “Because water is at such a premium in this area of the country, we began to look at our waste processes, and tried to figure out where we could either reclaim the wastewater, or recycle the water we had used,” he says. “One of the first opportunities we discovered was in the reverse osmosis process. We would take the RO reject stream that previously would have gone into industrial waste, and put it through another stage of purification, and send it back into our ultra-pure water process.” Garza says Freescale's site has a strong cost-reduction program. “We constantly evaluate projects to determine which ones are going be funded,” he adds. “We evaluate every project based on ROI [Return On Investment]; we evaluate the cost of the project in every single detail that we can, and determine how much we can save, compared to other projects. This project turned out to be one of the good candidates for us, and it was quickly funded for implementation."
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Photo: Jody Horton |
| Aerated bath fixtures and water-efficient showerheads provide savings, while maintaining a superior comfort level for guests. |
According to Ford, the RO reject stream reuse project was a good bet, yielding a return on investment within a span of six months. That return, he says, was derived from a combination of savings from lowered water consumption, and reimbursements and rebates from the city of Austin. Garza says the city is fairly vigilant in managing its rebate program, but encouraging. “They were there with us from the beginning to make sure we were saving what we stated we would save, and that we did spend what we said,” he says. “Once we were able to validate everything, they provided the rebate.... we were eligible for their maximum rebate. The savings can be significant. If you’ve got an operation using upwards of 400 gallons per minute, along with the wastewater fees associated with disposal, you can easily start saving tens of thousands of dollars over the course of a year.”
Cooling It
According to Ford, there are multiple opportunities for savings. For example, he says, managing the heat, generated by Freescale’s intensive manufacturing operations, presented another conservation prospect.
Garza describes the procedure. At completion of the lithographic stage of the fabrication process, the chips go through a rinse stage, once again using ultra-pure water. He says that, without too much trouble, the effluent from this rinse can be cleaned up enough for another use at the plant. The facility’s cooling towers became a prime destination for this spent rinse water. Once there, it is evaporated off, helping to control the temperature of buildings and equipment.
Ortega says, although the water requires some purification, and accommodating the retrofit of the facility put space at a premium, the application has proven to be a good alternative to purchasing dedicated streams for the cooling towers. Further, she says, by evaporating the spent process water in the towers, “we get a lot of savings on wastewater discharge fees.” According to Ortega, in the plant’s modified configuration, reused-process water provides virtually all of the cooling towers’ needs during all but the hottest months of the year. When cooling needs exceed the capacity of this recycled-process water, the company makes a supplemental purchase from the utility.
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Photo: Jody Horton |
| The hotel’s commercial washing machines reuse the final rinse water on the next load. |
Ford says Freescale’s efficiency efforts go beyond the manufacturing side of the operation. “We have a lot of uses for water, not just for the fabrication processes; we have boilers to maintain temperature year-round; and we use water to maintain the relative humidity specifications in the clean rooms. Not only that, we also have office space, which uses water for multiple purposes. Put all that together, and we’re a pretty large user of water.” He says that in the facility's restrooms “most of our faucets and toilets have sensors which reduce flow," and that, managers in “Facilities and Operations are currently considering installing low-flow urinals."
Freescale is not alone among high-tech firms in the Austin area, to practice water efficiency. According to Strub, the high-tech firms Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), and Samsung have also each participated in the city’s rebate programs. Samsung received its rebate for building a system to reuse their RO reject water for landscape irrigation, whereas AMD received Austin’s Excellence in Water Conservation Award, for installing a system to recover rainwater from the roof drains and elsewhere at their facility for site-landscaping irrigation. AMD’s rainwater harvesting system is estimated to save 5,000 gallons of water per day. Garza feels the need for the city’s ICI rebate program extends beyond the high-tech sector. “Anybody that uses water can participate,” he says.
Showers and Flowers
Strub believes the hospitality sector is yet another industry poised to make a significant contribution to the city’s water efficiency goals. “They can replace a couple of hundred toilets at a time—easily,” he says. But, he adds, “We have not had major buy-in from the industry.” He also says he is eager to see greater participation from area hotels. “If we could get the entire industry to follow suit there would be a much greater savings.”
Habitat Suites, a 96-suite, garden-style complex, which is a 10-minute drive from downtown, is among a number of area hotels taking a proactive stance on water conservation. Habitat Suite’s General Manager and Operator Natalie Marquis, is, by her own admission, an enthusiastic proponent of Austin’s Water Conservation Rebate Programs. While it is now nationally honored as one of the most environmentally sound operations in the hospitality sector, Marquis says the property she runs “was not always so green.” Built in 1985, on a plot of three-and-a-half acres, the hotel grounds, she says, were originally planted with Boxwood Hedges and St. Augustine Grass, “neither native to the area, and both very consumptive of water and intensive chemical treatments.” Since that time, she says, the managing partners decided to stop using pesticides and began to adopt permaculture-landscaping practices. Over the course of about 10 years, “We removed all of the St. Augustine Grass and replaced it with smart plants for this area—things that are drought resistant.” In 1999, the hotel was awarded Texas’ most prestigious environmental honor: the Texas Excellence Award for Small Business.
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Photo: Jody Horton |
| Solar panels compete with native plants to provide cooling shade in summer |
According to Marquis, it was more than just landscaping, it was about “a way of being in the world that is restorative and sustains human life, and does so without the use of chemicals.” “We try to conserve wherever we use water,” she says. “It’s a “holistic approach to conserving water. As a hotel, we face a challenge. [Hotel guests] don’t use resources the way they do in their homes: They turn the air conditioners down; they leave the hot water running; they fill the bathtub three times—all of these things. Our goal has been to mitigate that by having the best technology in place, using very simple things like aerators on every single sink, and high-efficiency showerheads.”
She also says the big water hog in a hotel is the laundry. To reduce waste in this area, Habitat Suites installed a recycle kit on its 50-pound commercial washer. According to Marquis, commercial clothes washers typically use 60 gallons of water per load, in three cycles, using 20 gallons each. “The ‘recycle kit’ on our commercial washer saves the final rinse water for each load and reuses it for the first wash cycle of the next load, saving 20 gallons per load, and that cuts our water consumption by a third,” she says, adding that by installing the kit the hotel became eligible for Austin’s water efficiency rebate. “It was easy working with the city.”
After the contractor installed the recycle kit, which cost in the range of $3,200 to $3,600, Marquis worked closely with experts from the water utility’s Conservation Division. “They walked me through the entire rebate process.” In order to document water savings, city technicians outfitted the washer with a counter, and for about a month ticked off the frequency of wash loads. “They multiplied that figure by 12, and that by the 20 gallons saved per load, using the recycle kit.”
She says the utility calculated the water savings for the year at 350,000 gallons. “They cut me two checks: one for the recycle kit [for which she says the hotel was reimbursed in full], and they presented us with a check for over $1,000 for the water we would save throughout the year.” Though she was pleased to receive the check, Marquis finds the long-term payoff of the recycle kit more impressive still. “That’s saving on every load for the rest of our lives, so, that’s pretty cool.” Further, she says the recycle kit can be retrofitted to work with just about any commercial washing machine. “You don’t have to wait to do the right thing; you can just start doing it right now.”
Mutual Support
Reflecting on the City’s Water Conservation Program, Marquis says that she was given things for free, and the support provided by the Conservation Division was impressive. “They gave us showerheads; they gave us aerators; they had a toilet replacement program; and they reimbursed the cost of the washer recycle kit.”
Moreover, their support was hassle free. “When, from time to time, temporary replacements would be needed for faucet aerators—clogged due to the high lime content of the local water—I’d call them and say, ‘while we’re soaking the old ones, can you give me 180 new ones,’” Marquis says. “And they’d say sure. I’d go down and pick up 180 new ones, while soaking the old ones. No paperwork, nothing more than just signing for what I receive—but that’s it.”
Marquis views the City’s water efficiency programs as a form of partnership. “The way that it works is, the less water city customers use, the less water the city has to buy from LCRA at a very high rate. It’s less costly to give away these little aerators, and showerheads, and recycle kits on laundry machines than it is to buy those water rights. It’s a win-win all around. I spend less on my water bill; they don’t have to buy those water rights upstream.”
And, the effort can be miniscule. For instance, she says, installing the aerators is simple. “Take off the knob that comes with the faucet and screw on another one.” The customers experience is unchanged, she says. “The intensity of the flow is the same when you’re washing your hands; you feel the same force in the water coming out.” Marquis sees another rebate opportunity on the horizon. The hotel has plans in the permit stage to construct an underground cistern on the property, to capture and harvest rainwater for irrigation. “We had rain water running off our property that was just going down the drain, and that didn’t make a lot of sense.”
Economic Sense
Overall, Strub is pleased with the ICI Rebate Program. “The companies have been very positive; the only thing holding them back from doing more is their own budgeting processes. These things usually pay themselves back in short order—usually within two years and often much quicker.”
At Freescale, Ford says, “We view it as a matter of our responsibility to the communities we live in. Because we manufacture a lot of product, we are a large user of utilities; we have a responsibility to be as efficient with that as we can. It makes both economic sense and environmental sense.”
There is also a direct benefit to Austin’s Water Utility. According to Strub, for years Austin has wrestled with the prospect of adding new drinking water treatment capacity. “One of our tasks is to decrease the rate of increase in the demand for water, so we can put off the need for a new water treatment plant as long as possible.” Though he concedes that, in the face of continued growth, the new plant will likely prove inevitable, he says, “The longer we can put it off, the more money we save.”
The savings are significant. Strub says since 1999, Austin’s Water Efficiency Program has achieved savings of over 2.3 million gallons of water per day. Strub believes even greater savings are possible through wider participation in the ICI Rebate Program. “We’re working to improve our outreach, however, we’re not actively going out knocking on doors saying ‘let us take a look.’” But, he says the Conservation Division is available. “When a manager in a facility gets charged with the responsibility for process improvement, and they start looking at inputs, and one of the inputs is water, they call on us as the experts. We’re happy to come out and give them a hand.”