DENVER -- It's raining again in Maryland. And soon drought-weary residents will be shouting for the right to water their lawns again to their former emerald squishiness.
It's been raining here in Denver, too -- twice the normal summer rainfall. But water conservation efforts continue uninterrupted. Water authorities argue that conservation cuts consumers' bills, and avoids millions in spending on new dams, pipelines, pumping and treatment to slake the thirst of a growing population.
"Most people who live in this part of the world understand it [water] is a scarce commodity," says Robert Nagle, an engineer with Denver Water, which serves more than a million people.
Yet on the semi-arid high plains, where the skies typically deliver barely a third of Baltimore's average annual rainfall, there are no mandatory watering restrictions. Denver's lawns and fairways are green. Sprinklers hiss and sputter everywhere, and restaurants serve tall tumblers of water without being asked.
Conservation here takes another form. It's permanent, and it's voluntary, encouraged by financial incentives. And therein may lie some lessons for East Coast communities now chafing under mandatory watering bans.
Denver was pushed into its conservation programs by a severe drought in the 1970s, the federal rejection of a big new dam-and-reservoir project, and a court order issued after a losing fight over a new treatment plant. The programs are now entrenched at Denver Water, with a $2 million annual budget.
And it seems to be working. As the population served has climbed from 850,000 in 1980 to more than a million today, total water consumption has remained steady.
Among Denver's strategies:
Water rates that encourage conservation by charging more per gallon as consumption rises. In Baltimore, the more you use, the less you pay per gallon.
Water bills that reflect water's true costs. A typical Baltimore City family pays about $98 a quarter for water. But a Baltimore County family drinking water from the same system may pay less than $25 a quarter because sewer service and other water-related charges are buried in their annual tax bills.
Free, voluntary water audits. Denver Water has visited 13,000 homes -- 10 percent of the total it serves -- installing free low-flow shower heads and faucet aerators and inspecting lawn sprinkler systems. Inspectors show residents how to cut consumption and save money indoors and out.
Free repairs. Low-income families can have their leaks fixed and toilets replaced with free low-flow models.
Financial incentives. Commercial and industrial customers can get one-time cash rebates up to $20,000 for conservation measures that produce permanent water savings.
Education. Denver Water promotes water-stingy "xeriscape" landscaping with literature, advertisements and seminars for homeowners, landscapers, nursery operators and sprinkler contractors.
Long-term conservation in Baltimore, of course, would not look like Denver's. Baltimore averages 40 inches of rain a year compared with Denver's 13. Its reservoir system is normally robust, and property owners use far less water per capita than in Denver, where a quarter of every gallon is sprinkled on grass.
Reason to conserve
But the current drought has shown the Baltimore region is not invulnerable. Its population is growing, its reservoirs are losing capacity because of silt, and it is costly to pump and treat Susquehanna River water in a crisis. And no one knows whether the hot, dry weather of recent years is a passing cycle or long-term trend.
Maryland politicians can take a pass after the rains return, Nagle says. But "at some point in time they're going to have to bite the bullet, and the bullet becomes a very expensive one."
Conservation, by comparison, is a relatively cheap, immediate source of water that may avert the next emergency.
Denver Water took its first steps toward conservation in 1990, when it abandoned its old, unmetered flat-rate system, which billed residents for water based on the square footage of their property and the number of baths and bedrooms they had. "It didn't matter if you'd gone for a month with the hose running all day and all night," says Denver Water's conservation manager, Elizabeth V. Gardener.
The new rate structure charged residential customers higher rates for consumption above a "lifeline minimum" of 22,000 gallons during each two-month billing period. Today, Denver residents pay $1.36 per 1,000 gallons, a rate comparable to Baltimore's.
But after the first 22,000 gallons used during Denver's two-month billing period, the rate jumps to $1.63 per thousand. In Baltimore, after the first 37,400 gallons per quarter, the rate drops to $0.84 per thousand. Industrial water consumers get even deeper discounts for volume, so there is no incentive to conserve.
Financial incentive
Pam and Paul Roberts moved last year from Quebec to the Denver suburb of Littleton. "We were surprised at the lack of [water] restrictions here," she says. Their first water bill -- $114 for 50 days -- revealed how Denver gets people to conserve.
There are six people in the Roberts household. A teen-age daughter fond of long showers, a baby granddaughter making lots of dirty laundry and automatic lawn sprinklers helped push their most recent two-month bill to $140. Paul Roberts called it "horrendous," and accepted an offer from Denver Water for a free home water audit.
On Monday afternoon, Jerome Patterson, a gregarious, 50-year-old customer service field representative from Denver Water, arrived and installed water dams in every toilet tank to cut flush volumes by a half-gallon.
He also replaced all the Roberts' shower heads and sink aerators with free, low-flow models. One upstairs shower using seven gallons per minute was instantly cut to 2.3 gallons per minute. Pam Roberts held her hand in the stream. "It certainly feels like there's plenty of water coming out of there," she said.
Patterson calculated that the Roberts' leaking upstairs tub spout was losing a tenth of a gallon per minute, or $150 a year in water and sewer charges. "One drop a second is 9,000 gallons a year," he says. "A fast trickle is 150,000 gallons, enough to water a small yard all season." He recommended a new, washerless shower control.
Patterson also urged the Roberts to run the dishwasher on the "light" cycle instead of "normal." "It doesn't run as long, heats and uses less water and lasts longer," he says. "The water temperature stays the same, so the sanitation need is still met."
Outside, Patterson found the Roberts' sprinkler system was delivering too much water, too often, at the wrong times. Pop-up sprinkler heads were too short, blocked by tall grass and shrubs, clogged or aimed in the wrong directions.
"I was thrilled when we got a sprinkler system," Roberts says. "I thought this was really going to cut down on water usage. But it is difficult to maintain." Patterson made some adjustments and wrote down other fixes.
Despite Denver's 13-inch annual rainfall, most residents insist on bluegrass lawns that need 39 inches a year. But their automatic sprinklers are invariably set to deliver more than that, water officials say.
Over-watering is not limited to homeowners. On Tuesday, school officials from Littleton met with Denver Water's Bob Nagle to discuss the system's water consumption. Littleton, a suburb six miles south of downtown Denver, is served by city water.
Nagle told them his analysis found watering at most district schools had declined to an adequate 10 to 20 gallons per square foot per year, thanks to new, centralized computer controls at school headquarters.
But there was one huge spike on the map. At Mark Hopkins Elementary, sprinklers last year delivered an astonishing 160 gallons per square foot. The school's meter clocked 2.5 million gallons in just two summer months, at a cost of more than $8,000.
School grounds chief Jim Lamb was aghast. His staff and Nagle's descended on Hopkins, tested the school's meter and pipes for leaks and found nothing wrong. But the problem soon revealed itself. A suburban park next door was ankle-deep in wet, lush, green grass.
Nagle and his team quickly found the sprinkler controls, linked by radio to park headquarters. But there was no meter. The water appeared to be coming from Hopkins.
Lamb resolved to take the matter up with park officials. "If it's our water, we need to take control of it," he says.
Eighty-five miles south of Denver, the city of Colorado Springs must draw 80 percent of its water from reservoirs on the other side of the Rocky Mountains' Front Range. Residents then put half of it on their lawns. Water demand triples in the summer, and authorities must build the costly infrastructure needed to keep up.
Seasonal rates
To brake the wasteful pattern, water officials have begun to impose a new, seasonal rate structure that boosts commercial and industrial water rates by as much as 40 percent in summer. Residential rates may soon follow suit.
Under an ordinance passed last November, new commercial, industrial and multifamily developments in Colorado Springs must use xeriscape landscaping on at least 60 percent of their property. Homeowners and landscape contractors are urged in ads and seminars to do the same.
In Colorado Springs, Mark Dierbeck, 38, has gradually ripped out the grass around his house and replaced it with sunflowers, creeping thyme, donkey tail and yellow coneflowers. The colorful, waist-high wildflowers stand in sharp contrast with his neighbors' irrigated bluegrass lawns. But Dierbeck doesn't mind.
"I haven't watered them at all, all year," he says. He does a little weeding and mulching, but needs no fertilizer or pesticides. "People who walk by tend to like it."
Ann Seymour, Colorado Springs' water conservation chief, likes that a lot. But she acknowledges that some people will never wean themselves from their thirsty lawns.
"My goal is to try to get them to adjust their sprinkler system by talking about healthy, disease-free turf," she says. "We have many more horticultural problems from over-watering than from any insect, drought or fungus disease that comes along."