The Big Thirst, page 42
“Most of the bacteria are typical soil bacteria, bacteria right out in your backyard. In fact, a typical well-digested wastewater treatment sludge ready for land disposal will have an ‘earthy’ odor,” he wrote. “I have read that we have only been able to identify about 30 percent of the bacterial species inhabiting activated sludge-type treatment processes, mainly because those are the only ones we can grow in the laboratory. Thus, we only know how to grow the other 70 percent within the wastewater treatment process, but cannot identify them yet. Most of our systems do quite well without knowing the 70 percent, or for that matter, the 30 percent. We do not have enough time or money to identify them. All we need to know is that they will function properly when the system is controlled properly.”
9. A large tanker truck can hold 9,000 gallons of water, so 5,000 tankers would yield 45 million gallons of water a day, or about 9 gallons for each of 5 million Atlanta-area residents.
10. Major Daren Payne’s comment about there being no plan for what to do if Atlanta ran out of water is from an Associated Press story by Greg Bluestein, “No Backup if Atlanta’s Faucets Run Dry,” October 19, 2007, which was widely published, although not in the Atlanta Journal Constitution: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8SCHTI00&show_article=1.
11. The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Mississippi, provided thorough coverage of the city’s water-main breaks. Just a few of the paper’s stories are cited below. The paper archives older stories, but requires payment to read them online.
Chris Joyner, “Water Repairs Continue,” January 13, 2010.
LaRaye Brown, “Businesses Coping Without Water,” January 13, 2010.
Gary Pettus, “Jackson Water Still Not OK to Drink,” January 16, 2010.
12. Jackson mayor Harvey Johnson’s quote “We have a disaster. It’s just not one you can see” is from Joyner, “Water Repairs Continue.”
13. The National Hurricane Center’s official report on Ike calculates that the storm surge across this bayside part of Galveston Island was between 10 feet and 15 feet.
Robbie Berg, Tropical Cyclone Report: Hurricane Ike, National Hurricane Center, pp. 6–7 (PDF). http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/pdf/TCR-AL092008_Ike_3May10.pdf.
14. Greg Bluestein, “No Backup if Atlanta’s Faucets Run Dry,” October 19, 2007. http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D8SCHTI00&show_article=1.
15. This quote is from an interview that a group of Galveston city officials gave to the Austin weekly newspaper a year after Hurricane Ike hit Galveston.
Kate X Messer, “Q&A: Austin’s Coastal Neighbors,” Austin Chronicle, September 11, 2009. http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A842282.
16. Figures for states with more than 60 percent of homes without complete indoor plumbing in 1950 come from the U.S. Census Bureau. The census defines complete plumbing facilities as “hot and cold piped water, a bathtub or shower, and a flush toilet.”
State
% Without Complete Indoor Plumbing
Alabama
68
Arkansas
71
Georgia
63
Kentucky
64
Mississippi
74
North Carolina
65
North Dakota
66
South Carolina
65
South Dakota
61
Tennessee
63
“Plumbing Facilities,” Historical Census of Housing Tables, U.S. Census Bureau. http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/plumbing.html.
17. Statistics for 1960 and 1970 indoor plumbing are from the census:
“Plumbing Facilities.” http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/census/historic/plumbing.html.
In 1960, 88 percent of U.S. households had televisions, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1961, Washington, DC, 1961, p. 516 (PDF). http://www2.census.gov/prod2/statcomp/documents/1961–09.pdf.
In 1970, 95 percent of U.S. households had televisions, according to the U.S. Census.
U.S. Bureau of the Census, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1971, Washington, DC, 1971, p. 487 (PDF). http://www2.census.gov/prod2/statcomp/documents/1971–05.pdf.
The census makes the texts of the Statistical Abstracts available online. http://www.census.gov/prod/www/abs/statab1951–1994.htm.
18. No one routinely gathers data on the average monthly water bill. But the American Water Works Association (AWWA) has used usage and fee surveys to estimate that the monthly bill is $34 per household in the U.S. (just for water, not including sewer service).
The figure of $260 per family each year for water infrastructure upkeep comes from the total infrastructure spending on water systems, compiled by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). The ASCE calculates that from 2009 to 2014, U.S. governments will spend $29.2 billion a year maintaining water and wastewater systems; the U.S. has 112 million families.
“Estimated 5-Year Investment Needs in Billions of Dollars,” Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, American Society of Civil Engineers. http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/report-cards.
19. Officials at the water company Aqua America provided the data on construction costs to lay replacement water pipe.
Desalination plant costs in Australia come from:
Norimitsu Onishi, “Arid Australia Sips Seawater, but at a Cost,” New York Times, July 10, 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/11/world/asia/11water.html.
5. THE MONEY IN THE PIPES
1. There are roughly 73 million sheep in Australia—three sheep for every person. Each sheep produced an average of 10.3 pounds of greasy wool in 2009–2010.
Australia produced 21.5 percent of the greasy wool grown in the world in 2008, followed by China (19 percent), New Zealand (10 percent), and Argentina (4 percent). Greasy wool is wool weighed before it has been cleaned.
Worldwide and Australian wool production figures from:
Australian Wool Production 2009/10. Australian Wool Innovation Ltd. http://www.wool.com/Media-Centre_Australian-Wool-Production.htm.
2. Michael Grealy, “Michell Wool Dynasty Shrouded in Mystery,” Sun-Herald (Sydney, Australia), October 29, 1989, quoting David Coombes, then executive director of the Wool Council of Australia.
3. At home, each pound of laundry requires about two gallons of water to clean and rinse. Conventional home washing machines (top-load) hold 12–16 pounds of laundry and use 30 gallons of water.
“Washing Machines: Types of Washing Machines,” ConsumerReports.org. http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/appliances/laundry-and-cleaning/washing-machines/washing-machine-buying-advice/washing-machine-types/washing-machine-types.htm.
“How Much Does It Cost to Run a Washing Machine?” Michaelbluejay.com. http://michaelbluejay.com/electricity/laundry.html.
4. How does a half-gallon-a-minute change in showerhead flow add up to millions of gallons in water savings a year?
The showerhead in each room in Aria, down from 2.5 gallons per minute to 2 gpm, saves 0.5 gpm. If the average shower is 8 minutes, each shower uses 4 fewer gallons of water than it otherwise would. (The Water Research Foundation study of U.S. water use, Residential End Uses of Water, cited in chapter 1, found that people with low-flow showerheads took showers that were 8.5 minutes, on average.)
The Aria has 4,004 rooms. If, at the low end, there are 6,000 guest showers a day at the Aria (75 percent occupancy, with two people per room showering), that saves 24,000 gallons of water a day. Over the year, that’s a savings of 8.8 million gallons of water. With a few more showers—that is, with a couple months of the higher occupancy typical of Las Vegas (average hotel occupancy is 90 percent), savings could easily be 10 million or 12 million gallons of water a year.
5. The CityCenter project has earned six gold ratings for environmentally conscious design from the U.S. Green Building Council.
The development’s environmental efforts and design innovations are outlined in this press release, and detailed in a separate Web site:
“City of Gold: Vegas’ CityCenter Earns Six LEED Gold Certifications,” City-Center Press Room, November 20, 2009. http://www2.citycenter.com/press_room/press_room_items.aspx?ID=778.
“CityCenter—Environment: The Nature of Luxury,” CityCenter. http://www2.citycenter.com/environment/.
6. As the calculations above show, every 0.5 gpm reduction in water used by the showerhead at the Aria hotel saves a minimum of 24,000 gallons a day—1,000 gallons an hour. Going from 2.5 gpm to 1.5 gpm saves 48,000 gallons a day, 2,000 gallons an hour.
Water consumption in Las Vegas, overall, is 400 million gallons a day, of which 59 percent is residential, or 236 mgd. As of 2008, according to the U.S. Census, there are 676,617 housing units in Clark County, which comes to 349 gallons of water per household per day. So 48,000 gallons a day would supply 138 homes.
7. Press accounts routinely describe Monsanto as the largest seller of seeds in the world:
Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, “Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear,” Vanity Fair, May 2008. http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/monsanto200805.
Jack Kaskey, “Monsanto ‘Warrior’ Grant Fights Antitrust Accusations, Critics,” Bloomberg, March 4, 2010. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=axVdNmPtSgts&pos=7.
Monsanto reports its seed sales each quarter. In 2009, seed sales were $4.5 billion out of total revenue of $11.7 billion.
Fourth-Quarter 2009 Financial Results, Monsanto, October 7, 2009, pp. 4–5. http://www.monsanto.com/pdf/investors/2009/10_07_09.pdf.
8. “Water Conservation,” 2009 Intel Corporate Responsibility Report, Intel, pp. 41–45. http://www.intel.com/about/corporateresponsibility/report/build/index.htm.
Intel’s detailed water-use figures, and water use per chip produced (“normalized water use”), along with basic financial data for comparison purposes, are available at the same link.
Intel’s water productivity is even worse in per-chip terms. From 2005 to 2009, the water required to make a single chip increased 58 percent.
Still, the very existence of such detailed figures, reported voluntarily, is significant. Intel says in its 2009 CRR report that the increase in water use was due in part to the recession (“low manufacturing levels”), and in part to “the increasing complexity of our manufacturing processes” (p. 42).
9. The Muhtar Kent comment comes from his appearance on Charlie Rose, PBS, June 9, 2009.
Coke says it provides 1.6 billion servings of soft drinks a day—584 billion a year, or 86 for every person on the planet. A “serving,” according to Coke’s figures, is 8 ounces, so at 86 per person, Coke is serving 688 ounces of beverages to each person on the planet—57 twelve-ounce cans.
Coke says that it uses 313 billion liters of water a year, which is 83 billion gallons a year, or 227 million gallons a day. At the standard U.S. citywide consumption rate of 150 gallons per person, per day, that 227 million gallons would support a city of 1.5 million Americans.
This data is from:
2008/2009 Sustainability Review, Coca-Cola Company (PDF). http://www.thecocacolacompany.com/citizenship/pdf/2008–2009_sustainability_review.pdf.
Basic water-use data: p. iv.
Water-use discussion: pp. 31–33.
Servings per day: p. 4.
10. Here are the calculations of Coke’s water productivity, compared with that of IBM and GE.
All figures are from 2008, the most recent year for which the water-use numbers are available.
Coke: 83 billion gallons of water per year.
$31.9 billion in revenue.
GE: 12.3 billion gallons of water per year.
$183 billion in revenue.
IBM: 13.4 billion gallons of water per year (just microchip manufacturing).
$104 billion in revenue.
Each $1 of revenue for Coke requires 2.6 gallons (333 ounces).
Combined revenue for GE and IBM is $287 billion. Combined water use for GE and IBM is 25.7 billion gallons.
Each $1 of revenue for GE and IBM requires 0.09 gallons (11.5 ounces).
GE water-use data from:
2008 Citizenship Report: Resetting Responsibilities, GE, p. 41 (PDF). http://files.gecompany.com/gecom/citizenship/pdfs/ge_2008_citizenship_report.pdf.
IBM water-use data from:
IBM and the Environment: 2008 Annual Report, IBM, p. 20 (PDF). http://www.ibm.com/ibm/environment/annual/IBMEnvReport_2008.pdf.
IBM reports on p. 20 that in 2008, “microelectronics manufacturing operations achieved a 2.4 percent savings [in water use]. This translates to an annual conservation savings of 1,214 thousand cubic meters of water.” That is, 2.4 percent savings equaled 1,214,000 cubic meters of water.
By calculation, in 2008, IBM used 50.6 million cubic meters of water, or 13.4 billion gallons.
11. 2008/2009 Sustainability Review, Coca-Cola Company, p. 31.
12. Coke’s SEC filings back to 1994 are online here. http://ir.thecoca-colacompany.com/phoenix/zhtml?c=94566&p=irol-sec.
The “Raw Materials” section of Coke’s 2002 annual report begins on p. 10, Form 10-K Annual Report for the Fiscal Year Ended Dec. 31, 2002, Coca-Cola Company, filed March 26, 2003.
The “Raw Materials” section of Coke’s 2009 annual report begins on p. 9, the “Risk Factors” section begins on p. 12, Form 10-K Annual Report for the Fiscal Year Ended December 31, 2009, Coca-Cola Company, filed February 26, 2010.
13. Intel’s SEC filings are online here. http://www.intc.com/financials.cfm.
14. A Product Lifecycle Approach to Sustainability, Levi Strauss & Co., San Francisco, March 2009, pp. 11, 15, 18 (PDF). http://levistrauss.com/sites/default/files/librarydocument/2010/4/Product_Lifecycle_Assessment.pdf.
15. The figures on ice and water savings come from Scott Steenrod, director of food and beverage operations, Celebrity Cruises.
If each ship saves 7,500 pounds of ice a day, that’s 52,500 pounds of ice a week. At 8.3 pounds per gallon of water, that comes to 6,300 gallons of water per ship per week not required to make ice.
Celebrity’s total fleet carries about 23,000 passengers a week; the ships together save about 55,000 gallons of water a week.
16. IBM Burlington uses 3.2 million gallons of water a day, and gathers 400 million data points about that water a day. So it gathers an average of 133 bits of data about every gallon of water.
17. IBM Burlington’s chip production in 2008 was 33 percent higher than it had been in 2000. But in 2009, chip production fell sharply, so while water use in 2009 continued to fall, the “water productivity” of the plant in 2009 wasn’t as good as in 2008.
18. IBM describes, somewhat superficially, its effort to revolutionize desalination with new filters and solar power:
Steve Hamm, “Solar Power + Water Desalination = Rivers in the Desert,” Building a Smarter Planet, IBM, April 5, 2010. http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2010/04/solar-power-water-desalination-rivers-in-the-desert.html.
19. Whole Foods spokeswoman Kate Lowery says that in the grocery category, yogurt was the No. 1–selling item by volume in 2007, 2008, and 2009. Water was the No. 2 item in volume in 2007, 2008, and 2009. By mid-2010, water as a product had slipped to No. 3 at Whole Foods, behind salty snacks.
20. The total U.S. wholesale bottled-water market in 2009 was $10.6 billion, according to the industry’s research leader, the Beverage Marketing Corporation. The markup on bottled water is typically 100 percent between wholesale and retail, so total sales to consumers in 2009 were roughly $21 billion. (Sales in 2009 were down 2.7 percent from 2008 in gallons of water sold, and down 5.2 percent in revenue.)
“Bottled Water Confronts Persistent Challenges,” Beverage Marketing Corporation, July 2010.
Beverage Marketing makes a wealth of data available about U.S. beverage consumption at http://www.beveragemarketing.com/?section=pressreleases.
Apple breaks down sales by product and by category in detail in its annual 10-K filing with the SEC.
In 2009 total iPhone sales were $6.8 billion; total iPod sales were $8.1 billion; total sales from iTunes were $4 billion. Together, iPhone, iPod, and iTunes sales were $18.9 billion.
Apple sold 21 million iPhones and 54 million iPods.
Form 10-K Annual Report for the Fiscal Year Ended September 26, 2009, Apple Inc., filed October 27, 2009, p. 41 (PDF). http://phx.corporate-ir.net/External.File?item=UGFyZW50SUQ9MTg1OTB8Q2hpbGRJRD0tMXxUeXB1PTM=&t=1.
21. Total 2009 U.S. bottled-water consumption of 8.4 billion gallons comes from the Beverage Marketing Corporation. http://www.beveragemarketing.com/?section=pressreleases.
The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that U.S. municipal water systems leak about 7 billion gallons a day, about 16 percent of what they pump.
Drinking Water: Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, ASCE, 2009. http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/fact-sheet/drinking-water.
22. Tap water is regulated in the U.S. by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), under the Safe Drinking Water Act. Bottled water that crosses state lines is regulated as a food product by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). And while the FDA has adopted the EPA’s drinking water standards for bottled water, the actual regulation of bottled water amounts mostly to a system of voluntary compliance and trust, because enforcement rules and factory inspections are both minimal.
For instance, the EPA requires that any significant violation of tap water standards be reported, both to the EPA and to the public, within 24 hours.
Bottled-water companies are not required to report violating water standards to either the public or the FDA—ever.
U.S. water utilities serving more than 100,000 people are required to test their water for bacterial contaminants every few hours.
