Businesses ignore the water issue at their peril

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As U.S. Senator and Wisconsin Gov. Nelson Gaylord (famous for founding Earth Day) once observed: “The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, not the other way around.”

We rarely think about this in our land of plenty, but light snowpack throughout the region this year gives us a reminder that we forget this maxim at our peril. As Bonneville Power Administration Administrator Steve Wright observed: “This is a very serious decline that impacts our power supply and therefore our finances…we’re hopeful that the outlook will improve, but we cannot count on it. The reality is that water is the fuel that provides much of the Northwest’s electricity.”

Fact is, water is central not only to the region’s power, but to every product made here. Like no other resource, water bears on our prosperity. Whether you produce beef, make railcars, or just pay your electric bill, water affects how much money you make. This changes the nature of the discussion of water from mere aesthetics or environmental health to something much more serious: How do we best care for a resource that underpins our long-term economic prosperity?

The concept of calculating direct water content in a given product is not new. By going through every step of production, however, we can determine how much water really goes into creating a product: direct withdrawals, processing, shipping, retailing and consuming. My blue jeans took 2,800 gallons to make. A pound of beef takes 1,857. That cup of coffee, 36 gallons. Everything has a footprint — products, companies, even countries. Dry countries purchase water-intensive goods they cannot produce at home and are net importers of water; others are net exporters because they have enough to make such goods. As it turns out, the United States is 3^rd largest exporter of water in the world, primarily through our cereals.

Those cereals feed some humans, but increasingly, they feed livestock in a world with radically changing dietary habits, which brings the weight of the global economy to bear on streams throughout our region — and your backyard. Consider this: The difference (just the difference) between the total amount of beef consumed in China in 1985 and 2008 is equivalent to all the water use in Europe annually.

That a dietary change in one country can put a whole “Europe’s worth” of pressure on an already strained global resource, is alarming.

For me, the most compelling reason for ensuring proper functioning freshwater ecosystems becomes economic. True, wild fish flicker at a fraction of historic abundance — sportsmen care about this. True, water quality is headed the wrong direction — kayakers and parents care about this. And true, climate change is coming at us like a freight train — a consensus of the scientific community and farmers witnessing global weather “weirding” care about this. But water is an input to every aspect of the economy, and everybody has a stake in the economy.

More pressures mean more scarcity — and man, are they coming. Fast forward 30 years. The Cascades snowpack dwindles to one-quarter of what it was in 1955. Water emigrants from the Southwest come to the region to continue their pursuit of the American Dream — and abundant good tap water. Communities seeking water for growth in the upper Columbia basin have followed Oregon’s lead on water policy and diverted winter flows into their aquifers, decreasing overall flow and leaving downstream users high and dry. Dry seasons have elongated, stressing crops. Electric bills outpace inflation — by a lot. Your water bill, too.

But there is enough water to go around; we just have to manage it better.

So what’s a smart business owner to do now? First, understand how much you rely on water (See, e.g., www.waterfootprint.org). Second, reduce what you can. Think of water as a commodity, and evaluate your operations for waste, trimming where practicable. Third, offset what’s left through water offset programs like Bonneville Environmental Foundation’s water restoration certificate program, which pools funds for use by organizations like The Freshwater Trust to increase water volumes in rivers, through water rights leases and other transactions. (See www.b-e-f.org/water).

Lastly, on a policy level, get ready: difficult decisions lay just ahead. As a business community member, demand that when these come, we do not make the politically-safe but smart-free decisions that have us on a crash-course with our water realities.

Our water underpins our economy. Without it, we have no computer chips, no micro-brews, no wild salmon. No thanks.

Joe Whitworth is president of The Freshwater Trust, co-chairs the Water Subcommittee of the Oregon Global Warming Commission Natural Resources Committee and serves on the Oregon Agricultural Water Quality Advisory Committee as well as the Policy Advisory Committee for the State’s Integrated Water Resources Strategy. He can be reached at joe@thefreshwatertrust.org.