Pursue water independence in the built environment

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As Cascadia Green Building Council’s Oregon Advocacy and Outreach Manager, Kelley Beamer works with the state’s sustainability community to create a positive environmental influence through the built environment. You can reach Beamer at kelley.beamer@cascadiagbc.org, or 503-228-5533 xt2#.

In the Willamette Valley, we are framed by lush, temperate rainforests and swelling rivers. Living in a place where freshwater is in relative abundance, it's difficult to feel connected to the water crisis that confronts billions of people across the globe.

According to the World Water Council, one in six people lacks access to safe drinking water. Climate change, deforestation, unsustainable water use, the drawdown of major aquifers and the accumulation of pollution and pharmaceuticals in surface and ground waters all pose serious environmental, social and economic risk.

In the United States, many communities are threatened by significant water-related challenges. Populations in cities and towns are growing rapidly, and the rising demand for water threatens to outpace supply. At the same time, our current water supply and wastewater treatment infrastructure — most of it designed and built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries — is aging and in desperate need of major overhauls and repair.

Big-ticket price for the Big Pipe

While we admittedly have a present-day abundance of water in Portland, we are learning in painstaking and intimate detail the severity of our own issues as we witness the completion of the $1.4-billion Big Pipe Project. This four-year municipal project to limit the amount of untreated sewer and stormwater that spills into the Willamette River during peak rainfall is the most expensive public works project in the city's history. And even with its outrageous price tag, The Big Pipe is an impermanent solution to a growing systemic problem.

In recent decades, the green building movement has worked hard to shift how people view water resources, raising awareness and increasing implementation of water conservation techniques. However, we continue to use potable water within our buildings for non-potable functions, such as washing clothes or flushing toilets, all with little or no attempt at reuse.

Living Building Challenge sets the pace

The time is ripe for a paradigm shift. Some leaders in the design community are helping to reframe our relationship with water. Guiding the way is the Living Building Challenge, a philosophy, advocacy tool and certification program that promotes the most advanced measurement of sustainability in the built environment possible today.

The Living Building Challenge, developed by the International Living Building Institute, a subsidiary of Cascadia Green Building Council, requires that 100 percent of occupants' water use must come from captured precipitation, or closed-loop water systems that account for downstream ecosystem impacts and that are appropriately purified without the use of chemicals. To achieve "Living" certification, a project must achieve net-zero water use.

Buildings that achieve net-zero water recognize the interconnectedness of water and wastewater. By using integrated, closed-loop systems where water is captured, treated, used, reused and released, the amount of water entering and leaving a building site reflects the natural hydrology of the land.

Traditional practices rely solely on regional potable water supply for all water uses and regional facilities for treatment of all stormwater and wastewater leaving a site. In contrast, net-zero water projects seek to source their water through harvested precipitation, groundwater, surface water, stormwater, reclaimed water sources, and treating and reuse the water onsite.

Challenges prompt innovation, chart path for progress

The challenge to achieve sustainable water systems has spurred brilliant innovations like biological wastewater treatment systems that use living plants and beneficial microorganisms to turn wastewater into clean water. The move toward sustainable water systems is also pushing public policy changes like the 2009 passage of Oregon’s House Bill 2080 that legalized the use of graywater for beneficial purposes. By making exterior graywater use legal and accessible, approximately half of all domestic water can be now reused for irrigation.

When completed, the Oregon Sustainability Center, a Living Building Challenge candidate, will collect and treat all of its water on-site. Plans call for rainwater to be collected into a 200,000-gallon cistern and used for tenant consumption and to run the building’s physical systems.

Treated graywater — wastewater from low-intensity uses such as dishwashing — will be recycled in the building's toilets and used for cooling mechanical equipment. Blackwater from toilets will be treated in an intensive biological wastewater system that uses a careful mixture of plants and biota to scrub wastewater, bringing it to levels that can be safely released into aquifers or reused again in the graywater system. Excess treated wastewater, along with storm runoff, will be filtered on-site into the ground, keeping it out of the over-taxed municipal sewer system.

We now have an opportunity to re-imagine our relationship with water so that we see it as a precious commodity and a life-giving resource. The design community has long talked about taking responsibility for our carbon footprints, and now the challenge is to live within our water footprint.

As Cascadia Green Building Council’s Oregon Advocacy and Outreach Manager, Kelley Beamer works with the state’s sustainability community to create a positive environmental influence through the built environment. You can reach Beamer at kelley.beamer@cascadiagbc.gov, or 503-228-5533 x 2#.