DID YOU KNOW That Water is a Zero Sum Game Resource?

Zero sum games refer to game and economic theories that recognize that one’s person loss is another person’s gain. In other words the size of the pie cannot be increased. If one person’s slice of the pie increases another person’s slice necessarily decreases.

The zero sum game applied to water means that the more workers and residents in any particular area the less water per individual available. However what the City of Redwood City has tried to tell its residents is that additional workers and residents do not mean less water per existing resident. One of the reasons they claim that Redwood City has defied the theories is that they are putting in place recycled water systems. But according to Mr. Michael Hurley, Water Resources Manager, for the Bay Area Water Supply and Conservation Agency (BAWSCA) “given the relatively small yields, recycled water shows no significant role in meeting dry year demands for BAWSCA member agencies at this time. Additionally, Redwood City’s existing recycled water line currently has no project analysis or demand for extension.” (http://www.bawsca.org/docs/15_BPC_Feb11_Agenda_FINAL_PACKET.pdf page 16 )

In fact the report from BAWSCA further notes that there were seven sensitivity analyses that were used to evaluate various projects and they included 1) drought supply, 2) cost, 3) drought supply and cost, 4) environmental issues, 5) local control, 6) drought supply, cost, environmental issues, and local control, and 7) drought supply, cost and regulatory vulnerability. Gray water reuse meets only the environmental criteria.

Last year in January 2014 BAWSCA put out a voluntary water reduction goal of at least ten percent across the board both from SF Public Utilities customers and its 26 wholesale customers that include Redwood City. Clearly if voluntary reduction goals aren’t met then they will have to become compulsory. For the sake of simplicity let’s say that there are 100 people in Redwood City using one unit of water each for a total of 100 units. The City now has a goal of only 90 units of total consumption. If the city adds ten people to the total for a total of 110 that means that instead of just cutting ten percent each existing resident and worker must further decrease their consumption to compensate for the additional users. You would think that the City of Redwood City’s torrid pace of building approvals would therefore yield to the reality of the need for at minimum a short term building moratorium until such a time as the impacts of all the already in process buildings is absorbed.

Just as an example according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) “commercial and institutional buildings use a large portion of municipally supplied water in the United States….Water used in hospitals and other healthcare facilities comprises 7 percent of the total water use in commercial and institutional facilities in the United States. The largest uses of water in hospitals are cooling equipment, plumbing fixtures, landscaping, and medical process rinses.”

Right here in the larger Redwood City area we have three large hospital expansions either already opened or coming soon: Kaiser (280,000 square feet expansion), Sequoia (160,000 square foot expansion) and Stanford (1.5 million square feet of mixed use office and clinic space) for a total of almost 2 million additional square feet. The impact on our water allocation is just starting to be felt.

However the City council and staff have other plans. Last week Council members and senior city staff met for a retreat and discussion. While a number of different items were not considered worthy of additional expenditures when it came to Communications the council members seemed to be in agreement that they needed to spend more in that area. What do they mean by Communications? Vice Mayor Rosanne Foust made clear that she felt that the Council’s message wasn’t being heard and that they needed to spend more City money to make sure that what they wanted the citizens to hear the citizens heard.

Should the City of Redwood City declare a city wide building moratorium?

What do you think?

Photo credit:

http://www.epa.gov/watersense/commercial/docs/factsheets/hospital_fact_sheet_508.pdf