The tide has come in for water cost reduction strategies

"The rapidly rising water" costs have made water cost reduction strategies an obvious target for residential building and hotel owners. Creating a strategy offers not only the traditional reductions in water costs and sewer bills, but can also project a desired image of helping to protect the environment, and respondent to water shortages. Many of the available technologies to reduce consumption and cost have been available for many years, but 10 years ago we had a booming economy and water costs were over 50% less per gallon. Today's challenging economic environment and water costs, rising over 7% per year for the last 12 years, require a closer look at conservation and installation of water cost reduction strategies. Installing technologies requires realistic cost goals that address each facilities specific requirements. Water consumption has an advantage of being able to be benchmarked and monitored, yielding easy calculation of projected return on investment for each project. A successful strategy to reduce water costs should include a facility water audit and a management plan, examination of rebates available from government and utility resources, online and timely monitoring reports to provide confidence and trust in approach. A facility water use audit should identify uses of all water: production lines, restrooms, kitchens, irrigation, recreation, temperature, and quality. Strategies can vary from checking for hidden leaks, installing low flow shower heads and aerator float boosters in toilets (toilets in older commercial buildings can account for up to 40-60% of the total water use in buildings. At 50 flushes per day, they can waste 100,000 gallons per year per toilet compared to the newer 1.6 gallon per flush toilets), to water monitors in an effort to be aware of sudden unusual volume changes, to lesser known water flow management devices. Flow management devices act as shock absorbers for incoming spikes of entrapped air caused by ruptures in your water provider's circuit; they moderate current or seasonal high water pressure conditions. These devices provide a truer water usage forecast and measurement and generally save from 10-25% on each bill. As the costs of delivering more clean water from limited supplies, waste treatment, and utility costs continue its rising trend, we will be forced to address this component of total cost of occupancy. TLR Energy has been a provider of market based and technology solutions to clients since 1990. TLR's clients span international and are leaders in the dialogue on efficiency, sustainability, and energy procurement. Michael Thaler is president of TLR Energy Inc., New York, N.Y.