The Value of Water

By Sarah Ramsden

Staff Reporter

May 2022

Imagine driving through a suburban neighborhood on a hot summer’s day. Nice houses bordered by lush green lawns, kids jumping in the pool in the backyard. Sounds great, doesn’t it? Well, it’s not really everything it seems.

Take those lush green lawns, for example. In the average American family, lawn watering accounts for 30% of their household water consumption. Thirty percent! Keep in mind that this water is made potable specifically for humans to drink or have clean water. And that’s not the only issue with lawns. Overall Americans use about three trillion gallons of water on their lawns, in addition to the 200 million gallons of gas (17 million gallons of spilled gas), and 70 million pounds of pesticides.

What about the other water usage problems that we have? Well, Americans view commodities that use absurd amounts of water (like a green lawn or pool, or even meat) as signs of status and wealth.

And the economic value of water is very cheap; you can turn a handle and get an unlimited quantity of water at virtually no cost, or walk into most restaurants and get water for free. This is because we view water as an unlimited resource (supply greatly exceeds demand), when really that’s not the case. Humans are greatly depleting our supply of available fresh water (emptying aquifers, polluting rivers and lakes).

Because of water’s extremely low economic value, the prices of things we buy don’t accurately reflect the amount of water needed to produce them. For example the price of a cotton shirt doesn’t reflect the amount of water needed to grow the cotton (2,500 liters), and price of meat doesn’t reflect the amount of water needed to produce it (15,000 liters per kilogram of hamburger).

However, raising the price of water has the greatest impact on the poor, which is not good, because everyone needs water to survive. One possible solution to this is allowing people to use the water they need to survive for free, ensuring that it is a human right, but raising the price of water after that could make people rethink using water on their lawns, or growing crops that require lots of water in a dry desert.

Lastly, even when we see water conservation as this impossible, overwhelming task, there is hope. In Cape Town, South Africa, their water supply became so depleted that their government actually projected a ‘Day Zero’ or a day that water would no longer flow when you turned on the faucet. Their government then implemented a series of restrictions and “Water management devices, which turned off the water once people had reached their daily limit. Through water conservation, the people of Cape Town were able to postpone and eventually end their water crisis, which shows that given the right incentive, humans are able to reduce their water consumption. The question is, will it take a Day Zero to make Americans rethink their water usage?