Water Conservation

Chad Staddon

Water conservation refers to a set of ideas and strategies orientated toward making less water do more. Thus, water conservation is about both increasing the efficiency of every unit of water used in all spheres—domestic, industrial, and agricultural—and also using less water overall. After decades of blind faith in “supply-side” solutions (ever-larger dams, etc.), policy makers now prefer to focus their energies on reducing demand across the entire range of users. The British government's strategy for water provision published in 2008, Future Water , talks about revising policies to encourage conservation behavior, including altering architectural and planning codes, changing the way water services are priced and regulated, and investing in consumer education. Water conservation policy in the United States is more complex, with some states (e.g., Arizona) working hard to promote conservation and others (e.g., Alaska, South Carolina) doing relatively little. Federal agencies such as the Natural Resources Conservation Service ...

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