Water is elemental to the growth of San Diego business
Mark Franklin – President of Faster Hot Water
I wanted to interview you about the future of water in California. The population is going up. What do you think is going to happen with water issues coming up?
20 years ago I sat on a board that was studying California’s water situation, in particular, San Diego’s. And in the best case scenario, what we came up with is, we would be really hurting for water at this point in time.
And, the reality is, I think if people knew the water situation they would be a lot more worried about it than we are. Right now you can turn on a faucet and you get water out of it – you never even really think about it. You pay the bills, you’re a little bit angry because you know that it costs a little bit more money than it used to… and you know next year it’s going to cost even more.
But what you don’t realize is that, if there was an earthquake where it upset the pipeline that came down from San Francisco, and it broke the pipeline, that source of water would be down for six months… depending on how bad the earthquake was. That pipe is our vulnerability. If something happens to it… it’s a very challenging situation.
The second thing is that there is a program that used to be called “toilets to taps” and that meant taking raw sewage and treating it, and after purifying the water so that we can drink it.
Whoever came up with the name “Toilets to taps” as a marketing thing – should’ve been fired. Immediately.
It’s just not what people want to be thinking about.
And I think they have renamed the program…
And, I just attended a seminar on it last week. They are actually getting very close to a real solution these days.
So San Diego built a recycling center – it takes raw sewage and turns it into potable water. In fact, they make it so pure that it’s like distilled water. And if you put that in a normal water pipe, it would destroy the pipe. It’s very corrosive. So what they’re going to do is dump it into the San Vincente resevour and mix it at a ratio of 12:1 with normal drinking water.
That could potentially make up 40% of the water that we need in San Diego, which is huge because right now we’re importing about 90%.
We’re importing it from the Colorado River and from San Francisco and there are just issues there, that are out there, that make it very difficult for us to plan for population growth at this point in time.
So the bottom line is, if we don’t start conserving… it’s just… we’re going to run out of options.
We’re going to turn on a tap one day and there’s just not going to be anything there.
What will our children have to do in the future to have enough water for everybody?
Well, there are 2 things.
One, we just have to become a lot more efficient with how we use the water. We are the most wasteful country on the planet, with water.
For instance, the Saudis, the Israelis the Australians are decades ahead of us as far as water conservation is concerned. The other thing is that the technology that we use to desalinate ocean water is just going to get better – and it’s going to have to get better.
We obviously have an enormous amount of water just right on our shore, the question is: how much does it cost to get the salt out of it?
And the reality is that it can be done.
It’s more expensive now than just bringing water from San Francisco, for instance… but the price is going down ever day.
So the price of desalination is going down while the price of normal water is going up and at some point the markets are going to match. And then desalination is going to be a huge solution for us.
What will San Diego look like if we just keep going the way we’re going now?… if nothing changes? What were your findings for your time on the board 20 years ago?
First of all, we had so many toilets that were high volume toilets. And so one of the things that we implemented… it was part of an EPA lawsuit to reduce the amount of sewage that was going out to the ocean… we implemented the low flow toilet programs. It is really having an impact on the water usage in San Diego.
So the water district, including the metropolitan water district which provides water to 16 million people in Southern California, counts on conservation to make up 25% of our future needs… and that’s a big number.
But we are moving towards it.
So unless we start really rolling out technologies line mine… we’re not going to make it.
So, people’s habits have to change.
You know… when you’re brushing your teeth, you can’t just let it run.
And that seems like a very small amount of water, it seems. But when you multiply it times the millions of people living in the San Diego Tijuana basin… that’s an awful lot of water.
The other really big, important thing that we must do, is we must stop the leaks in our water pipes.
The city of San Diego, I believe, is now estimating that 15% of all of our water is lost through leaks, either through our main distribution lines, or through our own water lines in our houses.
Dripping faucets… toilets that just run constantly… just wasteful practices that we have…
Those things have to change. Or we’re going to be in a situation where we cannot grow any more.
There are areas of the country where you cannot get a building permit because there’s no water.
There’s no capacity.
So, that’s what’s going to happen to San Diego. The reality is that we live in a desert.
And if we can’t get water supplied, that means that industry is going to move away.
Industries like the Navy.
Our biggest industry is the military, and the Navy and the Marines, they have to have water.
If we can’t supply it, not just actually to the armed services but to those folks… you know, they live somewhere too, and so they need water just to live. Just like we all do.
If it’s not available, new industries definitely won’t come here and old industries will have to find another place.
How do you change people’s minds from the “business as usual” approach that most of us take when we look at water issues?
It’s an education process. I think our schools are starting to do a really good job with that. In fact, they have been for the last 5 – 10 years. They’re educating kids on recycling and conservation.
But I think the future generation will be thinking about it much more than we are.
I think the whole climate change question; it’s something that’s very main-stream now. Everybody’s thinking about it and talking about it…
My point of view is that human beings are an incredible species as far as finding solutions to problems.
In fact, in so many ways that’s the reason we’re on the planet is just to find solutions to problems… even they’re problems we create ourselves.
So there’s a group called The Club Of Rome which got together in 1972, and it was supposed to be the smartest and brightest people on the planet getting together to talk about the oil crisis.
And they came up with a study, just like the one we came up with for the California water supply, which said – in 20 years we were going to run out of fossil fuels.
Well what happened instead, is that somebody invented a carburetor that got twice as many miles per gallon.
Then we also developed the ability to, instead of only being able to drill 1 mile deep, they were able to drill 5 miles deep.
Then Argentina opened up their oil fields and then Alaska and Russia and… all of the sudden… we’ve got enough fossil fuels to last us 200 years, at our current growth rate.
So, I think what happens is that when there’s money involved, people will put a lot of effort into it. And so, as it costs more and more for water and the related sewage costs, we will get much better at handling the water.
Do you think that water is a green issue, something good for the environment?… Or, do you think it’s an economic issue… an economic driver or, possibly, an economic consequence?
It’s probably a little bit of both.
I know that when I got started 20 years ago when I got started, being called a tree hugger was a negative. But now, if you’re called a tree hugger it’s considered much more positive.
But for years I have said that green will become the way to go once it make sense from an economic point of view. When the money is there, we will go green.
And I think we’re right on the cusp of that.
That many green technologies now are actually, not just more efficient that the old technologies, but from a financial standpoint it makes enough sense to change out what you had for something more efficient.
For instance: a washing machine. 10 years ago, it was better than what was out 20 years ago… but it wasn’t really enough to justify the expense of switching out. Whereas today’s washing machines, I believe it does make economic sense to change things out.
The thing is that most home owners aren’t looking at rate of return on investment when making decisions on things like that.
But, old stuff wears out and the new stuff going is much better that what was there before as far as the efficiency is concerned.
What we’re finding out is that you can make money going green, and increase your standard of living at the same time.
So we’ve just got to talk about a term called ‘user transparence’, and that means that you can implement a technology and user would never have to change their habits. They would get the benefits by just doing what they were doing in the past.
Low flow toilets are like that.
You can use the restroom the same as you did before. You flush just like you did before. Just now you’re using less water when you push the handle.
There’s a user transparent technology. There’s nothing that the user has to do different.
Now with my technology, it’s almost user transparent.
The one thing you do have to do, though, is you have to turn the faucet on for one second and then turn it off.
So that is a different than what you’ve been doing where you just turn on a faucet and let the water run for a few minutes before you get hot water.
But people are becoming aware enough of the situation that they are willing to make small sacrifices, at least in their lifestyle, to gain those benefits.
And a better return on their investment.
You said that when the economic reasoning is there, it will help people change their minds.
What would you say to a 5 year old child, now days, in terms of a direction for a career in something that’s water conservation related? What opportunities to you see in the future?
There’s going to be an awful lot of opportunities.
I think that for younger people today, we have to look at the lifespan of products.
Just because you make a solar panel and it doesn’t cost you anything to produce electricity once you have the solar panel made and installed, does not make it a green product.
So as a young person, instead of just looking at the immediate value today, I think that the careers that are going to be opening up in the future are – looking at the lifespan of a product.
From the point you mine the ore out of the ground to make the metal, to the point where you’re trying to recycle it and not throw it into a landfill.
That is going to be a science that is really going to start taking off. So, there’s a lot of opportunity there.
There’s a lot of opportunity in desalination.
And, the interesting thing about water is that – in California, water is the number 1 user of energy, believe it or not… because, we have to pump the water 1,000 miles to get it here.
That’s very expensive stuff. And so, if we can create a desalination plant where you’re only pumping it 10, 20, 30, 40 miles, that’s a lot better than 1,000 miles.
So I think there are going to be a lot of new technologies, a lot of new ways of doing things.
And the best part about developing new water conservation technologies is going to be the electronics that are going to be imbeded in devices. So things are going to become just smarter or smarter.
And so it won’t be a decision that you have to make, the technologies will make it for you. So things are just going to get smarter.
There’s going to be a lot of innovation in water conservation. And I think, outside, in the irrigation is where a lot of it is going to come from as well.
I’ve heard that more people have been killed in California for water rights than for gold, is that true?
And it’s going to get worse.
Jimmy Carter, former president and Mikhail Gorbachev, former head of the Soviet union… back when it was the Soviet Union… have formed a group that, their beliefs, and they’ve written books on this, that “future wars will fought over water rights, not oil rights”.
They feel that water is a much more important issue. And yes, I agree absolutely. You can live without electricity.
You don’t have to have a light on. You cannot live without water.
And there’s just a huge percentage of the world’s population that does not have potable water.
So yes… absolutely, I don’t know the numbers but I think that would be a true statement.
We do not realize how big of a deal it is.
If it weren’t for the energy crisis, the water crisis would be the number 1 thing that we’d be talking about. But because of the energy situation, and then the banking thing, it all took the front page. But the water situation… over the last 20 years it’s just gotten worse and worse.
Last year’s snow pack was just 17% of normal, up in the Sierra’s. 17. One, Seven – of normal. Which means, when it melted and ran off, our reservoirs didn’t get filled up.
Once I stayed up at a place near Sweet water reservoir and it is DOWN as low as it’s been in 30 years.
So if we don’t get some good snow this year it will absolutely impact us.
