November 2015 — Property Management Quarterly —
Page 15
D
evelopers, building own-
ers and property managers
increasingly are realizing
and responding to the risks
posed by climate change
and its specific impacts and risks
to future water supply. Yet, unlike
topics such as energy efficiency and
conservation, tools to help strategi-
cally plan for using water more effi-
ciently and reducing water quality
impacts still lag behind.
Building off the principles of net-
zero energy, net-zero water is a
concept that changes the way water
resources are managed by making
water resource planning and use
decisions based on local conditions.
Rather than going out and securing
water supplies to meet historical
demand patterns, a NZW approach
looks at local precipitation patterns
and tries to maintain a building’s
consumption at or below that avail-
able from local supply.
And, rather than allowing water
quality impacts from stormwater
runoff from building sites to flow
downstream, a NZW approach looks
to treat runoff on site. In essence,
NZW or being water neutral, means
using only as much water as falls on
your building’s site and eliminating
all water quality impacts from the
site.
To pilot the concept, our firm led
the development of a building-scale
NZW planning toolkit that walks
building owners and managers
through the process of understand-
ing their water footprint and tak-
ing action to reduce consumption
and improve water quality. Over
the course of three years, a broad
group of support-
ers, sponsors,
technical advisers
and experts from
around the country
convened to devel-
op the planning
toolkit.
“Net-zero water
addresses an
important gap in
the water resource
management con-
versation because
of the resources
it provides to support sustainable
water use amidst today’s many
water challenges,” said Barb Martin,
senior manager at American Water
Works Association and technical
advisory group member for the NZW
initiative. “The net-zero water build-
ing scale toolkit provides a frame-
work that allows developers and
property managers of all sizes to
easily assess and improve building
water usage to achieve their goals.”
Whether a building owner or man-
ager wishes to pursue NZW, the tool-
kit is a helpful resource to analyze
building water reduction scenarios.
For example, the toolkit can support
building certification under LEED
for Existing Buildings Operations
and Management by creating water
quality improvement and quantity
reduction goals, and then evaluating
several strategies to achieve these
goals.
For managers of entire portfolios,
the toolkit can be used to bench-
mark buildings against one another,
Management
Dave Wortman
Senior program
manager, Brendle
Group, Denver
A sample of net-zero water reduction scenario from the toolkit
