Investing $10 billion in water-efficiency programs could play an important role in America's "green economy," creating as many as 220,000 jobs while protecting a priceless natural resource.
That was one of the conclusions in a new report produced by the Chicago-based Alliance for the Great Lakes, an environmental advocacy group.
"Water conservation creates jobs, saves money, cuts energy (use) and greenhouse gases, the list goes on," said Cameron Davis, president of the Alliance for the Great Lakes. "It's one of the rare magic wands we have in the water world."
The Alliance wants Congress and president-elect Barack Obama to allocate $10 billion to water-efficiency programs nationwide as part of a massive public works program Obama is crafting. The incoming president is expected to propose a multibillion-dollar public works program to create jobs and stimulate the flagging economy.
Investing $10 billion in water conservation and water-related energy efficiency programs could create between 150,000 and 220,000 new jobs nationwide. Such an investment also would reduce water use nationally by 9.3 trillion gallons annually -- enough to supply 5 percent of the U.S. population for 10 years, according to the report.
Increased water efficiency would ease pressure on the nation's lakes, rivers and groundwater resources, reduce energy use and could increase America's gross domestic product by about $15 billion annually, according to the Alliance report.
Repairing or replacing leaky municipal water mains, and installing low-flow toilets and water-saving showerheads would quickly create tens of thousands of jobs, Davis said.
As individuals, businesses and communities learn to use water more efficiently, the demand for energy needed to treat drinking water and the resulting wastewater also would decrease, Davis said. Reducing energy use decreases the volume of air pollutants that power plants emit, including chemicals that contribute to global warming.
A drought that left residents and government officials in Atlanta praying for rain last year thrust the issue of water scarcity into the national limelight.
Forty percent of the world's population is affected by water scarcity, according to the World Health Organization.
Water scarcity is not an issue in much of the Great Lakes region. The five lakes -- Michigan, Superior, Huron, Erie and Ontario -- contain 18 percent of the world's fresh surface water and 95 percent of fresh water in the U.S.
Communities in the Great Lakes basin pump 850 billion gallons of water out of the five lakes and the St. Lawrence River each day. Most of that water is returned to the lakes. About 1.9 billion gallons of Great Lakes water is consumed daily, meaning it is lost forever, according to 2004 data compiled by the Great Lakes Commission.
The U.S. and Canada recently approved the Great Lakes Compact, a legally binding agreement that severely limits water diversions to areas outside of the lakes' drainage basins. The compact also requires the eight Great Lakes states and two Canadian provinces that surround the lakes to develop water-conservation programs.
Davis said the abundance of water in the Great Lakes region doesn't diminish the need to use water wisely.
"With water increasingly expensive to pump, treat, distribute, treat again, then discharge, it's not the size of the water body that matters," Davis said. "It's about the money you save and leaving the Great Lakes better for the next generation than the way we found them."