Water Soft Paths plan for the future
Researchers looking to create sustainable patterns of water supply, consumption
Andrew Sain Staff
Photo by Derek Law.
You may not pay much attention to the water that you use every day, but David Brooks does. Brooks is a researcher developing what he calls water soft paths, a system that aims to change the way people use and are supplied with water around the world.
Modelled after the soft energy paths — systems for clean and sustainable power development first designed in the 1970s in response to a growing reliance on nuclear power — the water soft path is a sustainable way to supply the world’s population with water.
David Brooks spoke on the subject at the U of M’s Wallace building on Jan. 13 as part of the faculty of environment, earth and resources seminar series. He defines the water soft path as a system that has many small and widely-distributed sources of water supply. The system aims to change the water-use habits of end-users, and it treats wastewater using nearby or on-site facilities.
He believes that this differs from the traditional supply-side “hard path” in both its goals and its approach; the hard path increases the supply of water to a market according to increases in demand.
Brooks, educated at MIT, Cal Tech and the University of Colorado, is the director of research for Friends of the Earth Canada and was the founding director of the Canadian Office of Energy Conservation. He has participated in the Canadian Delegation to the Middle East Peace Process dealing with water and the environment.
He said that soft water paths examine water supply and consumption from a broad perspective.The problems of Lake Winnipeg, for example, are bigger issues that cannot be solved by looking too closely at Lake Winnipeg, he said.
From an economics perspective, Brooks said that the key perspective of a soft path analysis is looking at the demand side. “You cannot solve macro-size problems from the supply side,” he said, emphasizing that the problem is not with inadequate supply, but high demand.
“It’s not just sustainable production; we have to look at sustainable consumption.”
Some solutions that the water soft path offers include monitoring water consumption more strictly, recycling wastewater and using water of different qualities for different functions.
“Sewage outflow can be very good for plant growth, but you certainly don’t want to drink it,” said Brooks.
“Most conservation looks at protecting the quantity of the resource, but losses are equally common when you allow quality to degrade . . . you’ve got to make sure you’re not devoting good quality water to do low-quality services.”
He cited the example of “taking water, treating it, putting it into a house, and flushing it down the toilet” as being something that needs to be changed for the water soft path to be effective.
Brooks said that a unique characteristic of the water soft path is the technique of “backcasting” to plan policies. This technique looks at a future scenario and plans backwards to see how the current system can be reformed to meet water requirements in the most efficient way.
Brooks said that in some ways, he puts himself on the right-wing of the environmental movement in terms of water, describing himself as ambivalent with respect to who delivers the water services. Despite this, he admits that “the bulk of experience with private water today has been bad; the good examples are the exceptions.”
Making it clear that water soft path research is a planning model, Brooks admitted that the analysis is in its infancy, but it has far-reaching implications for communities all over the world.
Brooks said that, across Canada, there are several studies in progress looking at the implementation of water soft paths on various scales.
