WATER Act to Provide 30% Credit for Water Efficiency Investments

Yet another piece of legislation was recently introduced in Congress that would provide incentives for water efficiency. This bipartisan bill sponsored by Sen. Mark Udall and Rep. Mike Coffman is called the The Water Accountability Tax Efficiency Reinvestment Act of 2009--or WATER Act--and is designed to create a tax credit for consumers and businesses who invest in water-saving appliances.

The bill would be similar to the Energy Star credit for purchasing energy efficient appliances and would apply to businesses and individuals who purchase WaterSense certified products.

Below are Senator Udall's prepared remarks on the bill, outlining the importance of protecting our freshwater resources and creating incentives to use them as efficiently as possible:

Mr. President, you know, the old saying “you don’t know what you’ve got until it is gone” is true – especially when you are talking about water.

We have a tendency to take water for granted since we are so used to it always being there when we turn on our faucets or showers. And we tend to use it inefficiently – for example, when we let the faucet run while we are brushing our teeth – or water our lawns in the middle of the day when evaporation is at its worst.

But when you grow up in the desert as I did, you learn to treasure water. Everything in the West is shaped by it, and you know that it might not always be there when you need it. That will become even more apparent as we see lower snowpack and decreasing precipitation in the Southwest associated with climate change.

Water is the lifeblood of the West. Recent droughts in the southeastern United States remind us that no one is immune from water shortages.

And it is with an eye to that experience that I rise today to introduce legislation that would take a measured, practical step toward conserving it.

The Water Accountability Tax Efficiency Reinvestment Act of 2009 – or simply the WATER Act – creates a tax incentive for individuals and businesses to purchase products and services that use water at least 20 percent more efficiently than comparable ones.

It is very similar to the existing tax credit consumers can get for purchasing energy efficient Energy Star products which many of us may have in our homes now.

I want to thank my friend and colleague, Congressman Mike Coffman, for introducing this measure in the House. I am pleased to work with him in a bipartisan-bicameral manner on this important piece of legislation. And I hope my colleagues here in the Senate will join me in supporting this bill.

The more we can conserve today, the more we can decrease the demands on our existing water resources. And better yet – we can do it while saving our constituents hundreds of dollars.

With the WATER Act, we would create a 30 percent tax credit on the purchase of products that have earned the Environmental Protection Agency’s WaterSense label – with a maximum lifetime cap per entity of $1,500.

Like the Energy Star label awarded by EPA and the Department of Energy, the WaterSense label is reserved for those products that consume at least 20 percent less water than comparable items.

WaterSense products and services are becoming common. They include several brands of faucets, toilets, showerheads, even irrigation services.

Soon, entire homes will become WaterSense certified.

Conserving water in our homes and businesses is a bonus not only for the environment but for our wallets. The cheapest gallon of water is the gallon you don’t have to use.

The EPA estimates that with some simple adjustments to the way we use water in our homes, the average household could save as much as $170 a year on their water and sewer bill.

In addition, conserving water also conserves energy. Less water use means less energy is needed to heat the water in our showers, sinks and dishwashers, and to supply and treat public water. The EPA also estimates that if just 1 percent of American households used WaterSense-certified toilets alone, each year we could save enough electricity to power 43,000 homes for a month.

Lower water bills, lower energy bills, and reduced demands on the environment – that’s something we should all be striving for.

Numerous groups already support this legislation as written, including industry groups, water authorities and local leaders in Colorado.

I also want to say that this legislation gained added importance for me last month after I attended a briefing hosted by the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research. This particular briefing dealt with ways we will have to adapt our management of water resources in response to the effects of climate change.

Mr. President, I used to think that any discussion of adapting to climate change was misguided, that adapting to climate change was giving in to the problem. But I have come to understand that climate change adaptation is simply a recognition of reality. Climate change is real having impacts for all of us across the country. If we do not act now to respond to inevitable changes, we will be doing ourselves and our constituents a disservice.

We can look to the Colorado River for just one example. Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, California and Nevada – and Mexico – have an agreement dividing up how we will each use the river water.

When we made the agreement, our best guess was that there were 16.5 million acre feet of water to divide between the users. We now believe that the time period when we made the original estimate was a particularly wet period in the Colorado River Basin. Our best guess now is closer to 14.5 million acre feet – not enough water to fulfill the commitments made in the agreement.

So we already have the possibility for dramatic water shortages in the Colorado River Basin, which will be even worse during times of severe drought.

As if this problem wasn’t bad enough – scientists predict that precipitation in the Southwest could decrease as a result of climate change. So Colorado River water levels may get even lower. And if that happens, we are talking about serious impacts for homes, businesses, and farmers in seven states and two countries.

The longer we wait to take practical steps to adjust to the effects of climate change, the harder it will become to deal with them.

The good news is that we have options that will do more than help address global climate change. And they are policies we should be adopting anyway – they simply have added significance now.

The WATER Act of 2009 is a prime example. If consumers in the Colorado River Basin install WaterSense products in their homes and businesses, they will decrease the demand on the already over-allocated Colorado River, reduce their water and energy bills, and help head off an impending problem as a result of climate change.

This is a win-win that benefits everyone, and I urge all of my colleagues to join me in supporting this common sense, bipartisan effort to save taxpayers money and take a practical step towards greater water conservation.