Sitting on the shore of Lake Ontario, it may seem that Toronto has an unlimited supply of water. But what it doesn't have is an unlimited capacity to treat water and wastewater, says Pamela Georgopoulos, Toronto Water's water efficiency supervisor.

In fact, given the current population and employment growth rates, the City of Toronto projects that it will have to spend $220 million in 2011 to expand water treatment facilities if action isn't taken to decrease consumption.

"If, on the contrary, we spend money now to implement water-efficiency measures, it is a third of the cost of expansion," Georgopoulos says. "We realized that for us to postpone the expansion of water and wastewater treatment facilities, we would have to reduce our peak demand by 266 million litres of water per day."

In 2004, Toronto Water distributed an average of 1.43 billion litres of water daily through more than 5,000 kilometres of watermains. It also treated about 1.3 billion litres of wastewater daily.

Ken Kerr, Business Edge
Pamela Georgopoulos, with filtered water, says the program sounds too good to be true.

Total expenditure including capital financing was about $557 million in 2004, while total revenue was about $520 million.

Toronto Water estimates the value of its assets, which include four water-filtration plants and four wastewater treatment plants, at about $26 billion.

To realize the goal of reducing consumption and delaying a costly expansion, the city has approved $73 million for a series of water-conservation programs. Two of the most aggressively proactive are the Industrial, Commercial and Institutional WaterSaver program and the multi-unit toilet-replacement program.

ICI WaterSaver, a capacity buy-back program, encourages businesses to replace older equipment with new, more efficient machinery. On a one-time basis, the city compensates a qualifying business with 30 cents for every litre of water saved per day.

"To do the calculation, we ask the facility to do a seven- or 14-day pre-installation monitoring," Georgopoulos says. "Once they've replaced a piece of equipment or in some way changed their water-usage processes, we would ask them to monitor again. We then work out what the daily consumption is and what the average daily savings is."

The savings add up quickly, Georgopoulos says. The time it takes to recoup costs is commonly measured in months and some projects are virtually free.

One example is the Fairmont Royal York in downtown Toronto, where a relatively simple change in the hotel's laundry operation reaped substantial savings.

The historic hotel runs one of Toronto's largest laundries, according to director of engineering Andrew Poultney. Because of hard-water problems, staff had to double-wash and triple-rinse the linens and towels from each of its 1,365 rooms every day. In total, Poultney says, the laundry consumed 676,000 litres of water daily.

"Our water bills were extraordinary. So we sat down and looked at ways to save money on utilities and energy," he says. "Of course we're also trying to be environmentally friendly."

The solution was an industrial water softener, which means the hotel can now single-wash and rinse its laundry. The upgrade saves more than 400,000 litres per day and the city paid for the $50,000 water softener. Poultney says the hotel will save $60,000 a year in water costs.

"I don't know why anybody wouldn't want to be a part of this program," Georgopoulos says. "It is one of those programs where it sounds too good to be true."

"I remember when I first met with the Royal York. They just thought this was insane, but the thing to remember is that we are saving money.

"We can offer 30 cents per litre because the cost of expansion for that same litre would have been closer to $1.12," she says.

While the Royal York's case demonstrates the dramatic savings possible, Georgopoulos admits that not every facility has the time or expertise to analyse its own water-usage processes.

As a result, for the program's official launch in November, the city's water department will offer engineering expertise at no charge to 200 of its biggest industrial, commercial and institutional water users.

Georgopoulos says that while these clients make up only three per cent of the customer base, the segment consumes and discards approximately 30 per cent of the water and wastewater the city processes each year.

"Of all-out program areas, ICI WaterSaver shows the greatest potential for water reduction," she says. "But I do believe it will be a challenging program because it takes a champion within a facility to look at their practices, put a plan down on paper and actually do something about it. It is so easy not to do something."

Georgopoulos says the city's toilet-replacement initiative has also been successful. Under the program, the city pays $60 to $150 toward the cost of an approved six-litre, low-flush model. To date, the program has subsidized the replacement of more than 125,000 toilets.

"We've done more than 150 multi-unit buildings so far and we are finding that, on average, our customers are saving about 45 per cent on their water bills," she says.

"Yet, surprisingly, a lot of multi-unit buildings have not even heard about the program."

Mike Lithgow, energy manager for Greenwin Property Management Inc., has heard of it, however.

He says that over the past five years his company has replaced all the toilets in its 250 actively managed buildings. Many of those were subsidized by the city's program.

A small three-storey apartment building managed by Greenwin on Craigton Drive replaced 39 toilets with approved six-litre models. Prior to installing the water-efficient toilets, the building used about 660 litres of water per suite per day. After the toilet installation, water consumption was reduced by 44 per cent, which meant a saving of about $4,700 per year. The project cost was recovered in less than 13 months.

At another Greenwin-managed property on Roselawn Avenue, water consumption was reduced by 42 per cent a day and water costs by about $21,000 annually.

In total, Greenwin has replaced about 13,000 toilets and saved approximately $1.2 million annually, Lithgow says "One of the very valuable things the city has done is that they developed a rigorous testing program to identify quality low-flow toilets," Lithgow says. "A problem in the early days was that manufacturers would simply tweak their existing model to use less water, but it would work just terrible. That's why the city is promoting only the quality toilets they've tested."

While the city has seen significant savings so far, Georgopoulos says a lot of work is still needed to meet its target of reducing consumption by 266 million litres daily.

In addition to the ICI WaterSaver and multi-unit toilet replacement programs, the city has fast-tracked a high-efficiency washer-replacement program. It is also readying an irrigation initiative.

"I don't know of any other municipality in Canada that can offer their water customers what the City of Toronto can offer," Georgopoulos says.

"The good thing about it is that these are fantastic programs for all of our customers. The more water we save, the more there will be for all of us."

(Mike McLeod can be reached at mcleod@businessedge.ca)