Are the rich causing water shortages in swimming pools? New Study Says Yes: NPR

A new research study indicates that maintaining backyard pools, like this one pictured in Los Angeles in August 2005, is one of the ways wealthy city dwellers consume too much water.

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Kevin Winter/Getty Images

A new research study indicates that maintaining backyard pools, like this one pictured in Los Angeles in August 2005, is one of the ways wealthy city dwellers consume too much water.

Kevin Winter/Getty Images

According to an international research team, swimming pools, flower gardens, indoor fountains and the urban dwellers who can afford them are important factors behind the increasingly serious water crises plaguing cities.

Published in the journal Natural durabilitya new study has found that socio-economic disparities are just as influential as climate change and population growth when it comes to explaining why the the water supply to so many cities is dwindling.

“There are certain people who have the power to decide how to manage water and also use more water,” said lead researcher Elisa Savelli from Uppsala University in Sweden. “Even with something as simple as water, it’s unfair. Some social groups have access to too much, and some social groups have too little.”

Affluent residents use 12 times more water than low-income people, study finds

More than 80 metropolitan areas around the world have faced severe shortages over the past two decades, a figure that is only expected to increase, affecting more than a billion people over the next few decades.

And the threat does not distinguish between hemispheres or climates. Moscow, Miami and Melbourne, Australia have been among the hardest hit over the past decade.

For the purposes of the study, the researchers focused on one location, Cape Town, South Africa.

Even 25 years after the end of apartheid in South Africa, Cape Town is always separated into distinct geographical lines, which makes it easier to track water use across income groups, Savelli said. The city also experienced a major drought from 2015 to 2017, a crisis so severe that the city narrowly avoided “day zero”, when it thought water sources would completely dry up.

During the same period, elite households in Cape Town consumed about 571 gallons of water per day, compared to 47 gallons for households in lower income brackets, the researchers found.

Although they represent only about 14% of the population, the wealthiest inhabitants used more than half of the water (51%) consumed by the whole city.

And most of the water used by these privileged social groups was for non-essential needs, such as irrigation, swimming pools and sanitation. Other social groups used the most water for basic functions like drinking or bathing.

“Even though we used Cape Town as a case study, the analysis can be applied to any other city in the world that is facing water shortages, or may face them in the future,” said Savelli at NPR.

“I won’t say the results will be exactly the same, but I believe any city in the US, Canada or Australia would have inequality. It can manifest in different ways, but it’s always there. and it is just as critical as population growth or climate change,” she said.

Another notable limitation of the study is its scope: domestic water consumption is only a fraction of overall public water use.

In the United States, two major thermoelectric power generation and manufacturing industries represent for two-thirds of the use of the public water supply. Agriculture accounts for about 40% of America’s total fresh water withdrawals.

But Savelli hopes the study will trigger much-needed change in the way policymakers rethink urban policy.

Effective policy can involve trade-offs and targeted measures

In the face of drought, cities often seek to implement incremental pricing models or infrastructure upgrades, bureaucratic measures that often only perpetuate the same “uneven and unsustainable water patterns” that have led to the crisis in the first place, according to the study.

During Cape Town’s severe drought, well-to-do residents turned to private water sources like boreholes and rainwater harvesting systems, according to the study. Low-income residents, facing higher water costs, sometimes lacked water to meet basic needs for activities such as cooking and laundry.

In other words, the drought made the wealthy more safe water and better equipped to deal with future droughts, even if they consumed unsustainable amounts of water to begin with.

Savelli says policymakers should think in terms of targeted solutions and compromises.

“Before building an additional dam, cities should first look at individual consumption, not just [citywide] average,” she said. “Maybe you have a pool, but you don’t keep the water on all the time or the government might tax you for water use they deem excessive.”

It’s hard to imagine solutions like fines and restrictions being immediately effective in places like the United States.

Take for example Los Angeles, a city with an infamous lack of underground water sources. In 2022, celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, Kevin Hart and Sylvester Stallone were called for blatantly flouting fines and “exceedance notices” for their water usage during the drought.

“For celebrities, musicians or athletes who all live in the area, monetary penalties won’t make sense to them because it doesn’t matter. They have a lot of money and if they want it, they could be spending $5,000 a month on a water bill,” said Mike McNutt, a spokesman for the local water district.

After mounting frustration, the district finally took the infrastructure route, installing automatic flow restriction devices capable of browning lawns and reducing even Kardashian’s sink faucet, famous on Instagram to a single fillet.