Water conservation has made its way onto the green stage, as it has become the focus of some Spokane city and county initiatives and efforts by some plumbing contractors here to broaden the scope of their work.

Richard Dixon, the president of Spokane-based Gold Seal Mechanical Inc., says the plumbing contracting company has joined an organization called GreenPlumbers USA, a national sustainable-practices training program recognized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a partner in its WaterSense conservation program.

Dixon has become certified to train his employees in what he calls green plumbing practices, which focus on water conservation.

"We felt we needed to do something to make available some of the newest technology to our clients," mainly home owners and contractors who are building new homes, Dixon says.

He says eliminating leaks and using efficient fixtures saves money.

"Obviously, nobody gets water for free," he says.

Nationwide, minor leaks from household plumbing fixtures and irrigation systems account for more than 1 trillion gallons of water wasted each year in U.S. homes—enough to supply Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami with their water needs for a year, says Enesta Jones, an EPA spokeswoman.

The city of Spokane and Spokane County are encouraging homeowners to consider employing energy conservation in choosing indoor fixtures as well as in installing irrigation systems for lawns, says Lloyd Brewer, the city's environmental programs manager. The city recently renewed a program to offer $100 rebates to residents who purchase low-flow toilets or water-conserving clothes washing machines. Spokane County offers similar rebates, Brewer says.

The city also last year offered incentives for homeowners who removed 1,000 square feet of grass, provided they didn't replace it with an impervious surface such as concrete. Meanwhile, Spokane County is offering classes on water conservation design and equipment for irrigation systems.

The city recently upgraded the faucets and toilets in much of City Hall, working with a Mead-based commercial plumbing company, Waters Plumbing Inc.

"Around here, water is still a relatively cheap commodity, so we try to get people to pick up on the idea that saving water saves us in a lot of ways. There's the cost of the power to pump it up and to send it down to the sewer. There are a lot of reasons to use the resource in a good stewardship fashion and to not be wasteful," Brewer says.

"(The contractor) had to work with vendors and there was a little bit of a learning curve in trying to get the kinds of equipment we were feeling we wanted," Brewer says.

Steve Waters, owner of Waters Plumbing, says Spokane's City Hall is a test site for a toilet, called a "dual-flushing" toilet, that uses a sensor that adjusts the number of gallons a toilet uses to flush depending on how long a person remains on the toilet. In the project the city also installed a waterless urinal, he says.

He says he's starting to see more water-conserving fixtures specified in the commercial jobs for which his company bids. He says that in commercial construction, it's often up to engineers to specify such water-conservation features in the planning stages.

"A lot of the time we don't have a chance to deal directly" with the project owner, he says.

Jim Wavada, who teaches in Community Colleges of Spokane's Sustainable Building Advisors program, says a water-conservation approach to building plumbing systems is taught in that program.

"This means that designers and contractors are encouraged to specify low-flow, dual-flushing toilets, waterless urinals, and flow-restricted, motion-sensing sinks in restrooms," he says.

"Students in the program learn how to calculate water and energy savings from these approaches, as well as looking at ways to maximize the efficiency of commercial building cooling systems, which can use large amounts of water.

"Finally, the students in the Sustainable Building Advisors Program learn about water-conserving designs for building landscaping. This includes drought-tolerant plant selection, the use of water conserving nozzles, moisture sensors, and timers," Wavada says.

Gold Seal Mechanical plans to train all of its plumbers in green practices, starting with its service plumbers, Dixon says. It's an investment, because the training takes 40 hours, but Dixon believes it will be worthwhile for the company as water conservation becomes more sought after.

"We're totally committed to the concept, and if we're committed we have to back it up," with the time and expense to train its employees, he says. Gold Seal has 20 trucks, 30 service plumbers, and 20 plumbers who work on new construction, though that number fluctuates with the housing market, he says.

Dixon asserts that wasting water has an impact on greenhouse gases because the more water people use, the more energy is required to pump the water and to heat the water if it's used for showers or washing. Water waste also creates more sewage to treat.

"We can stress our aquifer even in a wet year like last year," he says.

In addition to installing lower-flow equipment, trained "green" plumbers will counsel people on how to conserve water. For example, instead of letting water from washing a car at home run off into the street, park the car on the grass to wash it and let the water that comes off the car help water the lawn, Dixon says. Also, he says, going to a car wash that uses recycled water will conserve water compared with running a hose outside at home.

"It's a behavioral modification thing. It's easier to put on a low-flow faucet than to get people to change their behavior," Dixon says.

In addition to education and installation of more-efficient fixtures, Gold Seal also plans to begin offering water audits to its residential customers, Dixon says. He says the company hasn't determined the price it will charge or when it will begin offering that service yet. He says in those audits, plumbers will take apart fixtures and measure flows so people can get an accurate picture of their water usage. He says that in the early days of low-flow fixtures, some plumbers modified the devices so they actually had a higher flow than their rating, because homeowners were unhappy with the devices' performance.

"Back several years ago, when the federal government first got involved in water savings, manufacturers weren't on board," and the quality wasn't there, but now it has improved, Dixon asserts. "Now, we have 1.28-gallon-per flush water closets that work way better than 5- or 6-gallon ones."

Because some of those early products were poor, the city has a Web page, at www.greenspokane.org, that allows people to see performance ratings for 1,200 different low-flow toilets, including how much water they use and how much material they can flush.

"Some retailers and suppliers are hesitant" to stock the products because older versions of water-saving equipment didn't work well and left customers unsatisfied, Brewer says. He says the city aims to encourage people to make changes, but wants them to have the consumer information they need to find quality products.

Products now are certified by the EPA's WaterSense program, which also works with professional associations, such as the Heating, Cooling and Plumbing Contractors Association and GreenPlumbers, as well as utilities, to promote conservation.

To curb unneeded water use, the city of Spokane also uses computerized weather-control stations to turn off the sprinkler systems at public parks if it's going to rain, Brewer says.

"Roughly half of our water use goes to outdoor irrigation," and citywide, water usage goes up by about five times in the summer months, he says.