By Donna Bryson

(Reuters] – Cash crops flourish on hydroponics in a roof greenhouse located near Denver. Arugula. Chard. Escarole. Cabbage.

“And basil,” said Altius Farms CEO Sally Herbert, plucking a bright leaf. “Which you really should taste. Because it’s magnificent.”

Colorado’s vertical farm is just one example of a way to cope with growing water scarcity as droughts become more common in the west.

Coloradans are also working on other projects such as water recycling testing and creating barriers against wildfire runoff, which can cause contamination of supplies.

Colorado isn’t the only place where this happens. A major U.N. climate report published recently notes that half the world’s population is already seeing severe water scarcity for at least some part of the year. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change stated that drought in the U.S. West and early runoff due to a declining snowpack will lead to more water scarcity this summer.

While Colorado so far has met the water needs of its 6 million residents, it could face a roughly 30% shortfall by 2050 as the population grows while climate impacts escalate, according to one likely scenario experts prepared for the state’s official Water Plan https://cwcb.colorado.gov/colorado-water-plan/technical-update-to-the-plan.

Already, the region’s worst drought in more than a century has left water levels starkly low in the Lake Mead reservoir supplying Colorado River water to neighboring states.

“It’s mind-blowing,” Herbert said.

FARMING TOGETHER

Future water quality, quantity, and affordability will not be guaranteed by any one solution. Water recycling has faced resistance from the public and regulatory hurdles.

Vertical farming, meanwhile, won’t work at the scale needed for staple crops like corn or wheat. Altius grows 25,000 pounds (1,300 kg) annually on its rooftop of 7,000 feet. Others rely on lighting and electricity. This can lead to produce being more expensive.

However, traditional farming still uses 95% more water than vertical farming. Vertical farms can also be more cost-effective because they are closer to consumers. Indoor food production can also be beneficial in areas that are not subject to extreme temperatures, says Michael Dent from IDTechEx, an agricultural and food technology analyst.

Such benefits are luring investment: Georgia-based multinational Kalera is now repurposing a warehouse near Denver’s airport – close to highways and supermarket distribution centers. In 2010, the company began producing produce in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. It plans to grow further.

Walmart (NYSE) Inc was joined by Plenty, a San Francisco-based vertical startup Plenty to raise $400 million. This deal remains subject to regulatory approval.

Bowery Farming, a vertical startup based in New York City, raised $300 million last year through a round of funding.

It can be tough to assess a vertical farm’s overall environmental footprint. Wind power farms will produce less greenhouse gas emissions than those that use fossil fuels.

Kalera Chief Commercial Officer Henner Schwarz said there’s “frankly speaking, a lot of smoke and mirrors. Everybody has the ‘most sustainable technology’ and lots of blah, blah.”

“But when it comes to water savings, I’m actually very confident in saying that we use only 3% of the water traditional agriculture would use,” Schwarz said.

‘LIQUID GOLD’

A plumbing crew was huddled together around a refrigerator-sized piece of technology at a site for home construction.

The system will connect to your shower or bath and siphon the water off. It then filters the water and removes soap, hair, and sends it back to the toilet for flushing. “This is the first one that has taken the filtration to this level,” said Todd Moritzky, the plumbing company’s owner.

He and his crew worked on a house that was being built by Lennar Castle Rock, South of Denver. Lennar claimed that Greyter’s filtration system had reduced water usage by up to 25% when used in older builds.

“Water is liquid gold here,” said Eric Feder, Lennar’s Colorado-based director of national efforts to embrace homebuilding innovations. He stated that Greyter systems would be the industry standard for homes in his company.

However, Colorado’s Castle Rock and Pitkin County along with Denver are the only communities to allow water recycling at home.

“Plumbing codes, ordinances, local regulations are just catching up to that technology availability,” said Pat Sinicropi, head of the WateReuse trade association.

Castle Rock experiences less than 15 in (38 cm), of precipitation each year. It has a population estimated at 70,000 and is set to reach 100,000 in 2060. The town aims to decrease its water use from 115 to 100 gallons per day within 10 years.

“We fully intend to achieve it,” said Mark Marlowe, director of Castle Rock Water. Home developers can now get discounts on fees if they use systems like Greyter’s.

SAFE TO DRINK

Tzahi Cath, a local utility, has demonstrated that wastewater from the community can be reused for flushing toilets and drinking.

The Colorado School of Mines engineering professor and his students in Golden built a portable water treatment laboratory to further process the utility’s partly treated wastewater so that its safe for consumption.

The idea isn’t new. Since 2003, Singapore has treated sewage and recycled the water into its reservoirs. San Diego, California has a sewage recycling infrastructure. And Cath’s desert homeland of Israel is a world leader in desalinating seawater for drinking and treating wastewater for irrigation use.

Cath produced a half-million gallons of potable water from June through December – serving nearly 1,000 people who visited his lab. Most tasters liked the water.

“The state needs to start investing and utilities need to start building the infrastructure” to allow utilities to clean and deliver reclaimed waste water for drinking, Cath said.

Officials from the state are encouraging citizens to save water and looking to increase infrastructure funding.

The state needs at least 10 times the $25 million currently allotted in its annual budget for the Department of Natural Resources, which funds water projects, according to the state’s official Water Plan.

FIRE TINT

Colorado has growing concerns over not having enough water.

Fort Collins, a college town in Colorado had to allow some Cache la Poudre River water to run away last summer after it became contaminated by ash from the forest fires of the previous year.

Wildfires can destroy vegetation that could normally absorb some rainfallwater. The result is erosion and contaminated runoff over many years. A study https://www.pnas.org/content/119/10/e2114069119 published in this month’s journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences warned of an increase in hazards such as flooding and landslides in burned out areas of the U.S. West.

Fort Collins also has a water reservoir, so losing some from the Poudre supply wasn’t an immediate crisis.

Workers have been building permanent structures, at a cost of some $300,000, to block fire debris from getting into the water treatment plant, said Mark Kempton, Fort Collins Utilities’ interim deputy director for Water Resources & Treatment.

The clearing of debris from the 2020 massive fires will take several years. Additionally, wildfires are increasing in frequency and severity due to climate change.

In the future, Kempton said, we could see “fire response becoming part of regular water rate increases.”