by Lindsey Webb

If you’re like me, you don’t spend very much time thinking about your water bill. You turn the water off when you’re brushing your teeth and limit your shower time, but in the end, you use what you use and you pay for it every month, just like everyone else across the country. In reality, though, things are a bit more complicated; what you pay depends a lot on where you live.

Availability or scarcity of water in your area doesn’t entirely determine what you pay for it. Playing a huge role is the rate structure chosen by the municipality where you live. (State policies can also have some influence.)

Most cities charge a fixed fee to start off with, but beyond that they have a number of different rate structures to choose from. For example, Memphis, New York, and Chicago charge a uniform rate for every unit of water consumed. Fresno, California does as well, though given the recent drought in California, there have been calls to re-evaluate water pricing in a number of California cities.

Denver, Jacksonville, and Boston use an “increasing block”structure where users are charged more for higher amounts used. Users in these areas might pay a lower rate for the first 1000 cubic feet of water consumed, but a higher rate for the next. This structure provides a stronger incentive to conserve water than a uniform price structure, since the price per unit increases the more you use.

A “decreasing block”structure, used by a handful of major cities like Baltimore, Detroit, and Indianapolis, is the opposite. Users in these cities are charged less for higher amounts of water used, providing less of an incentive to conserve.

Cities acknowledging seasonal variation in water availability include Phoenix, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, and Seattle. The latter three cities use a seasonal increasing block structure, which is similar to the increasing block structure –the difference is that rates are higher in the peak season. Phoenix uses a seasonal uniform block structure where the prices paid during peak season and low season do not depend on the amount used.

So, in which cities do consumers pay the most for their water use? According to a 2013 survey by Circle of Blue, an association of scientists and journalists focused on water issues, average water bills for the 30 major U.S. cities vary quite widely. For a family of four using 50 gallons of water per person per day, the average monthly water bill in Phoenix was the lowest at just $11.55. Other low payers include Memphis ($11.79) and Salt Lake City ($16.55).

On the other end of the spectrum, a family of four using the same amount of water in Santa Fe, New Mexico could expect to pay $54.78 per month. Seattle residents paid the second highest at $51.10, perhaps the opposite of what one would expect given the city’s rainy reputation. San Diego, San Francisco, and Atlanta all had average monthly bills of over $40. Here in Boston, the average monthly bill for a family of four consuming 50 gallons of water per day is somewhere in the middle at $36.08.

For more information and a complete listing of the 30 cities’average water bills, see http://www.circleofblue.org/waternews/2013/world/the-price-of-water-2013-up-nearly-7-percent-in-last-year-in-30-major-u-s-cities-25-percent-rise-since-2010/

Lindsey Webb is a second year FPAN student who is very excited about graduating in May, in part because she can binge-watch all of the Chopped episodes she missed this year. Learn more about her on our Meet Our Writers page.

by Alyssa Charney

Many conservation programs in the Farm Bill aim to help producers protect water quality from impairment from agricultural inputs. However, since 2002, funding from the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) has been flowing to concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), which are contaminating, rather than protecting, critical water resources. The 2014 Farm Bill failed to reform EQIP’s funding of these operations.

EQIP is a working lands conservation program that was established in the 1996 Farm Bill to allow agricultural and livestock operators to enroll in 5 to 10 year contracts to manage natural resource concerns. EQIP provides financial and technical assistance to producers to address natural resource concerns and deliver environmental benefits. Common practices include planting cover crops to prevent erosion or installing fencings for grazing rotations.

Despite EQIP’s conservation objectives, nearly 40 percent of the program’s funds currently go to CAFOs for waste storage facilities and irrigation equipment installation. And yet even with EQIP funding, CAFOs do not effectively manage the large amount of waste they produce.

Animal manure and urine from CAFOs are funneled into and stored in massive waste lagoons, which often overflow, leak, or break and send dangerous contaminants into water supplies. These lagoons are frequently located within floodplains on aquifers, directly contaminating the drinking water supply. Additionally, liquid manure stored in the lagoons is sprayed onto cropland or pastures through large sprinkler irrigation systems that over apply waste to levels that exceed what is needed to maintain soil fertility. Liquid waste from the sprayfields runs off into streams, lakes, rivers, and estuaries.

Manure lagoon (Source: USDA).

The lagoons and irrigation pivots used by CAFOs are sucking up EQIP funding in the name of environmental conservation.

However, this wasn’t always the case. Between 1996 and 2002 CAFOs were ineligible to receive EQIP funding. But in response to a massive lobbying campaign from corporate meat industry interests, the 2002 Farm Bill increased the EQIP payment limit from $50,000 to $300,000 and CAFOs were deemed eligible. Funding priorities also shifted to favor projects with the greatest pollution potential instead of the most cost-efficient applications, again favoring CAFOs over small and midsized farms that wish to integrate pollution preventing practices on their operations.

Even with the EQIP funding CAFOs receive, CAFOs do not effectively manage the massive amounts of waste they produce.

Reforming EQIP to prevent CAFOs from receiving funds would have provided more needed support to farmers who are safeguarding, rather than further damaging, natural resources. Unfortunately, the 2014 Farm Bill not only failed to decrease the payment limit for EQIP, but it actually increased that limit from $300,000 to $450,000 per contract. CAFOs remain eligible and polluting livestock operations can continue to receive a disproportionate share of EQIP funding.

Public health and sustainable agriculture advocates have called for a variety of reforms to address the disproportionate share of EQIP funding that CAFOs receive.

The National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC)’s platform proposed that the Farm Bill should reduce the program-wide payment limit for EQIP from $300,000 to $200,00 per contract, as the average contract today is still smaller than the program’s original payment limit of $50,000, and CAFO applications receive larger contracts. NSAC added that if Congress does continue to fund CAFOs through EQIP, it should at least eliminate payments made to any new or expanding operations and to those located within flood plains.

Similarly, the Union of Concerned Scientists has called for the elimination of the waste-management subsidies that CAFOs receive under EQIP in order to provide more needed support to small and mid-sized farms. The Environmental Working Group (EWG) has also identified the effects of CAFOs on human health and the environment as reason to reform EQIP to prohibit CAFOs from receiving funding.

And the American Public Health Association (APHA) has pointed to the dangers that CAFOs present to contaminated drinking water and called for a moratorium on new operations. APHA cited a number of water-related health concerns including the contamination of drinking water with pathogens from manure.

What’s next?

While the Farm Bill fails to provide much needed reform to CAFOs’ EQIP eligibility at the federal level, state technical committees can play a significant role in determining which EQIP applications are or are not funded. The technical committees can, and should, advise state conservationists to restructure the way NRCS ranks applications, in such a way as to favor sustainable practices rather than those specific to CAFO waste management. Funding manure lagoons or pivot irrigation equipment for CAFOs should be especially discouraged.

States should not sit around and wait another five (or more) years for Farm Bill reform to stop wasting conservation dollars on water polluting CAFOs. The time for a shift in EQIP funding priorities is now.

Alyssa Charney is a first year AFE/MPH student. Also in the WSSS program, she’s excited about the water that helps grow the food we eat and the water that hydrates her as she gets ready to run the Boston Marathon. She grew up on the east coast, but loves Montana’s mountains that were home before arriving at Friedman. Alyssa can be reached at alyssa.charney@tufts.edu.

by Mimi DelGizzi

David Bekham had one, as did Taylor Swift and Beyonce. Even Superman had one. The Olsen Twins sported two. Since 1994, celebrities have donned milk mustaches for the “Got Milk?” campaign, but after two decades, the Milk Processor Education Program (MilkPEP) is retiring the slogan in favor of a new message. The new tagline for the calcium-rich drink is “Milk Life” and features everyday folks performing (almost) everyday tasks, but with more gusto.

Launched Feb 24^th, the new campaign moves away from the celebrity-studded image “Got Milk?” had generated (over 300 different celebrity ads were created for the campaign). According to ad executives, the use of celebrities was meant to bring excitement to an otherwise “boring product.” In fact, according to a report put out by the USDA, Americans born in the 1990s are less likely to drink fluid milk with lunch or dinner compared to Americans born in decades prior. Unfortunately, oftentimes sodas and other sugar drinks take the place of milk on modern dinner tables.

courtesy of NPR.org

Instead of trying to revitalize a low-interest item, then, the new “Milk Life”  campaign aims to slingshot milk into a spot it has not been since its “Does Your Body Good” days: touting milk’s nutritional benefits, particularly the protein content in one glass of the stuff—about 8 grams. The new ads depict liquid milk powering consumers through a myriad of physical activities. One ad shows a child jumping off a diving board, wings of milk giving her the chutzpah to do so. Another ad depicts a young man breakdancing and swirling liquid milk in circles around his body. The ad reads, “What 8 grams of protein looks like when you’re breaking the laws of physics.”

In an article on NPR’s food blog, The Salt, the marketing director of MilkPEP, Victor Saborsy, explains that “you can read ‘Milk Life’ two ways”: urging consumers to milk life, enjoying it to the fullest, or encouraging them towards “living a milk life” by making milk a central part of a healthy diet.

At a time when dairy milk sales are contending with increasingly popular non-dairy alternatives like soy and almond milk, the new “Milk Life” campaign wants to make sure consumers still know that yes, milk (still) does the body good.

Drink on.

Michelina (Mimi) DelGizzi is a 2nd-year dual degree MS/MPH student and the current Co-Editor of The Friedman Sprout. To learn more about her, visit our Meet Our Writers page.