Proper Water Stewardship Marries Sustainability with Health and Well-being

Although buildings are homes to living beings, they can also be thought of as living entities themselves. While it’s not a perfect analogy, buildings are “alive” in the sense that the materials used to make them, the locations they occupy, and the ways owners and occupants treat a building’s shell and systems all have a profound impact on the useful life of a building.

More than ever before, an increasing number of designers, builders, building owners and managers seek to be good stewards of their facilities by ensuring that they do not strain local energy, water and waste systems while also fostering human health and well-being. A stewardship approach to building management—specifically the built environment’s impact on water resources—can be achieved through purposeful alignment of key principles from WELL v2, the latest version of the WELL Building Standard (WELL), and the International Water Stewardship Standard (Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS) Standard).¹

Changing the way we manage water resources

Clean, accessible water for all is an essential component for the world we want to live in. The aim of Goal 6 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is to “Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.”¹ Any water policy congruous with Goal 6 must embrace the essential components of water stewardship by ensuring resources are used in a fair, sensible and transparently sustainable way. Implementing policies that encourage stakeholders to identify and mitigate water-related risks through development of, adherence to, and improvement of standards that apply clear metrics and due process to the acquisition, treatment, distribution, consumption and discharge of water is crucial.

Just as many companies in water-intensive industrial and agricultural sectors seek to improve their water-related goal setting and actions,² owners and managers in the commercial and multifamily residential sectors must pay more attention to water use, stormwater runoff and other water-related concerns inside and outside their facility.

The link between human health and buildings is clearer than ever. The COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced that buildings play a central role in maintaining human health, which is the core of Goal 3 (‘good health and well-being’).¹ Indoor environments where we spend ~ 90% of our time have the power to nurture our health or hinder it.³ Surfaces, pipes, ducts and fixtures can entrap microbes or harmful chemicals that we might breathe, ingest or absorb through the skin.³

By developing water-related health targets, owners and managers can seek to reduce individuals’ exposure to harmful chemicals and microbes in water used for drinking, cooking, bathing, toilets or water-based cooling systems like cooling towers. Actual health targets depend on the water’s use. For drinking water, for example, we aim to prevent ingestion of gastrointestinal pathogens and a range of chemicals. Yet for hot water used in showers, spa pools or cooling towers, we wish to prevent exposure to droplets contaminated with respiratory pathogens such as Legionella.

It’s important to note that placing health targets in a water management program doesn’t mean abandoning your conservation goals. In fact, only by addressing health targets can we truly achieve sustainable building design and operations. The reason is simple: the cost of unhealthy water operations, including shutdowns, additional chemicals, material replacement and re-commissioning, along with healthcare costs if someone gets sick, may be considerably more resource-intensive than proactive maintenance.⁴ However, the design and operation of building water systems must foster the water, as stagnation is a known cause of deterioration of water quality and microbial proliferation.⁵

So how do we achieve truly sustainable buildings? A “plan-do-check-act” driven approach by itself risks being overly formulaic unless it incorporates a more holistic view to include health and well-being metrics. Aligned with this philosophy, the sustainable use of water can contribute to the provision of healthier living and working spaces for us all.

From water management to water stewardship

Over the past ten years, there’s been a shift in how organizations address water issues in their operations from a traditional input management approach (i.e., move water quickly through and out of the building) to a stewardship approach (i.e., water is an asset and essential to operations and brand value). The growing water stewardship movement encourages building owners and operators to take a more holistic approach to water management, encompassing issues like stormwater considerations while providing safer water, sanitation and hygiene for all. Water stewardship is defined as “the use of water that is socially and culturally equitable, environmentally sustainable and economically beneficial, achieved through a stakeholder-inclusive process that includes both site- and catchment-based actions.”⁶

Credible water stewardship is encouraged through the use of the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS) Standard. It’s built on a plan-do-check-act platform of continual improvement that helps implementers prioritize and mitigate water-related risks and address shared challenges and opportunities by working through the criteria within the standard. Sites that achieve third-party certification to the AWS Standard operate their facilities in a way that leads to one or more of the outcomes of good water stewardship: good water quality, sustainable water balance, good water governance, the healthy status of Important Water-Related Areas, and safe water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) for all.

Design considerations, operational procedures and behavioral patterns are instrumental in achieving good governance vis-à-vis the water resource and directly affect the building’s water quality, access to hygiene and sanitation, and impact the water balance.⁷ Buildings take many actions to meet these outcomes, but to provide contextually meaningful actions, building owners and operators can apply the plan-do-check-act platform embodied in the five steps of the AWS Standard:²

• Gather and understand data on water challenges;
• Develop a stewardship plan;
• Implement the plan;
• Evaluate plan performance; and
• Communicate and disclose the stewardship efforts.

Water stewardship with WELL v2 and the AWS Standard

From a design perspective, occupants can ‘get to know’ their building’s incoming water through testing and analysis. This way, they’re able to determine the exact needs for on-site treatment systems like filters or softeners. Furthermore, plumbing material selection is important to reduce the risk of corrosion, and piping design should prevent the creation of ‘dead legs’ (i.e., pieces of pipe where water stagnates) which can happen if expansions are planned but not executed.⁸ Altogether, design considerations should improve safety in drinking water and reduce the risk of opportunistic pathogens like Legionella. During normal operations, periodic water monitoring, plumbing inspections and routine maintenance are straightforward aspects of maintaining water quality. And since water quality decreases with stagnation, occupants should note that regular tap water consumption not only helps with proper hydration but also plays a role in maintaining healthy pipes and fixtures.

In addition, implementing non-potable water capture and reuse systems, like rainwater harvesting systems for irrigation or greywater collection and treatment, may reduce potable water consumption along with downstream pressure for wastewater treatment during events such as storms.⁹ However, it is imperative that safeguards are implemented to prevent any intrusion of non-potable water into the potable water system.

The five steps of the AWS Standard have also been systematized through a risk-based, health-centered approach by the World Health Organization (WHO) in its guidance for building water management.⁸ It’s also been adopted in the Water Concept of the WELL Building Standard v2 (WELL v2). The foundational concept used by WHO is the implementation of a water management plan to reduce risk associated with one or more health-based targets. In simple terms, the management plan contains: (1) a system analysis, or understanding of the building and its source water; (2) the hazard identification and risk assessment, which lists locations and conditions that can become problematic to maintain the desired levels of safety; (3) the establishment of control measures to address these risks; (4) the development of monitoring procedures that determine variables that indicate adherence to health goals and their acceptable thresholds; (5) the implementation of corrective actions for when a monitored variable falls out of its acceptable thresholds and (6) the internal verification and auditing to ensure that the plan is being followed. The plan is subject to a validation step, which is an external assessment of the effectiveness of its implementation. As such, validation should not be thought of as the final goal in water management, but rather as the confirmation that all safeguards are in place to consistently deliver high quality water.

WELL v2 provides a path to implement the WHO risk management framework. The validation step is implemented in WELL features W01 and W02 through third-party sampling at the tap to confirm that the water quality adheres to thresholds established in the WHO drinking-water quality guidelines.⁷ By awarding projects for pre-testing the incoming water at the building’s point of entry and within the property (in feature W05), WELL encourages the production of a risk analysis which can highlight potential sources of water quality deterioration and any need for in-premise treatment. Periodic monitoring of parameters indicative of the overall health of the building water, such as turbidity, chlorine and pH (prescribed in WELL features W03 and W05), help inform schedules for system maintenance or repairs. By documenting and publishing results and maintenance actions as required in WELL v2 feature W05 and in a water management plan, WELL also closes the plan-do-check-act loop that is foundational to the AWS Standard. The diagram below displays how the steps of the WHO risk management philosophy and the AWS Standard’s five steps work together.

Figure 1: Continuous Improvement and the WHO’s Water Fundamentals and the AWS Standard’s 5 Steps

By making water available throughout a building (feature W06) and testing for good taste (feature W04), WELL also seeks to foster good hydration practices, a tenet of a WASH program that can be part of the goals set in an AWS strategy, with the additional benefit of encouraging water to flow through the building. Beyond drinking water, the WHO’s water management philosophy and its alignment with the AWS Standard is even more evident in WELL features for Legionella management (W03) and non-potable water reuse (W09), as both explicitly call for risk-based management plans containing these elements. Overall, the overlap between the intentions of the water concept in WELL v2 and the AWS Standard is high, and is illustrated below:

Figure 2: Common outcomes of WELL v2 and the AWS Standard v2

A typical exemplar demonstrating the complementary approach could be imagined, for example, in a facility that combines the principles and needs of domestic water requirements within a commercial environment. This may be an airport or entertainment arena venue, which seeks to safeguard each individual’s well-being and enhance their personal comfort and welfare within the context of a commercial industrial environment. A combined approach to water stewardship, amalgamating the WELL and AWS standards, could address all the necessary requirements and ensure that multi-purpose facilities such as these provide clean and safe water for visitors and on-site workers.

Conclusion

The risk-based approach to water management, espoused in WELL v2, aligns with the AWS Standard’s plan-do-check-act approach to site-level water stewardship. A complementary approach can building owners and managers help care for their building envelope and the individuals inside as well as steward their water resources in a sustainable manner. Oftentimes, people view voluntary standards as an “either/or” proposition, but, with smart application, WELL v2 and the AWS Standard can form complementary aspects to a holistic approach to building management that can help achieve world-class water stewardship performance, reconciling the “safety versus efficiency” paradox.

---

Resources

1. For more information on the AWS Standard, please visit: https://a4ws.org/the-aws-standard-2-0/; and, for more information on the WELL Building Standard, please visit: https://v2.wellcertified.com/wellv2/en/overview.
2. United Nations. The 17 Goals. https://sdgs.un.org/goals. Published 2015. Accessed April 16, 2021.
3. Alliance for Water Stewardship. AWS Case Studies. https://a4ws.org/resources/aws-standard-implementation-and-certification-case-studies/. Published 2021. Accessed April 16, 2021.
4. Allen JG, Macomber JD. Healthy buildings: How indoor spaces drive performance and productivity. Harvard University Press; 2020.
5. Perez R. Water; Go With the Flow… And Manage It Well. GRESB Insights Web site. https://gresb.com/gresb-insights-october-2020-water/. Published 2021. Accessed April 16, 2021.
6. Falkinham JO. Living with Legionella and Other Waterborne Pathogens. Microorganisms. 2020;8(12):2026.
7. Alliance for Water Stewardship. About the Alliance for Water Stewardship. https://a4ws.org/about/. Published 2021. Accessed April 16, 2021.
8. World Health Organization. Guidelines for drinking-water quality. 4th ed. Geneva, Switzerland: WHO Press; 2017.
9. World Health Organization. Water Safety in Buildings. Geneva, 2011.
10. Sharvelle SANC, E.; Hultquist, R.; Leverenz, H.; A. Olivieri. Risk-Based Framework for the Development of Public Health Guidance for Decentralized Non-Potable Water Systems. Alexandria, VA: National Water Research Institute for the Water Environment & Reuse Foundation; 2017.