Model and Strategy
The necessity to rapidly advance water management strategies is becoming self-evident. The new frontier in
California’s urban sustainability movement is greywater: using water more than once. We’ve seen that this requires
a significant realignment of priorities in design, operations, and the code landscape. Over 2 years, GG will
document the state of play of greywater opportunities in both Northern and Southern California, in terms of design
and regulatory reform, and create a resource book for key stakeholders. GG will then pick 2 low-income multi-family-dwelling
development projects, one in each area and likely including San Francisco’s Chinatown, that are
good candidates to explore for pilot projects for greywater retrofit. GG seeks to produce a clear and viable roadmap
to making greywater commonplace, state and nationwide. Greywater has the potential to save millions of dollars
and gallons of water per year.
Impact
Bringing our integrated design approach and the potential for technological innovation to the issue of greywater
retrofits, we hope to have a revolutionary, lasting impact, on both market/implementation barriers, and legal issues.
Two decades of our approach to make Green Affordable Housing commonplace, through pilot projects, education,
and policy influence, have resulted in a shift in priorities. Affordable housing as sustainable and green is almost
more the standard than not, and this is due in part to the influence of Global Green. We have built over 3,000 units
of LEED-certified housing to be water efficient in California, yet until now, only one has implemented a greywater
system. A nebulous code landscape quickly leads to inaction, as concerns about health risks lead to concerns
about liability, and then to a decision that it is better for someone else to be the trailblazer. There is a strong will on
the part of policymakers, advocates and the design community to see the realization of greywater systems
implemented at scale. This project represents the launch of the process to realize these greywater pilots, which we
intend to then use to swiftly influence policy.
Leadership
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Walker Wells
Vice President of Programs and Director of the Green Urbanism Program