Milwaukee, WI — Companies are increasingly tracking their water consumption and developing action plans to curb use. Yet they often lack the ability to take a closer look at how their water consumption is impacting local resources.

A new tool from Veolia Water North America aims to help organizations take a deeper dive into water assessments in order to help them maker better business decisions.

"Looking at the water content of a product doesn't give information on water stress," said Laurent Auguste, Veolia Water Americas' CEO and president, said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "We wanted to push it one step further for clients and people who manage water to evaluate the impact on resources, water stress and quality."

The company, a water and wastewater services firm, announced the creation of the Water Impact Index this week, with plans to eventually make the tool available to public. Veolia also revealed preliminary results from a case study that simultaneously analyzed the water, carbon and economic impacts of the water system of the city of Milwaukee.

The evaluation allowed the city to identify new projects that will improve its environmental profile, including a new initiative that will generate electricity using landfill gas from a local sewage treatment facility, simultaneously trimming its Water Impact Index and carbon footprint.

The Water Impact Index can also shed light on states' water challenges, as demonstrated in a comparison of California and Wisconsin. Veolia found that even though Wisconsin used 1.5 times the water as California on a per capita basis, California's Water Impact Index was 50 times higher because of water stress in the state and the energy needed to move transport water from one region to another.

Image CC licensed by Flickr user ygor.