California Water Agencies Cope with Diminishing Water Supply

When the new cutbacks hit, Resident B had few remaining tools to reduce waste as her overall use was already low. This meant she would start getting letters and even fines from the local water board, despite the fact that she was by far more diligent about conserving water. For Resident A, all that was required to comply with the 25 percent reduction was to stop hosing off his driveway and put a water-efficient nozzle on his hose.

California’s SB 606 and AB 1668 represent a shift away from one-size-fits-all cutbacks, creating district-level water budgets based on factors such as irrigable land, local evapotranspiration rates and household size. Water efficiency, rather than just water use quantity, is a central theme of these bills, which establish criteria for determining a district’s water allocation based on new urban water use efficiency standards.

As part of the legislation, the state provided water agencies with irrigated landscape data. But that data alone is insufficient to identify where inefficiencies exist among the agencies’ service area residents. Other metrics such as demographic data, parcel characteristics and evapotraspiration rates are necessary to pinpoint inefficient users. This is where software solutions like WaterView help, combining these datasets to identify inefficient users and manage targeted water conservation campaigns.  

A New Approach to Reducing Residential Water Consumption

Efficiency-centric solutions are driving clear results across the state, helping water districts save thousands of acre-feet of water annually and avoid millions in new infrastructure costs.

Achieving this kind of change, however, is easier when water agencies have visibility into parcel-level use and allocation, based on elements such as lot size and number of residents. WaterView water efficiency software is helping utilities across the state bring it all together by combining water use, allocation, landscape area measurement and remote sensing data into a simple GIS environment.

The WaterView software simplifies compliance with the new efficiency standards, displaying dashboard metrics that include use as a percentage of allocation at the parcel and district level. It also provides a window into water use efficiency to help identify which users are using more than their fair share.

For example, water agencies can identify the customers using more than 200 percent of their allocation, providing a targeted list of where outreach is likely to drive the biggest change in water use. Agencies are also using this technology to track use throughout the year—rather than discovering too late that they have exceeded their allocation.

Advanced Analytics Drive Deeper Insights

In summer 2021, California governor Gavin Newsom called for a voluntary 15 percent cutback in residential water use, focusing on measures such as reducing landscape irrigation. Doing so in a way that’s both effective for utilities and fair to users is another challenge where focusing on water use efficiency is the answer.

Looking at historical use data, one water agency determined that they would need to save roughly 69,000 CCFs to achieve a 15 percent reduction across the district. From there, they were able to use the software to break users into efficiency tiers based on their use and conservation score.

That data showed that if they focused on getting the least efficient 30 percent of customers to reduce use by 30 percent, it would result in a savings of nearly 67,000 CCF. In essence, they could achieve the same total reduction district-wide by focusing on the most inefficient 30 percent as they would if every customer reduced water use by 15 percent.

Just as important, they would only have to reach out to the most inefficient 30 percent of users—in other words, the low-hanging fruit where small actions are likely to drive comparatively large results. At the same time, this strategy would help avoid the political repercussions of pressuring already efficient users to cut back.

Identifying patterns is also an area where advanced data management is helping water utilities find easy opportunities to reduce water use. A water supplier in the desert near Palm Springs, for instance, the utility noticed a spike in water use in the fall, when lower temperature and watering needs should cause use to decline. What they suspected was that some residents had forgotten to reset their sprinkler timers, resulting in excessive watering and waste.

Equipped with data on those exceeding their allocation, they can tailor their outreach to customers with specific reminders that will help the district meet its allocation target. Using WaterView, they can also create a campaign for that target group and track the effectiveness of outreach activities to evaluate what’s working and what’s not.

Turf replacement initiatives, too, can benefit from detailed mapping data, making these programs more efficient and effective. Turf is a huge contributor to water inefficiency, with Metropolitan Water District of Southern California paying $340 million in rebates for replacing turf with drought-tolerant landscaping in response to the 2015 drought.

To maximize the impact of turf replacement campaigns, utilities can turn on a GIS layer within WaterView to search for residents with the most turf. Reaching out to residents with more than 2,000 square feet of turf, for example, is a strategic place to start, helping achieve bigger results through smaller-scale efforts.

Reducing residential water consumption is a thorny challenge, especially in water-stressed areas where many people are already going above and beyond to minimize waste. By changing the goal to wasting less rather than just using less, water utilities can ensure the time and money they invest in customer outreach delivers maximum impact. These tools are giving agencies what they need to do it, helping improve service area efficiency and mitigate the impact of drought in a way that’s fair to all.