eeze on various State outlays related to professional services and new hires. We are clearly in difficult, and in many ways, unprecedented times, and this is exactly the kind of executive decision that is needed to keep the State solvent and functioning.Unfortunately, due to either a legislative or administrative misstep, one important grant fund, the Water Efficiency Grant Program, has been frozen as well. This grant program provides much needed financial support to water providers for purposes of developing and implementing meaningful water conservation plans. The grant program can also be accessed, in some cases, by non-profits for educational purposes. As a non-profit, I am more concerned with water providers not having funding than non-profits, for the following reasons.
To begin with, many water providers, especially those that are special districts (e.g., water and sanitation districts, water districts, municipal districts) operate with a very small staff providing vital water and wastewater services to ther customers. These organizations need financial help to get water conservation programs to be more than some bill stuffers and other general educational activities. They generally need cash to hire a consultant to prepare meaningful water conservation plans and they need cash to implement those plans. The first stages of meaningful water conservation planning and implementation requires that water providers take a hard look at themselves and their customer's water use and management, and to look explicitly at the cost of doing (and not doing) meaningful water conservation. This is labor intensive work that requires a commitment of resources and expertise. Most water providers can get an outstanding plan in place, including cost benefit analyses, for $15 to 20K,... but having this cash can be very challenging to find in already strapped budget thus the importance of the grant program.
Once a plan is in place, water providers need help with implementation. Pagosa Area Water and Sanitation District (PAWSD), for example, is installing an automated meter reading (AMR) program in concert with a meter replacement effort starting this year to help collect better customer water use data. The meter and AMR equipment will support more accurate billing, improved leak detection, and better characterization of non-revenue water. It will also help to better characterize customer water use, especially for seasonal residences and large commercial users. This effort is costing PAWSD hundreds of thousands of dollars with the majority of the costs falling in the next year. They have benefited from a loan to support this capital outlay.
Castle Rock on the other hand utilized Water Efficiency Grant funds to conduct audits of their largest commercial customers, including HOAs that only have irrigation use. These audits identified nearly 80 acre-feet of potential water savings based only on more appropriate outdoor watering practices for 8 irrigation accounts. (At $500 per audit, the savings at these 8 locations may provide Castle Rock with saved water at a cost of about $50 per acre foot.)
Both of these projects illustrate a fact that appears to exist with respect to Colorado's current status of water conservation - we are in a data collection mode in many geographies. We need better data regarding customer water use, non-revenue water, and system leaks before we can launch our most cost effective programs. The Water Efficiency Grant Program is exactly the kind of State support that is needed in many locations to help collect the vital data and allow water providers to identify what water conservation programs will create the most cost effective water savings.
The sooner the Water Efficiency Grant Program becomes available to the water providers, the better our state will be with regard to long term water resource management.
