Tip Sheets

Saving Water and Energy: Municipalities and Water Utilities

Build the Infrastructure to Address Water Efficiency

  1. Bring together the human and financial resources needed to address efficiency.
    • Designate a water efficiency coordinator and build a water efficiency team.
    • Set goals and develop a water-efficiency strategy.
    • Educate and involve employees in water efficiency efforts.
    • Create a targeted budget for water efficiency.

Analyze the Current System

  1. Build the institutional capacity to analyze systems and locate efficiency opportunities.
    • Create a metering and monitoring system.
    • Develop a baseline of energy and water use.
    • Benchmark progress internally and externally.

Encourage Demand Side Reductions

  1. Work with Consumers to reduce waste and get more benefit from each liter of water used. Demand-side reductions can cost as little as 1/3rd the expenditure for comparable new capacity.
  2. Price: Develop a price structure that reflects the true cost of water. Ensure that the utility rate structure encourages water efficiency, or at least does not encourage water waste.
  3. Residential end-user
    • Promote/distribute efficient water saving technologies, such as:
      • Ultra low-flow toilets (6 liters per flush instead of up to 30 liters)
      • Low-flow faucet aerators (reduce water flow by up to 50 percent while maintaining water pressure)
      • High efficiency showerheads (using less than 10 liters a minute instead of 30 liters)
      • Leak detection tablets (a leak of just one drop per second can waste 10,000 liters per year)
      • Replacement valves.
    • Offer rebates and installation programs to customers who buy high-efficiency products like low-flow showerheads, ultra low-flow toilets, clothes-washers, water heaters, etc.
    • Educational outreach is essential. Include water tips in billing statements; provide water saving curriculum materials for schools, and so on.
    • Enact and enforce water-efficiency building codes and equipment standards.
    • Perform free water audits for customers, especially large users.
  4. Industrial and business end-user
    • Encourage industries to reduce water use by offering incentives.
    • Promote wastewater reuse.
    • Enact and enforce energy-efficiency building codes and equipment standards.
    • Introduce tax breaks for major efficiency projects.
    • Offer rebates for the installed cost of equipment that improves water efficiency such as retrofitting cooling towers, and replacing water-cooled with air-cooled equipment.
    • Offer audits and surveys of water use.

Take Supply Side Actions

  1. Improve operation and maintenance practices to increase efficiency.
  2. Implement a water-loss management program. Focus on pumps, pipe and valve leaks, and theft (water losses should be brought under 10 percent).
  3. Carry out facility assessments identifying water saving opportunities.
  4. Purchase appropriately sized energy-efficient equipment:
    • Pumps
    • Energy efficient motors
    • Adjustable speed drives
    • Impellers
    • Lower friction pipes and coatings
    • Valves
    • Capacitors
  5. Introduce and enforce universal metering.
  6. Try reclaimed wastewater distribution for non-potable uses