Even as many U.S. communities struggle to support growing populations with limited water resources, few are utilizing water connection charges to increase water-savvy residential development projects in their communities, according to a new report by Western Resource Advocates, Ceres and the University of North Carolina's Environmental Finance Center.
Evaluating water connection charges used by 800 public water utilities in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, North Carolina and Utah, the report, Water Connection Charges: A Tool for Encouraging Water-Efficient Growth, found that 93 percent of the fee structures in the Southeastern states and 62 percent of the fee structures in the Western states used uniform water connection charges for single-family homes that took no account of key factors in influencing the design of a home's water footprint.
As a result, owners of new homes are typically paying the same amount to be connected to local water systems despite wide-ranging differences in their water use.
The report found that 10 percent of the 800 local water utilities are including water-saving incentives in water connection charges, and initial results show how effective these are at shaping different developments. In the case of Aurora, CO, the state's third-largest municipality, five of six new developments coming on-line since 2014 used “zero-water” landscaping in order to get a 100 percent refund on their connection charges.
Although many studies have been done on how U.S. water utilities should price the volume of water being sold to customers monthly in order to incentivize efficiency, the researchers claimed, far less research has been focused on how to determine water connection charges — typically the cost of the actual physical connection to a water system, plus costs for developing new capacity to serve the customer — in order to influence development behavior.
The report analyzes water connection charges in states experiencing varying degrees of water scarcity and resource vulnerability, which makes them more likely to have connection charges designed to influence future water demand.
Utilities should consider using multiple factors to determine the connection charges to drive water efficiency and capture the costs of new development, the report recommends. Mechanisms to ensure longevity of water savings also could be helpful, utilities should fully engage customers and developers in designing new connection charges.
In other water conservation news, Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti on Monday announced the release of 20,000 “shade balls” into the LA Reservoir. The deployment marks the final phase of a program to safeguard the 175-acre, 3.3 billion gallon reservoir by releasing 96 million of the balls onto its surface. The Los Angeles Department of Wind and Power (LADWP) is managing the dispersal of the shade balls. It will be the first utility company to use this technology for water quality protection, reflecting the city’s leadership in addressing sustainability challenges.