American Water Works to work with CA’s urban water agencies for validated system water audits

The California-Nevada Section of American Water Works Association’s (CA-NV AWWA) will be working for the next approximately two years to train and assist California’s urban water agencies to produce validated system water audits in order to comply with California Senate Bill 555.  The bill established the requirement that each urban retail water supplier, on or before October 1, 2017 (and annually thereafter) submit a completed and validated water loss audit report to the California Department of Water Resources.

CA-NV AWWA recently announced the launch of its Water Loss Technical Assistance Program (Water Loss TAP), a $3.2 million program, as part of its broader initiative of combating water loss through the Water Loss Control Collaborative. Water Loss TAP is the largest program of its kind in existence. CA-NV AWWA has selected the Water Systems Optimization/Cavanaugh team to serve as the Program Manager for this initiative.

“Water utilities ask the public, their customers, to conserve water and that is important, but the public should also expect these same water utilities to manage their own facilities with the same quality and care. What that really means is understanding their water system’s apparent and real losses and from that data, developing an economically efficient water loss control program.” said Tim Worley, Executive Director of CA-NV AWWA.

The California State Water Resources Control Board provided a grant to CA-NV AWWA for a comprehensive program of training, technical assistance and water audit validation for roughly 450 of California’s largest water systems. The Water Loss TAP is funded from the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund Technical Assistance set-aside. The Water Loss Tap will help the state’s water systems attain a base level of competency with the water balance and audit concepts, the free AWWA Water Audit Software (on which SB555 is based) and the process of water audit data validation.

“Ultimately we want all utilities to develop strong water loss control programs which regularly and accurately assess the opportunities to reduce losses. Having a validated audit is a crucial first step,” said Sue Mosburg, Chair of the CA-NV Water Loss Control Committee, immediate past chair of CA-NV AWWA, and Program Manager at Sweetwater Authority.

The CA-NV AWWA is the professional, non-profit organization of the drinking water industry whose mission is to support the drinking water professionals who provide safe and reliable water to millions of people in California and Nevada.