Some of the case studies of WaterSmart are summarized below:
In 2013, the city of Oakdale faced questions about the future of their water system. Located in California’s Central Valley, Oakdale relies on groundwater for 100% of its supply. The water is pristine, pumped straight from aquifers into faucets with no treatment of any kind. But replacing old wells required large investments of time and money. Instead of setting its sights on future infrastructure projects, Oakdale turned to demand management, data analytics, and customer engagement to ensure sustainable water supplies for generations to come.
The City of Greeley, Colorado is located in a semi-arid climate, receiving 12-14 inches of precipitation per year. During the drought of 2002, Ruth Quade, Greeley’s Water Conservation Coordinator, needed to come up with the right solution to stimulate greater drought awareness and conservation actions on the part of ratepayers. After exploring several options, Ruth and her Greeley colleagues decided to implement a water budget system.
The City of Roseville has been lucky with water. Situated in Northern California and located conveniently near to Folsom Lake Reservoir, the City of Roseville has, historically, had a sufficient supply of water. However, as supplies have dwindled in recent years due to record-breaking drought conditions, Roseville has had to increase its water-use efficiency efforts. Educating customers about their water use has proved to be a challenging endeavor.
In 2009 Park City Water began replacing their old analog water meters with Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) technology to be able to view and track water usage in real time. AMI offers cost savings from automated meter reading and, when paired with the right analytic tools, the ability to identify residential water leaks as they occur. Once the AMI deployment was complete, the water department quickly realized cost savings and increased convenience of remote data collection.