WATER USE EFFICIENCY RULE

The 2003 Municipal Water Law required that the Washington Department of Health (DOH) must develop a set of conservation regulations by December 2005. The initial pre-draft regulations received over 700 comments and resulted in delays for the rule. The hearings for the formal draft were held in late August and again resulted in a huge volume of written and oral testimony. As a result, the intended date for rule adoption has again been delayed with final adoption anticipated in late spring of 2007. The time devoted to this effort truly indicates the diversity of interests and parties involved in this process. We know that the final rule has several elements that will affect Spanaway Water Company and its customers.

These items include:

• Detailed historical data and reporting on water supply, water use by customer class, and past conservation efforts and their effect on water use.
• Characterization of water supply sources including possible or known environmental impacts.
• Detailed water demand forecasting by customer class including future reduction of use due to conservation programs.
• Detailed evaluation of at least 6 conservation measures (for our size system) including potential quantity conserved, cost effectiveness, implementation, funding, evaluation of conservation, and reporting to both the public and DOH.
• Develop conservation goals through a public meeting process based on the above efforts.
• From the above, develop a “Water Use Efficiency Program”.
• Track and provide an annual performance report to both the public and DOH on progress in achieving the conservation goals.
• Revise/expand/add conservation measures as needed to insure the goals are achieved.
• Develop a “Water Loss Control Action Plan” if unaccounted for water is greater than 10 percent of total water produced.

The plan must include: activities to be taken to reduce water loss, an implementation schedule, funding for plan for activities, and reporting on progress to both public and DOH. As you can see this will be an involved process that will need your assistance through the public meeting and reporting processes. We have delayed the comprehensive water system plan to allow the plan to conform to the requirements of the Municipal Water Law. Once again, we ask that you watch for newsletter information about the public meeting/s required by these planning regulations.