July-August 2008

Over 18 Billion Saved

Innovation helps the Santa Clara Valley Water District win the EPA Water Efficiency Leader Award.

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The Santa Clara Valley Water District (SCVWD) reached another milestone by winning the EPA 2007 Water Efficiency Leader Award, proving that a commitment to long-term water conservation programs can achieve monumental results. During a year of dedicated effort with the local retail water agencies that serve industry (including Silicon Valley) and more than 1.7 million residents, the northern CA-based district saved about 18 billion gallons of water. The EPA was justifiably impressed, and since leadership has its price, it’s time for management to explain just how they saved so much water.

It starts with reaching out to water customers, according to Dr. Hossein Ashktorab, Ph.D, manager of the Water Use Efficiency Unit at the SCVWD. For Ashktorab, that means inspiring those customers to join in a team effort. And, there’s certainly no shortage of ways to join: customers have their choice of more than 20 conservation programs, various incentives, and rebates, plus free device installation, one-on-one home visits, site surveys, and educational outreach. All of it is aimed at reducing water consumption in homes, businesses, and agriculture.

“At this time, we have been working with homeowners much more than businesses,” says Ashktorab. “We started with the low-hanging fruit, and landscape irrigation is the next target. We’re also working with the agricultural industry, and, in the future, we’ll be putting more emphasis on businesses.”

The district has developed some innovative programs, most notably the Water Wise House Call Program, an effort that began in 1998 and has helped more than 23,000 residents to reduce consumption. “Onsite is very important,” says Jerry De La Piedra, program coordinator. “On Water Wise house calls, we visit residents and talk about indoor and outdoor water use, and, from there, we give them the various choices for programs and rebates. Studies on the program show typical savings of about 30 gallons per day in a household, with the low-flush toilet having the greatest impact on residential water use.”

Rebates Bring Results
“Since 1992, we’ve installed about a quarter-million toilets,” notes De La Piedra. “We estimate about one million pre-1990 toilets still out there, so we are about halfway to our goal, and now we’re offering a more efficient technology known as high-efficiency toilets [HET].” An HET uses a minimum of 20% less water than standard 1.6 gallons-per-flush models. Dual-flush toilets also qualify for a rebate: up to $125 per toilet for replacing high-water-use toilets that use 3.5 gallons per flush. Water efficient clothes washers also qualify for rebates.

Photo: Courtesy of Santa Clara Water District

The Santa Clara Valley Water District's Water Wise House Call Program, which began in 1998, has helped more than 23,000 residents to reduce consumption.

Ashktorab sees the toilet exchange program as a great success and notes that the district has installed the largest number of units of any area in northern California. The success is attributed to a combination of two important factors: great management support for water use efficiency and effective methods to market toilets with the area’s 13 retail water services. Support includes standing shoulder to shoulder with the retailers to promote water use efficiency at numerous community events. In 2007, such events included: Water Conservation Day with the San Jose Giants, environmental fairs, and Earth Day events.

Coordinating such efforts is a full-time job, and Ashktorab credits his agency’s marketing director, Susan Siravo, with creating a high level of conservation awareness. “When we started water conservation in 1992, we had a hard time, because people didn’t want to change,” recalls Ashktorab. “But now they understand that conservation is a good thing, and everybody likes our programs. Part of the success can be attributed to Susan [Siravo] and the staff, because they know how to work with our customers. Whenever I go to other agencies, they ask me about how successful the Water Wise Program has been and how we operate.”

Marketing, Public Relations, and Educational Outreach
Siravo says the marketing strategy targets both district-wide programs and more narrowly defined programs for specialized segments. The annual summer campaign highlights conservation in general, with occasional attention to the Water-Wise program. Consumers get the message through a combination of radio, TV, print media, buses, billboards, and door hangers. Bill inserts are a standard tool of the program, and Siravo has had great success with direct mail, where a return postcard is included. 

Public relations played a vital role in a campaign to alert the population to the district’s emergency goal of reducing consumption 10%, in response to a drought that depleted water reserves for 2007. “Our efforts gained us a couple of television news stories about the house call program,” recalls Siravo. “Then the local newspaper, the Mercury News, had one of their reporters request a house call at her residence, and she wrote a story about her experience. One of our board members also had a Water Wise inspection to encourage others to do it.”

The District also takes advantage of educational outreach, workshops, and classes. A full range of award-winning educational programs for both students and teachers reaches nearly 20,000 youngsters each year. Additionally, the Water Efficient Landscaping Workshop’s annual free series starts again in March 2008, over five Saturdays. It provides information on reducing water usage with efficient landscaping and irrigation techniques. The first event has sold out, and there’s a waiting list for the follow-ups.

Tapping Into the Green Plumber Trend
Such interest demonstrates a concern within the community for natural resources, says Karen Morvay, conservation specialist at SCVWD. Morvay notes that the district recognized an opportunity to connect plumbers with that concern, and sponsored a Green Plumber Workshop. “It’s a great thing for our community, and at our workshop in January the plumbers were just blown away,” recalls Morvay.

“They will bring that cutting edge technology back into the field. Many of them are seeing three and four homes per day, and they can talk about the latest in high-efficiency water conservation. It’s great for them to know that the district is offering these financial incentives that will help in their industry as well.”

Those incentives extend well beyond residential homes. The District has a commercial installation program that’s free to businesses and institutions. “We do schools, offices, and we consider apartments to fall under that category,” explains Morvay. “In fact, we just did a large complex with 544 units. Several of the apartments have more than one bathroom so we had a total of almost 600 high-efficiency toilets with the contract.”

Photo: Courtesy of Santa Clara Water District

An high-efficiency toilet uses a minimum of 20% less water than standard 1.6 gallons-per-flush models.

Replacing toilets in commercial sites with high-savings potential, such as restaurants and apartment complexes, is a top priority. In fiscal year 2006–07 more than 3,000 toilets were replaced, almost triple the previous year’s numbers. Restaurants received 1,431 pre-rinse spray valves, and the Commercial Clothes Washer Rebate program issued 215 rebates of $400 each, for a savings of 450 acre-feet in fiscal year 2006–07.

Cost Sharing Stretches Dollars
By combining the incentives and rebates in cost sharing programs with the district’s retail water sellers, the efforts go much further. According to Amanda Cox, manager of the City of Palo Alto’s Water Conservation Program, the SCVWD helps its retail partners stretch their budgets. “We work with the district to offer their programs and we can increase the rebates, so it's better for our customers,” she says. For 2008, Palo Alto has cost sharing on 10 programs.

With summer landscape watering demands ahead, Palo Alto is focusing on outdoor water efficiency. “The Water Efficient Landscape Program that’s available to both residences and businesses is a good example of working together,” explains Cox. “The plan includes removing turf and replacing it with drought-tolerant landscape. The district has set a rebate price of $75 per hundred square feet, and Palo Alto has matched that to raise it to $1.50 a square foot. By having Santa Clara participate and combine our rebates, we’re able to offer a better incentive.”

Palo Alto further benefits from sharing administrative costs and marketing materials. It’s a big help for a small city serving about 26,000 water accounts. Cox notes that the City’s budget doesn’t allow for a full-time staff on many of its programs. But, the City does have its own utility company, so it includes conservation materials with energy, gas, water, and wastewater bills. On large-budget marketing projects, such as magazine advertising, it partners with the district. “Whether that’s for commercial clothes washers in a magazine article or an article with the Tri County Apartment Association, it’s been a real benefit to partner with Santa Clara,” says Cox.

The partnership philosophy doesn’t end with water retailers. For industry, the Water Efficient Technologies Program (WET) provides rebates for process, technology, and equipment retrofits. The rebate rate is $4 per hundred cubic feet of water saved annually. The total saved to date is more than 430 million gallons of water on various WET projects. Another resource, the Cooling Tower Conductivity Controller Rebate Program, provides efficiency controller rebates of $900 each, to towers that use substantial amounts of water to regulate air temperature in commercial facilities.

Going Mobile Brings a Harvest of Savings
Farming is still an important industry in Santa Clara, and, according to De La Piedra, the district is very aggressive in helping agriculture reduce costs by saving water. To reach out to farmers, the district’s program relies heavily on its mobile lab. “Farmers are busy, so we go to them with our lab and measure the efficiency of their irrigation systems and their pumps,” he explains. “We always try to give them answers that are not going to be costly.”

The lab can also evaluate new irrigation systems to determine if a farmer is seeing full performance on their investment. Moreover, a mobile lab evaluation allows farmers to claim a discount of $3.75 per acre-foot off of groundwater withdrawal fees.

Working with the mobile lab was a profitable experience for Kip Brundage, owner of G&K Farms Inc. Located in the farming community of Gilroy; G&K has 1,000 acres of alfalfa crops, and has worked with the district over a period of 10 years. “They came in without pressure looking to help us,” says Brundage. “They had a fertilizer program and there was a big thing on nitrates getting into the groundwater and how to control them. We ended up using less nitrogen and getting a better benefit, because we’re feeding at the root zones. The water district offered these programs to reduce our amount of water per acre if we made the changes. They didn’t say what we had to do and how much we had to spend.”

The lab’s inspection revealed that the aluminum pipe in G&K’s irrigation system had deteriorated, so Brundage switched to a plastic pipe that saves on energy usage. “Now we have zero leakage in the main lines,” says Brundage. “I did an analysis, and I think we’re saving about 27%–28% in water. The water district has really helped the farming industry in this area. They were willing to step up to the plate and do their part.”

Efficient farmers are a benefit to the district, notes Ashktorab. “Farmers are often sensitive about water use, so we created a friendly relationship and they know we’re coming to help, not to penalize them. In California, 80% of the total water use is for agriculture. It’s a sensitive issue and of course agriculture is profitable for the state, and they’re part of the economy.”

Recycled Water Targeted for Growth
Eventually, the majority of water for farmers may come from the county’s recycling program. The district has targeted 5% of total countywide water use to come from recycled water by the year 2010, and 10% by 2020. For 2007, recycled water accounted for 16,978 acre-feet (most of it used for irrigation). “This is an upward trend, and it appears that we will reach the 5% recycled water target by 2010,” says Ashktorab.

If the district is to meet future demands, the recycled water targets won’t be the only numbers seeing an upward trend. Water demand in Santa Clara County is expected to rise 18% by the year 2030, driven by a 35% population growth. In its 2007 annual report, the district has acknowledged that conservation will play an important role in meeting future water needs. In fact, the district designates water-use efficiency as “a central part of the district’s long-term strategy.” By 2030, the goal is to supply nearly 30% of the county’s total annual water use through water conservation and water recycling.

Obviously, the current standards of leadership in conservation must continue, and, ultimately, Ashktorab looks to new technologies and customer-friendly programs to reap award-winning results far into the future.

“The 2007 EPA award is really for the activities we started in 1992 and have continued to make progress on,” he says. “In 2008, it’s going to move at the same pace, if not faster.”                                      

Author's Bio: Writer Ed Ritchie specializes in energy, transportation, and communication technologies.