City of Asheville, NC NRW Management Program

This is a story of good government, being proactive.  No mandate compelling the City to look closely at its efficiency or make improvements.  Biggest driver was the desire to be more resilient to future droughts, smart business for cost control, and a shift from reactive to proactive mentality - getting to root cause of line breaks and meter failures, for example - rather than staying in a fix-when-breaks approach.

The City of Asheville’s water loss improvements represent a powerful story of resource conservation.  The City started revenue bond-funded waterline replacement projects in , followed by the full conversion of the City’s customer metering system from 2009-2012, followed by the formal start in 2012 to the City’s Non-Revenue Water (NRW) program including full time leak detection, meter testing efforts, AWWA auditing/validation, and other analyses.  While normal monthly and seasonal variability can be observed, the overall trend is clear: The City sustained years of growth without increasing its water supply withdrawals.

In recent years Asheville has continued to grow its NRW program, implementing District Metered Areas (DMAs), and implementing Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI). The City of Asheville now stands as an exemplary program and its case study continues to draw interest from other utilities across the US.