Governmental Policies for Drinking Water Utility Water Loss Control

We co-authored the report Governmental Policies for Drinking Water Loss Control. This publication was funded by the Technical and Education Council (TEC) Project Funds managed by AWWA. Providing safe drinking water in an efficient manner is critical to a sustainable future for water utilities that are challenged by aging infrastructure and a rapidly changing climate. High levels of water and revenue loss exist in many North American water systems. Knowing the extent of losses and their cost impacts are vital to the efforts of utilities to control losses to economical levels. No national laws exist in the United States of America (US) to regulate losses in water utilities. Instead, many laws, regulations, policies, and incentives exist in more than one hundred state, provincial, and regional water regulatory agencies across North America. The policies used by governmental agencies are key to assessing and quantifying losses and motivating utilities to control losses and promote efficient management of valuable water supplies. Understanding the landscape of governmental polices is important to various stakeholders including government agencies across North America to understand the policies of their peers. Water utilities, funding agencies, and service providers also have interest in the range of government policies that assess and oversee control of water and revenue losses. The survey was successful in gaining a high response rate (77%) that found many agencies have continued to adopt and advance AWWA methods and tools to track and manage water losses in water utilities.

Access the report at https://www.awwa.org/Resources-Tools/Resource-Topics/Water-Loss-Control.