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Feature wateronline.com ■ Water Online The Magazine 8 W ater system regulations in the U.S. have been around for 100 years. Forty years ago, Congress passed the State Drinking Water Act that brought sweeping changes for America's drinking water systems. For nearly all of that time, those regulations have been solely focused on water quality. Only in recent years has the issue of water quantity found its place in the regulatory arena. It is important to recognize that resources — both envi- ronmental and financial — will become more restricted with time, not less. Management of water loss is "supply-side" conservation — that is, reducing wasteful losses that occur on the utility's side of the customer meter. Historically, con- servation has been a more common practice in the western U.S., where arid climates and severely restricted supply set the stage. Recent water loss legislation in the eastern U.S. has begun to bring conservation and supply-side efficiency to the center stage, particularly in the Southeast. The EPA put out a report 1 in 2013 articulating the importance of water auditing and water loss control, recognizing the emerging adoption of best practices to address an already prevalent issue. Drivers Can Be Different So why do we care about water loss? Just in the U.S., the driv- ers that make water loss important can vary widely from state to state, even utility to utility. For some, there are extreme drought conditions or arid environments with constrained water supplies that make water loss manage- ment a necessary source of new supply and resource stewardship. For some, it's a plain bottom line. There are strained budgets, with expenses outpacing revenues and they see water loss management as fiscal shoring. They understand the inherent business case for system efficiency, including the complex but proven dependency between water and energy. For some, the driver is political — where pending rate increases fuel customer distrust and outrage ("You're asking me to pay more for your inefficiencies?"), where water loss manage- ment provides defensibility and action and an offset to the severity of the required rate increases. For others, as is the case in Georgia and Tennessee, a primary driver is regulation. While there tends to be a primary driver, in most utilities all of these drivers exist to some degree. For this reason, the cost of doing nothing far exceeds the cost of water loss management in both the short and long term. Water Loss, Exposed We must understand the nature of any problem to stand a chance of solving it. The tricky part about water loss is that it's not a singular problem. Water loss has multiple compo- nents, each having multiple subcomponents, and there is not a single tool or technique for universally addressing all components. Thus, a collective strategy must be developed and designed to appropriately target each subcomponent. So what is water loss made of? Chances are by now you have seen or heard much of this, but it bears repeating. The Water Audit Method developed by the International Water Association and the American Water Works Association (AWWA) 2 defines water loss on the basis of the Water Balance (see Figure 1). Water loss is derived as "real losses" plus "apparent losses." Real losses are physical losses from Figure 1: AWWA Water Balance State Of The States: Emerging Water Loss Regulations In The U.S. Where does your state stand – both statistically and strategically – with regard to water loss? By Will Jernigan 8 _ V E R T _ 0 5 1 4 C l e a n w a t e r _ C a v a n a u g h _ D G . i n d d 1 8_VERT_0514 Cleanwater_Cavanaugh_DG.indd 1 4 / 2 1 / 2 0 1 4 2 : 5 5 : 1 0 P M 4/21/2014 2:55:10 PM