good afternoon thank you for joining us on this cloudy day in Tucson hi I'm
Candice Ruprecht I'm the water conservation manager here at Tucson
water I'm here with our director Tim Thomure we're gonna be spending the next
hour with you answering your questions and talking about how much water Tucson
has and then any other water supply questions future outlet questions that
you have for us we're here to take questions all hour go ahead and enter
them in your chats as comments go ahead and throughout the hour let us know
what's on your mind and we'll do our best to answer them absolutely thanks
Tim for being here Thank You Candace it's good to be here and I always enjoy
talking about water so I do too we have that in common so I think the first question
just pertaining to the topic of the hour about how much water we have here in
Tucson I'll just kick it off a question I know you get from the public I get
from the public a lot our office we're in the public information office so we
filled this question but are we going to run out of water I mean I'm a wildcat
you're a wildcat we've lived here a long time we want to stay here for a long
time what's the best way that we answer that so the answer is Tucson is not in
danger of running out of water we have been doing a lot of planning and
investment over many decades to put Tucson in a position where it has a very
reliable and resilient water supply and we can certainly and we'll go into the
details of why that is throughout this hour but the Tucson is not in danger of
blowing away and drying up it is through our investments in conservation on the
one hand and then in our water supplies on the other hand that we are in a great
position for water supply absolutely that's a great way to kick this off so
speaking of resiliency there's been a lot of news lately about what's
happening on the Colorado River both within Arizona and the basin so what
does that look like for Tucson in the come
months in coming years if there's a shortage on the Colorado River and just
in general what the outlook is for the river
so most people in Tucson maybe are aware of the fact that our biggest water
supply actually comes from the Colorado River so we get most of our water
delivered to us through the Central Arizona Project which brings water all
the way from Lake Havasu to Phoenix and Tucson and even though that is our
largest water supply there is a lot of concern about the threat of shortage and
the long term drought there's a drought on the Colorado River system has been
ongoing for going on two decades now and that might not even be unusual when you
look at the prehistoric record of evidence of what drought could look like
so the way Tucson has been preparing for that is we not only have a high
priority for receiving water if there's a shortage a shortage doesn't mean
there's no water a shortage means that deliveries begin to be reduced we are
amongst the highest priority to receive water even in a shortage
the other big thing we've been doing is we've been storing water for the future
so our allocation of water that we can get from the Colorado River is about 30
to 40 percent larger than what we use on an annual basis but we've still been
purchasing all of that water in most years and what we do is we store it
locally in our groundwater in our basin right here in Tucson so that we can use
it in the future and as of today we have a full four years worth of water that's
renewable water that we've recharged available and then behind that if we
needed to use it we have 40 years worth of groundwater that we could also pump
we try very hard not to pump the groundwater we want to preserve it for
when we really really need it but it is very comforting to know that if it
really got to the point where deliveries from the Colorado River were curtailed
or stopped for a period of time we wouldn't even feel the impact of that
for years right right and how does our portfolio or our situation
compare to other cities throughout the state
throughout the Southwest we absolutely are confident that we have if not the
most resilient water supply one of the most resilient water supplies
there are certainly other cities in the southwest that have a similar level of
resiliency a lot of people point to Phoenix and actually Phoenix is a very
resilient city as well when you look at some of the smaller cities around
Phoenix though you see some that are probably in a less resilient place it
doesn't mean they're in danger overnight but they don't have the same mix of
supplies like we do and they don't have the same volumes so the fact that our
rights to Colorado River exceed our annual demand puts us in a position
where we're storing for the future there are other cities that maybe have just
enough water yeah so if you have just enough water and everything's going well
then you're fine but if you get into a drought and you
get reduced deliveries that's when you can start to have some stress the other
thing that's unique about Tucson is the fact that when we use our Colorado River
water we actually do what we call recharge and recovery so the way we use
it is we use our groundwater system as the way to store it and treat it and use
it so we recharge that Colorado River water into our local groundwater and
then we use our well fields to pump it back out because we do that we're not as
tied to the canal or the river system to have water in it every single day when
you look at the Phoenix Valley cities they have what they call surface water
treatment plants where you have to have water in the canal in order to treat
water and deliver it we could go weeks or months even years without water in
the canal and still produce water for the customers that is one of the things
unique about Tucson and that puts us in a very good position right I wish I had
an image and aerial image of this recharge process but yeah I think it's
something we always talk to customers about what that physical process looks
like does the water get contained somewhere you know can you talk a little
bit about that process it does and what I'm going to describe if you've been to
the desert museum and you look out to the west over Avra Valley
you actually see our basins there are large bodies of water out in the middle
of in the bottom of the valley floor and what they what we do is we excavate or
dig out the first few feet of soil so soils have fines in it soils are
fine grain and don't transmit water in Arizona we also have a lot of caliche so
what we do is make sure that we excavate that and we get down below that we get
to these sands and gravels so an aquifer is kind of like a big bucket of sand and
when you pour water into it it goes down into the aquifer so we make sure that
when we pour water into these basins that we construct that it's going to
percolate downwards and so one of the other questions we get is what about
evaporation so the rate at which the water percolates down through those
sands is on the order of a few feet per day and even in the hot heat of summer
the evaporations on a few inches per month so we do lose about two percent of
our water supply to evaporation but it's a very small amount relative to what we
actually have the ability to store yeah when it's down into the water table
that's where our wells are pumping from and bringing it back to the surface and
how much do we think we have stored in the aquifer in Avra Valley we have about about four years worth of
water it's I'm gonna use the term acre feet yeah if you're not familiar with
acre foot an acre foot of water is over three hundred thousand gallons of water
that's still hard to picture so a couple ways to look at it one is if you had if
you think of an acre or land to a depth of one foot that's an
acre foot you can think of it in terms of how many people does an acre foot
provide water for in Tucson an acre foot of water supplies about four and a half
families for a full year or if you're in Scottsdale it's three families for a
year that's because Scottsdale is not as efficient as water as we so when you
look at an acre foot it's a lot of water and Tucson uses about a hundred and ten
thousand acre feet of water each year and so that's a lot of water but
actually our rights to water exceed that yeah so I was going to ask you a little
bit more about how much in terms of quantity
we're talking about so we use about 110 acre feet per year and most of that is
from the Colorado River right through the CAP canal right can you talk a
little bit about the other resources in our portfolio right so our resource
portfolio is what we call diverse of the hundred and ten thousand acre feet we
use about ten percent of that is through our reclaim water system so one of our
water supplies is the local wastewater that's generated from the sewer
system that wastewater is treated by Pima County to very high standards and
it's actually treated so well that it can be returned to the environment and
we return it to the environment either in through discharging it through the
Santa Cruz River which does recharge our local aquifers or through our reclaim
water system so we have a lot of golf courses parks schools some neighborhoods
that for their outdoor water use they use this reclaimed water instead of
potable water that most of us use so that means about 10 percent there's
another 10 percent that's associated with our groundwater remediation
projects so there's there's a part of town where the local groundwater has
been contaminated over the years or in past years and over the last several
decades we've been pumping that groundwater and treating it to remove
the contamination and using that water as well that leaves about 90,000 acre
feet per year that predominantly comes from the Colorado River through recharge
and recovery excellent I think that was so helpful to get a full picture of
where our resources are coming there's one more though you're right yeah the
newest one it's been around the longest but it's kind of the newest one we're
turning to is rain water and storm water so Tucson is one of the communities
leading the way on bringing rain water and storm water into use as a community
so we do that in a couple of different ways one is we have a commercial
rainwater harvesting ordinance which requires new commercial developments to
use rainwater harvesting but we also provide rebates and/or grant and loan
programs to the community and this I'm stealing your thunder
you should be the one talking about this, nope you're on you're on. For about six years as a community we've provided rebates to
customers to do rainwater harvesting residential so you know doing water
harvesting on-site so that's either putting in tanks or cisterns capturing
that water and storing it for later use on the property or I think an even
easier entree to water harvesting is just simply to do what we call passive
water harvesting so that's integrating earthworks berms and basins shallow
areas that capture water in your landscape and keep it from running off
your property that allows water to infiltrate creates healthier more and
moist soil allows you to grow plants and trees trees are a huge part of a
rainwater harvesting program of course because those add shade increase our
tree canopy which are really good ways to cool your local environment and then
as a community help us mitigate the urban heat island effects that we
experience and then just last year so in addition to that rebate program which is
up to $2,000 per customer we now have a limited income rainwater harvesting
program and so that's providing access to every customer in our service area to
do rainwater harvesting at their property through the addition of a grant
and/or a loan for those customers and then we just launched our neighborhood
scale stormwater program which is providing grants to communities and
neighborhoods throughout Tucson to allow them to do a little bigger scale
rainwater harvesting which includes stormwater captures so we have we've
just completed several projects that are capturing stormwater from the street via
curb cuts traffic calming circles so allowing vegetation to grow in the
middle of an intersection in a very safe way that captures water and creates
shame for that street and that's just finishing its first year and we're
really excited to see the projects that continue to go in and what year 2
brings in terms of additional projects in the community alright what I like
there's so much to like about rainwater harvesting so one of the things that I
like about it is it's actually visible so once you're aware of it and you're
driving around town you you can really connect with rainwater harvesting and
that part of our water supply in ways that it's it's hard to visualize this
water that we bring in through pipes and most of our infrastructure is buried so
we're kind of this quiet utility out there doing its thing but we're not
in your face you know like a road or a bridge but rainwater harvesting you know
and when you look around now you'll see buildings and homes with the cisterns on
the side the traffic circles like you mentioned and it really ties into not
just water supply but it broadens our scope where we're really touching
quality of life in Tucson the tree canopy and the health effects from that
there are positives to the community so we're what we're doing is taking water
thinking more broadly about it how it not just builds community but it builds
quality of life it's very exciting because it really makes us think
differently about our mission and it connects our community in a whole
different way yeah yeah I just heard the term invisible infrastructure so
thinking about like you said all the pipes that are underground all the water
that's stored underground but that this is the visible infrastructure that we
can start to see around the communities I love that that's so true mm-hmm okay
we got a customer question we got one I'm ready
It says Arizona Legislature mandates a five-year plan for water
shortage and drought can can we talk about your thoughts related to those
plans and walk us through the three classifications or stages in our drought
plan okay so we might tag-team this a little bit yeah so Tucson absolutely
does have a drought plan yes and it and you'll correct me where I go
wrong yeah because I will go wrong but it when you think about drought you need
to think not just locally you need to think about the Colorado River Basin
when we talk about a drought locally it is probably more predominantly an
impact on water use okay not necessarily water supply certainly the rain and
storm water harvesting is directly affected but that's what the storage is
the fact that water use goes up when we have hotter drier weather that's
a where drought can drive up the demand for water locally when we talk
about drought in terms of water supply certainly on
the rainwater harvesting over the long term it can affect our groundwater
availability right but the more direct effect is on the availability
of Colorado River water so even though we're well insulated from reductions in
Colorado River water the Colorado River Basin has been in that almost 20 year
drought now and it's close to what would be called shortage so we're not
in a shortage yet but we can see it from here right anybody that's gone to
Las Vegas and looked at Lake Mead you can see how low the water level is
in Lake Mead when it gets to a certain elevation and a shortage is
declared that's where water supply could start to
be affected now Tucson is a high priority user Tucson has a larger
allocation than we use on an annual basis
Tucson has stored water for the future so if and when reductions start to occur Tucson's prepared so what we've been locally as far as our drought plan is so
we do comply with the law we do have a drought plan we've been in a stage 1
drought probably since we created it as soon as we create it stage 1
drought and it just really means being aware of the fact that we're in a
drought being mindful of water use and continuing our conservation programming
and messaging and making sure people understand we're in a drought and that
they should be careful with water use Tucsonans are careful with water use
already so it's not really a lifestyle change for Tucsonans to be in a stage 1
drought if we get to a shortage I believe that would be a criteria that
would make us consider going to a stage 2 and so if we go to a stage 2 drought
there are it really is a further conservation further messaging about
water use In Tucson we've had so much
success with education and with Tucsonans doing the right thing we have not
been a community that's had to impose things there are certainly communities
that already impose things whether they're in a drought or not I'll use as
an example I grew up in the Midwest where we got 30 inches of rain a year
instead of 10 inches of rain like we do here and it was not at all uncommon that
in a summer you had to alternate when you could water all of those
restrictions we just grew up with that they were requirements and they were
just a part of how we've managed water in the Midwest here in Tucson we never
to my knowledge never had to impose anything like that there are certainly
things that we could do where we could mandate things or make it so you cannot
water or wash your car outside but the way we manage our water supply really
buffers us from that so really going to a stage 2 drought is a
higher level of awareness and it would be further actions that might be
considered by the utility or by the mayor and council to further encourage
conservation but we're not looking at draconian measures here in Tucson and I
don't know if you want to add anything to what a stage 2 looks like. I think that was really helpful
we've been talking about that more with customers because I think there is a
concern that stage 2 means restrictions and it definitely doesn't it means that
we're going to be out there in the community more helping customers figure
out ways that they can be more efficient conserve water use our rebates
and that applies to residential multifamily commercial customers all of
our customers are eligible to take advantage of our programs now and we'll
be working with them if we do go into stage 2 even more to figure out what's
gonna help them best be more efficient and I think one of the best places for
all of our customer classes to start is just thinking about how we use water
wisely outdoors and that's about 25% of our total use and it's
water that we can't directly recapture into our system to go and become
recycled water and so it's important that we help customers in various ways
to figure out outdoors how to be as efficient as possible
About 25 percent now but isn't that lower than it used to be it's 50% lower
yeah three decades ago half of the water that our customers were using was going
directly outdoors for landscapes and so we've cut that in half and that yeah I
think we should be really proud of that number 25% is still a large amount of
our water use but it's half of what it used to be right yeah I mean kudos to
Tucsonans we've really embraced living in the desert
figuring out the landscapes that make sense here absolutely great and then
stage three I will admit I'm not even sure what would trigger stage three yeah
I think I know I read this earlier today quickly but I think you know if
there is an additional cut additional shortage measures that go into
place and additional cuts on the river so what that could look like is if
there's different tiers of shortage just like there's different
tiers or stages of drought so the way the Colorado River would work is
there's this elevation 1075 feet it's the number burned in our brains because it's
the elevation of the lake of Lake Mead when we're saying the lake we
should always be saying Lake Mead but when I say the lake I mean Lake Mead okay when
the elevation in Lake Mead is projected to be at 1075 or lower by January 1 of
the following year then that would be the cause of a shortage but a shortage
does not mean a shortage to Tucson right that's really important to be clear about
about so there's there's different volumes out of this river that
delivers over 15 million acre feet a year when you go into a shortage it'll
start to curtail that the way that will be expressed in Arizona is the
central Arizona Project is the access to water that will start to be curtailed
but when you look at Tucson which is a municipal and industrial contract holder
and you look at the tribes like Tohono O'odham and the Pascua Yaqui they're part
of the the tribal allocations the M&I municipal industrial and tribal
allocations are only one-half to two-thirds of the CAP so when there's a
first stage one shortage or Tier one shortage actually Tucson doesn't get
reduced even under a tier 2 shortage Tucson isn't reduced under a tier 3
shortage then our allocation would begin to be reduced and we estimate
to be about 11% of our allocation so let me put that number in context right
now when you just look at our allocation for Colorado River water not anything
else when you look at that allocation it's about 30 to 40 percent higher than
what we use on an annual basis so even if we were (I'm going to use air quotes
sorry) even if we were cut by 11% it still hasn't even gotten to the point
where it's a reduction on what we use right it's a reduction on how much extra
water we're storing for the future so that takes us down to elevation 1025
when you get to elevation 1025 and Lake Mead there's a regional high level of
concern and other communities not Tucson but other communities that would start
to be in a crisis mode so there would be a lot of activity around keeping the
lake at that level or higher by others because they would need to do that in
order to keep their water flowing which then in turn protects Tucson right so that
was helpful so I think we covered the three stages of drought that are mandated
it was like anger acceptance and then I can't remember it was bargaining we're
bargaining that's all we do is bargaining. We better keep moving. So this
question thank you for that first question we appreciate you kicking it
off this question is from Tina Baker how many years out are we prepared with our
water storage 46 years 46 years okay great so if we did not get another drop
from the Colorado River tomorrow and that is not even a worst-case scenario
all scenarios includes some water coming from the Colorado
River but even if we didn't we have four years of renewable water stored locally
we have another two years roughly it's actually a little bit more than two
years of what's known as the Arizona Water Banking Authority so the Arizona
Water Banking Authority was formed to help municipal industrial customers in
times of shortage so there's another two years there and then we have the 40
years worth of groundwater and this isn't fictional groundwater
I mean we know how to pump groundwater we did it for decades we
know how much we have in both the Tucson Basin where urban Tucson is and in Avra Valley west of the Tucson Mountains so out there where our
recharge facilities are where old Tucson and desert museum are we actually own
22,000 acres of land out there we have a lot of well capacity out there
so we could have the CAP turn off tomorrow and it would be 46 years before
we we would be starting to have an impact from that that doesn't mean we
want to have that scenario and it doesn't mean there won't be couldn't be
consequences of pumping that much groundwater but it means we have a 46
year head start great on solving that problem great most
other communities have a one or two year head start right either they don't have
as much stored which most don't or again they're relying on these surface water
treatment plants so they need water in the canal so if that canal went dry
tomorrow they're already in a crisis it's interesting because you think
well why aren't those other communities doing something about that and they are
they're really trying to catch up to where tucson is and in fact City of
Phoenix is a partner with Tucson where actually we've already started to store
some of their water for them in the future
so what's happened the last two years and it's an ongoing agreement is any
water that the City of Phoenix has an allocation that's beyond their annual
use they send to Tucson so it comes through that same canal we store in our
facilities and then in a future year we don't put it in a truck and
send it back in a future year we would order some of our water we had rights to
and have it just delivered to Phoenix and we would pump that water that they
stored down here so I mean actually Southern Nevada Water Authority also
known as Vegas has water stored with us too so that's another I don't count that
in the 46 years but it's additional water that just extends that timeline
it's also an exciting opportunity to talk about these partnerships because I
think you know those agreements do make the news but I
think they're forgotten we're working very closely with Phoenix
probably closer than we ever have and this new partnership with Las Vegas is
also really exciting just showing that you know within our communities we're
coming together to help prop up the whole Basin and figure out how we're
doing this together it's quite a different approach than the past it's
where we're much better off together yeah and it's good to have big powerful
friends right when a shortage comes and it's just a little old Tucson here saying
you know we need to be taken care of it's much better to be say Phoenix
Tucson and Las Vegas hey look at the impact of a shortage on the
economy so work together and it's also important to note even though this is
about Tucson water we're Tucson water and we do supply most of the Tucson area
Oro Valley Metro Water Town of Marana Vail they also have water companies and
we either serve them together or in cooperation and we actually work
together to treat and deliver their water to them so they can serve their
customers so when we talk about Tucson water being resilient we talk
about our position relative to future drought you can really extend that to
the whole Tucson area and that's only because we have partnerships and
cooperation right right and what does that look like when we
deliver water to those other towns in our area so what we do is because
we've already built the infrastructure out in Avra Valley we
have the place to recharge it we have the wells to recover it and we have the
pipelines to bring it into urban Tucson what we do is we have these inter
connections to the other water systems so we'll be side-by-side in areas up
and downstream of each other so we connect our systems and allow water to
flow from one system to the other or the other direction if we had an incident
where we needed water from a partner and we call it Wheeling yeah and so it's for
a small fee you know we don't do it for free but they pay the cost of service
for us to do that yeah Thank You Tina for that question
okay we have a couple questions related to
I think our resources and our recharge so this one is from Mara Correll how does
Tucson have so much storage capacity compared to other communities so it's a
story of both the fact that we have a very large and productive aquifer which
actually has two parts to it the Tucson basin in the Avra Valley Basin and
it's also a very clean aquifer the water quality of the groundwater in the Tucson
area is largely very good we do have areas where it's been compromised
through contamination but they're very isolated and controlled the
majority of it is a great place to want to store your water contrast that to
Phoenix where there's have been a lot more industry over the years and there's
a lot more contamination so there's not as many good places to store water it's
not that they don't have it yeah it's that they don't have it as much of it so
the other thing that is relatively unique that Tucson water would own so
much land in Avra Valley so that that is a story that dates back to the 70s and 80s
the lands we own in Avra Valley were farming lands in the past and what
we did was buy them in order to retire them from farming to preserve the
groundwater and to acquire water right so one of the reasons we have 40 years
worth of groundwater is we went and bought it right and we've kept
those lands out of production so the groundwater has been preserved there not
a lot of communities have done that now the third one is I wish we were
brilliant from day one and we had these great ideas to do what we've done to put
us in this position through our own actions but we also had a failure where
when we were trying to do our Colorado River water like everybody else and we
built a surface water treatment plant we did not do that well so we
could very easily if we had done that well have not had as much recharge
capacity as we do today but we would have already had the land and the
aquifers to do so so we could have gotten to where we are today eventually
but so other communities while they've done a great job with
water supply they've had a little bit of a constraint on groundwater quality and
they also have not made the investments we have in recharge and recovery now
they're doing that today they're doing that to try to catch up and they're also
working with us in the meantime yeah that's so helpful all right another
question related to our recharge sites do they ever have to be cleaned out if
it gets too junky from water percolating through it so maybe just a little bit
about how we maintain them. So that's correct so no matter how clean the water
is that comes from the Colorado River and it is very clean it still always has
some silts and even perhaps some organic matter in it so when it when that water
does infiltrate over time those sediments and silt start to collect
right at the surface right at where we're doing the infiltration that's one
way that the recharge basins actually do treatment for us they're like a big
filter well when you have a big filter you end up with the residue left behind
so what we do is a couple things on our routine operations we do what we call
wet and dry cycling so we put water into the basins for a lot of the time
but then we let the basins dry out and those sediments will crack up when you
look at like where an old puddle was and there's a mud crack that
mud cracking actually restores the infiltration rates that works for maybe
even years on end on a basin and then ultimately we will go in on occasion
with mechanical equipment and windrow up the top surface layer and then
remove it from the basin and get back down to that sand and gravel
like hydrologist playing in a big sand box. That's what they do and they keep
telling me what they're doing is good so I keep saying okay go do it so
thanks Mara for those questions we know you have a couple others I'm gonna
answer or Tim's gonna answer a couple other customer questions and then we'll
circle back to yours all right this is from Tricia Gerrodette do you know
her I do know her yes hi Tricia how do you balance getting people to be more
aware and really cut their usage versus chaos water use can and should be below
50 GPCD pricing is important but dangerous so
there's a lot of levels to that so I'm going to kind of give you a philosophy
on it and then some opinion as well the pricing is something we do to
encourage conservation so if we were just running a business of selling water
the more water you'd buy the price would go down because we'd want to sell more
of our product we don't want to sell more of our product right we want people
to only use the amount of water that's prudent that's going to a beneficial use
and so we want to encourage conservation we do that through pricing so actually
the more water you use the more you pay for a unit of water that's called tier
pricing and that has been a part of what has helped water use come down in Tucson
so the danger side of that can be a couple things one is can you price
yourself to the point where you no longer have affordable water rates
Tucson's not a very wealthy community so we are mindful of that we have a limited
income assistance program to help with that but we do measure that we work with that
that the other is since most of our revenues come from
the volume people used as people use less volume the utility itself could be
at financial risk if again if we were just running a business we would want as
much of our income to be from fixed charges because most of our costs are
fixed charges they don't vary with the amount of water we deliver but to
encourage the conservation we do it through the volumetric pricing so that
is a danger there yeah I'm gonna address the 50 GPCD(Gallons Per Capita Per Day) so on a single-family
residential I'm gonna say 80 if I said 80 would my conservation manager say no
Tim it's really a different number it's very close okay it's very close to 80 so
and it used to be 120 right okay so it's really already come down from 120 to
80 which is great and when we were at a 120 we were still some of the best now
we're at 80 and we're doing even better I don't think in terms of and this is a
Tim opinion okay that chasing a specific number is what we should be
focused on what we should be focused on is though as wise use of water to
produce quality of life okay and if in Tucson that means 65 GPCD but we have a
livable community that has green space that has a tree canopy that has enough
green areas for people to have a quality of life and it has a thriving economy
then I'd say the right number 65 maybe that number is 80 maybe it's 72 I think
it certainly can be lower than it is today and there are benefits to that but
actually setting a target and making the target more important than the outcome
and I'm not saying Tricia's doing that I'm just saying yeah I think the
conversation should be about quality of life and wise use of water and then what
is that number yeah and then making sure we have enough
water to satisfy that number right and I would add that I think what we're
seeing in Tucson definitely but around the country is that as we get more
efficient you know in terms of appliances that you know there's some
additional water there and so it's a choice you know what do you do with that
additional GPCD and I think we can you know grow a great green community
right I mean there's one thing we can do with this water. We're not talking
grass we're not talking lawns we're talking we're talking a Tucson that is
sustainable right which and it really is trees we're talking about the benefits
of trees outweigh just the visual impact there's health effects from being
surrounded by trees they're both physical mental emotional and that we
shouldn't be afraid of trying to grow a community that's a healthy community on
many levels right absolutely I think that's great hopefully that
answers your questions Tricia thank you and then are you Raul
we have people live in or are before a live studio audience today. It's almost like we made it on the Today's Show
When's the band coming out. Tricia and Raul both are asking, we might spend the rest of the time talking about this
let's do this our Santa Cruz River Heritage Project what the time frame is
does this increase potable water supply benefits to the community let's dive
into it so one of my favorite topics is the Santa Cruz River heritage project so
what we're doing is changing the way we think okay
and so we've done that now we have to change the way we act when we look at
the Santa Cruz River this is a story that goes back 4,000 years so bear with
me the reason Tucson is here and the birthplace of Tucson is the base of A
Mountain is because there was a flowing Santa Cruz River in that area it was
perennially flowing that's what caused people to settle here in the first place
and at least until the early 1900's it still was a flowing river in that
part of the community and it was why Tucson settled so before we started
mining out groundwater from the aquifer we dried up the Santa Cruz River so in
many ways the last probably four decades or five decades has been focused on
groundwater and reversing that trend we are today to the point where we haven't
reversed everything in the aquifer there are still work to do there but we've
gotten off of groundwater we are allowing water levels to rise we are
actually recharging the aquifer what we haven't done yet at least
broadly and purposefully is look at the surface water so when you look at the
value the cultural and historical value of the Santa Cruz River you look at the
fact that it is in the proximity of downtown and you look at the economic
historical and cultural value of water also to the economy and how an economy
can revolve around water this is the perfect place to begin correcting that
original sin of drying up the Santa Cruz River so there's really a couple phases
to the Santa Cruz River heritage project phase one would be to actually take some
of our unused reclaimed water so we use a lot of it but we have additional we
don't use today and discharging that into the Santa Cruz River at Silverlake Rd
so we have reclaimed water infrastructure there already we have
water the available to us now that currently flows
into Marana we would move that upstream to 29th Street discharging in the Santa
Cruz River there it would infiltrate down and recharge the aquifer in urban
Tucson it would also create a riparian corridor in the base of the Santa Cruz
River and all of the benefits that accrue to that both the environmental
benefits the social and emotional benefits associated with having riparian
habitat restored into urban Tucson and phase one of that at
29th we are actually already have our permits filed and we've got one permit
pretty much ready it takes like four permits to do this we've designed the
facility and we have been in consultation with Pima County Flood
Control District because they manage flood risk we're working with them and
other city leadership and local stakeholders to make sure this is a
project that works because you have local community there that both would
benefit from it but also needs to support it you have the city and county
jurisdictions all of those things align for by May of 2019 we could have water
flow and that's our target to have water flow at 29th Street / Silverlake
11 months from now better get going
so we've been working on it for a little over two years and that believe it
or not three years from conception to having water in the river is an
aggressive schedule and it's been one of my highest priorities and I've been
gently pushing people so there's that additional phases could include we also
at Cushing Street have a large pipeline where we could discharge additional
water why it's more complicated at Cushing and why that's a Phase two is
the Santa Cruz River at 29th Street is pretty broad is not as constrained and
there's not a flood risk when you get right through the heart of downtown
much narrower channel and it's designed for a smaller flood than we could
actually reasonably foresee so if we were to deploy water and then have
riparian habitat through downtown as it stands today that could affect the flood
risk that's a longer conversation between the
city and the Flood Control District to make sure that whatever we do there
doesn't put undue risk on the flood channel because we do have properties
built adjacent to it that could be impacted so we have to sort through all
of that before we would put additional water there a third phase is this is all
we've been talking about water in the river channel a third phase could be
water on the west bank of the Santa Cruz River through the downtown area where
it's more of a visual expression of the water it's an amenity that could also
drive another different type of economic development but it could also be away so
like a river channel walk some kind of canal feature that brings water the
surface and you could have properties on both sides of that that have economic
development you also have the Chukson community that was there you have the
Mission Garden you have Mission Lane and the Convento these are all cultural and
historical sites that while Mission Gardens been restored you have a lot
that has not been restored so how do you attract money to do that and how can
water maybe be the catalyst to help that happen and Mission Lane used to have
acequia that flowed could we restore that with water and maybe reconnect it to
the Santa Cruz River and do recharge there as well so the future is
very bright and open for what could occur but phase one is pretty well known
and it's on track for 11 months from now yeah being started and maybe that's even
another thing that gives initiative for people to want to do more right so
that's where we're at with Santa Cruz River Heritage Project. Who gets to be
there when the water starts flowing well my guess would be you can't keep
the mayor away the mayor has got to be there council
member Romero would absolutely be there and I think she would absolutely want to
be there she was one of the very first people we met with on this when
we had it as an idea I went talk to my boss I said city
manager what do you think he's like go and then we went and
talked to Regina Romero we met with her staff we said what
do you think because with with her support this can be outstanding but if
it was not something that would be good for her constituents that's
something we needed to know early on she's definitely embraced it and has
even convened discussions with Menlo Park residents and others from the local
area to make sure that we're doing it in a mindful way and I'll
be there. Yeah I think you will. I want a big pair of scissors. Are you going to turn the valve? That's a mayor thing man
you know we just stand in the background and we're like look at what you did
mayor I'm just kidding he's good we love him he's a good mayor okay you know four
thousand years and five minutes that was great
that's what I do. Another question from Raul does A+ water imply that inorganic
volatile compounds have been removed. No so A+ when we talk about
A+ water okay we're talking about reclaimed water and in Arizona reclaimed
water can have different classes to it A+ is the highest quality of reclaimed
water and the water produced at the facility we take it from and in our
system we sometimes refer to it as A or we refer to it as A+ they're not the
same thing but with respect to contamination they are essentially the
same thing or constituents that you'd want removed from the water the +
just means also the nitrates been removed it's a good thing and the
sources of our water do have the nitrate removed so I don't want to get bogged
down in what we call it essentially it's A+ quality and that's what would be
discharged here A+ quality does not mean it's purified so there are still
constituents in the water there's total dissolved solids in the water there's
calcium there's iron there are other constituents that we're only beginning
to be able to measure so it is not purified water but it is of a high
enough quality that discharge to the environment is as acceptable as safe
putting it on school grounds is safe having a
full-body immersion in it is safe it just means you don't want to drink it
okay what is interesting is that when we add soil aquifer treatment okay I'm
using another another term when we recharge water and we allow it to filter
through sediments a process called soil aquifer treatment occurs soil aquifer
achievement which we've been demonstrating since the 80s at our
Sweetwater facility further removes any nitrate that might be left it's already
probably low it removes suspended solids and it does remove organics so when
you're talking about organic carbon or you're talking about
we use the term called emerging contaminants which are like man-made
chemicals that might not have a regulatory requirement but we certainly
want to be making sure we understand them and that we remove them those are
also largely removed sort through soil aquifer treatment so when we talk about the
quality of Class A+ water you also need to look at what happens to soil
aquifer treatment by the time it reaches the groundwater so that's
what that question is getting at that's really an explanation of it so
A+ by itself doesn't mean it's purified but the soil aquifer treatment
certainly contributes to that. Raul let us know if you have additional questions thank you for that one okay all right
we're going to go back to a couple from Mara okay. Are municipalities
agriculture or industry the greatest water user and I guess she doesn't give
a geographic extent so we can talk about that for Tucson and then maybe the state
in general sure so in the state it's likely still agriculture okay in the
Tucson region it has become municipal and industrial and we don't necessarily
distinguish between municipal industrial the one case where we do is there's
mining in the Tucson area which does use water that's not delivered through the
municipality so there's a use there but in the Tucson area its
municipal now that doesn't mean we don't have agriculture and we don't have
industry we still do and what's really unique
about Tucson is that all of those water sectors work together so on the
industrial side the mining activities that happen in the Green Valley area so
to speak they work closely with the Green Valley water companies and they
actually share on projects and they look at that together in the Tucson water
service area which is quite extensive we work very closely with the agricultural
growers in our area in a number of ways first of all we're all members of what's
called the Southern Arizona Water Users Association which is unique to Tucson
and it's the only one that includes all the water users not just the cities in
the Phoenix area they have one's called AMWUA and it's just the 10 biggest
cities we actually have BKW Farms Kai Farms FICO which is the pecan groves to
the south they're members as well so we sit at the same table when we talk about
water the other thing we do is Tucson Water and other local water companies
work with those farmers in order to move water around so they may be growing
crops with Colorado River water brought to Tucson by Tucson water and then we
get a benefit because they're not pumping ground water that they would
have and we also get a recharge credit a recharge credit is just our right to use
that water in the future and then they get a benefit because they don't have to
pump their own wells they actually pay a small fee which matches their cost
and then their on renewable water supply so in Tucson we got it figured
out and those different sectors all work together and so often when we talk
about the fact that in Arizona or in the southwest agriculture uses the most
water we're often talking in terms of does that mean that we need to now then take
the water away from Agriculture or fallow those lands in order to turn it to the cities
those conversations are certainly ongoing in other places but not in
Tucson we're partners and we have really a good mix of water use and then the
agricultural benefits for our economy so you know I sound like I'm proud and I am
I'm very proud of the way Tucson does water and I take credit for it as if I
did it. I did. No it's really just over decades of
people learning how to work together and that we're better working
together I keep saying that but it's absolutely true we're standing on a
long legacy of collaboration and partnership. yeah absolutely so speaking of
partnership I think this is a question and Mara thanks again for that question
this is from Amanda Lee Smith we do know an Amanda Smith so I don't know if it's
the Amanda Smith she threw the Lee in there yeah is that like an alias okay but based on
this question it might be the Amanda we know if we introduce water into another
reach of the Santa Cruz River what can be done to ensure that it will remain
committed to that reach for our environmental and economic benefits
instead of being repurposed or diverted for another use in the future it's a
great question and that is Amanda Smith so to put that into context I
mentioned that we currently discharge some of the effluent that we own and
others own too into the Santa Cruz River downstream of Roger Road and Ina road so
it's flowing in the river there are benefits accruing there what this
question is centering on is two things one is what is the risk that that water
or any other water we might want to put in the river upstream would would be
pulled out of the river at a future date and that's a very real risk and it's
actually been the default position that the water utilities have taken that
eventually we're going to pull our water out of the river why would we do such a
thing the current institutional framework and
the way we used to view how we could use the river was that in order to get full
benefit of that water that you own you had to pull it out of the river and put
it into a constructed recharge facility or use it directly and we do do a fair
amount of that the reason you don't get full benefit by leaving it in the river is
this an institutional framework which is called the cut to the aquifer so when we
recharge water to the aquifer through a river we lose 50 percent of it to the
aquifer we don't get a credit for it if we do it outside the river we get a
hundred percent so most people would connect the dots
and say you only leave it in the river until you have a direct use for it or
you can get 100% we're challenging that so first of all by moving some of that
water or the rest of the water entitled to Tucson upstream now we're getting a
direct benefit from it because it's happening in Tucson and that physical
water is being stored for the future so we're going to be more inclined to leave
it there we're also challenging the institutional
framework to say we should get a hundred percent credit now we're doing the
project whether it stays at 50 percent or goes to a hundred percent because we
still get the 50 percent credit and it's now where we can use it in the future
and we get the environmental and recreation and economic benefits of
it our goal would be to get a hundred percent so then there's never a question
that it needs to be there in perpetuity because we're getting full benefit the
same would be true of from Roger Rd to Ina Road there's again there's two plants
and now from Roger to Ina know we would be making the same argument to get full
benefit it's also adjacent to our service area so that water recharging
from Roger to Ina is from a practical standpoint in Tucson it's good
we'd still like to get a hundred percent credit it also becomes very expensive to
try to capture every drop that comes out of a treatment plant because as
variations throughout the day you'd have to build these big ponds to collect it
but we're already getting predominantly the benefit we're looking for yeah so I
would say our commitment is in perpetuity there yeah when you get
further from Ina it's no longer really the effluent owned by or the
wastewater owned by City of Tucson most of it's owned by the Secretary of
Interior or ownership is the wrong word entitlement so the Secretary of Interior
has entitlement to quite a bit of the effluent generated locally as part
of a Indian water rights settlement Act and they manage it or they steward
it on behalf of the tohono o'odham nation now their mandate is to get full use out of
it and that can be using it physically selling it physically or recharging it
getting a research credit and generating money
any of those will work for the Secretary of Interior because they're
obligated to manage it for the tohono o'odham the problem there is they don't have the
same discretion as we do to let 50% of it go or we can accrue these other
benefits that accrue to Tucson so we can live with it or they can't even
challenge the institutional framework we need to do that they are the federal
government they can't really step in on the state so long term they're
gonna need to do something to get full benefit and that might include pulling
it out of the river but if we're successful in changing the institutional
framework which is also good for Tucson it makes it so that they don't have that
same driver to pull it out of the river so while I'm out front
literally advocating for this change and meeting across the state with a number
of stakeholders and we have broad support to change the institutional
framework to give the hundred percent we still have some hurdles to go
the biggest benefit from that while some would accrue to Tucson is to
preserve a lot of that river flow Ina road north. great so you're out there
leading the charge is there a role that our customers and local constituents can
play in helping that? Certainly continued support and so a lot of members of
the environmental community are already partners on this they've made
appearances at the state level to advocate for it so where it stands today
is it's essentially on the governor's desk it's not there waiting
to be signed into law the governor stood up was called the (GWAC) governor's water
augmentation council so we worked through the recycled water subcommittee
of that to get support and the recycled water subcommittee said yes this change
should happen and at that place at Audubon and others were all there to
support that then it went to the full GWAC committee which is the one reporting
to the governor and the same folks came out including the tohono o'odham nation
showed up the Phoenix Valley cities showed up the environmental community
showed up to speak on behalf this and that full committee said yes we
should make this change this needs to go to the governor where it stands today is
that committees not met since this was January the legislative cycle came and
went and so it didn't get introduced but so there is awareness at the governor's
level his own GWAC says this is the right thing to do so that's got to be
good right and we've been in conversation with the Department of
Water Resources because if we don't have buy-in from the Department of Water
Resources no matter what any of us say the governor is going to
turn to his experts and say what do you think so we need them then
ultimately would need to go to the legislature because this particular
sometimes you try to do it administratively if you can or try to
do it in role this particular things in statute so it needs the legislature to
change it so you would need the governor recommendation the DWR recommendation
and we would need to at that point be really talking with all of our
representatives and senators about this because you would need a bill to go
through whether it was on its own or part of some other water bill they would
need to understand why it's important and then ultimately take that vote so we
are working with a community organization called Arizona forward it's
a business community organization but they also have an environmental ethic
and they've taken on this as a topic that they want to support so as a
resident of Tucson you kind of done what you can you know and you
continue to support us on doing the Santa Cruz River heritage project and
doing what we do but it's ultimately going to be we need to get a bill
introduced and we need to have support from the legislature Arizona forward can
help us with that but also there are members of this community that have
relationships that ultimately the call will come to say hey Tucson we need you
to support this and so call your representative there's a conversation
that should be rolling through Tucson sometime this summer so at the state
level Rusty Bowers and Gail Griffin are convening these listening sessions
they're going to bring one to Tucson so and we're going to make sure it's on the
agenda what we're gonna do is make sure that we
kind of get a meeting with them ahead of them because it's not been a part of the
conversation it's only been on the fringe we want to make sure they
understand it because we don't want them to go through a summer of listening
sessions and then in January we say why is this not in your bill and they're
gonna be like I don't know anything about it so we're gonna pounce yeah when
they come so that's kind of the key things that's great and I think
what's so interesting is that as a citizen I mean there's a role in
ensuring our water supply that you do by conserving water but then there are many
other roles you can play to make sure that were resilient absolutely and this
is one of them and paying your water bill great yeah that's a good one we
appreciate that. We can't do any of this without your water bill. Thats absolutely
true okay thank you Amanda a great question
great answer so this is going
back to our recycled water not Santa Cruz River heritage project but what
plans do we have to address growing concerns of drug metabolites and other
chemicals in our water so emerging contaminants it sounds like okay so this
whole topic of emerging contaminants is certainly on people's minds some of them
are things that you may have heard in other communities so you may have heard
of chromium six okay it's a specific part of chromium so we measure for
chromium all the time that's what's regulated but chromium six is now on
people's minds in Tucson TCE is a contaminant in the groundwater 1 4
dioxane is a contaminant groundwater that we manage we measure we treat for
where we need to so but what this question is getting at is how do we
know what we don't know right because there's hundreds of thousands of
chemicals and chemicals are in our everyday life right so let's use an
example for perfluorinated compounds it's kind of a new one that people are
talking about so we talk about well who's the bad guy who might have put
performing into compounds in our water well there are some bad guys out there
but there's also all of us right so perfluorinated compounds if you've ever
had a Teflon frying pan or you've ever Scotch guarded anything
or you've ever fireproofed clothing you have put perfluorinated compounds into
the environment yeah we don't often talk about it but that is the reality
so what's making this conversation interesting is that we now can measure
them in the environment to much lower levels than we used to so we used to not
talk about them because we couldn't measure them now we can measure them but
just because we can measure them doesn't necessarily mean that they're a risk so
we keep track of all the chemicals that are starting to show up and become
measurable and we also have what we call our sentry program so as a water
utility and most water utilities we have regulations we have to follow there are
certain chemicals we have to test for there are limits on those chemicals we
adhere to all that what we do that's beyond that is through our century
program we're on the lookout for anything else that might start to be an
emerging issue and we sample our wells and water supplies for these chemicals
and try to detect them we're actually looking for them you know if in
the 90s when I worked in the environmental industry you didn't look
for stuff because you don't want to find it when you're a water utility you want
to find it because you want to know it's there and you want to do something about
it so both in the reclaim water or any of our water supplies what
we do is we track them and we look at not just is there a regulatory limit
there's a set of guidance called health based guidance limits these are not
enforceable nobody can require us to meet them but
we treat them as if they were so if we find a chemical that doesn't necessarily
mean health's at risk it's how much are you finding and so we use those health
based guidance limits to determine is that a problem is that something that we
need to treat for is that a well we need to shut down and we do
a very good job of having a network where we're always looking for them and
the first hint of something going on we either shut down that well or we go and
do further testing and I'm not going to
say we don't have well shut down we do have wells that we have shut down
because of chemicals that are not regulated but we have been able to
detect and so we do that as a matter of course it makes Tucson unique
again yeah we're fortunate we have 200
Wells we have our large renewable supply what I'll say is Colorado River water is
really clean from this perspective that would be a
huge issue for us if we started to see this in that supply because we're
importing so much of it but the local groundwater we're always testing it
looking for it and if we're even in doubt we just take that well offline and
we do studies great so thank you okay pop quiz you said we have 200 wells
how many sampling locations do we have 262 great is that about right yeah yeah
how many tests do we do each year water quality test a lot yeah. I think it's like 15,000
it might even be more than that yeah so we're checking our water
that's probably the 15,000 if that's the number it's probably just what we're
required to do we do testing above and beyond that right so yeah we're
out there water quality is a huge priority for us because we live in a
desert we spend a lot of our time talking about do we have enough I'm
telling you we got enough we need to keep working on that we need to
keep storing more for the future we're not done yet but we're in a great
position we treat water quality as highly as an issue or even higher than
the quantity because first of all we have a history where Tucson has had
issues with that in the past and we're still living with those issues and
members of our community are still living with those issues so it really
made us focus on that and we have not lost that focus we are really
intent to make sure that the perfect answer okay we have two last questions
oh we have three last questions Oh a comment oh good good
read it if it's good can I show its from your lovely oh my wife is watching as
she's saying I'm do a good job great feedback thank you
Christina with a smiley face all right okay I have one fan
all right two more I think one that we can each answer okay but I'll let
you start with this and then I can add on so this is from Jean Ramirez
most important customers for water conservation in the future are the young
children do you to provide water conservation programs in our schools we
do actually you could even handle this question but I'm gonna say we do it on a
number of levels we do it through partnerships usually so
we have one example is we have an Academy we run every year just finished
last week where we have science technology engineering and math or stem
teachers that come in and they spend a week drinking from the fire hose
literally about our water situation in Tucson it's through Tucson water in the
University of Arizona project wet and so their goal is to become
knowledgeable about water and then they incorporate that into their curriculum
so this is like junior high high school students teachers and then they put it
in the curriculum we also have water festivals targeting at the fourth grade
level and into the classroom as well so we do it through partnerships but we
heavily invest in local education which is and we've actually gone through
we're probably on our third generation of that now because we first started in
the 70s and conversations in the 90s we're really like yeah parents were
talking about how I let the tap run when I'm brushing my teeth and my kids
telling me not to those are now the parents and now maybe we're even getting
close to grandparents and so it is generational and it is ongoing yeah so
we have three education partners that do a bulk of those touch points
oh yeah some of them are even in the room that I just ignored them completely
if they cut me off you know anyway
go ahead who are these people we partner with environmental education exchange
they're the ones that are making us look really tech savvy today thank you for
that Arizona Project wet like you mentioned
and together those two organizations reach 50 thousand kids a year in our
community which I mean that's a huge touch point for our community we can't
do that alone and though the fact that they're out there in the schools and
then at Sweetwater and working with the teachers throughout the school year is
tremendous absolutely they're really driving home again like you said
multiple generations of that conservation message and then we have
another education partner which is smart scape and they yeah absolutely
landscape education so helping both homeowners and our professionals figure
out ways to be efficient with their landscapes make sure that their
irrigation system is running properly and really have a holistic approach to
how we care for our landscapes in Tucson we missed one we have our Zanjeros
so we have a team of individuals within the utility that will come out to
your property and they'll do a water audit with you on your irrigation system
your shower heads your toilet flappers for free it is a free service
of Tucson water and they're wonderful they come out they work with you they're
not there to catch you they're here to help you save water and save money and I
would also give a shout out to our water quality team if it's not about a
quantity thing or conservation thing we have a great team that will come out if
you have a question about cloudy water or you know you just are concerned they
will handle it over the phone or they'll come out and sample your water and work
with you so that's that's a commitment from us it is great I'm glad you
highlighted there's many ways that we're working. Zanjeros report to her so
anyway so guys okay so I think we still we have this special one and I want you to
hang on to that already took it put it on your board yeah all right so this one
is a bigger picture I think stepping back to thinking about Colorado River
and the basin is there any mitigation for Colorado River water reduction and
impacts on wildlife and Native American communities in and around the Colorado
river there is so there's already underway and it's been underway for a
number of years it's actually in use it's a multi-species conservation plan (MSCP)
so it was a high bar to get through to everybody to commit water to
the environment and it's not just about water it's about getting rid of invasive
species and it is even in a shortage or in a drought we should do our best to
have a healthy environment in addition to having water supply so the MSCP
has been up and running it's a huge investment and even one of the recent
things tied to that is we had a pulse flow on the Colorado River so why would
we do that when you think of a natural river you
have floods and you have low flow periods and when you put big dams
on it you don't do that anymore right so the environment just doesn't mean the
vegetation and the wildlife it also means the sediments and the sandbars and
the things that are created in flood events and so I think it was either two
or three years ago I might be off on that because time marches on but they
did we actually agreed to a post flow to create a little mini flood to
reinvigorate those habitats in those environments and it
was wildly successful not only did it have benefits all the way through the
system it was actually the first time in a long time
that the Colorado River made it to the Gulf of California or the Sea of Cortez
and there were there's actually pictures of folks in Mexican communities out
there celebrating the fact that there was water flowing all the way it was a
cultural phenomena but an environmental thing so yes that's an ongoing thing
okay all right last question about
conservation unless there's any more that come in how much money do we have
available for rebates for conservation rebates and will they be expanded or
reduced over the next few years well it's June so you've already spent
your budget I know I always tell you when you're running out just keep going
we'll find it figure it out okay again the rebate spiel go wrap it up all right
so we do offer conservation rebates residential multifamily and commercial
customers residential customers have access to high-efficiency toilet rebates
$75 yep high efficiency clothes washer rebates
it's $200 rainwater harvesting rebates up to $2,000 and gray water harvesting rebates I don't know a
thousand okay yeah. up to $1000 we don't do as many of those do we don't okay we have some
work to do in that area that's all right what's unique about rainwater harvesting
and gray water harvesting is that we offer customers a workshop it's actually
a required work but they take that before they get the rebate so that they
have a little more knowledge about these systems because it's not just like
hooking up a clothes washer yeah right it's a little more complex you got to manage that part of
your water you're making your own little mini
infrastructure so that's on the residential side multifamily and
commercial we have again high efficiency toilets some amount that I don't know 75
or 150 if it's the kind you see like in airports the ones that like
blast you off the toilet that one yeah don't do any more of those they scare me
urinals up to two hundred dollars okay and then one of my favorite programs
that we call TAP our Tucson on it program which is our customized or our
flexible rebate program where similar to the service we offer through the Zanjeros
we offer free water audits for any commercial customer we work with an
efficiency engineer who knows a lot about water systems and mechanical
systems so he can identify any efficiency opportunities in a building
he's found like huge leaks on the order of millions of gallons a year anyway so
we do these water audits then we prepare recommendations report and we build a
custom incentive package off of that recommendation report so that's
available again for any commercial customer and a service that we're really
pushing to help customers think about how to prepare you know if there is a
shortage and they want to be as efficient as possible going
forward what about the next two years the next two years so we are undertaking
a conservation planning process in conjunction with a larger water planning
process and we are continuing all those rebates I just mentioned and we'll be
looking at determining what additional rebates would make sense you know to
bring onboard as we move into the future are you thinking of something that no
nothing specific that planning process is up and underway I
think it's important to note we have what we call a citizen's water Advisory
Committee which is 15 folks from our customer pool and they work with us on
all aspects of the utility financial technical and policy but we have a
conservation and education subcommittee that is very well informed and
informative to us and they help us they partner with us in order to develop
plans like that so it's pretty exciting and they deserve a shout out
they really do a lot of work with us and they don't always agree with us and so we
work it out right and but it always makes us better absolutely all right
any last words that you want to share pay your bill just remember when it
starts raining revenues go down I'm supposed to like the rain but you know
it's a beautiful day I know we're in here staring out at a window where it's
cloud cover be safe in the rain I mean rain is great and it brings
relief to us but you know Tucson rains are dangerous I just say you know
just be mindful and be careful that first rain of the year everybody thinks
they can still drive the way they were driving everybody leaves their
sprinklers on no you know when the rains come be careful but also recognize
you're getting some water from the sky and get a rainwater harvesting system
put in that's right that's it well do it all right well thank you all for joining
us I hope you had some of your questions answered
we enjoyed yes chatting about our water support we do so contact us if you
have more questions and thanks so much all right thank you thanks Candice
you
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