The State Water Resources Control Board (State Water Board) will hold a public stakeholder workgroup meeting to receive input prior to initiating the formal rulemaking process for the development of water loss performance standards. Interested persons can provide input at the workshop or via email to the contact specified in this notice. This is an informal stakeholder meeting, where a quorum of the State Water Board may be present, but the State Water Board will take no formal action. This meeting will be webcast.
Water Code Section 10608.34, subdivision (i) (Senate Bill 555, 2015) requires the State Water Board to develop volumetric performance standards for water loss for urban retail water suppliers by July 2020. Pursuant to section 10608.34, urban retail water suppliers are already required to submit annual water loss audit reports to the Department of Water Resources.
The State Water Board will use available data, including water loss estimates from water loss audit reports, data on water systems from Electronic Annual Reports, and available literature and input from stakeholders and experts to develop performance standards.
The State Water Board has conducted four public stakeholder workgroup meetings to obtain input and provide information regarding the performance standards. The first public stakeholder workgroup meeting was held in Sacramento in March 2018 and included discussions and presentations on interpretation of water loss audit data, an overview of the rulemaking timeline and the sections pertaining to Senate Bill 555 in the Electronic Annual Reports. The second meeting was held in Oakland in June 2018 and focused on existing technologies for reducing water loss and their potential for implementation depending on various water distribution system characteristics. The third meeting was held in Los Angeles in September 2018 and included discussions on costs and benefits of water loss control, and overviews of water loss control programs by two California urban water retailers. The fourth stakeholder meetings, held in Sacramento and Los Angeles in February 2019, provided an overview of the proposed regulatory framework of the performance standards.
Based on information gathered and discussed during the prior meetings, State Water Board staff have developed a regulatory framework for the performance standards. The performance standards are proposed to be based on the life cycle costs and benefits associated with the implementation of water loss control measures. The stakeholder meeting will describe and obtain input regarding staff’s proposed economic framework for the life cycle cost assessment to develop the performance standards.
This notice and additional information on the agenda are available at the State Water Board’s water loss webpage at: https://www.waterboards.ca.gov/water_issues/programs/conservation_portal/water_loss_control.html
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