Utility Water Loss Control

Water utilities provide one of the greatest bargains of modern civilization: safe, available drinking water for household and commercial use at a cost to consumers of fractions of a penny per gallon. In the United States, thousands of community water utilities operate treatment and piping systems that process over 42 billion gallons of water withdrawn from water sources each day. Water utilities have historically focused on safe drinking water quality and continuous, on-demand supply, and they are heavily regulated by national governments to ensure this high quality service. Unfortunately, a similar focus has not been given to system efficiency in the water supply process, and it is believed that many water utilities suffer considerable losses from leakage and poor accounting.

With water resources being increasingly stressed due to climate change and growing populations, water utilities must become water-efficient throughout the entire supply process. By employing improved methods of water auditing and loss control, water utilities have the potential to reduce the large volumes of treated water that are lost to leakage, as well as to provide incentives to customers to optimize their water consumption. Water Loss Control is an increasingly important field of practice that is being heavily promoted within the drinking water utility industry.

In 2019, AWE released a supplement to its State Scorecard Project called "State-Level Water Loss Laws in the United States," which ranks the states based on their water loss control laws. For more information and to download the supplement, click here.