2021 was another challenging year for the Alliance for Water Efficiency (AWE) and our partners as drought – both prolonged and seasonal - continued across much of North America, with the prospect of increasing water supply instability because of climate change. At the same time, political divisions strained the ties that bind our nation together and threatened to prevent action on a host of pressing challenges, including the growing water crisis.

Learn more about AWE's eventful 2021 in the full report.

Despite the challenging circumstances of 2020, the Alliance for Water Efficiency (AWE) persevered to provide research, member support, and policy advocacy that advanced sustainable water use across North America. As the world abruptly shifted to remote working, we collaborated with our partners to exchange ideas and strategies for navigating the new reality.

Learn more about AWE's eventful 2020 in the full report.

2019 was a year of production. AWE released studies, reports, manuals, handbooks, user guides, and webinars.

We successfully mobilized our community to help ensure a place for EPA’s WaterSense program in the FY2020 national budget.

We collaborated with Plumbing Manufacturers International (PMI) to establish strict guidelines for installing multiple showerheads in a single stall, thus closing a significant loophole in codes and ensuring effective water efficiency standards.

We gave our primary website, AllianceforWaterEfficiency.org, a major facelift and started work on updating our Home-Water-Works.org household water use resource and calculator.

The California Water Efficiency Partnership (CalWEP), a Chapter of the Alliance for Water Efficiency, hired its first Executive Director team. Congratulations to co-Executive Directors Sarah Foley and Tia Lebherz. It has been a joy watching CalWEP come into its own, and we are extremely proud to continue to support our first fully autonomous chapter.

Learn more about AWE's eventful 2019 in the full report.

2018 has been a fabulous year for us at the Alliance for Water Efficiency (AWE). Our years of hard work are bearing fruit in building partnerships and highlighting our ongoing efforts to provide cutting-edge research and technical assistance. Our members tell us that we are making a difference...Making a difference is why we exist. It is gratifying to see our efforts working in so many geographies and with so many partners.

2017 was a landmark year for us at AWE. We completed a year-long process of negotiating, creating legal frameworks, and strategic planning to lay the groundwork for the California Water Efficiency Partnership to become the Alliance for Water Efficiency’s first-ever state chapter. There is great synergy in the work of both organizations, and we will be stronger by having an explicit and cooperative platform for working together. Throughout the process, we stayed mindful of the strength of partnerships in an effort to create a model that we hope will be replicated many times in the near future as our team works to support regional efforts, and as water-aware regions work to support our work across North America...

The Alliance for Water Efficiency and the Environmental Law Institute (ELI) have released a five-year update to the 2012 Water Efficiency and Conservation State Scorecard: An Assessment of Laws and Policies. As with the 2012 State Scorecard, the 2017 update reviewed, scored, graded states for laws supporting water conservation and efficiency. In addition, the 2017 report added a new component for climate resiliency planning and performed a parallel evaluation, scoring, and grading process.

Though based on a 16-question survey, the 2017 update is an expansion of the 2012 edition; the underlying survey includes three new questions and a series of sub-questions for more complex topic areas. The goal of these changes was to develop a deeper understanding of legal frameworks supporting water conservation and efficiency, and climate resiliency planning. The topic areas addressed by the 2017 survey are: water loss control, consumptive use standards for appliances and fixtures, water conservation and drought planning, funding sources other than State Revolving Funds for urban conservation programs, technical assistance offerings, and customer metering, volumetric billing, and conservation-oriented rate structure requirements.

For the climate resiliency planning component, a three-question survey was used to explore what basic legal requirements obligate states to actively prepare for climate adaptation, prioritization of climate-related challenges, and the implications for water and wastewater utilities. The climate resiliency survey also included some sub-questions in order to fully understand legal parameters around critical base steps.

In all, the surveys produced more than a thousand data points which were all individually reviewed and verified. A draft of the report was made available for public comment in December 2017. All comments were responded to.

While the findings reflect some significant progress, in particular around water loss control and drought preparedness, they also clearly identify which critical areas need more work and which states have a lot of opportunity for improvement. This work was largely undertaken to support and motivate planners, policy makers, and water professionals in improving their state’s approach to managing fresh water resources and resiliency planning. Complete breakouts of state-by-state scores and grades are available in the report and in the supplemental state-by-state materials.

AWE has also released several supplements based on data collected by the 2017 State Scorecard team. The first supplement, "State-Level Water Efficiency and Conservation Laws in the Colorado River Basin," can be found here. The second supplement, "State-Level Water Loss Laws in the United States," can be found here.

AWE and ELI are grateful for partial support for this important work from the Turner Foundation.

Update: Click here to see subsequent 2022 State Policy Scorecard for Water Efficiency and Sustainability.

Planners, designers, decision makers, and researchers currently lack the information necessary to determine if graywater reuse systems are viable, safe, and provide cost-effective potable water savings. At the same time, these professionals and other stakeholders are increasingly under pressure to promote and/or incentivize the use of single-family packaged graywater reuse systems.

Recognizing this dynamic, the AWE Water Efficiency Research Committee wanted to develop a resource that would help industry professionals perform cost-benefit analyses for single-family packaged graywater systems.

The report includes easy-to-follow steps for determining the cost-benefit ratio, which gives utilities justification in choosing to include or exclude graywater systems from their program offerings. The report emphasizes that the results of a cost-benefit analysis will vary from utility to utility, but does set out some guiding principles that are the same everywhere. Specifically, it finds that graywater reuse programs are better suited as long-term, ongoing programs, and that several variables, such as long irrigation seasons and high home occupancy rates, impact the potential for customer savings. It also stresses the fact that the volume of water savings achieved via the use of a graywater system is not equal to the volume of graywater generated or collected—It is equal to the volume of potable water savings achieved by the homeowner.

Download the full Canadian report here

A unit cost comparison is another resource developed for this project. Click here to read more about unit cost evaluations across the U.S.

This report was made possible with funding from the East Bay Municipal Utility District  and the Portland Water Bureau,  and with grant support from the California Department of Water Resources.