New Study Demonstrates Importance of Federal Water Efficiency Standards
Published: June 25, 2026
The results of a newly released study from the Water Research Foundation demonstrate that proposals to weaken federal water efficiency standards are misguided. The study offers some of the clearest evidence yet that these standards are delivering exactly what they were intended to do: reduce water use, lower costs, and improve long-term water system sustainability.
The 2026 Residential End Uses of Water, Version 3 study updates one of the most important long-running datasets in the water sector and confirms a striking trend: indoor residential water use has dropped dramatically over the last quarter century, largely because of more efficient plumbing fixtures and appliances. Since 1999, the study finds that indoor water use in single-family homes has fallen by 44 percent, with daily indoor per capita use declining from 69.3 gallons to 38.5 gallons. The biggest reductions came from toilets, clothes washers, and faucets—products that have been shaped over time by federal efficiency standards, water utility programs, and related conservation efforts.
The study finds that the reductions were driven primarily by the replacement of older, less-efficient fixtures and appliances with new ones that meet federal standards. In other words, efficiency gains have been built into the products Americans use every day. The benefits of these standards extend far beyond gallons saved at the tap. Water efficiency standards also reduce energy use and household utility bills. Water that is not pumped, heated, treated, or wastewater-processed saves money for both customers and utilities.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimates that federal energy and water conservation standards adopted through 2024 saved 1.7 trillion gallons of water in 2024 alone—roughly 12 percent of annual public water supply withdrawals in the United States—and reduced Americans’ utility bills by $105 billion that same year. The Appliance Standards Awareness Project recently reported that existing federal efficiency standards have saved the typical U.S. household about $6,000 in utility bills over the last decade.
These savings are especially important at a time when communities across the country are grappling with aging infrastructure, rising water service costs, drought, population growth, and the need for new water supplies. Water-efficient products are independently certified to perform well and generally cost about the same as less-efficient products, making them a simple, low-cost way to save water and save money.
The new Water Research Foundation study also reinforces an important planning lesson for utilities and communities: assumptions about residential water demand must continue to evolve as product efficiency improves. If indoor use has fallen this sharply over time because of more efficient fixtures and appliances, then water demand forecasting, conservation planning, and infrastructure investment decisions must account for those trends. Utilities need current end-use data to make sound long-term decisions, and this study provides an important new benchmark for that work.
For the Alliance for Water Efficiency, the study is a timely reminder of what is at stake in ongoing federal policy debates. Over the past year, AWE has opposed federal efforts to rescind or weaken water efficiency standards for products such as clothes washers, dishwashers, and showerheads. Weakening those standards would not simply slow future progress—it could risk reversing decades of water, energy, and cost savings that households, utilities, and communities already depend on. It could also undercut state and local conservation programs, codes, and standards that rely on a strong federal floor for product performance.
Strong federal standards are not a substitute for utility conservation programs, state leadership, or customer engagement. But they are an essential foundation. They ensure that products sold in the marketplace meet a minimum level of efficiency and help deliver water savings equitably across regions, income levels, and housing types. The inclusion of a multi-family housing analysis in the new study is especially important in this regard, because it broadens our understanding of how efficiency gains are being realized across different residential settings.
The lesson from this new research is straightforward: water efficiency standards work. They have helped cut residential indoor water use nearly in half over the last generation. They save households money, reduce energy use, and ease pressure on local water and wastewater systems. And they strengthen the resilience of communities facing increasing water stress and increasing water service costs.
As water challenges intensify across the country, federal water efficiency standards should be protected, updated, and expanded where appropriate—not weakened. The latest data show that these policies are one of the nation’s most effective long-term water management tools.