Marin Municipal Water District details conservation plan

The Marin Municipal Water District has set conservation benchmarks for the next five years that are projected to reduce water use by hundreds of millions of gallons annually.

District staffers presented the final 2024 Water Efficiency Master Plan to the board of directors on Tuesday. The plan is a playbook that outlines how water is used today in the county, and how the district can help its 191,000 customers in central and southern Marin cut back.

The plan aims to reduce water use districtwide by more than 1,000 acre-feet a year starting by 2025, with even greater incremental reduction targets beyond that. An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons of water.

If the district is successful in implementing the plan, there could be a cumulative savings of about 28,000 acre-feet of water by 2045, said Carrie Pollard, the district’s water efficiency manager.

“This is a five-year plan to identify strategies of what are the best opportunities for us to reduce water use within our community,” Pollard said.

Pollard said staff might find that some programs in the plan are ineffective, or that new opportunities are discovered along the way.

With that in mind, staffers “will adaptively manage our water efficiency program as we move forward,” Pollard said.

Today the district delivers about 25,300 acre-feet of water per year.

When it comes to conservation, some of the district’s customers are motivated by drought while others value efficiency, a district customer survey found.

“We want to leverage that folks think saving water is important and that they highly value that as a motivation,” Pollard said.

The plan outlines three key initiatives to achieve major gains in conservation.

First, the plan calls for target marketing to get customers to participate in a turf conversion program. The district is planning to convert 190,000 square feet of turf a year. Turf conversion saves about 31 gallons per square foot a year.

This is an ambitious target considering past participation. During the drought, the district did convert 410,000 square feet of turf, but before conservation was top of mind, the district only replaced about 7,700 square feet annually.

“We need to be realistic but aspirational, and that’s what our intent is here,” Pollard said.

Secondly, the plan says all customers with advanced metering infrastructure, a type of smart meter, will begin receiving digital notifications when a leak is detected rather than a mailed letter.

Today, the district mails out about 1,200 leak letters annually directing customers to make repairs. After repairs, the average savings per letter is 28,000 gallons of water.

Once the AMI smart meters are fully deployed to all customers, these notifications are expected to increase, resulting in quicker repair and an average water savings of 731 acre feet per year.

Another area of focus is what’s called the large landscape customer initiative, where the district establishes water budgets for customers such as schools and parks that manage irrigated land.

It’s an educational program to show customers how much water they’re using, versus how much water their land actually needs, in hopes of educating them to irrigate more efficiently. The plan projects an annual savings of about 189 acre feet of water.

The plan also describes a Flume smart home water monitor program; rebate programs for pool and spa cover rebates and smart irrigation controllers. The plan describes laundry-to-landscape grey water incentives and rain barrel and cistern programs.

Other savings can be achieved by continued distribution of water efficient fixtures, such as showerheads, faucet aerators and toilet leak detection tabs.

The district has planned conservation assistance programs where staffers will package various water savings offerings tailored for residential customers or commercial customers.

The plan calls for two new pilot programs. One would develop customized water budgets for residential customers based on irrigated landscape and localized weather data. Participants would receive bi-monthly notifications comparing they’re actual usage against their budgeted use.

Another pilot program would package water efficiency offerings to managers of sports fields, such as schools and parks, to motivate turf replacement and better irrigation practices.

Already, the district has voted to end the high-efficiency toilet rebate and high-efficiency clothes washer programs. The programs have been replaced by a custom rebate program for commercial, industrial, institutional, irrigation and multifamily home customers.

Staff is proposing to rescind its grey water ordinance, which states that applicants seeking new water service, and projects requesting expanded water service for large residential or commercial remodels, must install a grey water recycling system for landscape irrigation.

A replacement to the rule is expected to be brought back to the board at a future meeting.

As the district moves forward with the plan, staffers are also monitoring state policies on conservation goals and the incoming ban on nonfunction turf.

District directors thanked staff for the effort in developing the plan.

Board member Matt Samson said he is concerned that participation in the turf replacement and grey water programs has tapered off.

“It is ambitious,” Samson said of the plan. “I think we need to be realistic in looking at a lot of those numbers where you’re trying to drive the costs, drive the use of water down.”

“I think it’s important, as you think about the next steps, to report back in on how we’re measuring the success of this effort and how it impacts our long-term water supply efforts,” said Jed Smith, a district board member.

“Achieving our water supply objectives are going to be based on a portfolio approach,” board president Ranjiv Khush said. “It’s not going to be one single effort that gets us there, it’s going to be a combination of a lot of different efforts. This is integral for that, and it’s one of the few actions we can implement right now.

“And if the next drought begins this winter our ability to conserve will be the main determinant of how well we’re going to cope with that next drought,” he said.