Published: Jun 28, 2013 | 21:09 PM

It Pays to Be Always Water Smart!

Irvine Ranch Water District uses a budget based rate structure which provides you with the water you need and promotes the efficient use of water. 

"If you are lucky enough to be an IRWD customer, you enjoy some of the lowest water rates in Orange County," said Nathan Adams, IRWD Water Efficiency Analyst.

Each customer receives a basic water budget that provides a reasonable amount of water for your needs and property characteristics, including the number of occupants, lot size, size of irrigated area, climate, etc. How your cost of water is calculated is based upon how much water you use (measured by reading your meter) and whether or not you stayed within your budget. During the month, if you use more water than your budget, your cost of water will increase due to the need for IRWD to purchase more expensive sources of water, such as imported water from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California. To see how this works, we have developed a user friendly water budget calculator.

Use IRWD’s rate structure to your advantage and capitalize on efficiency in the following ways:

• If your usage is consistently in the Low Volume or Conservation Base Rate tiers, congratulations!  Continue to keep it here and enjoy the low rates!
• If your usage goes beyond your budget and into the more expensive tiers (Inefficient or Wasteful tiers) use this as signal to check for leaks (e.g. your toilet) or over-watering.  IRWD staff can help by conducting a site survey at your request.
• Take advantage of one of IRWD’s many rebates to offset the cost of investing in water efficiency and then enjoy the future savings.

Let’s put the third bullet to practice.  Using the water budget calculator for a single family account the budget for the month of July is 15 ccf (1 ccf = 748 gallons).  This results in a commodity charge of $16.62.  If because of poor-performing sprinklers and over-watering the same family used 25 ccf in July it would result in a commodity charge of $48.10.  This is $31.48 more than budget charges!  Instead, let’s put this money to work by investing in efficiency.

This family decides to tackle the over-watering problem by fixing the sprinkler issues around the yard and installing a new weather-based irrigation controller.   Think of this as a $500 investment in a home’s landscape and value!  But factor in the $425 rebate IRWD offers for weather-based irrigation controllers and the average monthly watering savings and the payback may only take several months.  You see, it pays to be Always Water Smart!