The Dec 16 Daily Brief noted The Signal’s reporting on Valencia Water’s then-forthcoming plan to categorize customers on a scale from “Wasteful” to “Super Efficient.”  The program is modeled after similar implementations by other water utilities, including Irvine Water District in the City of Irvine.

2010 marks the rollout of categorization; 2011 will bring tiered rates.

The categorization is under the banner “Water SMART Allocation Program”, so named because an algorithm will determine each customer’s water “allocation”:

The Valencia Water Company Water SMART program is a fair and equitable method of providing residents an amount of water calculated to efficiently meet their specific needs. This system is based on extensive national research and local studies.

Calculations take into account lot size, amount of landscaping for each property, and daily weather readings to give each house an individualized allocation. Allocations are divided to show indoor and outdoor amounts. Indoor amounts will generally remain constant, but outdoor amounts will fluctuate depending upon actual weather conditions.

The categories are as follows (based on percentage of assigned allocation):

• Super Efficient: 0-40%
• Efficient: 41-100%
• Inefficient: 101-150%
• Excessive: 151-200%
• Wasteful: 201% +

There is at least one obvious flaw with VWC’s system: individuals with smaller homes are penalized.  How does VWC know how many people are in a home?  I’m admittedly taking an educated guess, but I’d bet it’s based on home size.  My neighbors have a smaller home but one more person in their home.  Their allocation will certainly be smaller, but all things being equal, usage will be higher.

On the whole, though, I like the concept and motives of the approach.  Water has been called “liquid gold” for good reason, and the ridiculousness of our water infrastructure combined with long term drought conditions makes for interesting debate about policy and circumstance.

So… is it as “fair and equitable” as VWC touts?  I’ll offer my household circumstances as a guide.

Customer Profile

We moved to new construction in the West Hills development in Valencia and, having spent a number of years in Irvine, are quite familiar with tiered water rates.  Our 2009-built stucco box has the latest in tract home efficiency, including:

• Weathermatic “Smartline” weather-based irrigation timer
• High Efficiency Clothes Washer (front loading-style)
• Aerators installed on all faucets
• Sterling High Efficiency toilets with 2 flush modes (1.6 gpf + 0.8 gpf)

Variable Toilet Flush. "Press the Left Side When You..." (oh nevermind)

Smartline Irrigation Timer. But is it VWC SMART?

Weather station for the sprinkler timer

We deliberately installed native California landscaping and plenty of ‘crete to cut down on maintenance, though I couldn’t convince my OC-bred wife to give up the bona fide Marathon fescue (and the cost honestly didn’t pencil out) – there are patches front and back. There is no pool nor spa, and the home has a traditional (though new) water heater.

Front Patch o' Fescue

Rear Patch o' Fescue

We have 2 small kids, no pets, and the home is just shy of 2500 square feet on a 5000-ish square foot lot.  I’d say that’s square in the Valencia Water Company demographic.

Habits

• daily showers
• wash one car per week
• average two loads of laundry per day
• one dishwasher run per day
• typical ‘faucet off while brushing teeth’ and similar conscientious behaviors
• use mostly RO drinking water from home
• check the water meter at the sidewalk for leaks (bi-monthly)

With the exception of our grass, I’m proud of our consumption and habits.  You can imagine my reaction when I received the first VWC bill with the “SMART Allocation” system.

SMART Category

I was shocked-SHOCKED-to read that VWC marked our recent month’s activity as “Inefficient.”  We had guests over for a portion of that time, so that may have contributed.  But aside from tuning the irrigation timer a bit (let’s just say the grass is not the greenest in the ‘hood), I’m not sure what else I’d change.

Including irrigation, we’re using about 100 gallons per person per day.  The feds say 80-100 gallons per person per day is average, but that’s excluding irrigation — which is 35% of the December SMART allocation for our household; that would put our indoor usage below the national average.

That being said, the majority of our usage has been below the allocation (with the exception of June, when our landscape was first installed).  And it nailed us dead-on for October and November.  I would be surprised if VWC will allow its customers to ‘rollover’ unused allocations in a future period.

Now What?

Compare your situation and habits to ours.  If a household with no obvious low hanging conservation fruit is considered essentially average, the SMART allocation methodology might surprise or even infuriate some VWC-served households.   Perhaps homes such as ours — with fancy toilets, mostly-native landscaping, and front loading washing machines — is where the bar is set.  Maybe military showers plus other drastic measures are what will be required to move the needle.  Or perhaps the NickelDime household will be ponying up the coin for some fake grass after all.  Now to convince the better half….