Case Study: Valencia Water Company – Drought Program

Submitted by VWC

In response to the current California drought, VWC developed the Drought Smart Allocation program as an addendum to the Water Smart Allocation and Tiered Rates Program (its BBR structure). The program leverages the strengths of the WSA Program by promoting conservation and responding to water supply shortage conditions. In the event of a need for increased conservation from customers due to a drought or reduced water supply conditions, VWC can implement the Drought Smart Allocation program in steps as defined below:

Data is also collected from Spatial CIMIS using the zip code for each weather station and additional zip codes for areas where the station coverage may not accurately represent the local ET. The zip code feature was built into the portal tool to allow the opportunity in the future for IRWD to choose to use CIMIS as a more representative ET data source for certain areas.The screenshots below show IRWD’s ET Portal and the data collected by weather station and for each zip code using Spatial CIMIS.

• Mandatory Water Waste Reductions (to specifically address Tiers 3, 4 and 5)

• Step 1: Reduce Tier 3 and 4 widths by 20%
• Step 2: Reduce Tier 3 and 4 widths 50%
• Step 3: Reduce Tier 3 and 4 widths by 100%

• Mandatory Outdoor Water Use Reduction (to specifically address Tier 2)

• Step 1: Reduce Tier 2 budget by 10%
• Step 2: Reduce Tier 2 budget by 20%
• Step 3: Reduce Tier 2 budget by 50%
• Step 4: Reduce Tier 2 budget by 100%

Due to VWC customers’ successful response in 2015, having saved more than 30% compared to the State’s conservation standard of 24% for the same period, VWC has opted to not implement the DSA.