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Study
suggests greater water conservation through submetering
WASHINGTON — Municipalities and policy makers
seeking incentives to improve water
conservation should embrace direct water billing by the apartment industry,
according to a new study produced in cooperation with the US Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA), 10 municipal water utilities and two national
apartment associations.
According to a release by the National Multi
Housing Council/National Apartment Association Joint Legislative Program,
the National Multiple Family Submetering and Allocation Billing Program
Study, a three-year effort to determine the water savings potential in the
apartment sector from requiring residents to pay for their water consumption
separately from their rent, found that billing residents for their water
usage by direct metering could reduce annual water consumption by an average
of 15 percent.
The research, conducted by Aquacraft under the
direction of Dick Bennett of the East Bay (CA) Municipal Utility District,
found that fully 85 percent of apartment properties still include water in
the rent, the release said.
This suggests there is enormous conservation
potential if utilities use their avoided costs to provide incentives to
property owners to upgrade plumbing fixtures and implement direct billing
programs.
The report's authors suggest "direct metering
and billing of water for apartment residents encourages water efficiency and
promotes a water billing system as transparent as other utilities like gas
and electricity, phone and cable, whereby residents pay for what they use."
According
to the release, the report also recommends that EPA cease to apply certain
federal Safe Drinking Water Act requirements to apartment properties that
bill their residents separately for water, since billing has no impact on
drinking water quality. |
