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Austin Water staff report Q3 conservation progress; portal, rebates and infrastructure loans highlighted
Summary
Staff reported third-quarter Water Forward and conservation implementation updates, including a small community outreach grant (up to $3,000), efforts to integrate programs into Salesforce, a $45 million loan for service-line replacement, and portal leak-alert activity. Task force members pressed for clearer progress metrics against long-range goals.
At a Water Forward Implementation Task Force meeting, staff presented third-quarter implementation results and next steps for Austin Water's conservation and water-loss programs.
Kevin Kluge, Water Conservation Division manager, summarized Q3 highlights, saying the city launched a community outreach grant “up to $3,000” per award and that staff had budgeted for five awards but received three applications and extended the deadline to Dec. 15. He said staff are integrating conservation programs into a new Salesforce customer-relationship platform to improve program tracking and outreach.
“We're not going to enforce the 50% restriction until 04/06/2026 to give builders and irrigators time to adjust their plans,” Kluge said, referring to the new uniform plumbing-code irrigation limit for new homes.
Kluge and other staff also reported operational work on water loss: Austin Water obtained a $45,000,000 loan to support replacement of customer service lines and reported 116 water-main leaks detected and repaired in Q3 (an increase from Q2); staff said a contract will deliver about 32,000 linear feet of condition assessment in December.
Emily Rafferty, in a separate briefing on Highland Lakes conditions, reported combined storage in Lakes Buchanan and Travis at about 1,750,000 acre-feet and noted October inflows were low while November returned to roughly average levels. Emily and staff also reviewed NOAA and ENSO outlooks and said interruptible stored water is expected to be available in 2026 after the March 1 evaluation.
Staff described customer-facing leak-alert work through the MyATX/MyTX portal and estimated savings from alerts using vendor analytics (Vertex/Vertex 1). Staff said portal sign-ups are in the tens of thousands and committed to providing an exact count; task force members urged more off-season outreach to increase participation.
Members pressed staff to show clearer progress against multi-year conservation targets. Kevin noted Q3 GPCD (gallons per capita per day) was 141 for July—September and that Austin's full-year 2029 goal is 119, saying there is still work to do to meet long-term targets.
What's next: staff will provide portal signup numbers, continue integrating program data into Salesforce, analyze outreach-pilot results over the winter, and return with further updates. A communications overview presentation is on a future agenda.
At the start of the meeting members moved to approve the prior meeting minutes; the motion passed with no opposition.
