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Council presses water staff on leakage, meter upgrades and large industrial users
Summary
Councilors asked detailed questions about the city's progress reducing nonrevenue water, meter replacements, tamper detection, resident leak alerts and the impact of large industrial customers; staff reported metered share has improved and committed to returning with KPI targets and more detailed metrics.
Council members used the committee meeting to press water staff about nonrevenue water, performance metrics and large industrial customers after a technical presentation on supplemental water options.
"And best in class on that, I think, is around 10%," Council member Romani said during the discussion about leakage and KPIs, urging staff to adopt a clear target for nonrevenue water. Councilors said a concrete target would make the department—lear progress measurable and asked staff to report proposed benchmarks for fiscal years 2027 and 2028.
Water staff said they have been replacing meters and improving monitoring. Presenters said the system's metered share is about 68% and that the city has improved that share by roughly 6.5 percentage points in the last year through meter change-outs, enhanced metering technology and leak detection work. Staff noted a recently approved $2 million meter-replacement program and that newer meters can record tamper events and provide daily reads to help detect leaks.
Council member questions covered specific resident-facing capabilities: can the meters flag leaks and notify households? Staff answered that the upgraded meters and network will allow more frequent reads and that software and staffing enhancements would be needed to provide resident alerts; they said building that capability is part of ongoing meter-network rollout.
Members also asked about large industrial users. Romani and other councilors requested staff review historical water-use trends for major customers (the presentation referenced manufacturing customers) to understand demand changes and to ensure planning accounts for large users as part of resilience scenarios.
Council members asked staff to prepare more actionable materials, including a heat map identifying leak concentrations and a proposed KPI schedule showing incremental targets to reduce water loss. Staff agreed to return with further detail and a proposal to commission an updated safe-yield study.
The meeting produced no binding change in policy; staff were directed to provide follow-up scoping and metrics for council consideration.
