Help your Government
As a consumer and citizen, you can urge your local water utility to do a better job promoting water efficiency. Find out what your water provider is and is not doing.

Does your local water utility:
• Have a program to find and repair water leaks and reduce other inefficiencies?
• Have a rate structure that is fair, tiered to encourage conservation, while securing the utility’s fiscal integrity?
• Offer incentives for installation of water efficient appliances?

Does it protect green space that allows rainwater to be absorbed by the soil and become “base-flow”—underground water that sustains our waterways during dry periods? Does your local government support programs to purchase green space and enforce laws that protect stream buffers, floodplains and wetlands?

As a voter and informed citizen, you can urge your local government to take actions to use water more wisely and reduce the amount of hard surfaces (parking lots, roads and rooftops) that are pushing rainwater away, wasting it rather than allowing it to seep into the ground and become base-flow. These programs can save water and money.

Local Water Conservation Program
The most important thing that your local government can do is to establish and annually fund a water conservation program to promote efficiency measures and offer incentives, such as rebates for new toilets and other water efficient appliances. Cobb County is a star among metro Atlanta governments with a staffed program and a budget of $400,000 per year. www.water.cobbcountyga.gov/efficiency.htm

• Urge your city or county to put a water conservation program in its annual budget!
And, encourage officials to make sure that all their buildings are water efficient.

Water Loss Control
While most local governments in metro Atlanta are working on leak detection and repair, the region still has an extremely high average rate of water loss (20%) and there are no mandates to reduce these losses. Only the city of Atlanta has invested significant funds to control its water leaks, currently down to 14% from 20% just six years ago.

• Urge your local officials to fix their leaks—before investing in expensive new
water supplies. Resources: AWWA, “Evaluating water loss and planning loss reduction strategies”; “Leakage management technologies”. www.awwarf.org.

Low Impact Development
We are going to have to grow differently in metro Atlanta if we are to sustain our limited water supplies into the future. Local policies should prohibit approval of developments if officials cannot certify the availability of water and sewer. Local ordinances that protect stream buffers, floodplains and wetlands must be strengthened and enforced.

• Urge your local officials to promote, even mandate, low impact development,
including the use of permeable pavement wherever possible to allow rain to filter into the ground. See www.lid-stormwater.net/

Click here to join or make a donation to Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper and help us make sure you have enough clean water now and in the future!