CONGRATULATIONS: the nightmarish proposal to revise BMP 3 has been replaced with one that appears reasonable

There is a new conceptual proposal for the water-loss control BMP on the table, put forward by, or acceptable in principle to Group 2 (Environmentalists), one that would require water agencies to complete the spreadsheet, “AWWA WLCC Water Audit Software” every year or two. This is really big news. The original proposal would have been a nightmare to implement.

To use the software, you enter information about the amount of water you supplied, the amount consumed by customers and the amount lost from your system, the number of connections and miles of water mains in your system, some financial data, and other information. The spreadsheet then calculates “Financial Indicators” (such as its estimate of the dollar value of the lost water) and “Operational Efficiency Indicators” (such as whether, in its estimate, your infrastructure is reasonably sound or not).

You can download a free copy of this software from AWWA’s website HERE.

However the software you download today will likely be revised soon, so that it will be able to rate the quality of the data your. For example, based on the precision of the data you entered, the spreadsheet may recommend that your agency focus on gathering more precise data rather than using the values generated by the spreadsheet (values such as the relative integrity of your water system) to improve your water-loss control program.

No one I know of has seen a drafted of this new BMP 3 proposal. Until we do, we cannot know with certainty what it will look like. And we may not see a draft until just before the CUWCC Plenary Meeting in September, when water agencies are suppose to give their tentative nod of approval. Hopefully this simple proposal will not be loaded up with additional requirements like needles on cactus.Some water agencies have suggested that we use this spreadsheet for the next few years:

* To better understand how the calculated results of the spreadsheet can and should be used in a regularotry way (i.e., judging BMP compliance),
* To give us time to collect more precise in-put values,
* To figure out how this approach (the spreadsheet and accompanying AWWA M36 Manual) can help California’s urban water agencies conserve water cost-effectively, and
* To give CUWCC time to work with AWWA to educate water agency field operations and management about AWWA’s new water loss control strategies.

Thanks to everyone who worked successfully to bring reason to this BMP 3 revision process.

- Matt Lyons

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 27th, 2008 at 3:15 pm and is filed under CUWCC Group 1. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.