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feature of green building standards suggested in an earlier staff report "Orange Turning Green." Stormwater flowing from residential driveways and sidewalks could be collected and used for lawn and landscaping irrigation and precluding the need to use potable water sources for irrigation. Further, pervious paving can be an essential element in low-impact design, which is a more specific application of LEED New Development and Home Builders' Green Building Standards development standards. Pat Davis from OWASA went through the following section. He said that some of the recommendations would involve OWASA taking a fairly significant proactive role in promoting conservation in development. The first recommendation that came out of these discussions and subsequent consideration by the OWASA Board with input from its General Counsel, was that OWASA as a utility should require state-of-the-art water use efficiency measures and conservation planning for all new development or redevelopment as a condition of receiving water and sewer service from OWASA. OWASA believes that it should be mandating whatever is possible in terms of water use efficiency. OWASA's attorney has advised that it has the inherent right as a utility to establish more stringent water use efficiency requirements for new development. There might even be an inherent right to require existing development to retrofit as a change of service occurs. Other recommendations include local governments serving as models for behavior such as incorporating water use efficiency in all new development and retrofitting existing public facilities. He said that Orange County, Chapel Hill, Carrboro, and the schools have been leaders in this. Another long-term recommendation would be to look at landscape ordinance provisions and see if there are some things to do to promote more sustainable landscaping. Regarding long-term issues, OWASA is developing a reclaimed water system in partnership with UNC-CH and this is under construction. It will be online in March of 2009. OWASA would like the local governments to consider having reclaimed water ordinances in place that would require connections to the reclaimed water system so that new development can benefit from the system as a way of meeting non-drinking water demands. The Board of Directors at its meeting on February 14th concurred with the overall recommendations, and this letter will be coming forward to the BOCC. OWASA is asking for the BOCC's concurrence that it is on the right track and that it is fully in agreement that the County staff continues to be at the table helping OWASA developing conditions of service possibilities, implementation plans, roles and responsibilities, and the funding requirements. C. Water Conservation (Attachments#2 and 3) County staff, along with representatives from the Towns of Carrboro and Chapel Hill, has been working with OWASA staff to make suggestions for water conservation priorities and initiatives. The draft of that report is attached to this abstract. The final adopted revision may not be available for this BOCC work session. However, the difference in the two documents is some clarifying detail in the recommendations, and not the recommendations themselves. Obviously, most of the emphasis of the report focuses on public water supplies and not wells. Orange County is only affected as a water customer. However, the need to develop incentives and/or requirements for water saving fixtures and devices, retro-fitting governmental and school district facilities, sustainable landscaping, retro-fitting private residences at the point of sale, and prohibiting homeowners associations from not allowing innovative water conservation measures for private residences are all worth discussing at the County level. Phase I of the Green Building Standards will accomplish the first Near-Term OWASA recommendation. The second and third recommendations essentially reflect current BOCC policy.