P-0097 - Water Conservation Policy for County Facilities

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Policy highlights include: • Setting goals. • Designating responsibilities for water conservation as to the Energy Conservation Task Group, Public Works Department, department heads and employees. • Providing for an annual Water Conservation Action Plan setting out specific actions to be accomplished during the coming year for review and approval by the Board, in conjunction with the annual budget process. • Providing for data collection, reporting and performance measures to assess water conservation performance. • Establishing Water Use Standards for County facilities, including watering plants, washing vehicles and the like. • Establishing a framework of supporting programs including employee awareness, incentives, water efficient equipment and construction and so forth. Water Consumption and Performance Measures Public Works maintains a database of water consumption and cost information from utility billings for County buildings. This will serve as the basis for measuring the County's success in reducing water consumption. As the Board wishes, this information may be presented in a variety of formats and varying levels of detail. Under separate cover, Public Works has provided a report covering Orange County water usage and cost. Public Works also will provide a brief presentation of this information at the Board meeting. At the Board meeting, the Board may wish to provide direction to staff on the types of water consumption information that it wishes to receive and the desired format for this information. Based on the current data, staff recommends two measures be used to assess the County's success in reducing building water consumption. These are: • Average daily water use per month -total and by building -and • Average daily water cost per month per square foot -total and by building. RECOMMENDATION(S): The Manager recommends that the Board: 1. Adopt the attached Water Conservation Policy effective January 1, 2006, subject to any further direction it may wish to provide. 2. Receive the report on County building water use and measures and provide additional direction to staff as desired. •