By Elizabeth Cutright
According to National Rural Water Association estimates, almost 30,000 rural water utilities dot our national landscape, including many located in unincorporated hamlets and isolated backwaters. And whether their water comes from a nearby lake, a local river, or a reservoir several miles away, all of those rural customers expect access to clean, affordable drinking water. Unfortunately for many rural water utilities, shrinking tax bases, challenging local environments, and customers located miles apart from each other make water resource management unwieldy and expensive.
Money is always the most obvious culprit. Large or small, most water utilities are ruled by budgetary constraints. The costs associated with the construction or rehabilitation of conveyance infrastructure is pricey, and most grants and bonds can only get a utility about halfway there.
Adding complexity to the issue is the hodgepodge of rights, rules, and regulations that affect who gets what water, and how much they pay for it. Rural water utilities must navigate a choppy sea of riparian rights, legacy claims, federal agencies, and boards and committees. And more often than not, it’s a skeleton crew at the helm: many small town water supplies are managed by a tiny group of renaissance men and women (many of them volunteers) who are charged with reading meters, fixing leaks, and billing customers, all while handling information technology demands and supervisory control and data acquisition systems.
Meanwhile, non-revenue water statistics continue to rise. Without the funding or the administrative support–many publicly elected water board officials run on a platform of reduced water rates–pipes keep leaking, meters keep misfiring, and the volume of water collected, treated, and delivered is never properly measured or billed. The gallons-per-day totals may seem relatively small when compared to larger metropolitan areas, but–proportionately speaking–the impacts of a water main break or customer billing error can be just as catastrophic whether they occur on Wall Street or Main Street.
Fortunately, difficulties and obstacles can reveal opportunities. Smaller populations make customer outreach easier. Utility managers and employees can cultivate a sense of trust with homeowners and businesses because regular interaction makes them a familiar face in the neighborhood. And if your customer trusts you, it’s easier to implement changes that may increase costs and momentarily disrupt services. Unlike urban water utilities–that can be perceived as uncaring behemoths dictating terms from on high–smaller, rural water utilities are able to engage customers and create an atmosphere of cooperation and teamwork. A “we’re-all-in-this-together” approach to ease the pain of higher water rates or delivery downtimes due to infrastructure maintenance.
In many ways, rural water utilities are perfectly positioned to capitalize on new technologies and innovations in water resource management. Advanced Meter Infrastructure (AMI) is constantly changing and improving, all with an eye towards easy implementation and the ability to dovetail with existing systems. In fact, rural automatic meter reading (AMR) and AMI adoption are often popular options, even in the face of budget shortfalls, in part because deployment numbers are smaller and more manageable. And because existing metering systems have not been improved upon in some time, utilities are willing to take on smaller projects with bigger paybacks and shorter returns on investment.
Advanced leak detection is another easy way for rural water utilities to improve their water resource management and increase revenue. Many of the latest leak detection technologies available are non-intrusive and easy to operate. As an added benefit, many of these leak detection units have been designed to piggyback on existing metering infrastructures and can interface with the data collection systems of those AMR/AMI units. This allows for easier data integration and the ability to collect and analyze usage data for better deployment of resources.
Rural water utilities may not make headlines, but 94% of our nation’s water is collected, treated, and delivered by small and rural water utilities (www.nrwa.org/about/about.aspx). As such, we have much to gain by listening to the voices of rural America. There’s plenty to learn from the success stories–those small towns that implemented changes and improved water service while reducing water use–and plenty of “canary-in-a-coalmine” moments we should all be paying attention to. Because, ultimately, when it comes to water resource management, it’s not the size of the system that matters, but how it’s used.
Author’s Bio: Elizabeth Cutright is a previous editor of Water Efficiency.
