H.B. 154 Water Loss Study Amendments: transcript

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and committee members. Nice to be with you. This, uh, just tell you, this bill has passed Water Task Force and Legislative Water Development Committee already. It's a small in scope bill. We've been doing a lot of important changes relating to water in the last half decade. And there's, uh, in particular, uh, the unified water infrastructure plan integration that's got us concerned about costs. And the idea of this bill is just a small, uh, small idea, and that is to pay some additional attention to water losses when we've gotten water into a, a delivery system. And then we're losing it. And I'd like to ask, uh, Mr. Joel Williams, who's acting Director of Water resources to, to maybe describe for a minute what the bill does.

You. Uh, Joel Williams, acting director of the Division of Water Resources. Good to be with you. What is water loss? It's essentially water that goes into the system and then is not accounted for, uh, for revenue generation. So that probably means it's treated, goes into a tank, and then somewhere between that process and end use it, it is lost. And some of those could be leaking. Water pipes is, is one of the common reasons, especially in older systems. It could, some of that could be due to flushing, uh, just maintenance of the system where they'll open a hydrant and do, do some flushing, but that is not metered and, and would be considered a loss. It could also do be due to maybe a faulty overflow valve on a tank. And, and the tank is full, but it continues to flow and is overflowing and, and somebody needs to just go and fix that overflowing valve. So there's, there's various reasons that losses could occur and many systems don't know what those losses are. Uh, the US average is about 16% of, of a water systems. Water goes to losses, but some systems, especially older ones, could have 30% losses or higher. And so why does this matter? Partly because you're, they're losing, uh, revenue generation. They're, they're, they're treating water, putting it into a system, but then never collecting revenue off of it. Um, also it's just kind of a, a lack of water resource, uh, management and planning. I'll give an example. Let's say there's a system that knows that they're growing and, and they are anticipating needing to increase their water supply by 10%, but let's say at the same time, they also have 30% losses and don't know it. And if they were to do an audit and evaluate their losses and, and be able to identify, oh, hey, we've got this, this, uh, water main that's leaking underground and is, and if we were to replace that and fix it, if we've got 10% more water in our system and we don't need to do that, that new project to, to increase our supply, we just, by fixing our losses, extended our supply another 10%. So it can have big, big impacts on a system. This bill would, would be done in-house with our existing staff, looking at some of the water rights data of reported water use and comparing source data with end use metering meter data and trying to estimate what losses are looking like. In some systems we wouldn't want to call out and identify specific systems, but more just generally look at small systems, medium systems, large systems, and, and report back to the legislature on what those losses are. And, and then make recommendations of things that systems can do to better identify their losses and maybe look at repairing and fixing, fixing things that could help their system run more efficiently. So that's the intent of the bill.

Thank you. Uh, Mr. Williams. So you might be asking Owens, why don't you just ask water resources to do that? They could do that. Um, but there, there are reports out there. Sometimes they don't, aren't able to get the information as readily as they'd like. So I think having a little piece of legislation to put some wind in their sails and, uh, obtain the information they need, uh, to get that accurate and holistic assessment. And I think it, it dovetails nicely with the unified water infrastructure plan. We're trying to get in place and get funded. That Representative Snider ran. We're not gonna impose costs on anybody. It's just to identify where those problems are, where they're, and then where the economics might, might point us to, uh, requiring fixes or, or letting them go. 'cause they're not worth the, the, the juice not worth the squeeze as is commonly said up here. So, uh, I think it's a good and small step forward. Thank you. That concludes my presentation.

Thank you. Mr. Chairman may ask a question. Sure. Um, I thought we did this, did we do something like this in the last couple years to try and identify water loss or was it just secondary water? I'm, I'm just trying to remember what we did. So Nothing's coming to my mind. I thought that we had not,

If I, if I could respond, Mr. Chair. Go ahead. There, there were a period of about three years in a row where a lot a water loss audit bill was, was run, I believe it was Representative Ballard that ran it three years in a row trying to, to get this message out. And it was unsuccessful. Okay. And so, and that, that was requiring or asking systems to do an audit. This is more just saying, let's just study what those losses might be and then take next steps. Okay.

I just remembered I didn't know it. Never made it

Through. Good, good memory.

So thank you. Appreciate that. Thank you. Mr. Chair Representative, is there a, a penalty or does this apply to all sizes of water systems throughout the state? I mean,

There's certainly no penalties involved. Uh, I thought, I think it's just asking water resources to look up and down the systems. I, I don't think we had a threshold or a limitation or a minimum size. I guess my question is, in some of these little small towns, here we go again, as the dog catcher, the grave digger, the whatever, is it gonna be a burden upon them to determine this? Are you, how are you gonna work with these little small towns? Let me, I I I would assume water resources is gonna be looking primarily at the larger systems where there's more potential to, you know, recoup losses. I don't think we're trying to burden anybody. We're just trying to get that a systematic look. But, uh, I do appreciate the question.

Maybe I could ask Director Williams to address that

The, we, we plan to just collect existing water rights data that's submitted by these systems, not going out to any systems and asking for additional information. Just taking what's already been submitted and doing some analysis with that. And, and, and then just reporting back generally what we're seeing with small systems, medium systems, large systems of saying this, these are the kinds of losses that we're seeing and then making recommendations. So it, yeah, no, no penalties, no, no, no, uh, burden to any specific system to provide information that they're not already providing. So you can decipher from the information that they're providing and whether they're having a loss, a little small town, It'd be taking the source source meter data of what's going into their system and comparing that to the end use meter data and tr and the difference between those two can be an indication of what might be lost in a system. It, it's a little bit rudimentary, but it's a, a starting point.

Okay. You've answered my question. Thank you.

Taz, be singer with the Utah Home Builders Association. A good representative I've identified this has been an issue for a long time. We've tried dealing with it. We think this is a wonderful start. It's great, bill. We hope that you'll pass it. Thank you.

Thank you Mr. Chair. I'd like to make a motion to pass out, uh, house bill 1 54 for substitute with a favorable recommendation.

I had my light on to make the motion, so Oh, Thank you. Okay.

Discussion. Yeah. Thank you Mr. Chair. Just to comment, um, related to this, uh, I know the big systems have it, the systems set up, they have the technology, they have the people, and they're doing this already. In most cases, the ones that are gonna hit this are the little ones that don't know and don't have time to worry about it. And it'll cost them a lot just to, I mean, I realize you're saying that you can evaluate this from a distance. I think that's gonna be seen as in a little bit of an interference anyway, but I'm gonna support it to get outta the committee, but I'm not sure I will on the floor. I just wanna look into it with our own people that it's none of the smaller towns in my area.

Uh, you know, I, I think if we need to put a protective clause in there, let's do it. I'd be happy to talk with you further.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Uh, this bill, uh, there, there's been a lot of great water action from this legislative body in the last five years. Um, there has, uh, been one little stepchild issue of water losses. And, um, when the, uh, big unified water infrastructure analysis was completed a year ago, uh, it did not take account of water loss issues. And there are some numbers out there suggesting that in some areas of the state, there may be enough losses to want to take account of them. So this bill, uh, requires water resources to look into the issue of water losses once we get water into systems to provide culinary and, uh, ag water and, uh, to make any recommended, make any recommended actions that would be useful. Does not require any, uh, uh, action yet. It's just to, to, uh, gather that information, collate it, give us a holistic view of it. Uh, you might be wondering, uh, why we need a bill to do that and why that's not just legislative action. And the answer is to let water resources know we're interested in the issue. We see this as part of, uh, dealing with our water systems responsibly, and again, not imposing any burden on anybody as a very small fiscal note. And, uh, I would note prior to the legislative process, outside the normal legislative process, this bill passed unanimously in Water Task Force and Legislative Water Development Committee. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Um, my concern with this bill, as the sponsor indicated in his presentation that the only purpose of this bill is to let water resources know that we're interested. And, um, as you have heard the governor mention many times, if it's a something that could be handled with a phone call, he'd rather not us run a bill to handle something that he could have been handled with a phone call. I have actually personally taken him up on that several times and have found the executive branch to be very engaging and willing to provide information to conduct studies, to resolve issues, uh, without running a bill, which is part of the reason why I don't have as many bills this year because I've been taking advantage of the phone, the governor phone, a friend in the governor's office. So, um, colleagues, I think this is a prime example of a case where this bill is not actually necessary and would rather that we just, I think the governor now knows, but we, somebody could call him and follow up, but I don't really think we need this bill. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

You, Mr. Speaker. I would address that I think that, uh, water is, there's no more important issue in the state right now. And water resources supported the, the idea of the bill, and I think it, uh, puts us on record as wanting that report in a certain timeframe. So I think there's value to it. Thank you, Mr. Speaker.