Thousands of Tucson homes use 250% more water than you. Now what?

Tucson Water will work this year to get water use reduced by nearly 8,000 households — almost half of them in the Catalina Foothills — that each consume more than 250% of an average household's annual use.

It will mostly do so by encouraging water-use "self-audits" and voluntary conservation.

But the utility is also evaluating the possibility and feasibility of imposing a "drought surcharge" on water bills. Probably in the next few months and definitely this year, its officials say they will provide surcharge options to the City Council.

"For instance, should a drought surcharge be something that is broadly applied to all customers, or should it be a fee for customers with especially high water use?" said James MacAdam, administrator of Tucson Water's conservation and stormwater resources division.

"We're not ready to say which one we favor," he said.

A city drought response plan says that at Lake Mead's current, precariously low water levels, customers who use significantly more water than the citywide average can get audits of their water use. But while the city has employees trained to come to homes to conduct in-person audits, the vast majority of high-water-using households this year will likely be encouraged to conduct self-audits.

Tucson Water staffers say that's due to a lack of available staff, although they plan to hire later this year. Some City Council members say the utility needs to get more staffers out in the field, given the need to conserve during difficult times for the city's Colorado River drinking water supply.

For people using excessive amounts of water, "I think they oughta get a real audit," Vice Mayor Steve Kozachik said. "There oughta be a stick involved for not complying, either a higher water rate or a surcharge. We can't have people using excessive amounts of water."

Councilman Kevin Dahl, however, said the utility staff wasn't clear about the surcharges' purpose when they discussed the issue at last week's council meeting. For now, "we have no plans to do surcharges — not at this level of drought," he said.

Council backs ban on ornamental grass  

In the past few weeks, Tucson Water has sent about 7,800 letters to the high-water-using residents, "for your awareness and to offer resources to help you save."

That's a very small percentage of the utility's total customer base. But city officials say they want to target the heaviest users because such households could have larger amounts of what they call "discretionary" water use, including lusher landscapes and unidentified leaks of plumbing fixtures.

The average household of about 2.5 persons uses about 74,000 gallons of water annually, the utility says; 250% of that is 185,000 gallons.

Forty-five percent of the letters went to residents of the Catalina Foothills, and including foothills residents, 62% went to households in unincorporated areas of Pima County that are Tucson Water customers, utility statistics show. City residents made up about 32% of the letter recipients. Most of the rest are households in Marana, Oro Valley and South Tucson. A total of three letters went to households on the Pascua Yaqui and Tohono O'odham reservations.

City officials assume the foothills have so many high-water-using households because many have lusher, larger landscapes on larger lots and are more likely to have swimming pools than people living inside the city, MacAdam said. He also cited a generally accepted correlation, or link, between households' wealth and how much water they use.

Last week, as anticipated, the council took a step toward a major water conservation policy — a ban on ornamental grass planting, otherwise known as nonfunctional turf. It directed Tucson Water to "move forward" in banning such turf in new developments and to phase out all existing nonfunctional grass plantings by June 2026.

The utility must now prepare a formal ordinance for the City Planning Commission, which will hold a public hearing and make a formal recommendation to the council. The ordinance should be to the council in three to five months, MacAdam said.

At meetings of interest groups the city held to gauge public sentiment about a ban, there was little or no opposition voiced. Asked if he thinks that means people understand the nature of the water problem that would justify such a ban, MacAdam said "Yes."

Helping people learn to save water

For in-person audits, the utility sends to peoples' homes what it calls zanjeros, or water managers. The zanjeros have "extensive training in indoor and outdoor water conservation and efficiency," a Tucson Water website says.

But there are only four of them, although the utility plans to hire two more by the end of 2023 as part of a staff reorganization.

Last year, the city sent zanjeros to 1,016 homes. This year, until those hires, "I think we'll probably be able to shoot for 1,200 with current staffing — trying to do more with the same staff," MacAdam said.

Back to homepage

Subscriber Login

Keep reading with a digital access subscription.

Subscribe now

"A zanjero audit includes checking for excessive water consumption, measuring flow rates of shower heads and faucets, looking for special water uses such as spas, pools, or misting systems, and analyzing the efficiency of an irrigation system. During an audit, new low-flow fixtures, faucet aerators, or other water-saving devices may be provided," says a Tucson Water website.

Zanjeros are quite busy, MacAdam said. They also do audits of businesses and multi-family residents, homeowners' associations and city government facilities. They also enforce the city's water waste ordinance, which forbids people from letting water run down the street.

"And the word audit doesn't quite capture it. They are really helping customers learn about how to save water, troubleshooting, educating," MacAdam said.

For now, Tucson Water doesn't have an exact threshold of water use for which a homeowner can get a one-on-one audit from a zanjero, he said. The drought plan says the city will offer audits for customers "significantly exceeding their annual water budget."

The utility's current definition of significantly exceeding water use averages is more than 250% of average, but "that's definitely subject to change."

Colorado River shortage

The drought plan's audit provision kicks in when federal officials declare what they call a Tier 2 shortage on the Colorado River.

That level of shortage began this year, after Lake Mead fell below 1,050 feet elevation at the end of 2022. In a Tier 2 shortage, the Central Arizona Project, which delivers Tucson's drinking water supply, loses 592,000 acre-feet of water out of an approximate total of 1.5 million acre-feet.

That total amounts to about 15 years worth of total annual consumption by Tucson Water customers. As of Saturday, Mead's water level stood at about 1,047 feet. The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation projects Mead will fall to 1,033 feet by the end of 2023 and to 1,017 feet by the end of 2024.

If Mead falls below 1,025 feet at the end of a calendar year, federal officials are required under an earlier, regional drought plan to declare a Tier 3 shortage. If that happens, and water consumption in Tucson doesn't decrease due to measures taken in earlier drought tiers, the city's mayor and council may consider actual water-use restrictions for customers continuing to exceed city usage guidelines, the drought plan says.

As part of the city drought plan, Tucson Water is developing what it calls a "suite" of self-audit tools, including a self-directed, online water use calculator to help customers understand their water use and behaviors on their property and to receive water conservation suggestions. The utility will have what it calls an online resource library of "how-to" audit videos and checklists for a Smart Home water use guide.

Those tools are "all in development," MacAdam said. The series of videos and the online water use calculator should be done in a month or two, he said.

'We just have to be vigilant'

Councilman Dahl said the city needs to do more to make in-home audits more available.

"They're so much more effective than trying to learn about it on a website," Dahl said. "I'm hoping we can staff up and really fulfill what our drought preparedness plan purports to be."

"It's not the council's job to get things done. It's to set policy direction. We're in a drought and the drought isn't likely to get better anytime soon," he said. "We need to get serious about water conservation."

Kozachik said, "We have been talking about hiring more staff for far too long. Some of the outreach work we should be doing is not done."

Councilman Paul Cunningham said he's not overly concerned about the city's staffing problems that limit the conducting of in-person audits. The 7,700 customers using excessive water represent less than 2% of all the utility's household customers, he said.

But he does believe the city's efforts to get these users to voluntarily conserve "will be a really good indicator of how we can encourage our highest water users to consider other practices. That's a good way to go about it."

"We just have to be vigilant, engaging them, encouraging them to adapt to the philosophy that we have adopted in regard to water conservation," Cunningham said.