LeakBird

In order to calculate how much your toilet wastes in a city like San Francisco, we need to know the water footprint of your entire building. Of course, if you’re a property manager or landlord, you’ll be especially interested in this, as tenants don’t foot the water bills anyhow.  I’m going to give facts from [...]

(April 19, 2009, Kelly Zito, The San Francisco Chronicle)
“We’re out there telling people to use less water, and yet a lot of the revenue we have is based on what people use,” said Gary Breaux, finance director for the East Bay Municipal Utility District, which serves 1.3 million people in Contra Costa and Alameda counties. [...]

(April 16, 2009, Aguanomics)
SFPUC’s announcement of rate hikes to begin in July 2009 are so modest as to make me think that no amoung of profligate use will go punished. Please consider the following, submitted as Comment to the Chronicle’s March 5 article, “On Coping With the Drought”:
“For every conscientous consumer, operating on personal principles [...]

With all of the rain California has been receiving over the last few weeks, water levels are back to 80% in Sierra snowpack terms and there is “drought improvement“.  The 167-mile stretch of the Hetch-Hetchy system, which provides 85% of the Bay Area’s water, can continue to flow at four fifths capacity.  But water restrictions [...]

(March 5, 2009, The San Francisco Chronicle)
The ongoing struggles of managing California’s limited water supply to support our cities, farms and natural environment are well known. As we face what some are calling one of the worst droughts in California history, we must all learn to conserve water wherever possible. Just as the Bay Area [...]

I’ve written about how to calculate your San Francisco water bill, but I thought it might be useful to know how the SFPUC functions and just how many landlords and property managers are getting excessively high water bills due to the likes of tenants’ running toilet conditions everyday.
Back in June of 2008, I spoke with [...]

(Feb. 15, 2009, Kelly Zito, The San Francisco Chronicle)

Is it time to stick a straw into the Pacific Ocean?
About 20 water agencies up and down the California coast seem to think so.
From Marin County to San Diego, small and large projects that turn seawater into tap water are gaining favor, propelled by events unprecedented in [...]

(Oct. 30, 2008, The Mercury News)
SAN FRANCISCO—San Francisco officials have approved a $4.4 billion plan to upgrade the Bay Area’s largest drinking water system, which draws water from Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite National Park. The city’s planning and public utilities commissions approved the upgrade Thursday, saying it’s needed to keep the system safe in [...]

What with the new higher water rates for San Francisco set for Tuesday, July 1, 2008, I thought it’d be useful to describe how your water bill is calculated by the SFPUC, and demonstrate how easily your water bill could double or triple due to a running toilet or two.
An SFPUC water bill is made [...]

The new water rates are about to kick in in San Francisco, on July 1, 2008. The water rate across the board goes up $.40 per unit.  On the wastewater treatment side of things, T1 goes up $.28, T2 goes up $.71, and T3 goes up $.81 per unit.
What does all of this mean?  Well, [...]

Last week’s SF Chronicle ran a timely and fascinating story by Kelly Zito on water rationing and the future of California’s water supplies.
I was amazed to learn that 80% of California’s water goes to agriculture, whereas 20% goes to urban areas, and that more water, because of increasing demand, is beginning to be supplied to [...]