In response to drought conditions in West-Central Florida, the Southwest Florida Water Management
District (SWFWMD) declared a water shortage emergency and issued an emergency order (Executive
Director Order No. SWF 01-14) on March 21, 2001, which
required that municipal utilities in the Tampa Bay Region implement a water-audit program for non-
residential customers and submit a report to the SWFWMD. As a result of this requirement, the City of
St. Petersburg Water Conservation Program developed a water-use evaluation program for their Industrial Commercial and Institutional (ICI)
customers. Hazen and Sawyer, P.C. was retained to perform the water-use evaluations for the City of St.
Petersburg.
The objectives of the ICI Water-Use Evaluation project were to identify the ICI customers with the largest
annual consumption of potable water and to encourage these customers to participate in water-use
evaluations. The City paid the entire cost of the program; therefore, the evaluation was free to the
customer. Each evaluation involved determining the consumptive use of the various water uses at the
subject facility, making recommendations to decrease consumption per water use, determining what the
water savings would be if the recommendations were implemented, costing the implementation plan and
finally, providing a pay-back analysis. The content of this paper is based on the authors' experience in
performing ICI water-use evaluations. The facilities evaluated included two nursing homes, a municipal
pier, a naval-affiliated boarding school and a greyhound-racing venue. The water-uses included domestic
plumbing fixtures, commercial laundry equipment, cooling towers, boilers, ware washers, and irrigation.
The consumption of each of the water uses was determined by direct measurement, equipment
specifications and/or calculations using engineering estimates. The water savings were calculated and the
local water rates were applied to the savings to determine the dollar amount that could be saved if the
recommendations were implemented. The cost of implementation was provided by local vendors and
contractors and was compared to the dollar amount of the potential water savings. Using the cost of the
implementation and the potential water savings, a payback analysis was provided to the utility customer.
Implementing the recommended changes was done on a voluntary basis and currently there are no rebates or
other incentives for ICI customers to implement the changes. Therefore, the payback analysis provided in
the evaluation report was the sole driving force in encouraging the customers to implement the
recommended modifications. Includes 2 references, tables.
| Edition : | Vol. - No. |
| File Size : | 1
file
, 320 KB |
| Note : | This product is unavailable in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus |
| Number of Pages : | 16 |
| Published : | 06/15/2003 |
