Water Use & Efficiency
Why It Matters
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Water use and efficiency is a critical component of
our operations and is important to our customers. By
increasing water efficiency, we can realize such benefits
as reductions in operating costs, energy consumption
and source water preservation. Water Efficiency is a
solution for an array of water industry problems including
customer conservation, resiliency, rates and regulatory
affairs, among others.
In our own operations, our greatest opportunities to
increase efficiency include optimizing our own water use,
minimizing water loss through prevention of leaks and
breaks and maintaining infrastructure. We also work with
our customers through education, tools and technology
to empower individuals to make their water use more
efficient and sustainable.
Our Approach
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Policies
American Water’s Environmental Policy helps incorporate
environmental leadership across the organization.
The policy guides our commitment to compliance with
relevant environmental laws, regulations and standards,
sustaining the environment through responsible business
practices and using natural resources, including energy,
effectively and efficiently. We regularly review and update
our Environmental Policy, as necessary. We most recently
updated our Environmental Policy in 2021.
In 2020, we updated our Non-Revenue Water and Water
Loss Reporting Practice, which helps us standardize
the quality and consistency of our Non-Revenue Water
reporting. We designate total water losses and any
unbilled consumption within our distribution system as
Non-Revenue Water. Using a standardized and efficient
methodology to report Non-Revenue Water is not only
important for identifying and minimizing water loss, but
is also critical for budgeting, managing the needs of our
customers, tracking our business growth and planning
our future capacity. The practice also recommends
annual water audits for our state subsidiaries, the
results of which we can use to identify and prioritize
investments that prevent and mitigate water loss.
Our Performance
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In early 2021, we announced a new goal to continue
to meet customer needs while saving 15% in water
delivered per customer by 2035, compared to a 2015
baseline1. Since 2015, we have already realized a 5.0% reduction in water delivered per customer.
Progress towards this goal will not only demonstrate
our commitment to environmental stewardship, but will
also yield energy savings, reductions in non-revenue
water losses and lower costs to customers.