This award-winning collaboration reduced water losses while strengthening a track record of environmental stewardship.

The City of Asheville, North Carolina, understands that a sustainable future requires stewardship of finite resources. Asheville partnered with Cavanaugh on a Non-Revenue Water (NRW) management program – improving water efficiency with a broad focus on accounting and billing practices, meter management, pressure and leakage management and team productivity.

The City of Asheville enjoys a plentiful supply of pristine water that flows through a beautiful watershed of more than 20,000 acres in Western North Carolina. The city’s water service population includes more than 50,000 connections, which serve more than 150,000 people. Facing unique challenges and an aggressive goal to reduce overall carbon footprint, the city reached out to Cavanaugh to help establish one of North America’s premier NRW management programs.

Water Efficiency

 

Cavanaugh worked with Asheville to design a solution that featured:

  • NRW management as part of the business culture, with reinforcement and coaching of new attitudes and behaviors
  • Full implementation of International Water Association (IWA)/American Water Works Association (AWWA)
    best practices in NRW management

Within the first two years since the city government began following its new NRW management program, it has documented drastically reduced water loss from loss control activities. And data validity – the result of process improvements – has also improved. In early 2014, members of the project team traveled to Quebec to present best practices for operation, maintenance and management of water metering systems being used in the United States – a perfect example of stewardship through innovation in action.