Water Conservation 5-Year Plan Complete

5-year plan due out mid-month

riginally published in the Santa Fe New Mexican on December 26, 2020

I still can’t believe that 2020 is upon us. In the month of January we will be pushing out all of the work we did in 2019 with our final 5-Year Water Conservation Plan.

Please visit www.savewatersantafe.com to see the completed plan along with our 2020 scorecard. The scorecard has four goals: education, customer service, partnerships and effective program management. Within each goal section we have listed programs that are measured by specific projects.

Each quarter we will post the work done for each program and attempt to score our progress. The public asked us to be more transparent in our work and to be able to provide public input along the way. Our website will be built out to do just that. In July we will post our second-quarter or mid-year accomplishments and ask the public to let us know how we are doing. You can do this on our website directly or attend one of our public meetings in July to give us that input. The scorecard is aligned with the 2,000-plus collected pieces of input as well other city projects that align with our 2020 goals.

We’re so excited to improve our existing programs, implement new ones. and to continue to build partnerships in the community that support our success. Please visit the website soon to view our rollout of the plan along with all the public input collected that informed the entire process.

One exciting program being launched this month is the continuation of our restaurant pilot. The Santa Fe Green Chamber of Commerce, Santa Fe Community College, and the company Uponor are our partners for this pilot program. Uponor is still piloting its Phyn technology in selected restaurants, which will help us continue to develop the data we need to meet our challenge of metering restaurant water consumption in situations where they reside in strip malls or other master metered properties.

We’ve learned so much from the work already completed but we’ve only begun to scratch the surface with the 40 restaurants we’ve audited and the 400 to 600 restaurants remaining. If you are a restaurant owner and interested in participating, there are many potential benefits. The cost of the audit will be paid for, retrofits will be made at the time of the visit, and a report will be delivered following the audit on all your opportunities to save water, plus your restaurant will receive free marketing via our social media and website platforms. Participating restaurants might also be selected to be part of the national pilot with Phyn technologies. For more information, please contact Glenn Schiffbauer with the Santa Fe Green Chamber of Commerce at 505-501-0222.

I hope you all have a happy and prosperous new year! Thank you all for your support and please visit our website on Jan. 15 for a peek of what’s to come for the Water Conservation Office in 2020.