DWR Urban Water Use Objective Analyzer Tool

With the enactment of Senate Bill 606 (Hertzberg) and Assembly Bill 1668 (Friedman) in 2018, California established a new framework for long term urban water use efficiency and conservation. This landmark legislation required the Department of Water Resources (DWR), in coordination with the State Water Board, to develop recommendations for new urban water use efficiency standards that would result in lower aggregate statewide urban water use than achieved by the SB X7-7 statewide 2020 target. DWR developed the DWR Urban Water Use Objective Analyzer tool to, among other things, evaluate alternative water use efficiency standards in relation to the statewide SB X7-7 water use target for 2020. This spreadsheet model utilizes the various data sources to estimate Urban Water Use Objective and Objective Based Total Water Use for the State’s urban retail water supplier. The "Read Me" tab of the spreadsheet provides description of the data sources used in the Objective Analyzer Tool. To use the model to evaluate different scenarios, users can input varying assumptions in yellow boxes on the "Dashboard" worksheet. This worksheet also summarizes the model's outputs. This is the only worksheet where the user can modify model inputs. The other worksheets store data or perform calculations. All worksheets in the DWR Urban Water Use Objective Analyzer, except for the Dashboard worksheet, are password protected to prevent inadvertent changes to data and formulas. Users are expected to download the excel file to their local computer before entering new values on the Dashboard worksheets. For additional details, see DWR reports “Recommendations for Urban Water Use Efficiency Standards, Variances, Performance Measures, and Annual Water Use Reporting (Report No. WUES-DWR-2021-01A)” and “Recommendations for Outdoor Residential Water Use Efficiency Standard (Report No. WUES-DWR-2021-02)” at https://water.ca.gov/Programs/Water-Use-And-Efficiency/2018-Water-Conservation-Legislation/Urban-Water-Use-Efficiency-Standards-Variances-and-Performance-Measures.