Vail-area water district implements watchdog program to report violations

The Eagle River Water and Sanitation District on Thursday approved new penalties for violations of its outdoor water use policy, including maximum penalties that say four violations in one year “may result” in water flow restrictions on properties.

But the district doesn’t expect to get much past the first or second violation, which is a warning and $500 fine.

In a meeting on Tuesday, Public Relations Manager Lauren Snyder said in researching other districts that issue fines, they rarely see properties get past the level of first or second offense.

“They had hundreds of reports on violating their watering schedule and very few of them actually went to a fine,” Snyder said. “Most of them, they called or emailed the person letting them know there was a violation, and that changed the behavior.”

Water watchdogs

As an additional tool for enforcement, the district also plans on implementing a watchdog program called Water Watch, where citizens can report instances of water use that is in violation of the current water policy, which only allows outdoor watering two days per week and only between 8 p.m. and 8 a.m.

The Water Watch program will be a way to channel the current flow of complaints coming into the district, which has been inversely proportional to current flow of actual water during this extreme drought season.

“We are already getting calls probably daily,” Snyder said.

The Water Watch program will have an online form where people can submit date, time and location of violations, and the district will follow up by checking the complaint against its own information.

“It’s very clear when someone starts their irrigation, there’s a very clear spike in their water use, so we’ll have two points of evidence,” Snyder said.

The program is also intended to curtail water waste, but what exactly that means remains to be seen.

“We have not done a lot of education on what water waste is to our customers,” Snyder said. “So we’re going to spend a few weeks if not a month, educating our customers on what that looks like — ornamental water features, letting water pool, overwatering and letting it go down the gutter, those types of things.”

Trying new tech

In the extreme circumstance of a water user reaching four violations in one year, the water flow restricting device would be installed at the homeowner’s expense.

District General Manager Siri Roman said the procedure would involve replacing customers’ water meters with a device that could restrict flows remotely.

Those customers would still receive water for indoor use as the district attempts to balance public health and access to water while reducing “the actual amount that goes through the meter,” Roman said.

The district owns some of its own employee housing units, which it will try the technology out on first, as they’re not sure how viable it actually is.

“We use the word ‘may’ because it’s kind of a newer technology,” Roman said. “We hope to build the program.”

While the flow-restricting devices could be useful in enforcement, district officials were careful to reinforce the message that they don’t expect they will have to use them.

“This is not meant to be a water police type of situation,”Snyder said. “It’s really just another opportunity for us to correct behavior, we understand that there are customers who aren’t glued to the water news … We’re trying to use this as a tool to educate our customers, not as a punitive tool.”

To report a violation, visit erwsd.org/water-watch.