Why BDD?
Continuing to Conserve
Santa Fe area water users are among the most environmentally conscious and conservative in the U.S. In fact, we have cut our average water use per day by about 40 percent in the last 10 years. That is important, because according to the U.S. News & World Report’s 2008 Best Places to Retire website, Santa Fe receives only about 14.2 inches of precipitation a year.
Both
the City
of Santa Fe and Santa
Fe County have water conservation ordinances. The City
offers rebates to
residents on rain barrels, hot water recirculation systems and high efficiency
washing machines as well as a commercial
rebate program on commercial dishwashers
and air-cooled ice machines.
The
County offers free
table tents for commercial restrooms and brochures
for hotels. Both have a great deal of information on how to save water indoors
and outdoors.
Even with aggressive conservation and City and County efforts to upgrade water treatment plants, pipelines and other parts of our water delivery system to make it more efficient, water planners expect our sustainable (reliable) water supply to start falling short of demand in the next 10 years.
The BDD helps us prepare for future water needs by creating an infrastructure that allows us to make the best use of existing resources now and incorporate new water resources in the future.