The following suggestions are practices that everyone can use and will result in reduced water consumption by 15 - 25 percent with very little difficulty or discomfort:

Outdoors
• Did you know that most Southern Californians water their landscape with double the amount of water needed to keep plants healthy? Calculate the right amount of water for your landscape.
• Make sure your sprinkler heads and valves are working properly. Check for leaks – and repair as soon as possible.
• Adjust your timer promptly to match changes in the weather or time of year.
Kitchen
• Install low-flow faucet aerators on all your household faucets. Some aerators can restrict flow to less than a gallon per minute.
• Check for and repair faucet leaks. A dripping faucet can waste several gallons of water each day – about 140 gallons a month.
• Only run the dishwasher when it is full. Whenever possible, don't pre-rinse your dishes before loading them.
Bath
• Turn the faucet off when you brush your teeth.
• Take shorter showers. The typical 5-minute shower uses between 15 and 25 gallons of water. The average bath uses even more.
• Install dual-flush toilets in your home. Dual-flush toilets, common in other countries and recently approved for sale in the United States, allow people to be even more water efficient. These toilets have two levers -- one lever to flush for liquids and the other for solids. The liquid-lever option uses half the water used in today's standard low-flush toilet. Using these new types of efficient toilets can save an average of 2,250 gallons a year.
Laundry
• The single best thing you can do to improve clothes washer efficiency is to replace an old inefficient machine with a new high efficiency washer. Traditional clothes washers use twice as much water and energy as new, high efficiency machines.

For more water saving tips click here.

A small leak quickly adds up to a lot of wasted water. Toilets can silently leak 150 gallons a day, or 55,000 gallons a year. A pipe leak the size of this letter L can waste a million gallons a year! Check fixtures for leaking faucets (Small drips can easily add up to 100-300 gallons a day). Yes it is well worth it to fix every leak.

What should I do if I see someone wasting a lot of water?

The Palmdale Water District is very concerned about water waste. If you see this occuring, please contact us with the location, time and date of the occurance. We will send a customer service representative out to the location to follow up on the report and discuss the issue with the customer who seems to be wasting water. The Palmdale Water District does not want the public to assume any risk or responsibilty by trying to correct such water issues themselves. If you wish to report water waste, please contact our customer service department at
(661) 947-4111, option 2.

If water naturally recycles in the environment, why is it important to conserve?

You are correct, there seems to be an infinite supply of water on our planet, which naturally recycles. But where such water exists, relocates, and how quickly these sources of water can replentish themselves to supply water demands is of real concern.

In wet years PWD uses more surface water than ground water thus allowing ground water table to increase. Higher ground water levels can then be maintained to supply water to offset any reduced amounts of available surface water. In dry years(drought conditions) the opposite takes place. We depend more on ground water due to the lack of surface water.

By conserving, we keep levels of groundwater high and reduce our chance of depleating all available water supplies that are needed durring times of drought. Ground water is considered a finite supply that can be completely depleated if not managed properly.

If our water supply comes from so many different local and distant sources, how can the public determine when we are actually in drought conditions?

Drought is a normal and recurring feature of climate. Although it occurs in virtually all of the world's climatic zones, its characteristics vary significantly from one region to another. In some of the world's most arid regions, a drought occurs when annual precipitation drops below 7 inches per year, while in the world's most moisture rich regions, a period of 6 days without rain might constitute a drought! Consequently, there is no universal definition of drought. In the most general sense, drought is a result of a deficiency of precipitation over an extended period of time, resulting in a water shortage, which impacts normal water usage. The severity of a drought depends upon the degree of moisture deficiency, its duration, and the size of the affected area. Because it is so hard to develop a quantitative definition for drought, it is difficult to determine precisely when a drought starts and ends.

Throughout much of the United States the Palmer Drought Severity Index (also known as the Palmer Index) is used to assess drought conditions. The Palmer Index is primarily a method of comparing recent monthly precipitation with average or "normal" conditions. Palmer Index values are scaled from +4 (extremely moist) to -4 (extreme drought) with a value of zero (0) indicating historic average conditions.

For more information on assessing drought conditions please visit NOAA's drought information center.

My neighbor over-waters his lawn. Is there anything that you can do so that I don't have to get on his wrong side by personally pointing out his waste?

The Palmdale Water District is very concerned about water waste. If you see this occuring, please contact us with the location, time and date of the occurance. We will send a customer service representative out to the location to follow up on the report and discuss the issue with the customer who seems to be wasting water. The Palmdale Water District does not want the public to assume any risk or responsibilty by trying to correct such water issues themselves. If you wish to report water waste, please contact our customer service department at
(661) 947-4111, option 2.

Do you have any figures or facts about how much water is used in our everyday usage habits?

I want to file a water waste complaint. What do I need to do?

You can call (661) 947-4111 or visit our District Office at 2029 E. Avenue Q, Palmdale CA 93550 for any water quality complaint.

• Please inform the representative that you wish to file a water waste complaint.

• Give your name and the phone number you are calling from in case you get disconnected.

• Provide the complaint address, your mailing address if different and a phone number where you can be reached between 8am and 4pm on weekdays.

• State the nature of your complaint.

We will investigate your complaint and attempt to resolve the problem immediately.