Case Study: City of Greeley achieves more accurate water budgets and increased conservation with WaterSmart

Right-Sizing Budgets with Analytics

The City of Greeley Water & Sewer Department faced the challenge of reducing water use during recurring drought conditions and communicating a fair, effective conservation program to nearly 21,000 accounts. After adopting a water-budget approach—initially using conservative occupancy assumptions to avoid penalizing residents—the utility found customers weren’t reading or understanding bill inserts, and the budgets weren’t targeting the right behaviors, especially summertime outdoor irrigation.

Greeley partnered with WaterSmart to send easy-to-read Home Water Reports and use WaterSmart’s Utility Analytics Dashboard to refine occupancy assumptions and consumption data. The improved messaging and analytics allowed Greeley to tighten budgets, focus summer outreach on irrigation, and better target rebate offers—leading to higher rebate engagement, greater budget compliance and a verified 4.1% improvement in water-use efficiency within six months.

City of Greeley

Ruth Quade

Water Conservation Coordinator