Is your neighbor wasting water? Snitching on them may ease California drought, study says

With hot and dry conditions ravaging California, water departments across the state are asking people to anonymously report their neighbors for washing their cars too much, soaking their lawns or failing to fix leaks, among other drought-related offenses.

Turns out, it may work.

A new study suggests that reporting water wasters in your neighborhood leads to a noticeable increase in conservation.

The study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that in a state the size of California — with 39 million people — one additional complaint of water wasting per 1,000 people served by the utility resulted in about 32 billion gallons of water saved, which could serve a city the size of San Francisco for over 16 months.

The study drew from more than 485,000 water waste reports compiled during the last major California drought in 2014-17.

Residents of Sacramento seemed to be particularly enthusiastic about snitching. Some Sacramento water utilities receive a higher-than-average number of water waste reports in comparison with the rest of California, according to the study from the Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The wide-scale reporting of water wasters is a relatively new phenomenon. In 2015, during the previous major drought, former Gov. Jerry Brown mandated water conservation by 25%, and many cities created anonymous hotlines and websites to report water waste, otherwise known as participatory surveillance programs. (This week, Gov. Gavin Newsom asked Californians to restrict their water usage by 15% but he didn’t make it mandatory.)

After the drought edicts, University of Wisconsin-Madison associate professor Manny Teodoro took an interest in the increase in citizen reporting, leading to the study with his colleagues, Youlang Zhang of the Renmin University of China and David Switzer of the University of Missouri.

“When California went into the drought a few years ago, it presented a unique opportunity to understand some dynamics that we haven’t understood before,” Teodoro said.

Other cities have found the same result as Teodoro and the other researchers. Richard Tsai, the environmental resources manager for Davis, told The Sacramento Bee that the city does indeed see a drop in water usage because of citizen complaints.

In the new study, Teodoro and his colleagues discovered that reporting rates were highest in places where the drought was most severe and where watering restrictions were the strictest. Reports of water misuse increased among communities with high education levels and partisan competition.

Sacramento area residents rank high in water-waste complaints

Teodoro’s study found the city of Sacramento received 1.73 complaints per 1,000 people and the Sacramento County Water Agency got 20.6 complaints per 1,000 people during the last drought, which are both high in comparison to California’s average complaint level: 0.38 complaints per 1,000 people served by the utility.

Sacramento County is classified as an area of “Exceptional Drought” by the National Integrated Drought Information System.

Matt Robinson, Sacramento County’s public information manager, said he believes the high number of complaints of water wasters coming into Sacramento County Water Agency could stem from people not knowing which utility manages their water: a municipality, a special district or an investor-owned firm. With 20 individual water purveyors in Sacramento County, calls to the Sacramento County Water Agency often end up directed to other water utilities, he said.

Teodoro’s study also identified this phenomenon: More people contacted their city governments for water waste complaints than special districts or investor-owned firms. Teodoro said many people do not know the names of special water districts or the investor-owned companies that provide their water, let alone how to contact them.

“If you are in a city government, there’s a good reason to expect that you’re going to generate a lot of complaints,” Teodoro said. “And if you follow up on those complaints effectively, there’s every reason to think that you are going to conserve water.”

Another explanation could simply be that Sacramento County residents are informed water stewards. Because Sacramento is the capital of California and a large agricultural hub, people are generally aware of their water use, according to Carlos Eliason, the media and communications specialist for the city of Sacramento.

“Wasting water is prohibited in the city,” Eliason said.

Some residents even report water waste multiple times a year. Between July 1, 2020, to June 30 of this year, 25 residents submitted complaints to the city of Sacramento Department of Utilities more than once, generating about 600 complaints. One person alone generated 21 complaints, according to Eliason.

How to deal with a water waster

Upon receiving a report of waste, the city of Sacramento Department of Utilities, the Sacramento County Water Agency and the city of Davis use an “education-first” approach to illustrate how and why residents are wasting water. With many people unaware that they waste water, most people are open minded when handling the situation, Robinson said.

“People are appreciative that we’re coming out to talk with them instead of being punitive,” Robinson said.

Some water conservationist specialists in Sacramento have reported that more engaged neighborhoods tend to have fewer water misuse complaints in comparison to less engaged communities. It is possible that these neighborhoods are more likely to share with one another that they are wasting water, instead of contacting their local utility, according to Eliason.

“You could draw the line that more connected neighborhoods means that people may use water more responsibly,” Eliason said.

Because this system is based on individual reporting, it is possible for neighbors to make bad-faith reports to their utilities.

While infrequent, Robinson said the Sacramento County Water Agency has received a few illegitimate complaints. If people use the reporting system “as a weapon against their neighbor,” crews can easily identify the veracity of complaints when investigating the situation, he said.

While Teodoro warned that the effect of water surveillance is challenging to measure, ratting out one’s neighbors could help relieve some of the pressure from California’s current drought. If residents witness their neighbors violating water conservation guidelines, they can file complaints by locating their water purveyor and finding a hotline or website to contact.

To anonymously report water waste in other neighborhoods, Save Water Report from the state of California automatically directs information to local water agencies — allowing people to make reports even if they do not know which purveyors serve the area.

“Cautiously, I wouldn’t give a wholehearted endorsement of participatory surveillance, but there’s evidence that the program can help conserve water with the caveat that it’s a social process and we need to be careful in enlisting the public in these kinds of enforcement,” Teodoro said.

This story was originally published July 9, 2021 at 7:06 AM.