Some Eagle County homes are using way too much water
Eagle River Water & Sanitation District targets nearly 600 homes that used 30,000 gallons or more for 3 or more months in 2024
Zoe Goldstein/Vail Daily
As the climate warms and the risk of drought grows, the Eagle River Water & Sanitation District is taking action to protect its most precious resource.
In presentations at the 2025 Eagle River Valley State of the River on May 29 and to the Eagle River Water & Sanitation District board on May 22, David Norris, the district’s director of business operations and Allison Ebbets, the district’s water conservation manager, laid out the district’s plan for encouraging its most consumptive customers to lessen their use.
The hard truth is that some homes in Eagle County are using way too much water.
Nearly 600 individually metered residential accounts — single-family homes — used over 30,000 gallons of water for three or more months in 2024. One home used over 1 million gallons of water throughout the year, equivalent to the use of a large hotel.
“Water conservation is crucial,” Norris said at the State of the River. “We all need to be a part of this together.”
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District designs programs to reduce water use by 400 acre feet
The Eagle River Water & Sanitation District has set a goal to reduce its customers’ overall water use by 400 acre feet by the end of 2026. An acre foot is the amount of water it would take to cover a football field a foot deep in water.
Since the district began working on the project in 2023 through strategies that include a conservation-focused water rate redesign, an industry standard-focused rate redesign and increased public outreach, its total reduction has been 111 acre feet.
That leaves 279 acre feet to reduce to reach the district’s goal.
“We still have a long way to go,” Norris said.
The district has just over 10,000 customers. Close to 14% are in multi-family complexes, mixed-use buildings or commercial businesses, which tend to have relatively low indoor water use and a small amount of shared outdoor land to water. These customers saw a water rate redesign in 2025 that was created to build consistency across water rates, not to target overconsumption.
The district’s individually metered residential accounts — single-family homes — and irrigation-only accounts make up the majority of accounts (87%) and 43% of total consumption. These accounts were hit with a rate redesign in 2024 that simultaneously targeted billing inequity and encouraged water conservation.
At the start of 2024, the district implemented a rate redesign to correct for an unequal billing flaw that allowed bigger single-family homes to use more water at a lower cost than smaller homes. While the fixed base rate homeowners paid was correlated to the size of their home, the rate homeowners paid for the amount of water they used was not.
Formerly, larger homes were allotted more water while paying the same rate as smaller homes. For example, homes that are 9,000 square feet and larger paid the same rate for up to 18,000 gallons per month that homes that are 3,000 square feet and smaller paid to receive up to 6,000 gallons of water. Now, all customers in single-family homes pay the same rate for the amount of water they use.
As a result, when large homeowners use a lot of water now, “their bill (will) escalate rapidly,” Norris said.
District’s excessive user campaign targets nearly 600 homeowners who use too much water
In 2025, the district began its “excessive user” campaign, a project that targets the homeowners who use disproportionate amounts of water.
Close to 600 residential customers used 30,000 gallons of water or more, which puts them in the district’s highest tier of water use, tier five, for three or more months in 2024.
“For reference, the typical customer is in the 5,000 to 6,000 gallon per month range,” Ebbets said during the district’s meeting.
These properties — many of which are on the larger side, located in Cordillera, Vail, Beaver Creek, Arrowhead and Mountain Star, and often owned as second homes — make up 7% of the district’s residential accounts but 24% of residential water use.
Many of the homes have outdoor water features like pools, hot tubs or fountains along with indoor water appliances that can leak a lot of water, like water softeners, ice makers and a large number of toilets.
“I think those people have a different relationship to the community, to the water, they have different expectations, maybe, of what their landscaping looks like,” Ebbets said. “Often — not 100% of the time, but often — bills are being seen or managed by property managers, accountants, lawyers, somebody who is not the customer, somebody who is not on-site.”
“For many, even if they cut water use in half … they would still be in tier five, so we want to see water use come down a lot,” Ebbets said.
If these homes all reduced their use from tier five to tier four, it would save the district 148 acre feet of water.
Legally, the district cannot shut off water to a home for high use. But it can level fines for excessive use, which will likely make an appearance in the 2026 water rate package that will come before the board this fall.
The district prefers, instead, to establish contact with homeowners. District staff have already sent out a mailer and an email to all excessive users.
The response has been strong: 85 people called the district’s customer service line in response to the messaging — more than have called about the 2025 rate redesign, which impacts more than 1,300 accounts.
The district also aims to talk to the homeowners directly. “We’ve had some really positive conversations when we did get on-site with property owners,” Ebbets said at the board meeting.
‘It’s going to take some time’
The district can offer the homeowners a home water use assessment, in which staff will visit the home, analyze inefficiencies and make recommendations for the home to improve water efficiency.
One home — an outlier — used over 1 million gallons of water in 2024. “That is equivalent to a large hotel,” Ebbets said.
District staff visited the property in April. The home’s three water softeners have since been shut off and its pool has been drained, dropping the property’s water use to zero while the homeowners are away.
“It’s going to take some time. Landscaping takes time to change. Behavior takes time to change. So we don’t anticipate being able to save that immediately, but we would like to … see that change over the next couple of years,” Ebbets said at State of the River.
While the excessive users’ use is dramatic, most of the district’s customers have strong water habits, Ebbets said.
“About 80% of our residential customers are doing really well — use water responsibly and reasonably — and we want to see that continue,” she said.
Those curious or concerned about their water use can start with two simple tasks: Learn their water use and turn down their irrigation.
“A lot of people don’t have very much of an idea how much water they use and what the scale of that is, so being familiar with your water use and what that means, say, relative to 6,000 gallons or 30,000 gallons, I think is a great start,” Ebbets said.
